Mitch Derangement Syndrome
Pelosi gets the favorable press,
yet McConnell always seems to outfox her.
Forget Iowa and New Hampshire. On the same day President Trump’s legal team began its impeachment defense in the Senate, “Saturday Night Live” offered an insight into the Democratic mood: There’s a new villain in town, and his name is Mitch McConnell.
This weekend’s show opened with a skit showing the Senate majority leader on a visit to hell along with Trump defense attorney Alan Dershowitz, who confers with Satan about strategy. In case the message wasn’t clear, later in the show the “Weekend Update” segment flashed Mr. McConnell’s photo as the mock news announcer says: “Mitch McConnell, seen here calmly watching an orphanage burn . . .” Subtle.
“Saturday Night Live” is easy to dismiss. But its approach to Mr. McConnell has been copied by supposedly serious people, such as Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame. He’s coined a popular new hashtag—#MidnightMitch—to characterize Mr. McConnell’s role in “a coverup.” On Twitter #MidnightMitch has been gleefully picked up by everyone from Harvard Law’s Laurence Tribe to Star Trek helmsman George Takei.
“Midnight Mitch” is only the latest in a long line of derogatory nicknames. Earlier examples range from “Cocaine Mitch” to “Moscow Mitch,” and are all intended to paint Mr. McConnell as evil. But because they all stem from his opponents’ frustration at his successes—Democrats still can’t forgive him for quietly killing Judge Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court—the real effect is to present Mr. McConnell as some sort of evil genius.
This week will put him to a test. As the weekend opened, it looked as if the Senate’s impeachment trial would be wrapped up by this Friday. But on Sunday the New York Times dropped a leak from a forthcoming book by John Bolton, in which the former national security adviser says the president told him he wanted to freeze military aid to Ukraine until it launched an investigation into possible corruption involving Joe Biden and his son Hunter. Mr. Trump tweeted that he never told Mr. Bolton any such thing. But coming from one of the president’s former top advisers, the news makes it harder for Republicans already feeling squeezed to vote against hearing from Mr. Bolton, which will be cast as a vote against learning truth. At a lunch Monday, Mr. McConnell reminded them they don’t have to make their decision for a few days.
Now, the issue is more complicated than simply putting Mr. Bolton on the stand. The White House says it will invoke executive privilege, which would tie the trial up in the courts. If Mr. Bolton testifies, Republicans would insist on calling Hunter Biden, or Joe Biden, or maybe Amos Hochstein, the Obama administration aide who raised questions with Mr. Biden about his son’s Ukrainian gig.
Which means that the vote on witnesses is also a vote for a much longer trial. How many Senate Democrats—especially those running for president—want that?
The irony is that if the Democratic House managers had aimed their impeachment argument at bringing a handful of Republicans moderates to their side, they’d be in a better position now to pressure Mr. McConnell. Instead, they played to a Democratic base that already agreed with them, in the process offending some of those they would need to persuade with talk of how President Trump would have their “heads on pikes” if they were to go against him ( Adam Schiff ) and how the president is a “dictator” ( Jerry Nadler ).
Then again, the choice of Mr. Schiff to lead the impeachment was guaranteed to polarize in a Republican Senate. Yet the choice was Nancy Pelosi’s.
Less than a year ago, the speaker had declared that “impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path because it divides the country.” Then, with her approval, the House impeached Mr. Trump without a single Republican vote.
Perhaps Mrs. Pelosi was simply bowing to the reality that impeachment was what her caucus wanted. But that raises the question why, despite her inability to hold her line, the press treats her as some Machiavellian virtuoso. Meanwhile, Mr. McConnell, who gets few favorable profiles, continues to stymie Mrs. Pelosi by letting much of the legislation she sends over die of neglect, leading her to lash out at what she’s called his “Grim Reaper role.” In their most recent clash, he clearly bested the speaker when he ended up proceeding with Mr. Trump’s trial without any concessions after she made a show of holding back the articles of impeachment.
The Bolton news may force Mr. McConnell to compromise when he prefers to call no witnesses. But it won’t change the trial’s outcome.
Democrats know that, even as they continue to thump for witnesses. They do so not because they expect Mr. Bolton’s testimony to produce the 20 Republican votes needed for conviction but to prepare the party line for when Mr. Trump is acquitted: We wuz robbed by Midnight Mitch and his Trump coverup.
It may be the best of a bad hand. But sneering hashtags, “Saturday Night Live” skits and accusations of coverup only underscore what’s really bothering them: that Mr. McConnell somehow always seems to outfox them.
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