Unity for me but not for thee

Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reported Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced Speaker Nancy Pelosi will deliver the article of impeachment to the Senate on Monday. That means the nasty guy’s second trial begins Monday (or maybe Tuesday). The House impeachment managers plan to play videos of the Capitol assault to emphasize that this was a mob intent on killing – and on killing the people who now sit in this room. Several GOP senators have changed their tune from what they said the day of the insurrection. For example, Lindsay Graham is now saying, “There’s no way to be a successful Republican Party without having President Trump working with all of us and all of us working with him.” Sure. Since the Senate still hasn’t passed its organizing resolution (because Moscow Mitch is blocking it) committee chairs are still in GOP hands even though Democrats should be. McCarter reported that while that is sorted out with the filibuster in the balance Democrats are working on the COVID relief package. They can bring the package to the Senate floor and avoid the filibuster if they can present the whole thing as a budget bill with each committee declaring how much of a budget increase they want to handle Biden’s request. But they can’t officially do that while committees are still in GOP hands. There are some issues of passing the relief package that way. It is difficult to declare a raise in the minimum wage as a budget item. And the GOP will call that one out. On the GOP side Moscow Mitch’s leadership position is being threatened. McCarter reported the threat is coming from nasty guy loyalists who consider Mitch to be insufficiently loyal. Their evidence is Mitch declaring the insurrection was because of the nasty guy’s lies. So some of us are delighted that Mitch is in a squeeze between some of his members and businesses (and their donations) that want nothing to do with the nasty guy and fellow seditionists. Kos of Kos analyzed the news that the nasty guy wants to start his own political party – the Patriot Party. Kos very much doubts it will ever happen because the nasty guy only does things for the nasty guy (and maybe Ivanka). So unless he can get it to line his pocket, it ain’t gonna happen. In addition, there is no party platform (he and the GOP didn’t have one this year). So all a new party would do is pull votes from the GOP, cementing a bigger Dem majority. The other way to go is for the GOP to excise the nasty guy cancer and take a couple presidential cycles to rebrand and rebuild. They they could be a national party again. It seems this is where Moscow Mitch is headed. It is where the donors are headed. Kos wrote:

For Republicans, it’s an existential question: Do they cut the Trump cancer out, wander in the wilderness for a few cycles, then rebuild in the image of today’s America (more diverse, more educated, more secular), or do they keep going down the same path that cost them the House, the Senate, the White House, and the critical support of key growth demographics (not to mention, Arizona, Georgia, and soon, Texas), while at the same time remaining beholden to the whims of an egotistical madman?

Hunter of Kos discussed that President Joe Biden has been in power for less than 2½ days and already some Republicans are complaining that for a guy who wants unity he’s being terribly divisive. Hunter wrote:

They would like us to know that Joe Biden's speech was divisive, because it called out white supremacists and racists and liars and whoa, talk about rude. They would like us to know that Joe Biden firing the incompetent toadies who have failed catastrophically in responding to the deadly pandemic, the nation's economic crisis, or anything else is divisive, because if this nation is ever going to heal from its current traumas the new administration should clearly keep all of Trump's malevolent and sometimes-criminal conservative D-listers in their current posts rather than divisively have the new president choose new appointees. And it's all very insincere and nonsensical and is most aggressively being shouted by traitors and allies of traitors, so they can all go pound sand, the end. … The purpose of these "unity" demands are to evade consequences, every single one, so that the most prolific enablers of anti-democratic attacks can continue to mount those same attacks without repercussion. But nobody should want "unity" with seditionists. Or with liars. Or with racists. Or with white nationalists. All of those people should face widespread public scorn, everywhere they go, forever. The American fascist version of "unity" demands purges of immigrants, the isolation of LGBT Americans, the widespread curbing of American civil rights, and the nullification of political opposition through fraud or by force. It is a "unity" that demands the nation abide by all their own bigotries, and harm all those Americans who they believe need harming. It will not happen. And "unity" now demands consequences for those who would go so far as to endanger democracy itself, either through fraud or by force, in their attempts to pursue those things.

Bill in Portland, Maine quotes a bit from Molly Ivens every Thursday. Here’s a bit of what he quoted this week from a column she wrote in 2006 (alas, only a few words would need to change to apply to today).

What kind of courage does it take, for mercy's sake? The majority of the American people (55 percent) think the war in Iraq is a mistake and that we should get out. The majority (65 percent) of the American people want single-payer health care and are willing to pay more taxes to get it. The majority (86 percent) of the American people favor raising the minimum wage. The majority of the American people (60 percent) favor repealing Bush's tax cuts, or at least those that go only to the rich. The majority (66 percent) wants to reduce the deficit not by cutting domestic spending, but by reducing Pentagon spending or raising taxes. The majority (77 percent) thinks we should do "whatever it takes" to protect the environment. The majority (87 percent) thinks big oil companies are gouging consumers and would support a windfall profits tax. That is the center, you fools. WHO ARE YOU AFRAID OF?

We know who they’re afraid of – their corporate overlords who fund their campaigns. But it isn’t all fear. A great many believe as their overlords do that to make their own lives look better they must make the lower classes suffer. Bill in Portland, Maine also offered up a few opinions from late night commentary.

The Trump presidency officially ended today as Joe Biden was inaugurated as the 46th President of the United States. And, uh…wow. So that's what it feels like when you're not grinding your teeth. I'd forgotten. And I can see colors again. —Seth Meyers Unsurprisingly, Republicans are 'furious' that Joe Biden chose to divide America by becoming president. And if that weren't divisive enough, he's openly plotting to 'do stuff.' Nice try, Joe, but according to Republicans a real unifier would have handed the office back to Trump, given him a McRib, and happily walked off to prison. —Samantha Bee