Tonight, the White House is going to rub America’s nose in their successful corruption of the Supreme Court.
Mark my words: The pictures of a corrupt president on the White House lawn politicizing a SCOTUS appointment 8 days before an election will live in infamy.
1/
Mark my words: The pictures of a corrupt president on the White House lawn politicizing a SCOTUS appointment 8 days before an election will live in infamy.
1/
Trump cannot help but see Coney Barrett being illegitimately pushed through as a victory because his disordered mind sees every time he successfully cheats as proof of his power.
But the public won’t see that.
It won’t see that today and it won’t see it tomorrow.
2/
But the public won’t see that.
It won’t see that today and it won’t see it tomorrow.
2/
The public will see it as the distilling image of the reduction of the Supreme Court to an illegitimate political body no longer a coequal branch.
It will see it as the moment SCOTUS became a wholly owned subsidiary of an unpopular president and even less popular Congress.
3/
It will see it as the moment SCOTUS became a wholly owned subsidiary of an unpopular president and even less popular Congress.
3/
The move to ram through Coney Barrett’s appointment is short-sighted, rash, and poised to boomerang both politically and practically.
It is an overreach far more likely to ultimately wipe out years of Republican efforts to stack the courts than extend them.
4/
It is an overreach far more likely to ultimately wipe out years of Republican efforts to stack the courts than extend them.
4/
It is a move a younger Mitch McConnell wouldn’t have made.
A younger McConnell would have been more pragmatic about the risk-reward.
He would have seen the likelihood of backlash and likely consequences and been more measured.
5/
A younger McConnell would have been more pragmatic about the risk-reward.
He would have seen the likelihood of backlash and likely consequences and been more measured.
5/
But there is a subtext to this.
Mitch McConnell is dying.
Both politically and physically, Mitch McConnell knows both he and his power are drifting closer and closer to the horizon.
McConnell is 78 years old. Time tends to shine dimly on an eighth decade post polio.
6/
Mitch McConnell is dying.
Both politically and physically, Mitch McConnell knows both he and his power are drifting closer and closer to the horizon.
McConnell is 78 years old. Time tends to shine dimly on an eighth decade post polio.
6/
The move to cram through Coney Barrett is a product of two things:
1) Trump’s slavish compulsion to serve a primitive, disordered id
2) McConnell’s recognition that his days at the head of the chess board are drawing near to their end and this may be his last big move
7/
1) Trump’s slavish compulsion to serve a primitive, disordered id
2) McConnell’s recognition that his days at the head of the chess board are drawing near to their end and this may be his last big move
7/
Trump will take his doomed victory lap and bask in the brief narcissistic fuel today.
It will do nothing to save him from a wallowing depression after being unequivocally rejected a mere week from now.
8/
It will do nothing to save him from a wallowing depression after being unequivocally rejected a mere week from now.
8/
McConnell will smugly crow about the feat thinking that this is where his future biopic will cut to the credits no matter what may come.
He will gleam and smirk in the belief that this is his career’s high water mark while any future defeats accrue to whoever comes next.
9/
He will gleam and smirk in the belief that this is his career’s high water mark while any future defeats accrue to whoever comes next.
9/
This will all be short lived. Be angry but not in despair.
The move to rush through Coney Barrett is craven, corrupt and contemptible but it is not canny.
It has only a thin veneer of the mercenary-but-effective politics McConnell has played for years. It isn’t shrewd.
10/
The move to rush through Coney Barrett is craven, corrupt and contemptible but it is not canny.
It has only a thin veneer of the mercenary-but-effective politics McConnell has played for years. It isn’t shrewd.
10/
It risks the whole board to merely briefly queen another pawn.
It is reckless and short-sighted.
It is the kind of rash move a careful man only makes when he knows they have few “another days” to live and fight for.
11/
It is reckless and short-sighted.
It is the kind of rash move a careful man only makes when he knows they have few “another days” to live and fight for.
11/
This is Mitch McConnell’s unsaid swan song.
It will burnish only an irrelevant last few pages of a corrupt man’s hagiography.
Meanwhile, the Congress that marches on without him as Majority Leader - and eventually, without him at all - will erase its impact.
12/
It will burnish only an irrelevant last few pages of a corrupt man’s hagiography.
Meanwhile, the Congress that marches on without him as Majority Leader - and eventually, without him at all - will erase its impact.
12/
And in the not-at-all-distant months and years ahead, the single searing image of what led to the reformation of our judiciary will be the ceremony on White House grounds tonight.
A corrupt president on the eve of being deposed.
A craven Senator desperate in his last hours.
13/
A corrupt president on the eve of being deposed.
A craven Senator desperate in his last hours.
13/
A nominee so disingenuous in her alleged moral turpitude and so thirsty for dominion over others’ lives that she would knowingly delegitimize the Supreme Court so as to join it.
Record and remember the image this evening.
14/
Record and remember the image this evening.
14/
History will remember it as of the same type as Joseph Welch asking “Have you no sense of decency?” to the bullies of government.
Tonight, it will be a question un-asked but answered.
They have no decency.
15/
Tonight, it will be a question un-asked but answered.
They have no decency.
15/
Trump and McConnell will peacock tonight.
Icarus and Icarus wheeling over a crowd.
Foolish, indecent men at their closest to the sun; smug in their soaring; soon to plummet back to earth in a fatal tangle of wax and feathers.
Mark the moment. It is the apogee before a fall.
//
Icarus and Icarus wheeling over a crowd.
Foolish, indecent men at their closest to the sun; smug in their soaring; soon to plummet back to earth in a fatal tangle of wax and feathers.
Mark the moment. It is the apogee before a fall.
//
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