We’re sorry, America, but Mitch McConnell will never do the right thing on RBG’s seat
Dear America, We are sorry. Not two hours after the death of beloved Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in the midst of your despair and anxiety, Kentucky’s own Machiavellian Mitch popped up with a few words of praise and a promise to ram through her conservative replacement even though we’re just six weeks away from a presidential election.
I think you know this, but just to reiterate: Sen. Mitch McConnell will never do the right thing.
His low-key lack of affect hides a brilliant burning in pursuit of only one thing: His power and that of the GOP. In a career full of self-serving plots that have included selling our democracy off to the highest bidders, his lowest move might have been deciding that a President of the United States should not be allowed to fill a Supreme Court seat 10 months before the election. Remember those words? “The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.”
That was Mitch and it was audacious even by his standards. But he can always go lower. Now, six weeks before another presidential election, McConnell will push Trump’s nominee through the Senate. His spurious explanation, something about how this time the Senate and the president are from the same party, blah, blah, is enough to make anyone of conscience, even Republicans, blush.
Anyone except Mitch McConnell. He has no conscience and he will never do the right thing. As Kentuckians, we’re sorry.
Instead of working on another federal COVID relief bill that could help his Kentucky constituents who are already suffering disproportionately from the pandemic because they are stuck in one of the poorest, sickest states in the union, Mitch will be consumed with making sure the U.S. Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority. Goodbye Roe v. Wade, goodbye Affordable Care Act (during a pandemic), goodbye any number of cases that might prevent the United States from turning into an authoritarian hellhole.
Thanks to his enabling of Trump, we’re already well on our way.
Think about that for a minute. Mitch is more worried about packing the court to overturn Roe v. Wade than about the children living in his state at this moment, a state where one in five of them is now struggling with hunger. A state where children suffer the highest rate of abuse in the nation. Mitch McConnell is the senior senator in a state that has either been first or second for rates of child abuse for the past seven years and has been in the top 10 states for more than a decade.
He could also be working on any number of House bills stalled at his desk, bills aimed at lower drug prices or more voting rights or the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act. Or, did we mention COVID-19 relief? That voting rights act, by the way, is named for John Lewis, another American hero who died in this hellish year. Mitch praised him to the skies, as he did RBG, while promptly ignoring the legislation that would truly honor Lewis’ memory.
That’s because Mitch will never do the right thing, and here in Kentucky, we’re sorry.
We’re sorry and we’re numb to his power-mongering, Trump-enabling politicking. That takes place in Washington, D.C. The only time we see
Mitch back home is when he hands someone a check for coal research or electrocuting carp. And I guess that’s enough to ensure that he will win the election against Amy McGrath, a woman who served her country while Mitch was creating legacy of hyperpartisanship and “legislative graveyards.”
What can we say and what can you do, Americans who still care? Well, Mitch is sure to keep his Senate seat, but it’s possible he could become the
Minority Leader. Donate to other Senate campaigns where a Democrat still has a chance, like South Carolina, Iowa, or Maine.
Mitch will never have enough conscience to think he should wait to fill the seat to see if a new president is elected. He cares nothing for the health of U.S. democracy compared to the fortunes of the Republican Party. That’s why we need to pressure other Republican senators who do have a conscience or a close reelection to see if they might resist his pressure.
Talk to the Bernie Bros in your life, the folks who remain uninspired by Joe Biden (I have one especially truculent one, but he’s only 15), but now might see this election has more far-reaching consequences than they thought. If they weren’t going to vote, maybe they will.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg represented so much of what is good about our country in her tenacity, strength, and intelligence as she pioneered a path for women in law and tried to save alive as a bulwark against exactly what we’re about to see. Mitch is a pioneer in nothing but dirty money politics. It’s sad that her seat is in his hands.
He will never change, he will never do the right thing, and we’re very, very sorry.