Leave McConnell to his legacy

 

The longest-serving party leader in Senate history, McConnell has wielded power ruthlessly to advance conservative goals.

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The conservative Supreme Court he and Trump co-created to overturn Roe’s longstanding constitutional right to abortion has triggered a sustained voter backlash across red states and blue. The entire country, meanwhile, remains trapped and threatened by the Republican party’s inability to move past Trump—even after he fomented a multi-front attack on democracy to stay in power.

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The longer all of this goes on, the more McConnell—who was Senate majority leader when Trump loyalists stormed the Capitol—bears the burden of not stopping it, or at least trying, when he could have and should have.

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McConnell controlled the Senate schedule until January 20, 2021, but he was unwilling to hold Trump’s [first impeachment] trial while Trump was still president: He refused to reconvene the Senate for an emergency session and said that it would be better for the nation to try Trump after he left office.

Yet when the newly Democratic Senate voted 56–44 in February 2021 that it had the jurisdiction to put a former president on trial, McConnell joined most other Republicans in opposing such a trial as unconstitutional.

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Four days later, as the [eventual] trial closed, McConnell told his colleagues that he would vote to acquit Trump. Had he instead voted for conviction and encouraged others to so as well, he likely would have brought some Republican colleagues with him. In the end, fifty-seven senators voted for a conviction that would have barred Trump from future office—and while seven of them were Republicans, the total was still ten short of the two-thirds needed.

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McConnell’s votes against a Senate trial and against conviction helped ensure that Trump would be free to wreak his usual havoc. McConnell could have stepped up. He could have taken a definitive stand, given his GOP colleagues political cover, and made the case to convict. He could have discussed help and support for people worried about primary challengers or even physical safety.

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At least seven deaths have been connected to the [January 6 MAGA Capitol] attack. Over 1,200 people have been arrested and over 450 sentenced to prison. How could McConnell not have tried?

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It’s a maddening cycle that has forced state and federal investigators, prosecutors, election officials, and courts into an expensive and seemingly endless process of trying to hold one man accountable. The opportunity cost at all levels of government is astronomical when you consider the time, money, and head space that would be available if they were not consumed by coping with Trump issues. That includes a Supreme Court dominated by six conservatives, three of them Trump appointees, who are asked repeatedly to deliver the last word on Trump-era legal mayhem.

The conservative supermajority is McConnell’s handiwork. He started by stealing a high court seat from second-term Democrat Barack Obama after Justice Antonin Scalia died in February 2016—ten months before the next election and nearly a year before Obama’s tenure ended. But McConnell immediately claimed that wasn’t long enough: “The American people‎ should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.”

Obama quickly nominated Merrick Garland, and as promised, McConnell blocked him. It was the most craven move I could remember in decades of reporting on politics—until nearly five years later when, by his own standards, McConnell stole another justice from Democrats. The Senate confirmed Amy Coney Barrett within a month of her nomination and eight days before Trump lost to Biden. So much for the people’s voice.

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Obama could have ramped up to make it happen—a massive public pressure campaign and simply going ahead and installing a new justice by recess appointment because the people had already spoken (by electing Obama). Let the lawsuits come. Find another nominee if Garland chose to skip the fray.

Maybe that was unrealistic. Maybe it would have failed. But the fight would have made headlines and, just maybe, put enough glare on the Supreme Court to elevate both the stakes and voter turnout in the 2016 presidential election.

  Bulwark

Obama made a lot of missteps that helped usher in our current crises. Another one was refusing to take on the W Bush war crimes. "We're going to look forward, not backward." Same democracy-threatening approach Gerald Ford took in pardoning Richard Nixon.

The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg also missed a chance to head off today’s conservative supermajority. Obama hinted to her about retirement at a 2013 lunch, when she had weathered two bouts of cancer and, at 80, was the oldest person on the court. That went nowhere.

Don't hint.

McConnell was far from alone in his abdication of leadership, but he was the Republican with the most power and opportunity to oust Trump—not from the White House but from politics and future public office—at the moment of his gravest offense against the country and Constitution.

McConnell's recent votes against confirming the worst of the worst of Trump 2.0's cabinet nominees may be his attempt to redeem himself in part. It can't work if that's his play. Too little, too late, and it doesn't matter now. It also doesn't affect his job prospects in the Senate because he's on his way out anyway. Coward and democracy destroyer. That's his legacy.