The Pivot, Blumenthal, Murphy and Trench Warfare

Schumer, Blumenthal, Murphy

It was bound to happen sooner or later. Now that former President Donald Trump has left office – peacefully, without summoning the military to insure his illegal re-installation to a second term – Connecticut Senators Dick Blumenthal and Chris Murphy have pivoted, which is to say they have pledged to be more responsible, if not more responsive to Trump’s populist backers across the country. There are lots of them, and it would be highly irresponsible and politically unwise to continue to bait them needlessly.

We are, since President Joe Biden was sworn into office in mid-January, in the midst of a tenuous unification project. At long last, we have a President, familiar with the ways of Congress, who has pledged to bring the country together again in unctuous harmony, entirely lacking during the two senators’ vigorous four year opposition to the Trump insurgency.

Then too, governing, rather than thoughtless and sometimes harmful blind resistance, has now become imperative. A Hartford Courant reporter puts it this way: “Now their adversary has departed for Mar-a-Lago and [sic] the two senators are confronting the new realities of governing in the post-Trump era. With a friend in the White House and a slim Democratic majority in the Senate, they face a long to-do list and big expectations.”

Some niggling impediments stand in the way of the unification of the country, one of which is a move by the unifiers to impeach Trump – again, even though the only punishment for impeachment is removal from office. Trump was effectively removed from office by a vote of electors on December 14, which should give pause to progressive Democrats who hope to eliminate the electoral college in favor of a popular presidential vote that would assure the domination of elections by large coastal population centers, an eventuality the founders of the nation had foreseen when they created the electoral college, a mechanism that distributes political power more equitably throughout the nation.

Also, some progressives have suggested packing the hitherto independent U.S. Supreme Court, the same body that curtly dismissed a Trump-favorable lawsuit brought by Texas. In an unsigned opinion, the high court declared that Texas had “not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another state conducts its elections,” polite judicialize for “bug off.

Blumenthal reflexively voted against the nomination to the Supreme Court of Justice Neil Gorsuch, who later wrote a decision that anchored gay rights to the Constitution’s 14^th Amendment.  The anti-Trump New York Times praised the Gorsuch ruling as “one of the most sweeping L.G.B.T. rights rulings in the court’s history.” In a Hartford Courant op-ed piece, Blumenthal wrote that his interrogation of Gorsuch left him with substantial doubt. 

Echoing Senator Edward Kennedy’s objections to the nomination of Judge Robert Bork, Blumenthal wrote, “That doubt leaves women wondering how long they will have autonomy over their health care decisions, same-sex couples questioning whether they might be denied the right to marry the person they love, workers and consumers doubting their rights, and Americans fearing the court will abandon protections of privacy, equality and the rule of law. That doubt is why I cannot support this nomination, and why I will work to block it using every tool at my disposal.” This statement, obviously incorrect, is still prominently displayed unamended on Blumenthal’s own senatorial site.

When one engages in partisan political trench warfare, one sometimes gets stuck in the trench.

The pivot from unyielding offense to uncritical defense may improve senators Blumenthal and Murphy’s disposition, but it is unlikely the pivot, however politically opportune, will similarly improve their ridged cast of minds and their sometimes ruinous policies.

This writer also has his doubts.

To take but one instance, the cancellation of the Keystone Pipeline, an appreciative nod to anti-fossil fuel environmental radicals, will further wreck the post-Covid US economy and tie the nation once again to oil suppliers such as Mafioso Vladimir Putin, who aspires to be the John D. Rockefeller of Russia. Unlike China, Putin has only two products in demand, oil and weaponry.

China, a Communist wolf in Communist clothing, steals proprietary intelligence from American businesses and universities and then relies on a cowed proletariat -- which soon will include once democratic Hong Kong -- to reproduce products at a lower cost than Western suppliers. When a monopoly is achieved on certain products – rare earth minerals, for instance – the knives come out and throats are cut.

One wonders whether friends of Israel such as Blumenthal and Murphy will willingly embrace Iran once again and ship to the mullahs at midnight, without Congressional approval, planeloads of ready cash that, some Iran watchers have insisted, was used to purchase the services of terrorists to push Israel into the sea. In foreign policy, is the Biden administration prepared to “move forward” past the Obama administration, or will the entire unification project become irreversibly stuck in the old trench?