Mitch McConnell’s shameful legacy

It is arguable, and in fact I will argue, that there is no more consequential figure in Republican politics in the modern era than Kentucky's senior senator Addison Mitchell McConnell, better known as Mitch, even better known as the longest serving Republican Senate leader in the minority or in the majority in U.S. history, and also the man who more than anyone else broke the United States Senate. And now that he's burnt the House down, today he announced his work is done. He is stepping down as the Senate Republican leader in November. But the fact remains, no individual has done more damage to the Senate than Mitch McConnell. No single individual has inflicted more harm on the reputation of the Senate than Mitch McConnell. And no one in the modern era, Republican or Democrat, has wielded power in a way that is more destructive to the American people or more shameful than Mitch McConnell. Mitch McConnell could well be called the Newt Gingrich of the Senate in that he broke the Senate in the same way Gingrich broke the House during the Clinton era, twisting its purpose from one of legislating for the country's good to one bent solely for the purpose of manipulating the rules for the purpose of seizing and holding on to absolute partisan power. Mitch McConnell led his party to use a single tactic more than any other to seize that power, the filibuster. And while McConnell tried to deny that the filibuster has a racist historical taint, before Mitch McConnell, it had been used for nothing more often than to stop racial progress. In fact, both the longest single speaker filibuster and the longest multiple speaker filibuster in U.S. history were launched to stop the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and 1964, respectively, according to the Senate Historical Office. But it was Mitch McConnell, not some segregationist senator from the 1950s or 60s, who presided over the largest number of Senate filibusters during the Obama administration, of course. And Mitch McConnell bragged that the purpose of the constant obstruction was to try to kneecap the first black president of the United States. Our top political priority over the next two years should be to deny President Obama a second term. Ha, ha, ha. Well, he failed at that because President Obama is and was a much better politician than he is. But Mitch did manage to stop President Obama from fulfilling a number of campaign promises, which died as a result of the filibuster, from bipartisan immigration reform, backed, by the way, by the late John McCain and even Marco Rubio of Florida, to gun reform that could have prevented some of the hundreds of gun massacres that have occurred since Mitch McConnell gained control of the Republican caucus in the Senate, to bills securing voting rights and women's right to control their own bodies. On that score, it was Mitch McConnell who boasted that he stopped President Obama from fulfilling his constitutional role of filling a vacant Senate seat, getting his caucus to refuse to even meet with Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, after the death of Antonin Scalia. Instead, Mitch McConnell stole the seat for the next president, reality show star Donald Trump, for whom McConnell flipped the rules again to ensure that Trump would fulfill his role as Leonard Leo's ignorant bag man by appointing two more Federalist Society justices to the court so that Samuel Alito could finally achieve his and his fellow far-right Christian nationalist dream of overturning Roe v. Wade, and Clarence Thomas could fulfill his sad, self-hating dream of killing affirmative action because it made him feel sad when he didn't get high-paying law firm job offers after Yale Law School. And so Clarence could debase himself by writing down on paper that the 14th Amendment had nothing to do with black freedmen. And so Mitch McConnell could retire knowing that he and Donald Trump had together created a far-right-wing judiciary that would inflict pain on this country for generations. And he even bragged about it. I was shocked that former President Obama left so many vacancies and didn't try to fill those positions. I'll tell you why. I was in charge of what we did the last two years of the Obama administration. And I will give you full credit for that. And by the way, take a bow. Ha ha ha ha. So today in Alabama, women who will suffer because of Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump's woman-hating Supreme Court rallied against a state court ruling that will cut off access to IVF for couples who want children. They can thank Mitch McConnell for that hell, as can every woman or little girl who will suffer and die because of the Dobbs ruling. Mitch McConnell will complete his career as minority leader thanks to the Dobbs ruling. But he finished off his legacy by securing the acquittals of Donald Trump on impeachment charges he knew were true. That Donald Trump attempted to strong-arm the government of Ukraine to cook up fake accusations against Joe Biden before the 2020 election, and that Trump staged an attempted coup on January 6, 2021. Trump's actions preceded the riot for a disgraceful, disgraceful dereliction of duty. There's no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day. So Mitch McConnell will leave behind a shameful legacy. In fact, the most shameful legacy of any modern senator. But he's not leaving the Senate entirely, and there's still additional ways he can damage our democracy.