AMERICAN AMNESIA

 I'll never forget what happened in England when divisive former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher died in 2013.  While there were some public displays of mourning, her political opponents openly celebrated, with the song "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead" becoming one of the most popular songs in the country.  Contrast that with how America  dealt with the passing of former disgraced President Richard Nixon in 1991, with the man who had embarassed the country with his criminal behavior recast as a merely controversial figure.  Of course, the rehabilitation of Nixon's reign began the moment that Gerald Ford pardoned him, with Nixon writing books and columns acting as an elder statesmen and not a criminal.  And it seemed to mostly work for him, because Americans seem to forget about former presidents the second they leave office.  Look at George W Bush, who's now just seen as soft spoken guy who paints (lousy) pictures and not a man who stumbled the country into a disastrous invasion of Iraq. 

I think this phenomenon happens because our 24/7 news cycle puts so much emphasis on who the president is and what his regime is doing at every given moment, that former presidents are forgotten almost immediately.   The lack of white hot media attention causes the approval ratings of former presidents to rise the second they leave office, as the bad parts of their reign seem to be  forgotten, causing many Americans get nostalgic for those better days, forgetting all the bad parts.

This amnesia could have disastrous effects in the coming election, with all the terrible things that Donald Trump did while in office somehow being forgotten by the public, who are still slightly favoring him in the polls.  And to make things even more depressing, remember that Trump outperformed the polls in 2016 and 2020, and that these are the best presidential poll numbers that he has ever had in his political career, and the stage may be set for a twice impeached man facing multiple felony charges to somehow wind up the White House again!

But there is some hope: for months, polls showed that most Americans couldn't believe that Trump was going to be the Republican party's nomination again.  Now that nightmare has become a reality, with Trump barnstorming his way into the nomination.  Since there is no question of his candidacy, voters who don't follow politics that much will start paying attention again, which will hopefully result in a remembrance of what a deeply divisive and awful man he is.  For the past four years Trump has mostly been communicating to members of his cult through right wing media, but now the public will be subjected to his obsession with how the 2020 election was "stolen" from him, along with his usual stream of bigoted, misogynistic and downright bizarre ramblings (what is it with this man and low flow sinks and showers?).  Add to that his criminal troubles and the court cases that he's already lost to the tune of almost half a billion dollars in penalties, and it's possible that the public's memory will suddenly return to the wildly chaotic, incompetent and corrupt regime that ran this country from 2016 to 2020 and they will come to their senses and vote for the slightly older man who's actually capable of caring about other human beings.  I really hope they do.

MITCH MCONNELL'S LEGACY

 Recently, 82 year old Repulican Senate leader Mitch McConnell announced that he soon will be retiring from the Senate.  McConnell was first elected in 1985 and has been the Republican leader of the Senate for 17 years. He said in an exit speech that he has realized that some of his political opinions have recently fallen out of favor with his party.  Accolades from Democrats who claimed to admire his old school pragmatism and willingness to compromise were made.

Personally, I can't imagine why any Democrat would say anything positive about a man who's cold, naked quest for political power saw him bend the Senate rules repeatedly.  And while it's true that he supports the Senate bill calling for funding for border security and aid to Ukraine that other Republicans have opposed, McConnell's history in the Senate is one of almost blind partisanship.  Remember how, after the violence of January 6th, McConnell gave a strong speech pinning the blame for the violence on Donald Trump, and then completely chickened out by failing to vote to remove Trump from office?  Even though he clearly thought that Trump was criminally liable for the violence of that day, he was too gutless to cast a vote that would have rightly prevented Trump from ever running again.

While that vote was shameful, McConnell's worst legacy will be the ultra conservative Supreme Court majority that he brought about entirely through his Senate actions as majority leader.  First, he denied President Barack Obama the chance to fill a vacant seat on the court for ten months before the 2016 election, and then he later  jammed through justice Amy Coney Barrett with less than a month to go before the 2020 election.  By doing this,  McConnell allowed a one term president who lost the popular vote by millions to pick three Supreme Court Judges instead of just the one he should have gotten in 2018.

And that conservative court has been busy, from overturning Roe Vs Wade to a brazenly partisan recent ruling that allowed Donald Trump to delay his upcoming legal trials by months, saving him the possible humiliation of being found guilty of a crime while on the campaign trail, and perhaps giving him the chance to dismiss the charges by winning the White House again.  And that overturning of Roe Vs Wade  has lead to an inevitable case of overreach, with the Alabama Supreme Court recently ruling that the frozen embryos used for in vitro fertilization were actually living beings, essentially ending IVF in that stare, a process used by millions of Americans that need help conceiving a child.  Although a bill to nationalize a right to IVF was put forth in the Senate, it was shot down by Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith,  who called the bill " a vast overreach".  Even while that was happening. many other Republicans have tried to say that they support the process, understandably not wanting to look like the oppose something that has led to the birth of more children. 

Along with these recent extremist rulings, there have also been stories of blatant corruption coming out of the court: first, it has been revealed that Justice Clarence Thomas's wife Ginny was involved in Trump's attempts to overturn the 2020 election, even as Thomas refused to recuse himself from rulings the court was making about that election.  And then there's the huge favors that billionaire conservative Harlan Crow has been making for Thomas, from treating him to a half million dollar vacation to paying for his step son's education.  Thomas never declared this favors.  And he isn't the only one, with Justice Samual Alito not reporting a luxury private flight that he took and Neil Gorsuch selling property to a law firm that had a case before the court.  Given all this, it's no surprise that court now has a record low approval rating. 

Because Supreme Court judges have lifetime appointments, there's little that can be done to stop the current court's reckless and reactionary rulings.  But there is one solution: now, more than ever, it's time for Democrats to support packing the court.  While such a thing has never been done before (FDR considered it) I think that, given the hypocritical lengths that McConnell went to get a conservative majority, the Democrats should do it while they still have a majority in the Senate.  Oh sure, the Republicans would scream bloody murder,  but there's no legal way to block it.  And if Republicans run on adding more seats to the court themselves, so be it.  No matter how much they may deny it, the Supreme Court is not above politics, so why not treat picking more Supreme Court judges as just another platform for presidential candidates to run on?  Anything to prevent this current court from poisoning our political process for decades to come.