The Eclipse of American Democracy, Part Seventeen: Mitch McConnell and the Damage Done

"If the US has someone whom historians will look back on as the gravedigger of American democracy, it is (Republican Senate majority leader) Mitch McConnell." - Historian Christopher Browning in the New York Review of Books

"By rights, McConnell’s tombstone should say that he presided over the end of the Senate. And I’d add a second line: "He broke America." No man has done more in recent years to undermine the functioning of U.S. government. His has been the epitome of unprincipled leadership, the triumph of tactics in service of short-term power." - Dana Milbank of the Washington Post

The observations quoted above may sound like hyperbole, but they're not. One blog post is hardly adequate to describe all the damage McConnell has done to Senate and to this country. Perhaps a set of encyclopedias entitled, "All the Things Mitch McConnell Has Broken" might cover the subject.

Here's some thoughts on the specifics of what McConnell has done during his tenure from the above-quoted 2017 WaPo article from Dana Milbank, written just after McConnell used a bare majority of the Senate to end the practice of the filibusters for Supreme Court nominees, something he had previously said he would only do with the support of two-thirds of the Senate:

"Back in 1994, McConnell lamented to the conservative Heritage Foundation that Republicans hadn’t used the filibuster enough: "I am a proud guardian of gridlock. I think gridlock is making a big comeback in the country."

For the next quarter-century, he made sure of it. Back then he was fighting all attempts at campaign-finance reform and spending limits, championing disclosure of contributions as the antidote. But when the Supreme Court allowed unlimited "dark money" in campaigns without disclosure, McConnell reversed course and has fought all attempts to enact disclosure. 

McConnell famously declared in 2010: "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."

ProPublica’s Alec MacGillis, author of a McConnell biography, "The Cynic," reports former Republican senator Robert Bennett’s account of what McConnell told fellow Republicans after Obama’s election: "Mitch said, ‘We have a new president with an approval rating in the 70 percent area. We do not take him on frontally. We find issues where we can win, and we begin to take him down, one issue at a time. We create an inventory of losses, so it’s Obama lost on this, Obama lost on that.’"

And that’s what he did. By 2013, for example, 79 of Obama’s nominees had been blocked by filibusters, compared with 68 in the entire previous history of the Republic." 

McConnell and other Senate Republicans aren't interested in passing legislation to fix the country's problems. In the Trump era, they see the Senate largely as a vehicle they can use to take over the federal judiciary. From Jay Willis of GQ:

"In two years, the majority leader facilitated not only a trillion-dollar tax cut for the wealthiest Americans, but also the confirmation of a pair of Supreme Court justices and nearly three dozen appeals court nominees—many of whom took positions McConnell had held open during the Obama administration. These judges preside over tens of thousands of cases every year, and under McConnell's watchful eye, Trump has pushed their courts slowly and inexorably to the right.

In 2019, McConnell faces a different set of circumstances. A new Democratic-controlled House stands in the way of enacting a sweeping legislative agenda, as does a scandal-ridden president whose obsession with building a border wall puts him increasingly at odds with members of his own party. Thus, McConnell is embracing a new method for cementing his legacy, and one which he can implement on a near-unilateral basis: shepherding as many federal district court nominees as possible through the confirmation process before his party loses the White House, the Senate, or both.

According to Politico, McConnell is preparing to invoke a "new nuclear option" by reducing the amount of time for debate over district-level judicial nominees from 30 hours to two. The phrase refers to a procedure by which senators, with a simple majority vote, can change the rules governing how they conduct business. The nuclear option's most famous invocation came in 2017, when McConnell and company, lacking the 60 votes necessary to install Neil Gorsuch in the Supreme Court seat stolen from Garland, simply did away with the requirement altogether. This proved to be a wise choice a year later, as the nomination of Republican justice Brett Kavanaugh would almost certainly have failed if McConnell had had to marshal meaningful bipartisan support.

As Politico notes, if it is successful, this change would have a dramatic effect on Trump's ability to address current district court vacancies. In addition to axing that 60-vote threshold, McConnell has also dispensed with "blue-slipping," a longstanding Senate tradition that allowed senators to nix the nominations of objectionable nominees from their home states. By eliminating yet another method by which Democrats can voice their opposition, Republicans further insure themselves against the distinct possibility that 2020 does not go as well as 2016. South Dakota senator John Thune gives the game away when discussing why confirming these lower-court judges is suddenly such a "high priority" for the caucus: "I mean, it’s one of the things we can do that we don’t need the House’s help with."

An additional observation observation about the way McConnell operates: He doesn't even pretend to believe that democratic institutions are important, nor does he so much as pay lip service to listening to other people. Consider his response the the recent passage of the Anti-Corruption bill recently passed by the Democratic House. This bill, known as H.R.1, the For the People Act, would expand early voting, create same-day voter registration, save eligible voters from "voter purging," create a pathway for re-enfranchisement for those who have lost voting privileges due to felony convictions and make Election Day a holiday for federal workers. It would also create incentives for elected officials to rely on small donors and require presidential and vice-presidential candidates to disclose their income tax returns.

McConnell's response? He won't allow it to come to a vote in the Senate because, "I get to decide what we vote on." OK Mitch, what's wrong with the bill? "What it really is is a bill designed to make it more likely Democrats win more often."

McConnell knows that more democracy in America does not benefit him. The question is, do the American people know it? From William Rivers Pitt of Truthout:

"Mark Twain once famously lamented that if voting really mattered, they wouldn’t let us do it. Well, guess what? They’re trying very hard to prevent us from doing it, more and more with each passing election cycle, because voting matters. Done with mass and vigor, it works quite well, thank you. Just ask the 2018 midterms. More voters are good, fewer voters are bad, and now we all know where the leader of the Republican Senate comes down on the issue.

To nick a line from recent birthday boy Thomas Paine, these are the times that try our souls. Only through mass participation can we, the people, say no to Mitch McConnell’s vocal hatred for democracy, and ring a death knell for the kind of politics that make people like him possible in public life. If he reviles it so much, he should forgo his re-election campaign in 2020, slouch on home to Kentucky, and stay there. He will not be missed."

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