Everyone remembers Jimmy Carter as a failed president, but few can remember the ’76 Democrat primary, where Carter, an unknown liberal from Georgia, overcame his lack of name-recognition to beat out a field of several better-known’s, including Mo Udall, Jerry Brown, Frank Church and George Wallace. I supported Gerald Ford, of course, but had one attaboy for Carter in his rise to the nomination because he had finally shed that “racist” label liberal national Democrats generally associated with any southerner who carried a distinctly “suthen” accent.
In 1976, if you talked with a southern accent and went to a Baptist church, you were, by default, a racist.
Seems you still are – if you are a Republican.
The Democrat Party leadership has let there be no doubt that it’s 1976 all over again, Senator Jeff Session’s southern accent the sole basis for his racist past, and the sole template for Shumer & Co going to the unprecedented measure of bringing forth a senate colleague of Sessions, Corey Booker of New Jersey (a black man), who was 7 when Carter flushed that racist label down the toilet in 1976.
The target of this campaign is not Jeff Sessions, nor even Donald Trump. It is directed at Mitch McConnell, to see if he is still the affable, gullible believer in the notion that Republican and Democrat Party differences are still a give-and-take game of politics, and not the kill-or-be-killed game the losing Democrats have declared. Donald Trump will be paying attention, as will most of America’s voters who elected Trump in the first place, and who far outnumber voters who voted specifically for the GOP.
The charge of being racist is just one of many names Republican lawmakers reflectively shrink away from. But the Senate leader, Mitch McConnell is not the alpha Republican in the room, but rather their deal maker. So, in the days of Reid, and presumably now Shumer, all the Democrats have to do is broadcast a few seeds of things to come on any particular issue to GOP members of McConnell\’s inner circle, and who may be wiling to swap a confirmation for some future consideration, think Murkowski, McCain, Graham, Cornyn, Corker, Hatch, many may go to Mitch wanting to avoid having to have to have their racist, homophobic, religious, war-mongering (or its pacifist opposite) come home to roost with the media, and sometimes even the voters, and instead get something in return at a later date.
That formula has changed and the Democrats know it. They’ve gone all in. But they need play it for all its worth until finally rejected, and hopefully, Mitch is that one guy who still lives in La-La Land (big winner at the Golden Globes) believing the game hasn’t really changed the past two months. It may be the Dems only card to play in fact.
The media is playing its own game, also thinking nothing has changed and that the political establishment still believes they can make or break them. The Democrats want to keep them believing this too, and Mitch is central to this plan.
All this scheming of course, depends on what Mitch thinks himself about the current lay of the land.. The Dems behavior, from the street rug rats to Hollywood to Black Lives Matter to Keith Ellison’s high profile pursuit of the chairmanship of the Democrat National Committee tells us the Democrats have gone all-in and it’s no longer Mr Nice Guy. Common-sense people understand this instinctively. This is winner-take-all, where “taking all” is yet to be determined….but we Trump voters have an idea where that might lead, if we let them win.
I think this is a wise way for our side to look at things, by the way.
But the Dem’s only have to wonder how Mitch looks at things. I believe the Democrats have no friends who are not with them to the end. Everyone else are patsies. Enablers. Useful idiots. And only want to at least try to see if Mitch still sees things according to the old way.
Our question is: Does Mitch McConnell finally get it?
We’ll find out inside 90 days. Trump isn’t going for 9 out of 10 of his nominees. If he comes up even one short, Mitch will be out of a job inside a year. Hammer, meet nail.
