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Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer are just playing a big ol' blame game, Politico's Capitol Hill reporters John Bresnahan, Burgess Everett, and Marianne Levine suggest in a new piece, saying "the state of the Senate is bad, and it could get worse." It's all just "both sides" finger-pointing, they say. Here’s a sampling:
Schumer first accused McConnell of overseeing a "legislative graveyard," adding that McConnell's Senate deserved an F.
McConnell responded hours later that Schumer was the father of gridlock, having blocked George W. Bush's judicial picks more than a decade ago.
"I know exactly who started it," McConnell said.
Politico reports this as if everything the Republicans have been doing to turn the federal judiciary into the Federalist Society since the Clinton administration—and it was happening that far back—hasn't happened. As if the total blockade of President Obama's Supreme Court nominee was just another normal thing to happen in the Senate. As if McConnell wasn't acting as a rubber stamp for the most extremist, corrupt, and authoritarian person to sit in the Oval Office since the turn of the last century.
As if McConnell recognized any prerogative of the minority party, gave even the slightest nod to the value of the institution. When Politico hints that "it could get worse," its writers mean Schumer could reciprocate by getting rid of the legislative filibuster if Democrats take the majority in 2020. Which is probably the only thing that the Senate could do to restore and preserve itself as an institution at this point. The only way to repair the damage McConnell has done, besides vote him out, will be to make the Republican Party irrelevant and force it to fix itself.