U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) mounted his harshest attack yet on Democrats amid increasing support for the Senate to kill the 60-vote filibuster, a relic of the Jim Crow era used to block civil rights legislation.
It did not go well for him.
Some pointed to McConnell’s infamous strutting back in 2017, after Donald Trump won the White House, and McConnell spent the next four years blocking hundreds of bills the Democratic House passed while confirming an unprecedented number of judges, including extremists the Bar Association rated as not qualified.
“Winners make policy. Losers go home,” McConnell retorted.
But now that Democrats have control of the Senate, the House, and the White House, and McConnell is still working to block Democrats’ legislation and President Joe Biden’s cabinet nominees, McConnell is playing a different game: “scorched earth.”
“Breaking Senate rules to kill the filibuster would not open up an express lane to liberal change,” he tweeted Tuesday, falsely characterizing using Senate procedures to kill or change the filibuster as “breaking the rules.”
“It would not open up an express lane for the Biden presidency to speed into the history books. The Senate would function more like a hundred-car pile-up. Nothing moving.”
He also took his “scorched earth” threat to the floor of the U.S. Senate:
It’s safe to say Democrats are furious, and have neither forgotten about nor forgiven McConnell for what they say is stealing a U.S. Supreme Court seat when President Barack Obama in March of 2016 nominated Merrick Garland. It sat open for 293 days and expired when the Senate concluded its session in January 2017. McConnell refused to allow hearing, much less a confirmation vote.
Voting rights expert Ari Berman sums up the situation:
Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid top aide explains what Democrats can do:
This Democratic strategist offers Democrats some advice:
And this former Obama Senior Advisor has had it with mincing words:
Here’s how others are responding to McConnell’s latest power-hoarding tactic: