President Obama Emerges With a Message for the Midterms
“Wow! Big Trump Hater Congressman Joe Crowley, who many expected was going to take Nancy Pelosi’s place, just LOST his primary election. In other words, he’s out! That is a big one that nobody saw happening. Perhaps he should have been nicer, and more respectful, to his President!” Donald Trump tweeted last Tuesday. This was a bizarre—to say the least—interpretation of the stunning victory of 28-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democratic Socialist who ousted house Democrat Crowley, a 19-year incumbent. Ocasio-Cortez ran on a platform that included Medicare for all, tuition-free public colleges, and the abolition of ICE, and her triumph provided a singular ray of light in yet another grim week. Once she gets to Washington, she can be counted on to be far from nice and even less respectful to “her president.”
The week began with Trump proposing to get rid of due process for immigrants and asylum seekers, turning them back at the border and eviscerating a right that has been enshrined in the fifth amendment of the constitution for over 200 years. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court, with a regrettably predictable 5-4 vote, upheld the third version of Trump’s travel ban, a dark day for America, which got even darker when Justice Kennedy announced his imminent retirement. But wait—remember when Mitch McConnell would not allow President Obama’s Supreme Court pick, Merrick Garland, to come up for a confirmation vote, because, according to a new rule just invented by McConnell, it was too close to an election? Well guess what, Mitchie-boy? This is an election year too—perhaps the most important midterms in the history of the free world are only four months away. Plus, isn’t there something just a little bit unnerving about a president selecting one of the very judges who will perhaps be called to sit upon him in judgment, ruling on whether Trump can be forced to testify before the Special Council, or even whether he can pardon himself?
If there is one thing that may motivate even the most phlegmatic citizen to, as the president has so eloquently put it, “get your asses out to vote” in November, it may be the prospect of this new judge—“We have to pick one that’s going to be there for 40 years, 45 years,” Trump has said. Which means that this person will be issuing his or her decisions after many of us are dead—potentially rolling back Roe v. Wade, LGBT rights, workers’ rights, union rights, and so many other human rights people have struggled and died for over the last century. Even the sagacious, no-drama Obama has come out of his shell, saying at a California fundraiser on Thursday: “If what you are doing requires no sacrifice at all, then you can do more. If you are one of these folks who is watching cable news at your cocktail parties with your friends and you are saying ‘civilization is collapsing’ and you are nervous and worried, but that is not where you are putting all your time, energy, and money, then either you don’t actually think civilization is collapsing . . . or you are not pushing yourself hard enough and I would push harder.”
But lest you feel that no matter how hard you push, this has become a nightmare from which you cannot awaken, that we are inching ever closer to the Republic of Gilead, don’t jump, dear reader! Be at least slightly encouraged by the knowledge that Ocasio-Cortez killed it Tuesday night, that on that same day a federal judge in California ordered a halt to most family separations at the border and the timely reunification of all families that have suffered those forced separations. On Thursday, almost 600 people, mostly women, were arrested for staging a nonviolent protest in the Senate office building, and yesterday, tens of thousands of people took to the streets to protest this administration’s immigration policies.
And there is still Mr. Mueller, scribbling away, thumping like Edgar Allen Poe’s telltale heart, getting louder in Trump’s ears every day.
