When Barack Obama was sworn into office, it was a serious “Oh, no” moment for patriots and lovers of limited, constitutional government — but I repeat myself.
The reason for our angst was simple: Obama hadn’t just threatened to “fundamentally transform” the nation — to adoring cheers, I might add — but he had brought along a massive 76-seat majority in the House and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.
If you’re thinking I cleaned up “Oh, no” from what I actually said at the time …
… yes, considerably.
Obama could do pretty much anything he wanted in his first two years, and if that might cost him his House majority (it did), so what? An ambitious progressive with big majorities can do an awful lot of fundamental transformation in just two years.
His newbie Democrats in the House, lemmings all, enacted Obama’s agenda — to their own detriment. Not to mention, that of the country.
More recently, Presidentish Joe Biden was installed in power on January 20, 2021 (it seems like ages ago, doesn’t it?) along with his coterie of hard-Left Obama retreads determined to outdo the very man who had made possible Biden’s ascension to the Oval Office.
There’s just one problem: A 50/50 Senate is not the same as a 60/40 Senate. Not even close.
And so, here follows an open letter to the alleged POTUS.
Dear Mr. President,
Why can’t you figure this out?
In a 60/40 Senate, the overwhelming majority can play like the other party isn’t even there when it suits them.
Is it still 2009 in what’s left of your mind?
A 50/50 Senate requires the presence of the Vice President just to settle basic matters like which party gets to pick the Majority Leader.
Complicating an already tricky situation, as you should have taken into account at the outset, is that two of your 50 — Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema and West Virginia’s Joe Manchin — represent red states. And neither one is looking particularly forward to getting voted out of office.
And so, while there are things you can get done with a 50/50 Senate, there are a lot of things you can’t get done.
The trouble with you, sir, while we’re speaking frankly, is that you and your team can’t tell the difference.
Or, as my grandfather used to say, the Young Turks running the White House for you are too big for their britches.
It’s one thing to lard up an “infrastructure” bill with enough home state-friendly pork that you can peel off a few RINOs, get it passed, and praise it as “bipartisan.” It’s quite another to try and shove through an election-takeover law that would effectively kneecap the Republican Party forever. Not even a RINO was going to vote for that — and none did.
This is middle-school civics-level dumbassery.
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In fact, the “Free to Vote for Anyone (So Long As They’re A Democrat)” bill, or whatever you called it, was dripping with so much partisan rancidity that not even Manchin or Sinema would support it.
But the real tell that your ambitions exceed your frail grasp is your attempts to radicalize everything from the Federal Reserve to the Supreme Court.
The most recent example is Sarah Bloom Raskin, who this week removed her name from consideration for the Fed:
Raskin was a former Fed governor and deputy Treasury secretary during the Obama administration. But threatening to throttle the domestic oil industry in the midst of soaring gas prices marked her as just one more nutty, radical nominee by Joe Biden.
There was no way someone whose intention was to use the power of the U.S. central bank to strongarm a green agenda was going to make it past a 50/50 Senate.
So why did you try, President Dumbass?
You also have that Affirmative Action (by your own admission!) Supreme Court Justice pick, Ketanji Brown Jackson, whose friendly face “might” be masking another radical agenda:
A review of a handful of Jackson’s lectures and speeches from the past seven years shows that the nominee has a strong appreciation for leading proponents of CRT, a progressive idea that holds in part: ‘racism is endemic to, rather than a deviation from, American norms,’ legal scholar Kimberle Crenshaw, who coined the term, wrote in 1989. While Jackson has avoided openly championing CRT, she has complemented its advocates and suggested that the progressive theory informs her legal analysis.
SCOTUS nominees generally receive greater scrutiny than “mere” Fed positions, so there’s a chance you’ll see another defection or two — God bless Sinema and Manchin — from your Senate caucus.
Pardon me for asking, sir, but didn’t you spend decades in the Senate? Did you learn nothing about how it works?
Jackson could generate the kind of nasty nomination fight that would energize the GOP and moderates to take back the Senate in November. All you needed to do was nominate some non-radical (but still reliably lefty) judge who would sail through the process.
Jackson wouldn’t alter the Court’s balance. Her radicalism isn’t needed. You just needed someone reliable enough to replace Breyer and moderate enough to get through a 50/50 Senate — an easy task.
The fact that you’re willing to risk everything when the stakes are comparatively low shows just how out of touch you are with the political realities of a split Senate.
Considering the rest of the damage you’ve done and are doing, for that one small thing we can all be grateful.
Very Truly Anything Other Than Yours,
– VodkaPundit
P.S. The very best advice I ever got was from an active-duty Army sergeant serving as an advisor at my high school, Missouri Military Academy. I can’t remember what dumbass thing he caught me doing — we were weeks away from graduation and I had a bad case of senioritis — but he didn’t report me. Instead, he just looked disappointed and said, “Son, don’t be stupid on purpose.”
Good advice. Just sayin’.