Drunk History, Mitch Edition
A Scot, a New Mexican, and a Senate Majority Leader Walk Into A Bar
Frank Spring is back, accompanied by his friend and coconspirator, pollster Marcus Roberts, with a rundown of political advice they got from Mitch McConnell over several rounds. Long story short, Democrats should play to actually win once they’ve won. But how did Frank and Marcus end up having drinks with Mitch? It’s a long story.
by Marcus A. Roberts and Frank A. Spring
Last night, Marcus A. Roberts and Frank A. Spring, a pollster and a politico respectively, walked into a bar in Lexington, Kentucky. Never mind how they got there, or why, or how they got back to London and New Mexico, again respectively, in less than a day, in the middle of a pandemic. That’s not important right now.
What is important is that they struck up a conversation with an older gentleman at the bar. He’d obviously been there a while, and the barman had kept him from seeing the bottom of his glass.
The following is a more-or-less faithful rendering of what Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said to Marcus and Frank when he found out they were Democrats. The frequent refilling and draining of all their glasses has been excised for clarity and to protect the dignity of the participants.
I expect you’re feeling pretty good right about now. Pretty damn good. I can’t say that I blame you. Not at all.
You’re going to pound us flatter than hammered shit. The bill on Trump has come due, and my side’s about to pay it. And how.
But I’m not worried. Why should I be? I know what y’all will do, because I’ve seen this movie before. It’s a G-rated adventure about a plucky bunch of valedictorians and hall monitors who somehow win an election and bring their warm-hearted commitment to rule-worship and politeness-at-any-cost to Washington, DC, where they negotiate against themselves for years until the people, furious and exhausted with their hem-hawing bullshit, vote them out again.
It’s a dull movie but I can sit through it again. Cost of doing business.
Now, if I were writing it...I really shouldn’t say. Ah, what the hell. Barman? Thank you.
Y’all know that ‘whiskey’ means ‘water of life’ in Gaelic? Not wrong. Not wrong at all.
Okay, boys, here’s what I’d do if I were your majority leader. You just inherited the biggest political mandate in three generations. If you’re waiting on a clearer signal that the people want you to push your agenda through than the one where they give you the presidency, the Senate, and an expanded House majority, you’ll be waiting until the sun goes out.
Ah, you say, but what about the filibuster? What about the Supreme Court? Should we nuke the first, and pack the second? Oh, I don’t know, I’m a Democrat, I’m scared of my own shadow of course you should nuke the filibuster and pack the Supreme Court. That’s 101. Shit, it isn’t even 101, that’s learning to tie your goddamn shoes.
The Virtuous Valedictorians Disappoint Voters: The Sequel
I’m not saying any more unless you dumbasses promise never to mention the filibuster and courtpacking again. If you don’t do both, your agenda is dead in the water, and we’re back to The Virtuous Valedictorians Disappoint Voters: The Sequel.
And just to show you that I’m not a hard-hearted man, that it’s not all a political calculus to me, I’ll put this in terms you might understand: the voters are about to put their trust in you, and they expect you to deliver. They are waiting for hours in line, risking their health, to put their trust in you. They have undone every goddamn scheme my colleagues and I can think of to keep them from voting. If you do not deliver the agenda they want, filibuster and Supreme Court be damned, you are betraying their trust and they should neither vote nor speak to you again. They don’t elect you to make excuses, not that anyone’d know it from listening to y’all.
So let’s hear no more crying about whether or not to tie your goddamn shoes, are we clear? Goddammit I said are we clear?
That’s better. Sorry, barman, I made them shout, that’s my fault. We’ll be a little quieter. Thank you very much, you’re very kind.
Statehood for DC and Puerto Rico - that’s 101. You should do both. You can do the first without a constitutional amendment, and don’t believe anyone on my side - including me - if we say otherwise. You just redraw the District’s boundaries so it’s just the Capitol and the White House; everything else becomes the State of Deez-nuts, California-east, or whatever floats y’all’s boat.
Incidentally, I think we can have one of those Puerto Rico Senate seats, but, I don’t know, after Trump’s bullshit...Worst case scenario for you, you’re up on us 3-1 in the Senate at a stroke.
But here’s where it really gets interesting. Because I think you’ll have the governorships and both chambers of enough state legislatures to pass a constitutional amendment. And you should.
To start with: California. Awful big, isn’t it? Some might say too big for one state. Four seems better. Maybe even six! And of course, each new state simply must reflect California’s unique culture and geography, so you’ll want to slice the state laterally, so each new state includes a major metropolitan coastal area and a less-populated but of course still very important piece of the Inland Empire. That’s another 8-0 you’re up on us in the Senate.
Just make sure when you’re adding states that you can keep the governorship and both legislative chambers of each one, so you can keep passing amendments. Very important you keep track of that as you’re creating however many new Californias you need.
But what about voting rights? Ah, yes. Very important, those voting rights. Pesky things, I’ve found, never cared for them, but there’s no accounting for taste.
You can pass this through the legislature if you like, but a constitutional amendment might be better: Mandatory no-excuse vote-by-mail in every state, mandatory early-voting, Election Day becomes a holiday, convictions are no barrier to the franchise, same-day registration in all 50 states. And that’s if you’re skittish about the Postal Service (which you should also give a huge budgetary shot in the arm; we’ve been trying to kill it for years and it still works, imagine what would happen if it got real support). If you’re not skittish, and you’re willing to fund the Postal Service and lock in its budget for a generation, just make the whole country vote by mail. Oregon does it. It works. I hate it.
Voting rights. Pesky things, I’ve found, never cared for them
This all, of course, really comes home when you either bind the Electors of the Electoral College to vote so that the College reflects the popular vote, or do away with the Electoral College forever and make the presidential election a straight first-past-the-post popularity contest. I have no idea what you Democrats have against the idea that the president should be the person for whom the most Americans voted. It’s insane to me. Oh, but our sacred processes! give me a break, the only people who actually like the Electoral College are me and this glass of whiskey, and something bad’s about to happen to the whiskey.
But why stop there? You’ve called a Constitutional Convention, you might as well get some good out of it. Declare quality public education and health care to be fundamental rights of American citizens.
Hell, pass the shortest Amendment in history: We can argue about what free speech is, but we know money ain’t it. Which - and never tell my caucus I said this - it ain’t. I cannot believe y’all let us get away with that shit. But that’s your Supreme Court fixation - y’all are obsessed with a Democrat being president at just the right time a justice throws in the towel (or buys the farm). But do you have any idea how badly I’ve fucked you on lower court appointments? Ha ha ha ha! Ah ha ha ha ha ha! Oh boy. I got y’all but good on that one. Of course, if you imposed term limits on those people and appointed some kind of nonpartisan - not bipartisan, we always beat your asses with those things, really nonpartisan - commission to appoint future judges, you could undo most of my work at a stroke. The Federalist Society would die of rage.
Pass the shortest Amendment in history: We can argue about what free speech is, but we know money ain’t it.
Then you’d want to lock all this in by another Constitutional amendment: everything we just said is not to be revisited except via the Constitution. We’d never meet that standard. We’d be fucked.
I probably shouldn’t have told you all that. Ah, well. Barman? Thank you.
Once you’ve cleared the decks by packing the court and overturning Citizens United by Amendment and locked us out of power, then you’d really want to go to work with your legislative agenda, which, if you’re smart, would be the most aggressive campaign of cartel-busting since that bastard Roosevelt turned his coat against his financial peers; chopping corporations and banks down to size, workers on corporate boards (including tech. Especially tech! Just because they’ve given you a lot of money does not make you their friends; I can’t believe y’all haven’t figured this out yet), that kind of thing.
Sound radical? It isn’t. Not really. It’s all in how you talk about it. Oh, we’d accuse you of socialism, but we do that whenever you try to add another bus route. More of the country is with you than y’all like to think, the data on this couldn’t be clearer. Y’all need to accept that AOC isn’t your party’s future - she’s your present.
Of course, if y’all did even half of this, it wouldn’t be me you’d need to worry about, because I’d resign my seat. You would have genuinely locked me out of power at that point, which I don’t much care for, but more to the point, even if I tried to obstruct you, you’d have cut me off at the knees. At the goddamn balls! I wouldn’t be able to so much as slow you down while you did away with student loan debt and attacked income inequality and treated climate change with the seriousness it deserves (yes, even I know). And I’m not sticking around for that shit.
But of course, that’s if y’all even try to do this. I’ll believe it when I see it.
Until then, I’ll be back in Washington, getting the popcorn ready for the movie about the polite little valedictorians. I love that scene where y’all ring your little hands about changing the Senate rules! Makes me laugh.
I should be getting home. Pleasure meeting you boys.
Y’all can get the check.
Check out Frank Spring’s previous contributions to The Experiment which include “Neither Gone Nor Forgotten,” “Oh, DaveBro,” and “In Praise of Gold Leaf.” Follow him on Twitter at @frankspring.
Follow Marcus Roberts at @marcusaroberts.
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