For the better part of this century, the Republican Party has consistently played dirty, bent the rules to their own small ends, and relied upon the Democrats to adhere to rules that they long ago eschewed.  They beat their breasts about the unconstitutionality of executive action, only to govern almost exclusively with it when they cannot not get their bankrupt policies through Congress.  They cry voter fraud, when the only fraud perpetrated in American elections is by the Republican governors, legislatures, and secretaries of state who knowingly disenfranchise rightful voters from exercising their constitutional rights to preserve their dwindling, increasingly illegitimate majorities.  And they deny presidents the constitutional right to appoint a Supreme Court justice, using labyrinthine logic that they then discard when it suits their purposes.

In the knock-down, drag-out fights of this century, we Democrats have been content to take the high road and concede the battle in the name of winning the war the right way.  We stood on principle, burnishing tradition, recalling the better angels of our nature, and declared that a win using the other side’s tactics would represent a hollow victory.  One that undermined the rule of law, norms, and traditions that we fought to uphold.  Republicans, if you throw out the rules of the game and take this Supreme Court seat, ignoring your party leader’s stated logic from just four years prior, mark my words, you will reap the fucking whirlwind.

I would love to believe that the Republicans and Mitch McConnell will remain consistent in their arguments and hold to the standard they themselves created (out of thin air) four years ago.  But McConnell himself has already, just hours after the death of our beloved Ruth Bader Ginsburg, demonstrated that this is magical thinking.  “President Trump’s nominee will get a hearing,” he decried, exposing his earlier argument as the empty rhetoric and blatant political subterfuge that everyone always knew it to be.  OK, Mitch, you can play the game this way.  And in response to your myopic, craven, self-serving politics, this will be our response: no more bringing a knife to a gunfight.  We’re going to bring the heavy political artillery and drop the pretense of fighting fair, as the Republican Party did long ago.

Here are seven steps that we as Democrats should endorse and take if Mitch McConnell and the Republican Party have decided to abandon the rules that guided cooperative, meditative, norm-based government:

  1. Fuck the Filibuster

Once we control the Senate in January 2020 (ironically made ever more likely by McConnell’s bad-faith actions), we get rid of the filibuster.  The filibuster is a relic of consensual government when the minority party’s wishes needed to be taken into consideration.  That assumes a loyal opposition, when in truth the Republican Party has been a disloyal opposition party clinging to power through illegitimate means since the 2000 election.  The Democratic Party no longer needs to honor this principle of collaborative government as we no longer have a faithful, responsible, reliable partner in government.  So we govern by simple majority.  And our system becomes more like a parliamentary democracy with the party in power pushing through all of its agenda unchallenged.  Universal health care?  Ram it through.  A new Voting Rights Act?  51 votes.  And a Green New Deal?  Hell yes, screw the antiquated thinkers and retrograde naysayers.  Let’s rebuild our economy the right way after the Trump Administration destroyed it and do so in an environmentally-friendly way.  If we have 51 votes (or even 50 with the Harris tie-breaker), ignore their objections and protests as they have ignored ours.  We pick our policies, and we put them in place.  With the cooperation of the opposition or without them.  It’s our world now.

2. Pack the Court

You want to steal two Supreme Court seats Mitchy?  Great.  We’re taking them back.  I have never been an advocate of court packing, in the FDR days or in recent years, seeing as it detrimental to our best norms and traditions.  One party should not try to change the system when they win because they will eventually lose.  Or so the thinking went.  But the Republican Party doesn’t play this way.  They take everything they can get, violate every norm, shit on every tradition, and then expect the Democrats to play by the rules once in office.  Guess what, two can play at that game.  We add two more seats the Supreme Court and ram through our chosen nominees.  Have objections to the far-left 40-year-old judges we’ll nominate?  Too fucking bad.  It’s in the title of the blog: you reap what you sow.

3. Statehood for DC and Puerto Rico

This should be done regardless of who is in power because it is simply the right thing to do: to allow all Americans to be represented faithfully by their Congress.  But that’s not the Republican way.  Day 1 of a Biden presidency should be undoing all of the wrong-headed, destructive executive orders of the Trump Administration on immigration, the environment, education, and a host of other misdeeds.  Day 2 should have him pressing Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Schumer to take up a bill granting immediate statehood, full Congressional voting delegations, and legitimate representation for the citizens of Washington DC and Puerto Rico.  Wait, that will bring in four new Democratic senators and tip the balance of the Senate?  You’re goddamn right it would.  But how will we pass these over the inevitable Republican objections and filibusters?  See Step #2.  Again, you’re living in our world now, Republicans.

4. Govern by Legislature when Possible, Executive Order when Necessary

True, President Obama was not shy about using executive orders when he felt it necessary, as with environmental protection, gun control, and humane immigration policy.  Naturally, the Republicans lambasted him, crying foul, tyranny, and violation of norms and procedures (and the Constitution).  Not surprisingly, President Trump is on pace to exceed the number of executive orders issued in their respective first terms.  See, the rules only apply to Democrats.  If Republicans do it, it’s strictly necessary or for the good of the republic.  Horse shit.  We will no longer be constrained by self-regulation, as the phony party of fiscal responsibility has never actually been constrained by budgetary concerns when it was their turn to rule.  President Biden should feel no compunction in governing by executive order from Day 1 where it proves difficult or time-consuming to pass legislation through Congress.  You made the rules, Republicans, and now we’re following them.  Cry me a river, Britney.

5. Blow up the Electoral College

By now, it is well documented that the Electoral College is the antiquated, unrepresentative bastard child of misbegotten compromises made to slave-owning states.  With the increasing shift in the American population to the coasts and the cities, why should Democratic Californians accept a vote that is worth four times less than Republican Wyomingites?  They should not.  It is a patently absurd, outdated model that needs to be abolished.  Will we be able to do so with a slim Senate majority and broader but insufficient House majority?  No.  Which is why every Democratic statehouse that has not yet passed the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact should do so immediately.  Effectively, this Compact gives all of a state’s electoral vote to whomever wins the national popular vote for president.  If enough states sign on to the compact, we wouldn’t need a constitutional amendment to get rid of the Electoral College, we would have performed an effective end-around to achieve our goal, and the policy of every other developed democracy on the planet, to let the people decide who becomes their leader.  And then, when we do have the votes, we officially confine the Electoral College to the scrapheap of history by means of a constitutional amendment.

6. Strip Rural Areas of Their Outsized Power

Here’s a newsflash for rural-dwelling Americans: you are now in the distinct minority.  The Jeffersonian view of an agricultural America is long-since dead.  Hamilton won.  And so will urban Democrats.  We are an urban nation with a majority-urban population—83% of us live in urban areas, and that rate is only increasing.  Along with the Electoral College, the make-up of the Senate has preserved the outsized power of rural areas.  Steps #3 and 5 will begin to address this inequity, but a Democratic-led government should take it even further.  While we shouldn’t abandon our farmers or our natural agricultural advantages, we should scrap the Farm Bill and the many wasteful subsidies it contains.  We should also strip oil companies, largely located in big, western states of their subsidies.  Not only will these policies go hand-in-hand with the Green New Deal, but it will give us back vital tax dollars to pour into infrastructure, social spending, and education in urban areas where it is needed most and where most of us live.  We’re not going to forget our rural neighbors, but they should no longer be given preferential treatment or outsized voting shares.  And, just maybe, in the Republican mode, we should simply say “screw them, they don’t vote for us anyway.”

7. Use Every Dirty Trick in the Book

Just as McConnell made up a convenient, patently-false excuse for denying a rightful Supreme Court seat to Merrick Garland, so should we invent policy or rules as benefit us and our supporters.  Oh, we don’t appoint nominees during recesses?  We just did.  Oh, we generally consult the opposition party on major decisions involving foreign policy (like moving the US Embassy back to Tel Aviv)?  Yeah, sorry, we just did that too.  Oh, we should actually honor subpoenas, be transparent with our tax returns, and govern in the best interests of the whole country, rather than our narrow electoral base?  Yeah, that’s not how we do things anymore.  Federal aid, that’s for blue states.  For anyone who has played sports, you know that if the referee loses control of the game, it quickly goes to shit.  If you’re playing soccer and are repeated kicked without consequence, or playing basketball and keep getting hacked without any calls, you are eventually going to start doing the same.  It’s high time we started playing the game the Republicans are playing, kicking them and hacking them as we see fit until some referee can adjudicate a fair match.  Or until we win.

If I’m being honest (and more level-headed than I feel at the moment), I don’t want most of these things to come to pass.  OK, I definitely want to see Steps #1, 3, and 5 enacted.  But our government, or any government really, is best when it adheres to well-intentioned norms and rules with the consent of a loyal opposition party.  But the Republican Party is, and has long been, a disloyal opposition in control of the country only through dirty, underhanded tricks, as I stated earlier.  Statisticians (and Democrats) have said for some time that a demographic reckoning is in the making.  But it’s now finally coming to pass.  No, Latino voters aren’t of a single mind (nor, for that matter, are Black voters, Asian-American voters, or any other number of minority groups).  But we’ve got more of them and more of their impassioned support.  And why shouldn’t we with a racist president enacting a racist agenda?  Younger voters—millennials and Gen Z—skew highly Democratic or liberal and eschew the party they view as antiquated, outdated, and regressive.  Add this to the fact that the electorate is increasing urban and that we will soon be a majority-minority country and the future looks bleak for the party of white, rural, less-educated men.  There are just more Democrats now than Republicans.  The future looks bleak for the Republican Party, as presently constituted, and it is in their interests to play by the rules, even if they continually refuse to do so.  Pretty soon, we will be the ones writing the rules, and we are under no obligation to do so fairly, following Republican precedent.

I love Michelle Obama.  She is an amazing woman and an amazing example for us all.  But if Republicans insist on writing their own rules—jamming through Supreme Court nominees, disenfranchising minority and poor voters, gerrymandering the crap out of state districts, and ignoring the rule of law—then forget going high.  No more.  Fuck that.  Donald Trump may be the orange face of the Republican Party, but Mitch McConnell embodies its rotten soul.  It’s ugly, cowardly, twisted soul.  Think of the shriveled, moaning shell of Voldemort at the end of Deathy Hallows when Harry has finally destroyed the archvillain’s final horcrux.  That shrieking, wailing sound you hear is the death knell of the Republican Party as we confine it to the scrap heap of history.  A modern version of the Know-Nothings.  A party who time has passed by and who moral, right-thinking citizens have judged and have found wanting.

Republicans, lend me your ears.  I come to bury Mitch McConnell.  Buried, dead, and gone from our body politic.  He remains a cancer.  Excise him.  Stand up to your party and let them know that consistency matters.  Rules matter.  Norms matter.  Because if you go down this road, it will yield short-term gain.  But make no mistake, it will assure long-term wrath.  And the destruction of your party.  There still may be time to save it.

The Republican Party is about to make its final deal with the devil.  Selling its soul for a rock-solid Supreme Court majority.  And if and when that happens, it’s time for the rest of us to wake up to the reality of the fight that we’re actually in.  To realize what is at the heart of this insidious institution that we’re trying to fight for the soul of our country.  And to start playing and fighting dirty.