In last month's post-election post, I discussed the disappointing results in U.S. Senate races for Democrats, relative to the predictions being made in pre-election polls. I considered the possibility that voters, fed a steady diet of bothsiderism by the MSM, decided at the last minute to declare a plague on the houses of both parties, despite the fact that only one party was clearly responsible for the existence of an actual plague. I've had a few more weeks to think about it and, somehow, it still seems like the likeliest explanation.
How else to explain the fact that pandemic politics clearly were decisive in the voters' rejection of Donald Trump (and just to be clear: they really, truly have rejected him), while still allowing them to vote in Senate races for incumbent (and replacement) Republicans who have done everything possible to enable Trump's worst tendencies? And not just with regard to the virus, but everything else. The re-election of Susan Collins in Maine is particularly disturbing. Collins did everything she could to stand by Trump, and thereby forfeit her well-polished image for independent thinking, and still won re-election by a decisive margin.
In fairness, it may be the case that the large amounts of out-of-state money flowing into her opponent, Sara Gideon, and other Democratic challengers made it easier for Collins and other Senate Republicans may have made it easier to emphasize their local roots. Still, if the question is independence from Trump, where is that revealed in her voting record over the last four years? Where is it revealed in the voting record of any Republican Senator over that period? Mitt Romney's vote for one article of impeachment? Commendable, but hardly enough to suggest any real independence in the caucus as a whole.
Even now, flush with enthusiasm from an unexpected victory, Collins is bent on pretending that it has given her some sort of new-found political significance, and is now pushing a compromise pandemic bill with a handful of her Republican colleagues and some Democrats that is supposed to prove that a spirit of kum by yah has descended over Capitol Hill. Not likely. Not while Mitch McCONnell is still insisting on approving no more than one-sixth of the amount approved last spring by House Democrats for pandemic relief. Not while, in addition to that paltry figure, he is insisting on iron-clad immunity for his donors from COVID-related litigation AND the nationalization of legal standards for personal-injury law. Interesting, don't you think, to insist on nationalizing access to justice, while refusing to do the same for public health and safety?
It's precisely that latter refusal that has made this nation, which formerly set the global standard for public health and safety, an international pariah and an internal menace to everyone living in it. As I write this, we are now north of 280,000 COVID-related deaths, with no end in sight. Even if the promised vaccines live up to their potential, we will still have lost over half a million souls before we can say that this is over.
And while the President-elect, and his Democratic colleagues in both houses of Congress are pushing for badly-needed financial aid to Americans in every state, red or blue, what are Republicans actually doing?
Continuing to rubber-stamp Trump's judicial and executive appointments, while making negative noises about their plans for people Joe Biden will nominate. Those appointments will no doubt live up to the unbelievably low standard being set by his current Supreme Court Justices, who are demonstrating their own unconscionable misunderstanding of how to balance religious interests with those of public safety.
Looking the other way while Trump attempts to use the pardon power of his office to give the criminal apparatus he has installed around himself a series of get-out-of-jail-free cards, including a big fat one for himself.
And otherwise pretending that there is still some level of doubt about the outcome of the presidential election, thereby wasting precious time in addressing the needs of a nation in crisis, while simultaneously enabling Trump's efforts to undermine democracy and push a slow-motion coup that may leave us stuck with him indefinitely, until everything finally comes crashing down on our heads.
If there's one thing we absolutely need to do--and, frankly, there are many--we all need to get one thought all the way through our heads and hearts, and act as though our lives depend on it, which they do:
Both parties are NOT the same. And there is absolutely NO reason to doubt this.
Not while Trump is throwing crowbars into every aspect of federal machinery for the sole purpose of making life miserable for his successor.
Not when Trump's Bond-villain excuse for a Treasury Secretary is taking nearly half a trillion of federal dollars already approved by Congress for COVID relief, and putting it beyond the reach of the incoming Administration.
Not while the nation as a whole teeters on the brink of a level of economic disaster not seen in just under a century.
And absolutely, positively, not while the former party of Lincoln, and now the party of Trump, is pushing the one philosophy for which it stands: the systematic suppression of democracy, by any means necessary.
Which, in an admittedly roundabout way, brings me to the matter of Georgia's two runoff races for its Senate seats, the outcomes of which will decide which party controls the Senate, and perhaps the federal government as a whole, for at least the next two years.
If the results of the Senate races on Election Day were in fact a conscious effort at ticket-splitting, the Republicans are trying to make the Georgia races all the more so. There's already a great deal of right-wing rhetoric, including from Trump himself at a rally last night in the state, about how the GOP needs to take both seats in other to have a firewall against what they call socialism (and what the rest of the world calls SOP). Right this minute, I could probably turn on my TV, select a news channel, and find some random talking head uttering the words "checks and balances."
You know who really needs checks and balances?
McCONnell and his Senate partners in crime.
For over a decade, he has done everything he can do stonewall the functioning of the Senate, turning the World's Greatest Deliberative Body into a deathtrap for any proposals that might even hint at being a threat to his monopoly on power. Or, in other words, anything that might actually make the lives of the American people better. And, as I've already mentioned, nothing about the results of this election thus far have done anything to change his mind.
Indeed, even if the Democrats take both Georgia seats, effectively making a 50-50 Senate one under Democratic control by virtue of Kamala Harris' tie-breaking vote, there's no guarantee that McCONnell will allow them to be seated. The Constitution, and related Supreme Court decisions, allow the Senate to have the final say over whether newly-elected Senators will be seated. And McCONnell, who will be the majority leader prior to the outcome of the elections, will be able to take advantage of any election "irregularities" ginned up by conservatives, and other Trump devotees, to argue that either of the Democratic candidates, if victorious, should still not be seated. Think that sounds far-fetched? Think about what McCONnell has done over the past five years with Supreme Court nominations, and then ask yourself if it sounds far-fetched.
And so, once again, as it was on Election Day, it's up to us. As it always is and should be, in a democracy. Especially in a democracy as evenly divided as this one.
Here is a quick and easy reference outlining how you can help Jon Ossoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock check-and-balance Mitch McCONnell and the Republican criminal cabal and give America, for at least two years, a puncher's chance to become America again.
Whatever you can do, for the next month, until January 5th, keep Georgia on your mind, and in your heart. Your nation, your life, may very well depend on it.
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