They've bought the Senate to buy the Supreme Court

A few GOP senators have tested positive for the coronavirus. But the nomination process for Supreme Court nominee Any Coney Barrett is still on track. Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reports that Moscow Mitch seems to be part of a death cult in making sure Barrett gets that seat. He doesn’t care what it costs in the health and lives of his colleagues and their staff and families. Some may break quarantine to vote. McCarter wrote:

McConnell doesn't care who could be killed. It's entirely possible that he has issued a directive not to be tested or to release the result of a test until this vote is taken. That's something that's at the back of Democrats' minds as they try to figure out their strategy for the coming hearings and votes. McConnell and his fellow Republicans will have absolutely no qualms about endangering their colleagues.

Kerry Eleveld of Kos, after hearing Mitch prompted the nasty guy to stop negotiations for another virus relief package until after the election, adds a bit more:

But perhaps even more telling than the steady stream of bad public polling for Republicans is the fact that McConnell isn't acting like a man who thinks his caucus can pull this one out. Rather, he's essentially declared that everyone is on their own as he sets his sights on the singular goal of ramming through Barrett's confirmation.

The first task of Barrett, once she’s on the court – take away health care from the victims and survivors of the virus by tossing out Obamacare. We’re seeing supremacy – the forced ranking of society so those at the top can gloat about how their lives are so much better than anyone else’s – can be so strong that people are willing to kill it maintain it. In another post McCarter reminds us the nasty guy and Moscow Mitch are the visible faces of the destruction of democracy, but they have backers with enormously deep pockets. The Judicial Crisis Network (and one might ask, crisis for whom?) spent $27 million to keep Merrick Garland off the Supreme Court, another nearly $16 million to get Brett Kavanaugh on, and will likely spend $10 million for Barrett. Much of that money is given to the campaigns of key senators, such as Susan Collins of Maine during Kavanaugh’s hearing and now for Cory Gardner of Colorado, among others. Who is JCN? Other than it’s led by Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society, we know little. McCarter summarizes it this way:

They've bought the Senate to buy the Supreme Court, the likely outcome of which is the end of free and fair elections in the U.S. for at least a generation, if not forever. That is, unless we use this last one to retake the Senate and White House and then force the new leadership to make the deep structural changes necessary to the courts and, well, everything else that democracy demands.

Meteor Blades, in his Night Owl column for Kos quoted Randall Kennedy of The Nation who wrote a column titled Politicians in Robes: The Supreme Court’s war against democracy which reviewed the book Supreme Inequality by Adam Cohen. Wrote Kennedy:

In Supreme Inequality, Adam Cohen argues that for half a century, America’s highest court has waged “an unrelenting war” on the poor while championing the rich. The Supreme Court, he laments, has consigned to legal helplessness those reduced to government welfare subsidies, even in the face of unjustified deprivations. Its “campaign finance decisions have expanded the rights of wealthy individuals and corporations to use their money to gain influence over government.” Rulings “on partisan gerrymandering, voter ID, the Voting Rights Act, and voter roll purges have diminished the ability of those with little money to use the one thing they have at their disposal to win influence over government: their votes.” … Supreme Court decisions are determined by the particular justices who sit on the court, which is determined in turn by the presidents who nominate them, the senators who ratify them, and the citizens who vote for both. This largely explains the trajectory of the Supreme Court since the 1960s.

In another Night Owl, Blades included this quote for the day.

The Constitution they wrote was designed to protect the rights of white, male citizens. As there were no black Founding Fathers, there were no founding mothers - a great pity, on both counts. It is not too late to complete the work they left undone. Today, here, we should start to do so. ~~Shirley Chisholm, Speaking in Congress for the Equal Rights Amendment, August 10, 1970

When the nasty guy took himself out of the hospital on Monday he tweeted he was feeling really good (due to the medications) and told us “Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life.” Back in the White House the West Wing staff is gone, switching to doing their jobs from home. But the residence staff, the butlers and housekeepers, can’t work from home. They have to be there. Laura Clawson of Kos has sympathy for them and for the Secret Service agents. She doesn’t have sympathy for the political staff. They can leave. They helped build the nasty guy culture. They’re part of the problem. If they feel the nasty guy is putting them in danger, they should walk. David Perry tweeted a response to the nasty guy’s claim we shouldn’t be afraid of Covid. In between lines of what the nasty guy said he has images of coffins in a mass grave, body bags in a hallway, and a hospital team wheeling a gurney with a body. Yeah, there are big reasons to be afraid of Covid. Sarah Kendzior tweeted:

Trump's satisfaction lies in dragging people to their lowest level, exposing their capacity for evil, getting them to do what they otherwise wouldn't do. It's more satisfying for him to get people to take their own lives -- or to murder each other -- than to kill them outright.

Early voting has begun in Ohio. Walter Einenkel of Kos gathered together photos of very long lines in several cities. I’ve been a part of Vote Forward, writing short letters to people who tend not to vote. I’ve now completed 80 letters and may be able to finish a couple more batches of 20 before I mail them 10 days from now. I need to buy more printer ink and envelopes. Then there is Miriam Helbok. She told her story on Kos. She has 2,705 letters ready to go. When I claim a batch of 20 letters I essentially get a form letter (though the recipient’s name and address changes), which I print. There is a space for me to personalize it with a sentence or two. So far I’ve used the same two sentences, though for the next batch or two I may borrow a bit from Miriam. Vote Forward set a goal of writing 10 million letters. After volunteers like me completed a million letters in a week they upped the goal to 15 million and are already at 11.7 million. If you would like to help encourage voters, for the cost of paper, envelope, and stamps, go here. Letters are to be sent October 17. Basketball star LeBron James has taken another step in giving back to the community. Three weeks ago his voting rights organization More Than A Vote started a We Got Next campaign to encourage younger people to be poll workers. By a week ago he had 10,000 volunteers. Poll workers in black majority cities are in short supply (older workers are taking a pass) and are important in working against voter suppression (such as closing polling places for insufficient staff).