DEC 02, 2019
Robert Reich
He’s maybe the most dangerous
politician of my lifetime. He’s helped transform the Republican Party into a
cult, worshiping at the altar of authoritarianism. He’s damaged our country in
ways that may take a generation to undo. The politician I’m talking about, of
course, is Mitch McConnell.
Two goals for November 3, 2020:
The first and most obvious is to get the worst president in history out of the
White House. That’s necessary but not sufficient. We also have to flip the
Senate and remove the worst Senate Majority Leader in history.
Like Trump, Mitch McConnell is
no garden-variety bad public official. McConnell puts party above America, and
Trump above party. Even if Trump is gone, if the Senate remains in Republican
hands and McConnell is reelected, America loses because McConnell will still
have a chokehold on our democracy.
This is the man who refused
for almost a year to allow the Senate to consider President Obama’s moderate
Supreme Court pick, Merrick Garland.
And then, when Trump became
president, this is the man who got rid of the age-old Senate rule requiring 60
Senators to agree on a Supreme Court nomination so he could ram through not one
but two Supreme Court justices, including one with a likely history of sexual
assault.
This is the man who rushed
through the Senate, without a single hearing, a $2 trillion tax cut for big
corporations and wealthy Americans – a tax cut that raised the government debt
by almost the same amount, generated no new investment, failed to raise wages,
but gave the stock market a temporary sugar high because most corporations used
the tax savings to buy back their own shares of stock.
McConnell refuses to support
what’s needed for comprehensive election security – although both the U.S.
intelligence community and Special Prosecutor Mueller say Moscow is continuing
to hack into our voting machines and to weaponize disinformation through social
media.
McConnell has earned the
nickname “Moscow Mitch” because he’s doing exactly what Vladimir Putin and
Donald Trump want him to do – leave America vulnerable to another
Putin-supported victory for Trump.
McConnell is also blocking
bipartisan background-check legislation for gun sales, even after the mass
shootings in Dayton, Ohio, El Paso and Odessa, Texas.
So even if Trump is out of the
White House, if McConnell remains Senate Majority Leader he will not allow a
Democratic president to govern.
He won’t allow debate or votes
on Medicare for All, universal pre-K, a wealth tax, student loan forgiveness,
or the Green New Deal. He won’t allow confirmation votes on judges nominated by
a Democratic president.
The good news is McConnell is
the least popular senator in the country with his own constituents. He’s
repeatedly sacrificed Kentucky to Trump’s agenda – for example, agreeing to
Trump’s so-called emergency funding for a border wall, which would take $63
million away from projects like a new middle school on the border between
Kentucky and Tennessee.
McConnell is even cut funding
for black lung disease suffered by Kentucky coal miners. I know from my years
as labor secretary that coal mining is one of the most dangerous jobs in the
country, and the number of cases of incurable black lung disease has been on
the rise. But when a group of miners took a 10-hour bus ride to Washington this
past summer to ask McConnell to restore the funding, McConnell met with them
for one minute and then refused to help them. No wonder Democrats are lining up
in Kentucky to run against Moscow Mitch in 2020.
The not-so-good news is that
McConnell is up for re-election the same day as Donald Trump, and Trump did
well in Kentucky in 2016. Which means we have to help organize Kentucky, just
as we have to organize other states that may not be swing states in the
presidential election but could take back the Senate.
Consider Georgia: Republican
Senator Johnny Isakson is retiring, meaning both of Georgia’s Senate seats are
now up for grabs. And this one extra seat—in a state that is trending
blue—could be the tipping point that allows Democrats to win enough seats to
end GOP control of the Senate.
Trump has to go, but so does
McConnell.
Here’s what you can do:
Wherever you are in the country, you can donate to McConnell’s challengers. If
you live in or near Kentucky, you can get out and knock doors or make calls. Or
if you have friends or family in the state, encourage them to get involved.
As to the question of who is
worse, Trump or McConnell — the answer is that it’s too close to call. The two
of them have degraded and corrupted American democracy. We need them both out.
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