Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell may be bad for the United States, but he’s good for the Republican Party. Democrats should watch McConnell to see how to manage expectations. As James Comey is set to testify, you can feel progressives’ giddiness over the twitters. They’re sure he’s about to bring down the president. The media is also setting up high expectations with CNN bringing in a cast from Watergate to discuss the hearings.
In reality, progressives should be prepared for a big letdown. Trump is not about to be impeached and Comey’s testimony won’t single-handedly lead to definitive proof of obstruction of justice. Instead, today’s testimony is just more of the big shiny object that’s distracting progressives from the issues that could return them to power. Collusion with Russia will not end the Trump presidency and may actually help Republicans in 2018.
And while progressives are setting an extremely high bar for success (i.e., bringing down the president), Mitch McConnell is downplaying chances for his legislative agenda. Last week, a parade of Senators, including Richard Burr, told reporters that they don’t believe there’s a path for repealing Obamacare this year. Now, it turns out that McConnell and company are working on a compromise that may go to vote right before the July recess. In other words, Trump goes free and Obamacare goes away.
Russia has become the Democrats’ Benghazi. It’s a great rallying cry for the base but the rest of the country is already tired of it. If anything is really going to happen with the Russian probe, it will come out of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, not Comey’s testimony, and Mueller is just beginning his process. The obsession with Russia is little more than a distraction.
Democrats are like kids with attention-deficit disorder. They can’t stay focused on what matters and keep getting distracted by what doesn’t. A few weeks ago, they were bringing light to the House’s disastrous repeal-and-replace legislation which would bring back pre-existing conditions, lifetime caps and strip health care coverage from millions of Americans. Once it passed, though, the media and a handful of Senators said it would have a hard time getting through the Senate. Democrats immediately switched their attention to the Paris agreement and now the Russian investigation.
Meanwhile, Senate Republicans are quietly putting together a repeal bill. They’re also telling everyone that GOP tax reform is too difficult to pass. McConnell is downplaying expectations to minimize the impact of failure while using other distractions to try to put together legislative successes for the 2018. It’s smart politics.
Democrats would be wise to refocus their attention on issues that directly affect American voters. The Russian probe is complicated and highly politicized with little connection to most people’s lives. Bringing back pre-existing conditions, though, is a deal killer. Tax reform that shifts the burden from the wealthy to the middle class could provide Democrats a cudgel. Right now, they’ve set the bar so high that an indictment of a guy like Carter Page or even Jared Kushner will elicit little more than a shrug from most Americans. In contrast, anything McConnell passes in the Senate, no matter how flawed, will be seen as a huge success.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
Why should anyone be surprised that U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, has jettisoned all normal procedures in writing a healthcare bill?
He spent the eight years obstructing every effort Barack Obama made. Indeed, the senator said his “No. 1” goal was to make Barack Obama a one-term president. Even when Mr. Obama attempted to win passage of basically Republican ideas, such as infrastructure, Mitch McConnell, taking a page from the book of the late Jesse Helms, said, “No.”
When President Obama nominated centrist and very well-qualified Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, Senator McConnell would not even allow a hearing for the nominee and certainly no committee or floor votes. He said the post was too important to allow a lame duck to fill it despite the fact that Mr. Obama had won two presidential elections by handsome popular and electoral college margins. The seat was left vacant until a very “tainted” President Donald Trump filled it with a far-right ideologue.
This McConnell guy a piece of work and knows no shame.
So it should come as no surprise that his latest gambit is to have a handful of Republican senators operate in secret to write a so-called healthcare bill. There have been no hearings, no allowance for amendments, and no release of what is in the plan. There is only a promise it will be voted on by the end of the month without a Congressional Budget Office score.
Obamacare faced more than 100 public hearings, more than 100 amendments, virtual transparency along a process that lasted nearly a year.
Of course, if the Senate version of the legislation is anything like the House version it is a liittle understandable why even Senator McConnell is ashamed of the bill seeing the light of day. When legislation strips benefits from fellow Americans, something like 24 million Americans, the spectacle is beyond shame and outrage.
My late mother used to tell me that “what goes around comes around.”
I am waiting for this truism to hit Mitch McConnell and the Republicans.
I still maintain that this whole Russiagate is going to change the political landscape in major ways, including tainting the Republican Party for a generation and more. It will be to the GOP what Herbert Hoover, a decent man, and the Great Depression did to the party until at least Ike and really until Reagan’s election. Don’t underestimate what is happening. Not only has our sovereignty been attacked, but we have corrupt chief executive with his tentacles into the heart of Russia. Our country is in the midst of a growing national emergency. If voters even in the most GOP districts want to ignore this and surround themselves by tribalism rather than genuine patriotism, our country is doomed. The wildest of wild cards is the Mueller investigation. He recently brought in a bulldog prosecutor, and that reads to this aging newspaperman that Mueller is building a criminal case or cases.
Thomas may not be wrong; Trump may not be impeached. By the same token, this is not something to leave by the wayside either. The absolute contempt with which this man approaches his responsibility and the lack of seriousness with which he assumes the position he holds must be assailed at every turn. He, his policies, and those of his compatriots in Congress must be attacked, exposed for what they are, and decried to the public as the contemptuous things they are.
The party of “No” was successful using the same strategy of ‘delay, disparage, attack’ over the last two terms of Barrack Obama, lead by non other than the impetus of today’s article; Mitch McConnell himself.
I read the article Progressive linked to. Which I found to be factual as well. The Republicans have no plan other than cut their taxes, inflate everyone elses’ and get government off their backs so they can continue to crap on the people and the world all in the name of the bottom line. That’s their plan and while the devil may be in the details, they are devoid of anything except rhetoric, which they seem to possess in spades and peddle it like a snake oil cure-all.
So for my contribution to this discussion, we don’t need to let it go; we need to use it and all of the other eggs in the basket to start making omelettes. Why should these issues have a non sequitur relationship? They shouldn’t is my thinking. Donald Trump needs to be held to the exacting standards Republicans demanded of every other Democratic President. Each and every failing needs to be highlighted and not placated.
It’s time that Donald Trump and the Republican party abide by the standards and ideals they espouse and not pay lip service to or accuse others of falling short of.
Troy hit the nail on the head. Russian interference in our election is extremely important. To quote Comey himself:
“The reason this is such a big deal is we have this big, messy, wonderful country where we fight with each other all the time, but nobody tells us what to think, what to fight about, what to vote for except other Americans,” he said. “And that’s wonderful and often painful. But we’re talking about a foreign government that — using technical intrusion, lots of other methods — tried to shape the way we think, we vote, we act. That is a big deal. And people need to recognize it.”
Does that mean Democrats should take their eyes off the ball on taxes or healthcare? Of course not but it simply cannot be either/or. There are legislative/policy issues and there are issues of substance, leadership, and legitimacy. The Republicans want to focus on the first set, thereby enriching themselves and their corporate overlords, and they are utterly devoid of the second. Democrats need to point this out over and over regardless of where Donald Trump and his cronies reside.
“Russiagate” is the cudgel that the Deep State is using to force Trump to acquiesce to what they have been doing in the Ukraine. What it actually shows is that our election process is hopelessly compromised. Election security looks like swiss cheese, and accountability is so non-existent we don’t have a clue who has been interfering. In spite of numerous cries of alarm since HAVA was implemented, and actual demonstrations at US universities as to how easy it is to hack our election software, we have seen open hostility to the idea of meaningful oversight or actual recounts (rather than feeding the same ballots back into the same machines).
Former President Jimmy Carter has stated on more than one occasion that our elections are not legitimate under international standards. If you think that our elections have been deliberately set up that way to benefit RUSSIA, you are insane. The domestic actors who set it up, set it up that way to benefit domestic actors.
I predict that as soon as Trump becomes hostile to Russia, and starts supporting Kiev in a meaningful way, the threat of impeachment will vanish into thin air.
You heard it here first.
Mr. Mills,
I normally agree with your comments. Not this time. The Russiagate story is the biggest one facing our country. Healthcare and even a job don’t amount to a hill of beans if we have lost our republic.
As a young North Carolina editor in the 1970s, I wrote a ton on Watergate in real time. Nixon was charged (second article of his impeachment) with obstruction of justice for little more than grunting approval of interference in the Watergate probe. Trump has done far, far more than that. I believe James Comey and others that Trump tried to shut down an investigation of Michael Flynn.
Russiagate is a far bigger story than you state. It goes to the heart of our democracy and it reveals already that the leader of the free world is dangerously compromised.
I would bet my next mortgage payment that Trump will be indicted, forced from office or resign. The bombshells are just beginning, and this is not going to end well because for Trump or the country. I don’t base this prognostication on the Comey testimony today, but on the fact that there is smoke coming from too many fires for this not to be a disaster for Trump and the nation. If I am wrong, and I hope am wrong, then I will acknowledge it pronto.
i agree except for the impeachment outcome. Just do not see it as something the House would do anytime soon and it seems even less likely to happen as the 2018 elections arrive.
What puzzles me is why anyone believes that the Democrats are not also aware of the Senate work on the health care bill. My inbox has a half dozen different emails just yesterday from Democrats and/or their organizations on this topic. The press is captivated by the Russian/Comey/Flynn hearing, and they should be covering both. In any case, the GOP Senate will quickly find out that the folks who care about health care issues have not forgotten them if they pass anything like what is being hinted at.
Thanks for commenting on my comment. You make good points.
I believe thee are many more shoes to drop. Whether those shoes drop may depend on the work of Special Counsel Mueller. . I truly believe he is investigating an obstruction case against Mr. Trump.
One of the questions I have are there Republicans in the U.S. House or Senate who will stand up for patriotism rather than party and president? In the Wastergate case, the Republicans, although now storied for their “courage,” became “courageous” only after they began losing congressional elections. This is why is it crucial that Democrats battle like the dickens in special and midterm congressional elections. A few losses early on could put the fear of God in the congressional GOP, especially coming in wake of the Comey testimony.
Well, Thomas, there’s your view, and then there’s that of Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post (see link). We will ultimately find out which is more on the mark.
http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article154697784.html