Bye, Mitch
Democrats will take control of the Senate after a historic race in Georgia, thus ending Mitch McConnell's disastrous tenure as Senate Majority Leader.
Image via Getty Images
by Ben Cohen
In May of 2016, Lindsey Graham tweeted that, “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed.......and we will deserve it.” Unfortunately for him, Graham’s prediction has finally come true.
It is now almost certain that the Democrats will take control of the Senate after a historic race in Georgia, and the ramifications for American politics in the coming years are enormous.
With Raphael Warnock’s win against Kelly Loeffler and Jon Ossoff’s impending victory over David Perdue, the Democrats will now control all branches of the US government. This gives Joe Biden significantly more power to pass legislation, and no obstructionism from Senate Republicans who had been planning on hamstringing the incoming administration in every way conceivable. It will be a razor thin majority, but a majority nevertheless and Biden will almost certainly use it to pass sweeping legislation very early on in his presidency.
No more Mitch
Most importantly, this win signifies the end of Mitch McConnell’s tenure as Majority House Speaker. The ruthless, amoral Senator from Kentucky has transformed American politics over the past six years, turning the Senate into a hyper political organ of government that seeks only to maximize Republican power. Rather than adhere to historic Senate norms and work to reach bipartisan consensus, McConnell used his tenure to obstruct almost all of President Obama’s agenda, including blocking his nomination of Supreme Court Justice Merrick Garland. Under Trump, McConnell saw an opportunity to further consolidate power, passing historic tax cuts for his billionaire donors while ramming through hundreds of conservative activist judges to federal courts, and three new Supreme Court Justices. As Obama wrote in his new memoir, “What McConnell lacked in charisma or interest in policy he more than made up for in discipline, shrewdness, and shamelessness — all of which he employed in the single-minded and dispassionate pursuit of power."
McConnell, perhaps more so than Trump, has corrupted politics in America almost to the point of no return. His sociopathic quest for power meant McConnell put aside any allegiance he may have had for the constitution and the rule of law, and dedicated himself to providing political cover for Trump as he laid waste to the country’s institutions. McConnell sensed that if he kept the MAGA mob happy, he could get everything he wanted. So he did, and refused to help stop Trump committing multiple crimes and impeachable offenses. McConnell practiced a form of political nihilism so severe that even a pandemic killing hundreds of thousands of Americans did not deter him from attempting to destroy Democrats and wreck the lives of working people.
Warnock and Ossoff’s victories end all of this. McConnell’s plans to hijack Biden’s agenda are in ruins, and his total control over the business of government is finished. McConnell will have no influence over Joe Biden’s cabinet nominees. He cannot block new stimulus checks. He will cede power to Chuck Schumer and become the minority leader. He will no longer decide what happens on the Senate floor. McConnell isn’t completely powerless, but his party is no longer in control of any branch of government and he will need to build coalitions and make concessions if he is to have much of an influence on anything. Furthermore, he will no longer have much control over his own party. Trump loyalists despise him, and thus the base will want him gone. This is Mitch McConnell’s worst nightmare, and it is one of his own making.
A new era
The election of Warnock and Ossoff represents the dawn of a new era in American politics, and the end of an incredibly dark one. Joe Biden now has latitude to enact bold legislation on climate change, health care, gun control, education, and economic justice. The Republicans can now be left to incinerate themselves with internecine warfare — the MAGA mob vs what is left of the GOP establishment.
Because who now controls the party? Trump has now lost the general election and did everything humanly possible to hand Democrats the Senate. He is a loser in every sense of the word, and the GOP is in the midsts of a revolt as many are now publicly turning on him. Trump’s cult is losing power and influence, and with McConnell cut down to size, there is a leadership vacuum with no clear favorite to fill it.
As an experienced exponent of Machiavellian power games, McConnell knows he has been had. This loss is the final nail in the coffin for the bloodthirsty politics he forced everyone else to play. Which makes this victory all the sweeter.
Read an excerpt from the latest Banter Members piece:
Trump Must Be Impeached (Again) Over Georgia Phone Call If American Democracy Is To Survive
Even Republicans should get behind new impeachment charges, not just for the country, but for their own political survival.
Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
by Ben Cohen
There is an unspoken rule in Republican circles that stipulates Donald Trump can never be held accountable for his many crimes because he is too incompetent to know he has committed them.
Lindsey Graham came the closest to spelling this out in 2019 when he claimed Trump was “incapable of forming a quid pro quo” with Ukraine because he was too “incoherent”.
“What I can tell you about the Trump policy toward the Ukraine, it was incoherent,” Graham told reporters. “They [the Trump administration] seem to be incapable of forming a quid pro quo.”
No one in GOP circles batted an eyelid at this. Graham was just saying what everyone else was thinking: Trump might have committed a potentially treasonous crime, but he was too stupid to understand what he was doing, so it must be ignored.
Trump’s stupidity and incoherence has thus far enabled him to survive every political scandal of his presidency including charges of collusion, obstruction of justice, illegal hush payments to pornstars, bribery, conspiracy to defraud the United States and multiple Hatch Act violations.
However, with two weeks to go in his scandal filled circus of a presidency, Trump may have finally crossed the Rubicon….
This is an excerpt from this week’s Members Only article. Get a 50% discount on a Banter Membership and read the full article here.
“ the Democrats will now control all branches of the US government.”
Not the Court.
“ but his party ... will need to build coalitions and make concessions if he is to have much of an influence on anything.”
Not something Republicans are likely to ever except. The idea that they might have to compromise is entirely foreign to the modern Republican. I don’t see them being in the minority changing that mindset at all.
Unfortunately, it’s not at all foreign to the modern Democrat. And my expectation is that, stupidly, the Dems will try to “work with those across the aisle” instead of, as the good of the country and preservation of democracy requires, bitch slapping them and telling them to fuck off.
Yes, it’s a perpetuation of partisanship. But when the other side is unrepentant fascists and mobsters who have as the ONLY item on their agenda the other destruction of the country, damn right you keep things partisan.