I don’t recall any election in my lifetime when it seemed like there was so much riding on the outcome. The contrast between the two potential paths could not be greater. If Trump wins, I believe the ‘great experiment’ in American democracy will continue to deteriorate and move more and more towards authoritarianism. If Joe Biden wins, I believe that the damage inflicted by Trump will start to be corrected, but it will take time. However, if Joe Biden wins and the Republicans under Mitch McConnell retain control of the Senate, we are in for another rocky 4 years.
There is no doubt that in the last scenario with a Biden victory and a Republican controlled Senate, that McConnell will do the exact same thing he did during the Obama administration and just become an obstructionist. McConnell is on record as stating that his goal, when Obama was elected, was to make sure he was a one-term president. He will do the exact same thing with Biden. This is really almost more of a nightmare scenario than if Trump wins.
At least if Trump wins, you know the country will continue to go to hell and you can deal with that however you like. (Perhaps it will be time for me to write my version of ‘Under the Tuscan Sun’ from somewhere else in the world!) If Biden wins and McConnell still controls the Senate, expectations for a return to some kind of normalcy in government will be very high, but McConnell will do everything in his power to dash those hopes. There is no doubt about that. He already played this game with President Obama. It will be like a big giant tease – great expectations dashed by one purely partisan man.
It seems to me that there is something wrong with the system when one man such as Mitch McConnell has that kind of power. I’m not sure what the solution is, but the current system is unworkable and truly unfair to the American people. McConnell relishes his ‘nom de guerre’, ‘the Grim Reaper’, and I can only hope that the Senate turns blue. Otherwise, Biden, and the rest of us, are going to have a really, really hard time.
So, how did we end up with a system that is so warped? Money! Here are some staggering figures. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, a non-partisan group that tracks money in politics, there will be $10.8 billion (yes – BILLION) spent on the 2020 election.1 Of that, almost half, about $5.2 billion will be spent on the presidential race. The rest, $5.6 billion will be spent on House and Senate races.
Since elections in this country are not primarily funded by the government, this is virtually all private and corporate money flowing into the political system. It’s no small wonder that the system has become so corrupt and people like McConnell are allowed to thrive. As I stated in a previous post, McConnell’s push to pack the courts with conservative judges is nothing more than a power grab designed to benefit corporations and wealthy individuals. Why wouldn’t corporations be willing to ‘invest’ in this type of effort when they are looking at how it might benefit their bottom line down the road.
The Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case (Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission) opened the door for the foundation of SuperPACs which allow virtually unlimited spending to support candidates. This single decision was, in my opinion, a devastating blow to the ‘great experiment’ of American democracy. It is quite telling that the decision was a 5 to 4 decision along ideological lines with the conservative justices in the majority. And this is exactly why Mitch McConnell is continuing to pack the courts with conversative justices – hoping for more pro-business and pro-Republican rulings. The American people are losing this fight.
A lot of people think the confirmation controversy of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court is basically about abortion rights and the Affordable Care Act. Those are certainly real issues, but the bigger, and more troubling issue is the fact that the conservative majority which ushered in the ‘Super PAC era’ that now governs American politics, will be locked in place for a generation. It will be very difficult, if not impossible, to put anything in place to counter this huge monetary influence on American politics with a staunch conservative majority on the court
The good news is that in a couple of weeks, hopefully the airwaves will become much less polluted with the current bombardment of political ads. It has been a seemingly endless stream of nothing but character assassinations and disinformation. Most of us would just like to know the answer to the question, “What are you going to do to make my life better?” Unfortunately, unless you are a party mega-donor or have your own personal lobbyist, you’re unlikely to get a satisfactory answer to that question.
- https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/01/election-2020-campaign-spending-set-to-hit-record-11-billion.html