The punditry can’t get enough of this reptile
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has never minded playing the villain. While most politicians are desperate to be loved, what matters to the Kentucky Republican is power, and his is not based on people loving him…
McConnell’s plan is coming together almost perfectly.
In McConnell’s perfect world, Democrats would get absolutely no meaningful legislation passed, but given that they control the White House and Congress, that’s not realistic. So he’d prefer that their ability to legislate be restricted to the once-yearly reconciliation process, which allows a bill to pass on a majority vote but restricts it to budgetary matters.
It doesn’t hurt that the same punditry can’t — or won’t — point out that Mitch McConnell’s never faced an electorate larger than the Commonwealth of Kentucky, not exactly the voice of the nation, though wow, I’ll bet Kentucky’s got plenty of rural diners.
But President Biden, who only picked up some 80 million more votes than the senior senator from the Bluegrass State in the 2020 election, is castigated for the usual reasons — cue up the Dems-in-disarray canned tweets — while Moscow Mitch is revered by the same journos that seem, at least in my readings, to rely on GOP/K-Street sources for all their privileged inside information.
Not that I want to defend the Dems. My vote is strategic: they’re the lesser-of-evils. But the greater of evils keeps getting more and more, um, evil. For fuck’s sake, they glommed on to the cult of DJT, and, ahem, the evidence is clear that the Orange cult isn’t proto-fascist or fasc-curious: it’s the real thing.
Small d democracy is in genuine crisis.
And Mitch is all-in.
Worse, so is the elite media. Whether out of cowardice (can’t be labeled librul, or worse, hippie) or because they’re more than a little elite themselves, they’ve carried GOP water for, goddamn, my whole life.
Sure, Nixon got caught…on tape (and he probably would’ve skated minus that).
But the ensuing decades have been fake news…fake news that’s elevated an Orange Blob and Human Tortoise to positions that allow them to openly trash any semblance of government of, by, and for the people.
Meanwhile, the press fawns over a grim GOP consistency (the daily message) while trashing Dems, who again, are by no means perfect, but at least try to act like a political party in a complex, modern, nation-state.
But hey, can’t get labeled librul…