{"id":143695,"date":"2025-02-26T13:21:27","date_gmt":"2025-02-26T13:21:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/?p=143695"},"modified":"2025-02-26T13:21:34","modified_gmt":"2025-02-26T13:21:34","slug":"what-democrats-should-learn-from-mitch-mcconnell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/?p=143695","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;What Democrats should learn from Mitch McConnell&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/2025\/02\/20\/mitch-mcconnell-retire\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">WaPo<\/a>: &#8220;McConnell, who\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/politics\/2025\/02\/20\/mitch-mcconnell-not-seek-reelection\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">announced on Thursday<\/a>\u00a0that he is retiring from the Senate after his term concludes in January 2027, was never elected or even a candidate for president. But his influence and power at times eclipsed the men who were in the Oval Office. I disagree with McConnell on most policy issues and don\u2019t respect many of his decisions. But no one can deny that Mitch McConnell fundamentally changed American politics \u2014 mostly for the worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">&#8230;McConnell\u2019s leadership style, from 2009 to when he\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/politics\/2024\/11\/13\/senate-republican-leadership-trump\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">stepped down last year<\/a>\u00a0as Republican leader in the Senate, was defined by one single factor: partisanship. He treated almost every conflict as a war between Team Red and Team Blue. So, in 2016, as majority leader, he blocked Obama from putting Merrick Garland on the Supreme Court, claiming such an important appointment should come after the presidential election later that year. But he then pushed hard for the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump pick, only weeks before the 2020 election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">&#8230;We now have a country where the two parties and its citizens are deeply polarized, and an autocratic figure is in the White House. Perhaps McConnell could not have prevented those two outcomes, but was instead a major figure in creating them. McConnell appears wary of what he has unleashed, recently voting&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/politics\/2025\/02\/12\/mcconnell-resistance-trump-votes\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">against some of Trump\u2019s most controversial Cabinet nominees<\/a>, who were confirmed anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">The story of why American democracy is in trouble starts with Trump, but the person second-most at fault is McConnell. He should not be celebrated upon his retirement.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WaPo: &#8220;McConnell, who\u00a0announced on Thursday\u00a0that he is retiring from the Senate after his term concludes in January 2027, was never elected or even a candidate for president. But his influence and power at times eclipsed the men who were in the Oval Office. I disagree with McConnell on most policy issues and don\u2019t respect many&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-143695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newsstory"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=143695"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":143696,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143695\/revisions\/143696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=143695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=143695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=143695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}