Mitch McConnell, Enemy of the Vote

[babylonsister]

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/mitch-mcconnell-enemy-of-the-vote-787596/?fbclid=IwAR1i2Vr4s8XOO-vhLo2n_rCwpY_1F1IB8H_fv38efP5v2hdrmJKJt95K5mg


January 31, 2019 1:11PM ET
Mitch McConnell, Enemy of the Vote
The Senate Majority Leader mocked a bill expanding ballot access while staying silent on foreign threats to our elections
By Jamil Smith


Suppressing votes is not merely a racist act, nor it is simply the last resort for a party out of ideas. Voter suppression is traitorous. Intentionally restricting access to the ballot is a violation of the ideals that we have been told are inherently American. The United States government is of, by and for the people. Yet we are barred from the fundamental democratic process by those in power merely because our skin color predicts our political persuasion. The Supreme Court’s 2013 Shelby vs. Holder decision should have had people marching in the streets to restore that landmark civil rights legislation to its full powers — or at least made that a key topic of the subsequent presidential election. We are lucky if outlets use “racially tinged” or other cowardly terminology to reference it. Voter suppression is not an accident, as Chief Justice John Roberts would have us believe, some benign exclusion from the small-d democratic process. It is a form of violence.

Mitch McConnell is okay with this. The Senate Majority Leader, the longest-serving Republican to ever hold that position, all but admitted on the Senate floor Wednesday that having more Americans vote is bad for the Republican Party. H.R. 1, the omnibus package of ethics and civil rights reforms proposed by the newly elected House Democratic majority, was McConnell’s target.

snip//

Many are still wondering why Republicans blocked $250 million in funds last fall to enhance election security, but then months later cheer on a president who shuts down the government over $5.7 billion for his fantasy border wall? It doesn’t matter whether Republicans were complicit in foreign election interference. That interference helped elect Trump, and it is allowing the GOP to continually destroy our democracy. Whatever moral compromises and treachery is necessary to help McConnell and his party confirm conservative judges at a manic pace, they seem all too willing to do it.

The Russians failed to make a noticeable dent in the 2018 midterm elections, but not for a lack of trying. Still, McConnell and the Senate caucus he leads haven’t lifted a finger to make the nation’s electoral infrastructure more secure after our intelligence agencies concluded that we were attacked in 2016. Former vice-president Joe Biden alleged that the Obama administration’s response to the Russian election interference was slow-walked thanks to McConnell, which the Majority Leader denies.

McConnell’s behavior should disturb us.

It is somehow fitting that the man who blocked Merrick Garland from a Supreme Court confirmation hearing would declare H.R. 1 dead on arrival a month before it ever was debated on the House floor. In the same early December Wall Street Journal report in which he predicted that lawmakers would avoid a government shutdown, McConnell said that the omnibus Democratic reform bill is “not going to go anywhere in the Senate,” where Republicans hold 53 of the 100 seats.

McConnell isn’t betraying America merely because he is going against popular opinion. As he did by withholding the Garland pick, he is subverting democracy once again at its baseline level. Even worse, McConnell is targeting efforts to make the system fair, painting them as totalitarian while he holds the door open for actual despots seeking to muck with our ballots. His odd sycophancy to Trump, a man whom he clearly shares little in common with other than preferences for judicial picks, has been the story of the last two years. However, going forward, we should give McConnell more credit for his own villainy. He has earned the recognition.

[RAB910]

1. More like enemy of the people

[lame54]

2. He mocked paying federal employees right before the shutdown

[Hermit-The-Prog]

3. Moscow Mitch despises democracy

If Mueller is not investigating McConnell, we need someone else to do so.