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McConnell has done more harm to the USA than any other politician I can think of in recent memory.

tyre 6y ago
This. Seeing trump as a cause and not a symptom or as the leading disaster for American democracy is a very common distraction. McConnell is the heart of all of it. He is nothing but an appetite for power. He’ll do anything. No morals whatsoever (and I say that neutrally, as a fact and not a moral judgement.) And he wins.
basementcat 6y ago
McConnell is just doing what his constituents want. Otherwise, they wouldn't have voted for him repeatedly since 1984. EDIT: One might argue that Mr. McConnell correctly anticipated the desires of the USA electorate because in November of 2016 they expressed a wish for more conservative judges in federal courts. If the voting public was outraged by McConnell's actions, one might expect they'd vote accordingly.
- paxys 6y ago
  McConnell's constituents = half of Kentucky, so ~2 million people. Meanwhile ~40 million Californians have zero say in the process.
  - basementcat 6y ago
    That is because the people of the USA don't want the ~40e6 people in California to be able to dictate policy for the ~2 million people in Kentucky. Most Americans are perfectly okay with this because there hasn't been any serious effort at an Amendment to grant each citizen with similar amounts of power in the Senate.
    - tomjakubowski 6y ago
      > Most Americans are perfectly okay with this because there hasn't been any serious effort at an Amendment to grant each citizen with similar amounts of power in the Senate. This doesn't follow. There is no way to amend the Constitution by a national popular vote so the opinion of the majority of Americans is irrelevant to the question of any Amendment's passage. A more likely reason such an Amendment wouldn't exist is that a majority of states favor the status quo, because most states are small and benefit from their current outsized representation in government.
      - basementcat 6y ago
        One of the mechanisms for beginning the amending of the USA constitution is via a 2/3 vote of both houses of Congress. The USA House of Representatives assigns political power approximately proportionally to population and it has never passed any proposed amendment to proportionally elect Senators or delegates of the Electoral College. Source: Article V Edit: Corrected 3/4 -> 2/3 Edit2: I stand corrected. The Bayh-Celler proposal was passed by the House and filibustered in the Senate in 1970. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_abolition_amendment#Bayh%E2%80%93Celler_amendment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_abolition_am...
        sokoloff 6y ago
        > One of the mechanisms for amending the USA constitution is via a 3/4 vote of both houses of Congress. I believe this is factually incorrect. I'll offer Article V of the Constitution as my citation. Do you have a contrary citation to support this claim?
    - sukilot 6y ago
      40e6 people in California aren't a bloc. The blueness/redness of a state is nothing more than the arbitrary balance of urban vs rural population. States are "purple" in actuality. The major geographic divide in US politics is urban vs rural, not state vs state
  - refurb 6y ago
    It’s not like Mitch can singlehandedly control the whole senate.
    - awalton 6y ago
      > It’s not like Mitch can singlehandedly control the whole senate. He's Senate Majority Leader. That's literally exactly what he does. Besides, he's whipped his party so hard they basically never break rank. Even Mitt "I'm not like the others" Romney votes with him nearly 100% of the time.
      - refurb 6y ago
        His power as whip is not absolute. It's not like a parliamentary system where they are actual consequences for not voting the party line. Take a look at any number of votes in the past year. There are plenty of Republicans who don't vote on party line (Republican and Democratic)
        couchand 6y ago
        > It's not like [there] are actual consequences for not voting the party line. There absolutely are, they just happen to be a side-channel in this particular system.
        stjohnswarts 6y ago
        If you don't vote the party line then you get shown the door during your next election. They turn off the money spigot and nominations stop coming and they help your opponents (same party) get the R nomination. None of the current R senators have the backbone to go against that. Oh they say they will but when the day comes to vote, it's all just hot air.
  - rhexs 6y ago
    Yes...that’s how the government works. I’d recommend taking a civics course. We thankfully don’t (yet) live in a country where New York, LA, and Chicago control everything.
    - TylerE 6y ago
      Yes, instead we live in a country where a few small rural states wield vastly outsized influence. So much better!
      - jcranmer 6y ago
        Of the ten least-populous states, half are solidly Republican and half are solidly Democratic.
        TylerE 6y ago
        Why should the vote for president of someone in Wyoming be worth 5.5 times as much as a voter in California?
        juniper_strong 6y ago
        Because that's the only way there would be a federal government in America. What choice would you have made in 1787?
        TylerE 6y ago
        We're way beyond 1787. The Reapportionment Act of 1929 is the cause of the worst distortions. It fixes the HoR at 435, and is the main cause of the gross imbalance of power. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reapportionment_Act_of_1929 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reapportionment_Act_of_1929
        jcranmer 6y ago
        Actually, it doesn't. Wyoming (the least-populous state) has .183% of the US population, so it should have .183% of the US House seats if they were fully proportional. It actually has .230% (1 / 435)--about 1.25× the power it should have. Rhode Island getting two House seats gives it about 1.34× the power it should have. Montana having only one seat leaves it at about 0.673× the power it ought to have. As quantization errors go, the House's quantization isn't terribly distortive.
  - throwaway212135 6y ago
    These comments strike me as tone deaf. Have you seen California lately? It is democratically run and McConnell has done more harm? You can't be serious.
  - jimktrains2 6y ago
    His constituency is all of Kentucky. Senators do not split their states, they represent it as a whole. McConnell rules through the consent of half the senate, not alone. This is literally the purpose of the senate. We are a union of states, and the senate is where each state is granted equal power. One could argue that states should have been defined differently, but the point was that large states should not have absolute control over small states. Edit: I'm loving the downvotes without comments. They're clear indication that some people are either not arguing in good faith or that they simply do not understand how and why the us is set up the way it is.
    - sukilot 6y ago
      A "State" in the USA Senate sense is a deprecated aristocratic entity created by the King of England. The Senate exists to protect the interests of a few 18th Century slaveowners. That's why it was created and how it was used up to the middle of the 19th Century (Missouri Compromise). The non-existence of an imaginary line across the middle of California is not a justification for the minority to control the majority. There's no way to defend the Senate without defending slavery.
      - pnw_hazor 6y ago
        Nonsense. The entire basis of the US government is the dual sovereignty of States and the Federal government. What slavery? 2020 is bad but it isn't that bad.
    - gran_colombia 6y ago
      The only reason Mitch Connell withheld the nomination was to prevent a vote he would lose. Kentucky's representative prevented a vote where California's representatives would have had a say. Kentucky decided that California did not need to be consulted on this matter. This sort of behavior is hostile to representative government.
  - neverartful 6y ago
    They do have a say. They're free to contact their senators just like citizens from all the other states (on either side of the issue).
- thrwn_frthr_awy 6y ago
  There is the chance that his constituent's mostly just vote for a Republican and would still vote for him either way.
- evan_ 6y ago
  > If the voting public was outraged by McConnell's actions, one might expect they'd vote accordingly. This is nonsense. Trump got three million fewer votes than Clinton.
  - sukilot 6y ago
    No, it's nonsense because only Kentucky votes for McConnell
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
tick_tock_tick 6y ago
Harry Reid, he's the one that ruined congress by changing the rules. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Reid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Reid
- neverartful 6y ago
  Harry Reid was warned of the long-term consequences and he ignored them. Had Reid not pulled the 'nuclear option' the filibuster from the minority would stop the confirmation.
  - sukilot 6y ago
    That's a fantastical interpretation. Reid pulled the nuclear option to stop Republicans from refusing to do their job (approve judges). McConnell would have pulled the nuclear option himself as soon as he got the majority, regardless of what Reid did.
worker767424 6y ago
More than Trump? McConnell is at least a professional politician and not a washed-up reality TV heir.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
giardini 6y ago
It's beautiful to see someone like McConnell, who understands political power and is able to use it fully and legally w/o overstepping. If Democrats had someone his equal then they would be pleased too. Please remember that luck (chance) is an important and sometimes decisive component in conflict. Today it seems the Republicans are lucky; who knows what the future will bring.
- thirdsun 6y ago
  > It's beautiful to see someone like McConnell, who understands political power and is able to use it fully and legally w/o overstepping. If Democrats had someone his equal then they would be pleased too. Regardless of which side you're on - I don't think that's a worthwhile basis for political discourse and shouldn't be the modus operandi for what basically determines the development of a country. Then again, you're right of course - the fact that McConnell and other don't actually overstep in legal terms just shows that the rule set isn't suitable for the current political climate in a time which is shaped by disregard of norms and mutual respect.

tyre 6y ago

This. Seeing trump as a cause and not a symptom or as the leading disaster for American democracy is a very common distraction. McConnell is the heart of all of it. He is nothing but an appetite for power. He’ll do anything. No morals whatsoever (and I say that neutrally, as a fact and not a moral judgement.) And he wins.

basementcat 6y ago

McConnell is just doing what his constituents want. Otherwise, they wouldn't have voted for him repeatedly since 1984. EDIT: One might argue that Mr. McConnell correctly anticipated the desires of the USA electorate because in November of 2016 they expressed a wish for more conservative judges in federal courts. If the voting public was outraged by McConnell's actions, one might expect they'd vote accordingly.

paxys 6y ago
McConnell's constituents = half of Kentucky, so ~2 million people. Meanwhile ~40 million Californians have zero say in the process.
- basementcat 6y ago
  That is because the people of the USA don't want the ~40e6 people in California to be able to dictate policy for the ~2 million people in Kentucky. Most Americans are perfectly okay with this because there hasn't been any serious effort at an Amendment to grant each citizen with similar amounts of power in the Senate.
  - tomjakubowski 6y ago
    > Most Americans are perfectly okay with this because there hasn't been any serious effort at an Amendment to grant each citizen with similar amounts of power in the Senate. This doesn't follow. There is no way to amend the Constitution by a national popular vote so the opinion of the majority of Americans is irrelevant to the question of any Amendment's passage. A more likely reason such an Amendment wouldn't exist is that a majority of states favor the status quo, because most states are small and benefit from their current outsized representation in government.
    - basementcat 6y ago
      One of the mechanisms for beginning the amending of the USA constitution is via a 2/3 vote of both houses of Congress. The USA House of Representatives assigns political power approximately proportionally to population and it has never passed any proposed amendment to proportionally elect Senators or delegates of the Electoral College. Source: Article V Edit: Corrected 3/4 -> 2/3 Edit2: I stand corrected. The Bayh-Celler proposal was passed by the House and filibustered in the Senate in 1970. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_abolition_amendment#Bayh%E2%80%93Celler_amendment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_abolition_am...
      - sokoloff 6y ago
        > One of the mechanisms for amending the USA constitution is via a 3/4 vote of both houses of Congress. I believe this is factually incorrect. I'll offer Article V of the Constitution as my citation. Do you have a contrary citation to support this claim?
  - sukilot 6y ago
    40e6 people in California aren't a bloc. The blueness/redness of a state is nothing more than the arbitrary balance of urban vs rural population. States are "purple" in actuality. The major geographic divide in US politics is urban vs rural, not state vs state
- refurb 6y ago
  It’s not like Mitch can singlehandedly control the whole senate.
  - awalton 6y ago
    > It’s not like Mitch can singlehandedly control the whole senate. He's Senate Majority Leader. That's literally exactly what he does. Besides, he's whipped his party so hard they basically never break rank. Even Mitt "I'm not like the others" Romney votes with him nearly 100% of the time.
    - refurb 6y ago
      His power as whip is not absolute. It's not like a parliamentary system where they are actual consequences for not voting the party line. Take a look at any number of votes in the past year. There are plenty of Republicans who don't vote on party line (Republican and Democratic)
      - couchand 6y ago
        > It's not like [there] are actual consequences for not voting the party line. There absolutely are, they just happen to be a side-channel in this particular system.
      - stjohnswarts 6y ago
        If you don't vote the party line then you get shown the door during your next election. They turn off the money spigot and nominations stop coming and they help your opponents (same party) get the R nomination. None of the current R senators have the backbone to go against that. Oh they say they will but when the day comes to vote, it's all just hot air.
- rhexs 6y ago
  Yes...that’s how the government works. I’d recommend taking a civics course. We thankfully don’t (yet) live in a country where New York, LA, and Chicago control everything.
  - TylerE 6y ago
    Yes, instead we live in a country where a few small rural states wield vastly outsized influence. So much better!
    - jcranmer 6y ago
      Of the ten least-populous states, half are solidly Republican and half are solidly Democratic.
      - TylerE 6y ago
        Why should the vote for president of someone in Wyoming be worth 5.5 times as much as a voter in California?
        juniper_strong 6y ago
        Because that's the only way there would be a federal government in America. What choice would you have made in 1787?
        TylerE 6y ago
        We're way beyond 1787. The Reapportionment Act of 1929 is the cause of the worst distortions. It fixes the HoR at 435, and is the main cause of the gross imbalance of power. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reapportionment_Act_of_1929 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reapportionment_Act_of_1929
        jcranmer 6y ago
        Actually, it doesn't. Wyoming (the least-populous state) has .183% of the US population, so it should have .183% of the US House seats if they were fully proportional. It actually has .230% (1 / 435)--about 1.25× the power it should have. Rhode Island getting two House seats gives it about 1.34× the power it should have. Montana having only one seat leaves it at about 0.673× the power it ought to have. As quantization errors go, the House's quantization isn't terribly distortive.
- throwaway212135 6y ago
  These comments strike me as tone deaf. Have you seen California lately? It is democratically run and McConnell has done more harm? You can't be serious.
- jimktrains2 6y ago
  His constituency is all of Kentucky. Senators do not split their states, they represent it as a whole. McConnell rules through the consent of half the senate, not alone. This is literally the purpose of the senate. We are a union of states, and the senate is where each state is granted equal power. One could argue that states should have been defined differently, but the point was that large states should not have absolute control over small states. Edit: I'm loving the downvotes without comments. They're clear indication that some people are either not arguing in good faith or that they simply do not understand how and why the us is set up the way it is.
  - sukilot 6y ago
    A "State" in the USA Senate sense is a deprecated aristocratic entity created by the King of England. The Senate exists to protect the interests of a few 18th Century slaveowners. That's why it was created and how it was used up to the middle of the 19th Century (Missouri Compromise). The non-existence of an imaginary line across the middle of California is not a justification for the minority to control the majority. There's no way to defend the Senate without defending slavery.
    - pnw_hazor 6y ago
      Nonsense. The entire basis of the US government is the dual sovereignty of States and the Federal government. What slavery? 2020 is bad but it isn't that bad.
  - gran_colombia 6y ago
    The only reason Mitch Connell withheld the nomination was to prevent a vote he would lose. Kentucky's representative prevented a vote where California's representatives would have had a say. Kentucky decided that California did not need to be consulted on this matter. This sort of behavior is hostile to representative government.
- neverartful 6y ago
  They do have a say. They're free to contact their senators just like citizens from all the other states (on either side of the issue).
thrwn_frthr_awy 6y ago
There is the chance that his constituent's mostly just vote for a Republican and would still vote for him either way.
evan_ 6y ago
> If the voting public was outraged by McConnell's actions, one might expect they'd vote accordingly. This is nonsense. Trump got three million fewer votes than Clinton.
- sukilot 6y ago
  No, it's nonsense because only Kentucky votes for McConnell
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

tick_tock_tick 6y ago

Harry Reid, he's the one that ruined congress by changing the rules. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Reid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Reid

neverartful 6y ago
Harry Reid was warned of the long-term consequences and he ignored them. Had Reid not pulled the 'nuclear option' the filibuster from the minority would stop the confirmation.
- sukilot 6y ago
  That's a fantastical interpretation. Reid pulled the nuclear option to stop Republicans from refusing to do their job (approve judges). McConnell would have pulled the nuclear option himself as soon as he got the majority, regardless of what Reid did.

worker767424 6y ago

More than Trump? McConnell is at least a professional politician and not a washed-up reality TV heir.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

giardini 6y ago

It's beautiful to see someone like McConnell, who understands political power and is able to use it fully and legally w/o overstepping. If Democrats had someone his equal then they would be pleased too. Please remember that luck (chance) is an important and sometimes decisive component in conflict. Today it seems the Republicans are lucky; who knows what the future will bring.

thirdsun 6y ago
> It's beautiful to see someone like McConnell, who understands political power and is able to use it fully and legally w/o overstepping. If Democrats had someone his equal then they would be pleased too. Regardless of which side you're on - I don't think that's a worthwhile basis for political discourse and shouldn't be the modus operandi for what basically determines the development of a country. Then again, you're right of course - the fact that McConnell and other don't actually overstep in legal terms just shows that the rule set isn't suitable for the current political climate in a time which is shaped by disregard of norms and mutual respect.