Why We Desperately Need A Democratic Senate In 2017

It just gets worse and worse.

Not only is the Senate Republican "leadership" saying they wouldn't bother to meet with a Supreme Court nominee of President Obama's, much less give them a hearing or an up or down vote, Sen. Mitch "Missy McConnell now says the same might be true if a Democrat is elected President in November and the Senate stays in Republican hands!  Tom Levenson expresses our thoughts:

I didn’t think that anything the GOP could do — especially an act as predictable as this — would do more than deepen my weary sense of “they are who we thought they were.” But this feels like a last straw. I’m just done with allowing any framing of this as “just politics” or what have you. I and a majority of my fellow citizens voted President Obama into office twice. The disrespect to him is something he can handle (better than I ever would). But it’s the delegitimizing of my vote, my choice, my place in American democracy that has just gotta stop. The current Republican Party has to be destroyed, root and branch. They are blight on policy, and a boil on the body politic. Time for them to go.

We all know what we need to do by electing a Democratic President.  But that won't do us much good in the face of unprecedented, un- democratic Republican rule in the Senate.  We need to flip that dysfunctional chamber in order to restore some semblance of a working democracy in America. 

Let's start here:  among the most vulnerable Republican Senators hacks up for reelection in November are Ron Johnson (WI), Kelly Ayotte (NH), Ron Kirk (IL), Patrick Toomey (PA) and Rob Portman (OH).  If you're in a position to work for the Democrats opposing them, please do so with all your energy.  If you can donate to any or all of their opponents, please do so, because it will increase the chances of a Democratic Senate in 2017.  Even if you have a Republican Senator who isn't on this list but is running for reelection this year, do whatever you can to retire him/her.  As Levenson says, they're a "boil on the body politic," each and every one of them.

Here are links to Democrats' campaign pages (where there's a leading Democratic challenger):

Russ Feingold (WI)

Maggie Hassan (NH)

Tammy Duckworth (IL)

Ted Strickland (OH)

BONUS:  Nancy LeTourneau has the list of the Republicans' unprecedented abuse of the President and the Constitution.