We Don't Live in Bipartisan Times

Sen. @ewarren is 25 minutes into a fiery speech on the Senate floor about voting rights and the filibuster. Go watch.

“Today’s filibuster doesn’t encourage debate, it promotes cowardice.” pic.twitter.com/Nn3RbA68Yr

— Sawyer Hackett (@SawyerHackett) January 19, 2022

Professor Warren explains the truth--cowards can hide behind the rationale that "We can't get to 60, so what does taking a stand matter." That's what infuriates me about Manchin and Sinema right now. They are pretending that they are standing up for a principle of bipartisanship and not making the divide between Republicans and Democrats worse, but what they are really doing is failing to make a stand. Absent the filibuster, the votes fall where they may. 

We all know we'd be hard-pressed to find a Republican right now putting their vote on limiting state legislatures' ability to suppress voting because they are going to talk about federal power grabs and states' rights, and if that doesn't sound familiar! I'd love to make the Republican party expound at length on that subject so we could tell exactly where they stood. 

Please, have them defend everything from restrictions to mail-in voting to DeSantis' possible vote cops (I imagine crackers with bullet heads and necks exceeding their jawlines carrying blackjacks and being prone to saying shit like "You don't look like you're from around here" and "Who all is your people?"). In lieu of that, though, just based on our current composition in the Senate, I'd like Sinema and Manchin to put their vote where their ideals are supposed to be, let VP Harris settle the matter, and go forward with voter rights better protected.

Where we are now is at a stupid state where Senator Romney pretends it is a darn shame President Biden didn't reach out to him. If Senator Romney was so moved to think voting rights needed to be protected, he could have reached out his damn self. Senator Murkowski might be persuaded--but is she not a grown woman who understands politics? Ditto all GOP senators. If they have an opinion, fuck it, put it on the damn table, like grown people. But also, explain voter purges, and defend poll places miles from where some voters live, and long lines, and how unequal access impacts outcomes. And if that wasn't even the intent of such voter suppression laws in the first place. They need to be put on notice that they can't bitch about being called racist for supporting those "states' rights" bills if they can't defend the obvious demographic choices that made them what they are.  Put the GOP on the spot for what they have come to stand for, after the Voter Rights bill had been so universally approved-of not so long before. 

I am tired of Democrats in congress behaving as if they all have some short-term memory problem and can't figure out that Republicans have stopped being people we can deal with in full good faith. They fucked that up. They did it a long time ago, and Democrats don't even need to feel bad about it. They tried to overturn the 2020 presidential election. They didn't have the courtesy to convict Trump in the Senate or even support a bipartisan commission. Let's take a little history lesson:

Watergate: Nixon was going to win in a landslide, but just to be sure, some dumbshits broke into the DNC HQ and got caught. It got covered up, badly, and somehow, it was supposed to be all good once Nixon resigned and Ford pardoned him.  What does that say about how Republicans view democracy? 

Iran-Contra: like, the Democratic-led Congress basically said don't fund sub rosa wars in Central America so for some reason, the Republican Reagan Administration was like, yeah but we can raise funds from Iran weapons deals and ignore that our Contra pals are selling coke to our inner cities because fuck those welfare queens anyways, LOL. They reasoned it was ok to sell weapons to Iran because they were selling them to Iraq too, which had absolutely no fallout in any sense whatsoever. They also Warred on Drugs so hard that drugs proliferated everywhere. 

Also, I think 1988 backbencher Newt Gingrich contributed to the problem when he went hard after Democrat Speaker of the House Jim Wright and later, when Speaker himself, after President Bill Clinton, in part on the idea that the "politics of personal destruction" (a phrase popularized after Robert Bork was rejected for SCOTUS) was now fair game. Because it was a game to unserious people. And Gingrich is kind of one. He was for the clicks before the internet. He dumbed down the House. From the Contract with America on, he basically created the space for Freedom Caucus know-nothing weirdies.  

Bush v. Gore: The actual Supreme Court of the United States decided that the son of a former president would be really harmed if we counted all the votes so he became president and except for one major terrorist attack that some evidence existed for that he had been made aware of before the fact and two wars he had no exit strategy for and some trifling business to do with suspension of civil rights for some people, and a little bit of torture apology and winding the economy up in a deep recession, he is recognized as a dispenser of hard candies and an outsider artist. So, we are cool with him, I guess? Except you know. There were massive voter purges in Texas and Florida ahead of the 2000 election and you will never guess who were the Governors of those states!

Benghazi. The problem with the Islamist terrorist extremists who killed four Americans was that the Obama Administration would never say the words in the right order for Republicans, so obviously, the Obama Administration was to blame for the four people killed by the Islamist terrorist extremists, and not the Islamist terrorist extremists, which is exactly what all the Republican hearings have led me to believe that they believe about the tragedy on 9/11/2012, except they still blame Obama and I still blame Islamic terrorists. Because that's how I roll. 

Obviously Trump supports Putin and sucked his dick to become president there was some kind of collusion, because let's not pretend Manafort and Flynn were political prisoners. Sadly, the most obvious "Hi we are from the Russian government and are here to help the Trump campaign" moment was from Donald Trump Jr's emails, and he was deemed too stupid to collude. Also, Trump's extortion of Ukraine's president served Putin's ends as well as Trump's obvious desire to stay president for life, probably for the immunity against lawsuits and maybe even his own explosive debts. 

So really? If Republicans are fixing to make an example of Democrats with hearings in the event the House turns over--fucking go for broke, because they already have shown they will do this anyway--it isn't new. Cut them up. If Republicans are threatening obstruction--since when have they never? 

Republicans have been some dodgy MF-ers my whole old enough to be a grandmama life. It's been about time they got named and shamed for their excesses and their white supremacy and their billionaire sponsorships, and their false witness and so and so on. In legislating, go around them hard. In exposing them, cut them up. Because this party earned Democratic scorn, and it no longer behooves Democrats to withhold it.