So what now, Mitch?

The article below was written just before the networks called President Elect Biden's victory on November 7. This update is posted on November 11. As the quotation below from the Guardian this morning makes clear (it's about Att. Gen. Barr's scandalous instructions to the DOJ re "voter fraud") the last paragraph about legacy and compromise already looks laughably naive and optimistic. I do feel somewhat foolish. Re McConnell, as the scorpion says, "It's my nature".

From the Guardian: The highly contentious action, which was first reported by Associated Press, was greeted with delight by Trump supporters but with skepticism from lawyers and election experts. Within hours of the news, the New York Times reported that the justice department official overseeing voter fraud investigations, Richard Pilger, had resigned from his position.

“Having familiarized myself with the new policy and its ramifications,” Pilger reportedly told colleagues in an email, “I must regretfully resign from my role as director of the Election Crimes Branch.”

Doubts about Barr’s intentions were heightened after it was reported that a few hours before the letter to prosecutors was disclosed, he met with Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate majority leader.

McConnell has so far remained in lockstep with Trump. Earlier on Monday he expressed support for the defeated president on the floor of the chamber. He said: “President Trump is 100% within his rights to look into allegations of irregularities and weigh his legal options.”

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Many of President Trump's most ardent supporters have commended him for saying things "other politicians just don't say". At what appears to be a dangerous time for democracy in the USA, it seems appropriate to take a leaf out of the soon-to-be former President's book in an attempt at clarity. Trigger warning done, we'll come to Sen. McConnell in a bit.

At the time of writing, Vice President Biden's victory in the presidential election looks inevitable and I'm looking forward to getting back to a life in which we're not being endlessly reminded by Chris Cuomo and his hombres on CNN that we have to "wait for what the numbers tell us". They look pretty articulate already and we know why they're being so very deliberate, but still...

As Blackadder might have opined, President Trump's reaction to this looming reality is as "predictable as the most predictable thing on national predictability day". The best human response I've seen to that was offered by Stephen Colbert on Thursday night and I've nothing to add, save to wonder what anyone expected. Dignity?

As Colbert points out, Senate Leader McConnell's response to the President's flagrant undermining of the democracy he ostensibly leads is currently "No comment". That's also predictable, but the reasons for that are worth giving some thought, especially as it looks likely that his leadership of the Senate will continue for the next cycle.

I strongly disagree with McConnell's political world view. As a liberal (using US terminology), how could I not? I also consider him morally suspect and almost genetically unable to act in a way that isn't wholly partisan. His rank hypocrisy in the wake of the recent sad passing of Justice Ginsberg hardly needs illustration here, save to also wonder how that walking oil slick Sen. Lyndsey Graham sleeps at night.

Despite that, let's concede that the Senator is an extremely sharp operator and a million miles from dumb. He weighs every sentence for effect and knows how to negotiate tricky high-wires. The ascent of President Trump and how he's accommodated that is an important example of his modus operandi and worth an analysis that rings true - to these ears at least.

Please recall that towards the end of President George W Bush's second term and throughout President Obama's time in office, the Republican Party (hereinafter GOP) was struggling with a growing perception that it was in danger of becoming the party of "angry white men". The rise of the Tea Party (for a coherent analysis of what that shit show represented, look here) in response to America having had the temerity to elect a black man to its highest office appeared to cement that view and Sen. McConnell will have been sharp enough to know that demographic change in the USA represented a real threat to the GOP's longer term viability.

As a member of the Good 'ol Boy corporate part of the party, that presented a choice for the Senator and those like him; change the party to grow its appeal to a much wider demographic or engage in as much voter suppression and gerrymandering as possible to game the system in the GOP's favour. Sadly, he made the latter choice.

Then came Donald Trump. Driven by his racist hatred of everything President Obama represented and encouraged by Roger Ailes' offer of full backing from Fox News, he ran for President and his base street cunning told him that the Tea Party represented a demographic he could seriously grow. He differentiated himself from his Republican opponents by test-marketing and then shamelessly appealing to every single prejudice those within that voter group held- something his opponents simply would not do. LOSERS!

Via his celebrity and the free-of-charge bullhorn Fox and all the other media outlets granted him, those messages got through to people well beyond the politically engaged Tea Party. They got through to millions of Americans who previously never, or hardly ever voted. The Democrats didn't align with their darker views, the Republicans were too obsessed with their corporate backers and tax cuts.

Candidate Trump worked out how to get that lot fully animated and then create an alliance uniting those with the millions who were prepared to turn a blind eye to his clearly rancid nature and tick his box just to avoid having to vote for Hilary Clinton, their Devil Incarnate. The rest is history and the waking nightmare of the last four years.

When Hilary Clinton uttered the "Basket of Deplorables" phrase in 2016, she made a huge political mistake and handed her enemies - on all sides- a stick to beat her with. The thing is, was she factually wrong? I am sure she was not referring to all those ready to vote against her, but those she saw represented at the increasingly raucous Trump/MAGA rallies. Viewing of these always makes me fearful. A feedback loop inevitably starts up in which the President utters an utterly repugnant opinion, receives an approving roar from the crowd, often followed by a base three-syllable chant, egging the President ever further down a deep rabbit hole, which he's more than delighted to burrow in. The "Fire Fauci" chants and the President's risible response to them at his most recent rallies offer a prime example.

If the President, at one of these night rallies, leant conspiratorially forward and said "A lot of people are talking about a final solution to the Muslim problem we've got" (and yes, dear reader, you did get the analogy, which I'll return to) can anyone here be sure as to what the three-syllable chant after that might be? I have some candidates in mind, but common decency demands some self-censorship. If you believe such a statement would be met with a mass walk out, I envy and commend your optimism, which I'd love to share.

Sen. McConnell sits, to my mind, squarely in the latter part of the alliance Donald Trump built. He refrains from direct criticism of the President, the odd subtle bon mot notwithstanding, but sees him as the malodorous tumor in American public life that he is. However, given the way he has driven so many into the GOP camp (over 70m voters in this election, lest we forget, the second highest historical total for any candidate) he has, along with nearly every elected Republican in Congress, held his nose and made the Devil's bargain. It's had its upsides, that deal. They got the tax cut their donors were screaming for, the EPA has been utterly denuded, the Supreme Court is now firmly weighted in the GOP's favour etc.

However, that cowardly bargain now presents two problems: As the biggest vote for a presidential candidate in history has just illustrated, it created an even greater opposite, now poised to smash that alliance. Amen to that. The second consequence is much darker and how that's addressed is the reason I started typing today.

To return to my earlier analogy; in early thirties Germany, the mercantile and aristocratic classes viewed Hitler as a usable bulwark against communism/socialism and engineered enough power his way to make him useful and controllable. That didn't turn out so well. This analogy is certainly not like-for-like, its Constitution having afforded the US protections unavailable to Weimar Germany's fledgling democracy, but the Devil's Bargain has certainly ripped Pandora's Box wide open and the President's removal alone will not fix that.

The election has starkly illustrated the USA's entrenched and bitter divisions. Warnings from many respected commentators in the run up, that it's predictably elongated nature this year and the equally predictable pouring of oil onto fire by the incumbent could lead to armed conflict in the streets ( just think about that for a minute), simply cement the view that dangerous forces have been unleashed. Reflect for a moment on what President Trump actually represents, the polar opposite of a decent, civilised position on any issue one cares to consider and then reflect further that over 70 million citizens ticked his box. A very dark moment in a great democracy's history at the very least.

The defeated will divide into two groups; those who accept the people's judgment and move on (hopefully a majority) and those who refuse to. However the response of the latter group plays out, it presents the vast majority of decent Americans with a real problem. I suggest the vast majority at least agree that this segment of its population needs to be marginalised and managed by a combination of depriving their worst views of oxygen and a political choice and then seriously working out what circumstances might lead to those views and addressing that.

"Worst", I shouldn't need to point out, does not mean "conservative" in this place. This liberal could magic up a polemic on the benefits of small government without too much trouble. The struggle would be in offering the same in defence of racism, misogyny, rampant homophobia, the willful misinterpretation of the second Amendment et al. Conservatism has a proud intellectual tradition. Whatever the rabidly pro-Trump part of the US is, is isn't conservative.

So far, so pessimistic. To end this on a dose of optimism and bring this back to Sen. McConnell and the choice now before him (Quiet at the back, I can hear you laughing!), may I offer some hope?

This will, in all likelihood, be a one-term presidency. President Elect Biden (There! Said it!) turns 78 this month, Sen. McConnell is that age already. Four years from now, shouldn't a well-earned retreat to more private matters appeal? The immediate crises of a very difficult transition and the US desperately needing to establish some control over the wildly raging pandemic will surely concentrate both their minds for now, but the question of "legacy" will also feature in their minds.

What do they wish to bequeath? A USA still deep in the trenches of a ruinous cultural civil war or a nation at least on the path to making the compromises necessary to move towards, if not sweetness and light (I ain't that thick), at least a sense of common and, dare I say, noble purpose? For now, the USA remains the Rome of our day, as much an idea as a geographical place, however much the current President has tried to turn it into a commode. That idea has been nobly pursued in the past and my gratitude to those countless young Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice in my own war-like continent not that long ago will accompany me to the grave. Surely it is time to turn a corner and rediscover that.

President Elect Biden is a unifier by nature and has already strongly suggested his willingness to try. Sen. McConnell is a grade A splitter, so engaging in a healing process will be tough for him, but his legacy is at stake and he's smart.

Calling out Trump on his currently fascist behaviour would be a great start. To end where we started, so Mitch, what now?

Peace, especially to my dear friends in the US.