McConnell’s Gambit
I don’t envy Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. To be honest, I don’t particularly like him either. He has done more harm to the United States than almost anyone else currently alive, and bears direct responsibility for the hysterical, partisan breakdown of our country that gave us the Great Trumpian Catastrophe. That being said, he is in a nearly impossible position tonight. Laughably inadequate $600 checks have been approved for many Americans. President Trump says he is unhappy with them and they should be larger. Congressional Democrats absolutely want them to be larger and passed a bill to that effect approximately 25 seconds after the thought wandered into Trump’s brain and made it to Twitter. Larger relief is popular across almost every group in America. The Senate, and Mitch’s job, are on the line next week in a state that Biden won. The Republican Senators running in Georgia would very much prefer that every voter in Georgia got a $2,000 check in the mail, a vaccination, and a puppy right on their way to the voting booth. In fact, almost the only people who don’t want more Covid relief money going out are a handful of Republican Senators. Senators Toomey, Johnson, and Paul have all stated they will go to the mat in opposition to aid for families during a global health crisis. I can’t believe nobody has ever written a folk song about these wacky guys and their humanitarian exploits. Rand Paul actually gave some people the coronavirus, but giving them money to pay their rent? That’s just a bridge too far.
Unfortunately for Mitch McConnell, he has been playing a dangerous game for far too long. His power stems from being almost completely without ideology or principle. This has served him well for his years as Majority Leader because it means whenever something absolutely must pass, say a Defense Authorization bill or a Supreme Court nominee, he can extract whatever he wants from the proponents of the sin qua non, without having to care one way or the other. He is largely immune from reelection concerns, to his seat or to Majority Leader, and the Senate itself is ridiculously weighted toward the GOP that about 20% of the U.S. population can control a majority. He aspires to no higher office, as that would only be the presidency and his physical appearance and speaking style preclude that possibility. Thus Mitch McConnel is unique among political leaders. He has tons of power, almost no vulnerabilities, no one to answer to, and needs nothing but to hold onto his extremely well-entrenched position.
In Trump, McConnell found an extremely useful tool. For five years now, Trump has motivated the Republican base, who were also then supporting Republican Senators and McConnell’s position, while drawing most of the attention and ire of everyone else, who were then not focused on Mitch. The few times he was forced to step in and save Trump’s bacon, impeachment and SCOTUS nominees in particular, he did so in a way that risked nothing personally and gained him power and influence. Curiously, the one thing that would have bolstered Trump’s reelection chances the most in the final months of the campaign would have been a robust relief package, delivered in a timely fashion in late October. Yet McConnell consciously, carefully prevented that from happening. He also convinced Republican senators running for reelection that GOP messaging about Antifa and Socialism would get them across the finish line without Covid relief.
Why the trouble, then and now? Why risk reelection for the President or the Senate seats in Georgia opposing something so basic, popular, and humane? Because this is how he operates. Presidents have always filled SCOTUS vacancies. But in 2016, McConnell saw that he could leverage his position in a way no other Majority Leader had ever dared to do. By withholding the nomination entirely, he was able to anger and demoralize Democrats, thrill Republicans, add power to the Majority Leader position, raise the stakes of the 2016 Presidential election, curry favor with Senators who didn’t want to have to vote on Merrick Garland one way or the other, and ensure that the Supreme Court would not interfere with his future plans for the Senate. The loss of faith in the Senate or the Supreme court were irrelevant to him. The destruction of the last drops of civility and bipartisanship in government were unimportant to him. It was all upside.
If he can hold something up to extract value he will, regardless of the consequences. If something is going to pass and there is nothing left to gain from it, he will poison it as best he can so it weakens his opponents or, at the very least, stops them from claiming credit and adds to the general disfunction. Today, faced with such bizarre alliances as AOC and Lindsey Graham, or President Trump and Nancy Pelosi all calling for $2,000 stimulus checks McConnell put forth his own bill that comes up with the money, but removes the online liability protections known as Section 230 (which prevents people from, for example, suing Facebook when someone posts libelous content about them) and calls for a commission to study voter fraud in the 2020 election (essentially calling Biden’s win illegitimate)
This will either A. cause the Democrats to not support the bill, and he can claim that they are the ones blocking the relief, or B. cause the bill to pass, but claim credit for it while also screwing social media and forcing Democrats to significantly undermine President-Elect Biden before he is even inaugurated. If he had been Majority Leader in 2008 he could have held up the TARP bailout unless Democrats launched a full inquiry into Obama’s birth certificate. Just think about that for a moment. One man, one deeply corrupt, insensitive man, is withholding $1,400 from almost every adult in America, when they need it perhaps more than any other point in their lives, because he wants to know what’s in it for him. He wants us to say, “Pretty please, with sugar on top. We are lazy and don’t deserve this, and probably cheated in the election. We promise that we’ll be good if you let us pay our rent this month.”
Of course, we could also just vote him out of his position on January 5th. Yeah, that would probably be a lot easier.
