They Can Run…

Mitch, in the shadows, ready to jump out at democracy.

The GOP is showing how scared they are…

Right now, 66% of Americans want the selection of the next Justice for the Supreme Court to be done after the election, by the next president. 50% of Republicans think so as well. That’s according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released Sunday.

It’s pretty obvious most American do not want Donald Trump anywhere near the next SCOTUS pick. Rushing a new nominee, and shoving it though in what would have to be record speed is incredibly unpopular. In fact, it’s suicidal to the GOP senate majority. This most shows the Republicans not only to be blatant hypocrites, but not caring in the least about the will of the people in replacing the most admired Justice on the Supreme Court. Don’t care, gonna do it anyway, screw you.

The GOP majority is near and dear to McConnell, why would he throw that away, and cause a (hopefully) ton of bricks to fall on him and his precious majority?

Joe Biden is ahead in the polls by 7 points, and he’s been leading since he secured the nomination. Trump has never led in the polls, unlike 2016 where it was close and leads traded a few times.

Never once.

That’s why: they think Trump is going to lose. Big time. If you going to get evicted anyway, why not burn the house down on the way out?

Over the weekend, from Friday when Justice Ginsburg’s death was announced and McConnell’s callus announcement minutes later that he planned to move forward with a nomination vote, ActBlue, a non-profit dedicated to helping Democratic candidates fund elections, raised over 100 million dollars. Individual Democratic candidates around the country saw their fundraising numbers shoot up. The GOP is defending 23 Senate seats this election year, with an incredibly unpopular president whom they cannot let go or their Trump loving base will turn on them. Many of those seats are underwater; Arizona (Martha McSally), and Colorado (Cory Gardner) look to be lost, Maine (Susan Collins) is behind, others like South Carolina (Lindsey Graham) are tied. South Carolina! With so many seats up, so many close or look to be gone, why do something that will make an already angry electorate even angrier?

Well, if you’re being evicted, and you are burning it anyway, might as well have something to show for it. The control of the Supreme Court, something the right has been wanting to decades, is that thing. McConnell must believe it’s worth killing his majority for that control (Trump doesn’t think that far ahead, it’s Mitch calling this one). Now comes the best, biggest, and baddest ‘own the libs’ campaign ever. They don’t need a senate majority now, they can have the SCOTUS kill anything the Democrats might pass.

This now puts them in place to destroy the ACA and take insurance away from millions, to finally kill abortion rights, the minimum wage, and all the other far-right things they have been promising since the formation of the Birch Society and the Goldwater campaign. I imagine they’ll try to repeal the entire Civil Rights Era, especially voting laws. Expect nothing the least bit progressive to be allowed to live for a generation. At least.

The problem is (there are many, but this is the biggest) these are popular programs with majority support. This new SCOTUS will not be the least bit interested in justice, but settling grievances with ‘libs’ and ‘atheists’ and host of others they feel have harmed them or their community. They will be going down a long list of perceived slights, gathered over decades, and start ticking them off one-by-one. We will have a Supreme Court not answerable to the will of the people, and, frankly, not ready paying any attention to precedent or settled law. It will be a far-right organization bent on repealing as much of the 20th century as it can get its hands on.

It’s Minority rule, basically what we’ve had in government for the past four years, but this time write large and lasting for decades. Now the GOP, who never liked governing anyway, can sit back while the SCOTUS, and all the federal judges they’ve appointed, do their work.

They don’t need a majority anymore.

This is why if the Democrats get control, they need to kill the filibuster, admit DC and Puerto Rico, and even the Virgin Islands as states, expand the federal judiciary, pass laws to kill partisan gerrymandering, and yes, expand the SCOTUS. The GOP will jump up and down, screaming, but let them. They don’t matter.

As they taught us, if you have the majority, the other side loses. Make them feel it.

Trump is Going Nowhere.

Trump smirks and then pouts his way though the grievance fest that is his ‘press conference’. BRIAN SNYDER/REUTERS

Trump is going nowhere.

I don’t mean he’s going to win the election, I mean he’s going nowhere, not him, and not the party he embodies. This is what many people (including Joe Biden, I believe) are missing, The GOP is Trump, Trump is the GOP. You can cut off the head, but the body will just go doing what it was doing before. And Trump himself, bar going to jail, will still be around, still be telling it what to do, think, say, and taking his network of grievance and hate and just installing it elsewhere, maybe in a new subscription TV channel that he can spew nonsense on 24/7, without any ‘enemies of the people’ to question him.

Trump is going nowhere. The GOP has not been so much transformed as it has come of age, reached the goal it (and others) set for itself back in 1964 with the defeat of Goldwater. It absorbed the John Birchers, it invited in the religious far right, it purged itself of anyone and everyone to their left (if there was such a place), embraced the crazy and conspiracy, and folded its supposed ‘big tent’. Gone is/was any talk of ‘compassionate conservatism’, hell, most of them never really knew what Bush was talking about… sounded weak, sounded left.

Trump is not the aberration, Trump is destiny, he is the messiah, riding his donkey into the White House, arriving to lead his people into the promised land of power. He is the ‘Chosen One’, the One they have been waiting for since Goldwater. He is the one who will no longer smile, no longer couch his words with niceties, or hide his meaning behind ‘dog whistles’. Trump is the human ‘fuck this shit’. They delight in his crudeness, his racism, his bigotry, because he’s finally saying what many of them have been thinking or whispering to each other for decades.

Trump is going nowhere. If he’s voted out, (and is dragged from the White House by his ankles, his hands clawing at the carpet), he becomes the Messiah-in-Exile, Napoleon at Elba, waiting for his chance at power again. Be serious with yourself; do you really think his minions won’t be working some angle to get him back in power? They’ve already proved, over and over, that they will lie, they will seek out enemies of America for help, they will go to any length to give him more, and more, power. And if not Trump himself, there are many Trump children and hangers-on to assume power while Trump whispers in their ear.

You might shake your head and think this is all crazy. Well, four years ago, did you think we’d have an American President who worked with the Russians to get elected, asked two foreign countries to help collect dirt on a political opponent, worked hard to undermine allies while showing sycophantic affection for murderous dictators, and who has stood by while an est 200,000 of his own countrymen died?  

This is where we are.

So, don’t fool yourself.

Trump is going nowhere.