thenation--2020-09-22--Mitch McConnell Defends His Turf

Mitch McConnell Defends His Turf

The week after July 4 , rare sightings of a strange creature from the East began to be reported across Kentucky .
When he visits the state he ’ s represented in the Senate since 1985 , Mitch McConnell , the jowly old swamp monster from Washington , D.C. , doesn ’ t typically roam far from the tony Louisville neighborhood where he maintains a residence .
As an elder Democrat told me last summer at Fancy Farm , the state ’ s annual political picnic , “ If you see that buzzard popping up all around Kentucky all of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be sure of one thing : He must be up for reelection.
” Sure enough , as he pursues his seventh term in the Senate , McConnell was popping up in all kinds of unlikely places during Congress ’ s traditional two-week July 4 recess .
The Senate majority leader had left Washington amid howls of protest over his refusal to cancel the break ; Democrats , as well , seemed to believe that passing another coronavirus relief package to deal with the pandemic and the economic meltdown ought to take precedence over @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t bat an eye .
For him , there has never been any business more urgent than his next campaign .
“ He really exemplifies more than anyone else in Washington the permanent campaign mindset , where everything is about winning the next election and nothing else matters , ” explains Alec MacGillis , the author of a biography of McConnell aptly titled The Cynic .
“ For McConnell , it ’ s not really about what he does while he ’ s in power to address problems or [ pursue ] his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they might be .
It ’ s really only about setting himself up to win the next race.
” And so the millions of Americans desperately worried about evictions , school reopening plans , stimulus checks , unemployment benefits—not to mention life and death amid surging cases of Covid-19—would just have to cool their jets until McConnell returned on July 20 .
He had far more pressing matters to attend to in Morehead and Willisburg , Bardstown and Glasgow , Bowling Green and Henderson , Leitchfield and Covington , to name just a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t holding rallies in these places ; he doesn ’ t do rallies , any more than he mixes and mingles with voters .
This was a carefully scripted photo-op tour designed to highlight the senator ’ s caring , compassion , generosity , and statesmanlike leadership during the pandemic .
The Complete Dysfunction of the GOP Is on Full Display On Monday , July 6 , for instance , you could find the Senate majority leader standing at a microphone at Bardstown ’ s Flaget Memorial Hospital , which received funding @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Virtually every stop on his recess itinerary was a hospital or health clinic that got funding—meaning that , everywhere he goes , he is sure to be praised and thanked before his carefully calibrated remarks , which urge Kentuckians to practice personal responsibility during the pandemic .
“ Everybody ’ s got a role to play to get through this , ” McConnell solemnly intoned in the distinctive , deep-down drawl he acquired as a child in Alabama and Georgia .
“ Clearly , a lot of people thought when we started @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Let the good times roll.
’ And a lot of people went out , and we ’ ve seen the spiking of cases.
” His face was a perfect rictus of disapproval .
“ Since we ’ re not gon na shut down the economy again , we ’ ve got ta figure out how to work through this , and the single best thing we can do is wear a mask.
” He waved a light blue disposable model in the air for effect .
It ’ s much the same in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that his sermonettes on mask wearing will make perfect bits for the local 6 o ’ clock news or the next morning ’ s local paper , which will also surely mention how much money McConnell directed to the clinic or hospital to help it weather the crisis .
While he ’ s traipsing around the state displaying his benevolence and his sober leadership , his campaign is reinforcing the message by airing a new ad called “ Saved , ” featuring a series of small-business owners thanking him for rescuing their livelihoods @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is vintage McConnell—every six years , anyway .
He knows that he needs to gin up all the positive spin he can between now and November .
He has never been popular—and certainly not beloved—in Kentucky , even among Republicans .
But ever since he became majority leader after his reelection in 2014 , he ’ s consistently ranked as one of the most loathed members of Congress back home ; in August 2017 , McConnell ’ s approval rating in Kentucky was at an almost unthinkable 18 percent .
His survival instinct @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bet for the next election was to hitch his wagon to Donald Trump , who carried Kentucky by 30 points in 2016 , even though McConnell reportedly detests the president .
So he became Trump ’ s unlikely but faithful lieutenant , delivering the few major policy triumphs the president can claim—all those conservative judges and all those tax cuts for the rich , most notably .
Clinging to Trump looked like a better strategy one year ago than it does today , of course .
But despite Trump ’ s terrible and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ far more popular than the senator .
And so , no matter what depths of insanity and depravity Trump may plumb between now and November , McConnell is stuck ; he can ’ t afford to poke the bear , risk becoming a target of Trump ’ s wrath , and alienate the president ’ s fans in Kentucky .
The careful and calculating McConnell has no choice but to clutch the coattails of the most undisciplined politician in American history .
Meanwhile , for the first time ever , the senator is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ being beaten in fundraising and hit early on the airwaves by his Democratic opponent , Amy McGrath , while being attacked by a host of well-funded PACs and groups hell-bent on taking him down .
McConnell had always wanted to be majority leader , but it sure is complicating things when it comes to winning again .
“ He ’ s never undergone this level of early and sustained attacks , ” says Al Cross , the dean of Kentucky political journalists , who has covered McConnell for nearly three decades .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ level of intense scrutiny at the national level… .
And because he has no reservoir of popularity or loyalty to draw on , he has to stick with Trump , come hell or high water.
” Even with so much stacked against him , however , you ’ d be hard-pressed to find a political observer who believes McConnell can lose .
( Pollsters mostly rate the race as likely Republican . )
That ’ s partly because the GOP wins almost everything in Kentucky these days and because Trump will almost surely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s also because no one can really conceive of McConnell losing ; deservedly or not , he ’ s widely considered the canniest , most ruthless , most strategically brilliant politician around—while this year ’ s opponent , despite her fundraising prowess , emerged from June ’ s Democratic primary looking fatally flawed and hopelessly overmatched .
McGrath was supposed to sail smoothly to the Democratic nomination this June .
She became a rising star in a flash in 2017 , when her long-shot campaign for the House kicked off with one of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a slick biographical spot about how she became the first woman Marine to fly an F/A-18 in combat and how she ’ d returned to her native state with a “ new mission ” to “ take on a Congress full of career politicians who treat the people of Kentucky like they ’ re disposable.
” She fell just short of unseating Republican Andy Barr , a McConnell acolyte , after committing some rookie blunders that Republicans used to redefine the centrist Marine on a mission as a secret left-wing radical .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , McGrath was a little too eager to please her audience , claiming , “ I am further left , I am more progressive , than anyone in the state of Kentucky.
” And on a talk-radio show back home , she answered questions about abortion by robotically repeating her prepared talking point— “ I don ’ t think the government should be involved in a woman ’ s right to choose what is happening to her body ” —even after the host asked , “ So you think a woman on the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ could decide to abort it instead ?
” By November , these audio clips had been aired so often on radio and TV in McGrath ’ s district that most voters probably could have repeated them verbatim .
But she raised a ton of money from admirers around the country and shaved around 19 points off Barr ’ s previous margin of victory , and that was enough for Chuck Schumer , the Democratic Senate leader , to recruit her to try again in 2020 , this time against McConnell .
By June @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s primary , McGrath had hauled in nearly $ 41 million , more than any other Senate candidate in the country .
Which made it all the more shocking when she came within a whisker of losing the nomination to Charles Booker , a first-term state representative who entered the race late , in January , and started the final stretch with less than $ 300,000 to spend .
If McGrath would have lost with all that money and all her other advantages , “ it would have been one of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Cross says .
McGrath had nearly sunk her chances long before—as soon as she announced her candidacy in July 2019 , in fact .
After promoting her bid on Morning Joe , she “ promptly fired a Sidewinder missile into her own foot , ” as Courier-Journal columnist Joseph Gerth put it , by criticizing McConnell for not being helpful enough in turning Trump ’ s “ good ideas ” into policy .
“ The things that Kentuckians voted for Trump for are not being done , ” she said .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it done because of Senator McConnell.
” In a later interview , she was asked whether she considered herself a “ pro-Trump Democrat ” and demurred rather than denying it .
“ This isn ’ t about being pro-Trump or anti-Trump , ” she said .
“ You can ’ t put me in some partisan box .
And this is the major difference between me and someone like Senator McConnell .
If it ’ s a good idea , I ’ m for it .
It doesn ’ t matter if you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ jersey.
” If that wasn ’ t enough to make progressives cringe , there was worse to come when the interviewers turned to the controversial Supreme Court confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh .
How would she have voted ?
McGrath , who had tweeted her opposition to Kavanaugh in July , hemmed , hawed , then finally answered , “ Yeah , I probably would have voted for him.
” Cue Twitter eruption .
By 7:30 pm , McGrath had hastily reversed course , tweeting that “ upon further reflection and further understanding of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ no.
” For some on the left , she was now permanently branded as a pro-Trump Democrat so eager to pander to the right that she had become pro-Kavanaugh .
To conservatives , she looked like a flip-flopper who ’ d caved easily to pressure from the social-justice warriors .
( “ Take your third position on this later , ” one Republican Senate aide chirped .
“ The night is still young.
” ) To others , she looked just plain inept , especially for a candidate who wanted to knock off @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hoots and jeers was the news that should have emerged from McGrath ’ s moment in the spotlight as McConnell ’ s new challenger : In spite of everything , she ’ d raised a record $ 2.5 million in the first 24 hours after her launch video dropped .
National donors never stopped ponying up for McGrath , especially as no viable Democratic challengers emerged until Booker stepped forward .
Her campaign ’ s anti-McConnell messaging was often sharp and timely on social media and in her daily e-mail blasts .
She @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , which seemed like a safe thing to do .
By April , Booker had climbed into second place , but with only 11 percent .
Booker , who likes to note that he lives in one of the poorest zip codes in Kentucky , the predominantly African American West End of Louisville , ran on a bold and clear set of progressive ideas ( universal basic income , a Green New Deal , and systemic criminal justice reform ) .
He wowed Democrats from the start with his “ hood to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Kentuckians across racial and geographic divides—or at least he wowed the Democrats he could reach , without much money to advertise and with the pandemic preventing him from whipping up support in person across the state .
Liberal donors nationally had long assumed that McGrath was the anti-McConnell candidate for 2020 , just as Schumer intended , and Booker garnered little attention outside Kentucky .
Until everything changed .
On May 28—three days after the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police ignited protests across the country and 26 days before the primary—audio @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of medical worker Breonna Taylor two months earlier became public .
The West End rose up immediately , followed by protests across the state , and Booker quickly emerged as a leading and powerfully resonant voice of both calm and defiance .
On June 1 he showed up for the only Democratic debate of the primary , fresh from the streets .
His campaign-long message was made for the moment ; McGrath was not ready for it .
When a moderator asked whether she ’ d been “ on the ground with the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t .
Why ?
“ I ’ ve been with my family , ” she said , “ and I ’ ve had some family , um , things going on.
” Booker , with donations finally pouring in , turned McGrath ’ s deer-in-the-headlights moment into a devastating ad , juxtaposing it with footage of him speaking into a bullhorn as a “ good troublemaker.
” He soon picked up endorsements from the state ’ s major newspapers and from national politicians , including Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rallies around the state and soared in the polls .
In all his time covering Kentucky politics , Cross had never seen the likes of it .
“ He just caught fire—caught a wave like no candidate I ’ ve ever seen , ” Cross says .
Turnout in the Democratic primary was far higher than anticipated , no doubt because of the first-time voters Booker had inspired .
On election night he was in the lead , but since most ballots were mailed in , it was a week before the final @ @ @ @ @ @ @ barely , by the ballots that were sent in before Booker ’ s surge .
“ If the primary had been postponed or all the ballots cast in the last week , ” Cross says , “ he would have won.
” McConnell has richly earned his reputation as a master of the art of political destruction , ever since his first local race in 1977 .
He learned it in part out of necessity .
Blessed with almost none of the assets that typically make for a winning politician—charisma , eloquence , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that his surest path to victory was to make his opponents even more disliked than he is .
For Team Mitch , nothing is off-limits .
McConnell has used marital strife , allegedly corrupt family members , inherited wealth , prescription drug habits , and membership in a fox-hunting club to paint his opponents as corrupt , darkly menacing , out of control , or elitist and alien .
“ McConnell ’ s campaign style is personal destruction , ” writes Matt Jones , the founder and much-loved host of Kentucky Sports Radio @ @ @ @ @ @ @ !
When Jones was merely pondering a Democratic run for the Senate , he found that he already had a McConnell tracker following him ; a private investigator was digging for dirt .
McConnell himself captured the spirit of the operation in a secretly recorded 2013 meeting about a potential opponent .
“ When anybody sticks their head up , ” he told his minions , “ do them out.
” To destroy the reputation of an opponent in the comprehensive way that McConnell prefers , it ’ s essential to have an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Democrat ’ s defenses .
“ As I always say , ” McConnell writes in his 2016 memoir , The Long Game , “ the three most important words in politics are ‘ cash on hand.
’ ” From the start , he ’ s been a relentless fundraiser , someone who does generous favors for his corporate and wealthy benefactors and , of course , expects generous returns from them .
As former Republican senator Alan Simpson told McConnell ’ s biographer MacGillis , “ When you raise the flag and somebody @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ‘ Does anyone want to go to a fundraiser and raise some bucks ?
’ Mitch will be right there… .
It ’ s a joy to him .
He gets a twinkle in his eye and his step quickens.
” It ’ s this idiosyncrasy that allowed McConnell , possessed of none of the back- slapping bonhomie that usually helps senators climb the leadership ladder , to move up through the years .
He also became the most ardent foe of campaign finance reform in the chamber , even when it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ John McCain .
While others in the party were reluctant to speak out against the McCain-Feingold Act , the most ambitious effort to rein in political money in recent decades , McConnell took on the fight .
After the bill passed , he challenged it in court and founded a legal center dedicated to overturning it , and his efforts bore fruit in the Citizens United decision that created the dark-money-driven chaos of today .
Not surprisingly , McConnell is pretty darn good at exploiting the system he did so much to create @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , he had $ 10 million and $ 12 million advantages over his Democratic opponents .
Through the first two quarters of this year , he raised more than ever : $ 36 million , almost 90 percent of which came from out-of-state donors ( aka Wall Street & Co. ) .
Even so , McGrath raised more .
Supplementing her efforts , the Ditch Mitch Fund , a PAC operated by political operative Ryan Aquilina , had raised $ 14 million by early September that will be used to go after McConnell @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Fox News and social media , and in other spots where Trump voters who dislike McConnell may roam .
“ There ’ s so much money coming in , for her campaign and our fund , that we ’ re able to get a little creative , ” Aquilina says .
“ When you talk to people [ in Kentucky ] who voted for Trump , the reason they like him is the reason they hate McConnell .
A lot of them still believe Trump is taking on the establishment ; they all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and just in it for himself.
” In the past , McConnell ran against experienced politicians with voting records , donors , allies , years of speeches , and financial disclosures that could be exploited and exaggerated .
But McGrath spent almost her whole adult life either at the Naval Academy , where she later taught , or in the Marine Corps .
She has three young children , she ’ s never been divorced , and her husband is a Republican .
Team Mitch will find something to use on her , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ life doesn ’ t appear to offer much grist for the Team Mitch mill .
Since McGrath entered the race , McConnell ’ s campaign has been left to revive and repackage the two gaffes that Barr used against her in 2018 .
The campaign ’ s reaction to the news of her narrow win in June was typical : “ Extreme Amy McGrath…is just another tool of the Washington Democratic establishment who has no idea what matters most to Kentuckians , ” said McConnell ’ s campaign press secretary , Kate Cooksey @ @ @ @ @ @ @ self-proclaimed most liberal person in Kentucky who supports government-run health care and abortion even in the ninth month does not represent Kentucky values.
” This is stale , boilerplate stuff—unworthy , really , of a McConnell campaign .
But that ’ s the same note it has been sounding for 13 months .
And branding McGrath as a left-wing extremist is a harder sell after Booker and Mike Broihier , the other progressive candidate who challenged her in the Democratic primary , ran ads throughout May and June castigating her for being too @ @ @ @ @ @ @ even a real Democrat .
In a sign that a screw is loose somewhere in McConnell ’ s campaign , Team Mitch released an attack ad in early July called “ Reviews , ” which quoted negative comments about McGrath during the primary campaign and had Booker castigating her for peddling “ BS ” to Kentuckians .
“ That ’ s a completely different argument than the one they ’ ve been making all along , that she ’ s too extreme , ” Cross says .
While Team Mitch is apparently still @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that isn ’ t already well-worn , her campaign and the anti-McConnell PACs and groups have what can only be called an embarrassment of riches when it comes to angles of attack against him .
Name any political sin you like , and the chances are exceedingly strong that McConnell—like the Democratic Senate leader of yore to whom he ’ s sometimes compared , Lyndon Johnson—has committed it repeatedly for four decades and counting .
While McGrath ’ s campaign for the Senate has already been left for dead twice , one close @ @ @ @ @ @ @ taking her seriously is her opponent .
Team Mitch began hitting “ Extreme Amy ” the moment she stepped into the race ( and then stepped in it ) , and McConnell ’ s refusal to miss a day of recess when he can be in Kentucky campaigning doesn ’ t suggest that he ’ s feeling a sense of blithe confidence about what awaits him this fall .
Of course , he has never been one to take victory for granted ; it ’ s one big reason he ’ s never @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , there was one tangible sign that McConnell has his worries .
The Senate Leadership Fund , run by McConnell ’ s former chief of staff , which raises megamillions to help other GOP senators fend off challenges ( and keep them loyal to their leader ) , announced that it had bought $ 10 million worth of TV time in Kentucky for the fall .
Soon after , another McConnell-affiliated PAC booked $ 4.5 million worth of airtime in Kentucky for August .
“ I know it ’ s a cliché , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ speaks volumes .
Why are national Republicans spending $ 15 million , so far , in a state that Trump won by 30 points ?
To take it away from Kansas and Montana and Colorado , that says a lot .
Clearly , they think Kentucky ’ s a competitive state.
” Maybe .
But if it comes down to a choice between helping other Republicans who are struggling to hold onto their seats—or even the party ’ s majority in the Senate—and his own survival , McConnell has shown that he will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has his challenges—not least the fact that , as Senate majority leader without a functioning president , he can ’ t avoid doing some governing and legislating during a running national emergency .
He won ’ t be able to avoid sharing the blame if the pandemic continues to rage out of control , especially if it spikes in Kentucky .
Thus far it hasn ’ t , because of the steady leadership of Governor Andy Beshear , a Democrat who defeated incumbent Republican and Trump disciple Matt Bevin last fall .
Beshear @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Kentucky Democrats for 2020 , but it ’ s a slender reed : His party still lost every other statewide election .
“ If anything , Kentucky is getting even more red , ” wrote FiveThirtyEight contributor Perry Bacon Jr. last November after the off-year elections .
But key suburban voters , who are rebelling against Trump all across the country , have been trending blue in Kentucky since 2014 .
And McConnell is tethered to Trump , which is its own special hell .
The senator looked decidedly uncomfortable during the Republican @ @ @ @ @ @ @ segment from a location identified only as “ Kentucky.
” After praising the president and boasting , “ I work beside him every day , ” McConnell segued into a litany of conspiratorial red meat .
“ They want to tell you what kind of car you can drive , what sources of information are credible , and even how many hamburgers you can eat.
” He tried to chuckle .
Still , there ’ s no question that McGrath faces the longer odds .
If Trump ’ s popularity doesn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ persuade a lot of the president ’ s Kentucky fans to switch sides on the second line of the ballot .
At the same time , she has to convince Booker ’ s fans that she ’ s worth bothering to vote for .
That would be a tough combination for even the nimblest of politicians .
But one advantage to the fact that she ’ s been in general-election mode since July of last year is that McGrath has had a lot of time to sharpen her message about McConnell .
Last @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for almost an hour in her Lexington campaign office , McGrath was still figuring it all out .
She still had awkward things to say about Trump and partisan boxes , and she meandered around policy questions .
But whenever the talk turned to McConnell , she switched on .
Suddenly she knew what she wanted to say , and she just said it .
“ I want guys like Mitch McConnell out because they ’ re making the rest of America cynical .
The dysfunction , Bob !
We ’ ve got @ @ @ @ @ @ @ don ’ t know how a functioning government works .
Because of him .
He isn ’ t in the swamp .
He is the swamp .
“ His narrative has always been , ‘ Look at me , I ’ m so powerful , I do so much for Kentucky.
’ Meanwhile , we have the highest cancer rate in the country .
One in four Kentuckians have diabetes .
We have the second-highest per capita spending for prescription drugs in the country .
We have an opioid crisis , where we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ comparison to the national average .
And we have a senator who over and over again wants to throw people off health care !
We have a senator who does not want to do any work on getting drug prices down .
He ’ s bought off by Big Pharma.
” And when his party had all the power and the presidency , what did he do ?
“ He passed a massive tax windfall for people like him , for millionaires like him .
That ’ s the only major piece of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Powerful Man.
” This version of Amy McGrath just might get somewhere , I thought .
It took a while , but McGrath—who after her near pratfall in June replaced her original campaign manager with a former organizer for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton—has become a sharper and more comfortable candidate , less prone to grasp for anodyne talking points .
In July , she was a guest on The View and smiled her way through one of Meghan McCain ’ s characteristic attempts at a gotcha .
Didn ’ t she think @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she almost lost her primary had something to do with the fact that 96 percent of her contributions came from out of state ?
Did she really have any connection to Kentucky at all ?
Was that her problem ?
“ Mitch McConnell gets about 95 percent of his money from outside of Kentucky , too , ” McGrath snapped back .
“ My average donation is $ 35 .
And when that vet from Iowa gives me $ 25…he ’ s not handing me draft legislation at the same time.
” The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ year after the Kavanaugh mess .
In a good way this time .

This article appears in the October 5/12, 2020 issue.
Subscribe to The Nation Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month! Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month!
Get The Nation’s Weekly Newsletter Fridays. The best of the week. Email By signing up, you confirm that you are over the age of 16 and agree to receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Fridays. The best of the week.
Thank you for signing up for The Nation’s weekly newsletter.
Repro Nation A monthly newsletter on the global fight for reproductive freedom. Email By signing up, you confirm that you are over the age of 16 and agree to receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here.
Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue
Subscribe to The Nation Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month! Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month!
Support Progressive Journalism The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter. The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter.
Sign up for our Wine Club today. Did you know you can support The Nation by drinking wine?
The week after July 4, rare sightings of a strange creature from the East began to be reported across Kentucky. When he visits the state he’s represented in the Senate since 1985, Mitch McConnell, the jowly old swamp monster from Washington, D.C., doesn’t typically roam far from the tony Louisville neighborhood where he maintains a residence. As an elder Democrat told me last summer at Fancy Farm, the state’s annual political picnic, “If you see that buzzard popping up all around Kentucky all of a sudden, you can damn well be sure of one thing: He must be up for reelection.”
Sure enough, as he pursues his seventh term in the Senate, McConnell was popping up in all kinds of unlikely places during Congress’s traditional two-week July 4 recess. The Senate majority leader had left Washington amid howls of protest over his refusal to cancel the break; Democrats, as well, seemed to believe that passing another coronavirus relief package to deal with the pandemic and the economic meltdown ought to take precedence over vacationing or campaigning.
McConnell didn’t bat an eye. For him, there has never been any business more urgent than his next campaign. “He really exemplifies more than anyone else in Washington the permanent campaign mindset, where everything is about winning the next election and nothing else matters,” explains Alec MacGillis, the author of a biography of McConnell aptly titled The Cynic. “For McConnell, it’s not really about what he does while he’s in power to address problems or [pursue] his party’s policy goals, whatever they might be. It’s really only about setting himself up to win the next race.”
And so the millions of Americans desperately worried about evictions, school reopening plans, stimulus checks, unemployment benefits—not to mention life and death amid surging cases of Covid-19—would just have to cool their jets until McConnell returned on July 20. He had far more pressing matters to attend to in Morehead and Willisburg, Bardstown and Glasgow, Bowling Green and Henderson, Leitchfield and Covington, to name just a few of his stops. He wasn’t holding rallies in these places; he doesn’t do rallies, any more than he mixes and mingles with voters. This was a carefully scripted photo-op tour designed to highlight the senator’s caring, compassion, generosity, and statesmanlike leadership during the pandemic. In the swamp The Complete Dysfunction of the GOP Is on Full Display Robert L. Borosage
On Monday, July 6, for instance, you could find the Senate majority leader standing at a microphone at Bardstown’s Flaget Memorial Hospital, which received funding from the Cares Act passed in March. Virtually every stop on his recess itinerary was a hospital or health clinic that got funding—meaning that, everywhere he goes, he is sure to be praised and thanked before his carefully calibrated remarks, which urge Kentuckians to practice personal responsibility during the pandemic. “Everybody’s got a role to play to get through this,” McConnell solemnly intoned in the distinctive, deep-down drawl he acquired as a child in Alabama and Georgia. “Clearly, a lot of people thought when we started opening up the economy again, ‘Let the good times roll.’ And a lot of people went out, and we’ve seen the spiking of cases.” His face was a perfect rictus of disapproval. “Since we’re not gonna shut down the economy again, we’ve gotta figure out how to work through this, and the single best thing we can do is wear a mask.” He waved a light blue disposable model in the air for effect. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. Manny Maung Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. Manny Maung
It’s much the same in town after town. The senator knows that his sermonettes on mask wearing will make perfect bits for the local 6 o’clock news or the next morning’s local paper, which will also surely mention how much money McConnell directed to the clinic or hospital to help it weather the crisis. While he’s traipsing around the state displaying his benevolence and his sober leadership, his campaign is reinforcing the message by airing a new ad called “Saved,” featuring a series of small-business owners thanking him for rescuing their livelihoods with the Paycheck Protection Program. This is vintage McConnell—every six years, anyway.
He knows that he needs to gin up all the positive spin he can between now and November. He has never been popular—and certainly not beloved—in Kentucky, even among Republicans. But ever since he became majority leader after his reelection in 2014, he’s consistently ranked as one of the most loathed members of Congress back home; in August 2017, McConnell’s approval rating in Kentucky was at an almost unthinkable 18 percent. His survival instinct told him in 2017 that his best bet for the next election was to hitch his wagon to Donald Trump, who carried Kentucky by 30 points in 2016, even though McConnell reportedly detests the president. So he became Trump’s unlikely but faithful lieutenant, delivering the few major policy triumphs the president can claim—all those conservative judges and all those tax cuts for the rich, most notably. Current Issue View our current issue
Clinging to Trump looked like a better strategy one year ago than it does today, of course. But despite Trump’s terrible and awful 2020, he’s still far more popular than the senator. And so, no matter what depths of insanity and depravity Trump may plumb between now and November, McConnell is stuck; he can’t afford to poke the bear, risk becoming a target of Trump’s wrath, and alienate the president’s fans in Kentucky. The careful and calculating McConnell has no choice but to clutch the coattails of the most undisciplined politician in American history.
Meanwhile, for the first time ever, the senator is experiencing another reality: He’s being beaten in fundraising and hit early on the airwaves by his Democratic opponent, Amy McGrath, while being attacked by a host of well-funded PACs and groups hell-bent on taking him down. McConnell had always wanted to be majority leader, but it sure is complicating things when it comes to winning again. “He’s never undergone this level of early and sustained attacks,” says Al Cross, the dean of Kentucky political journalists, who has covered McConnell for nearly three decades. “He’s never been under this level of intense scrutiny at the national level…. And because he has no reservoir of popularity or loyalty to draw on, he has to stick with Trump, come hell or high water.”
Even with so much stacked against him, however, you’d be hard-pressed to find a political observer who believes McConnell can lose. (Pollsters mostly rate the race as likely Republican.) That’s partly because the GOP wins almost everything in Kentucky these days and because Trump will almost surely carry the state again. It’s also because no one can really conceive of McConnell losing; deservedly or not, he’s widely considered the canniest, most ruthless, most strategically brilliant politician around—while this year’s opponent, despite her fundraising prowess, emerged from June’s Democratic primary looking fatally flawed and hopelessly overmatched.
McGrath was supposed to sail smoothly to the Democratic nomination this June. She became a rising star in a flash in 2017, when her long-shot campaign for the House kicked off with one of the buzziest videos of the midterm elections, a slick biographical spot about how she became the first woman Marine to fly an F/A-18 in combat and how she’d returned to her native state with a “new mission” to “take on a Congress full of career politicians who treat the people of Kentucky like they’re disposable.” She fell just short of unseating Republican Andy Barr, a McConnell acolyte, after committing some rookie blunders that Republicans used to redefine the centrist Marine on a mission as a secret left-wing radical.
At a fundraiser in Massachusetts in 2018, McGrath was a little too eager to please her audience, claiming, “I am further left, I am more progressive, than anyone in the state of Kentucky.” And on a talk-radio show back home, she answered questions about abortion by robotically repeating her prepared talking point—“I don’t think the government should be involved in a woman’s right to choose what is happening to her body”—even after the host asked, “So you think a woman on the way to the hospital to give birth could decide to abort it instead?” By November, these audio clips had been aired so often on radio and TV in McGrath’s district that most voters probably could have repeated them verbatim. But she raised a ton of money from admirers around the country and shaved around 19 points off Barr’s previous margin of victory, and that was enough for Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate leader, to recruit her to try again in 2020, this time against McConnell.
By June 1, three weeks before this summer’s primary, McGrath had hauled in nearly $41 million, more than any other Senate candidate in the country. Which made it all the more shocking when she came within a whisker of losing the nomination to Charles Booker, a first-term state representative who entered the race late, in January, and started the final stretch with less than $300,000 to spend. If McGrath would have lost with all that money and all her other advantages, “it would have been one of the biggest pratfalls in American political history,” Cross says.
McGrath had nearly sunk her chances long before—as soon as she announced her candidacy in July 2019, in fact. After promoting her bid on Morning Joe, she “promptly fired a Sidewinder missile into her own foot,” as Courier-Journal columnist Joseph Gerth put it, by criticizing McConnell for not being helpful enough in turning Trump’s “good ideas” into policy. “The things that Kentuckians voted for Trump for are not being done,” she said. “He’s not able to get it done because of Senator McConnell.” In a later interview, she was asked whether she considered herself a “pro-Trump Democrat” and demurred rather than denying it. “This isn’t about being pro-Trump or anti-Trump,” she said. “You can’t put me in some partisan box. And this is the major difference between me and someone like Senator McConnell. If it’s a good idea, I’m for it. It doesn’t matter if you wear a red jersey or a blue jersey.”
If that wasn’t enough to make progressives cringe, there was worse to come when the interviewers turned to the controversial Supreme Court confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh. How would she have voted? McGrath, who had tweeted her opposition to Kavanaugh in July, hemmed, hawed, then finally answered, “Yeah, I probably would have voted for him.”
Cue Twitter eruption. By 7:30 pm, McGrath had hastily reversed course, tweeting that “upon further reflection and further understanding of his record, I would have voted no.” For some on the left, she was now permanently branded as a pro-Trump Democrat so eager to pander to the right that she had become pro-Kavanaugh. To conservatives, she looked like a flip-flopper who’d caved easily to pressure from the social-justice warriors. (“Take your third position on this later,” one Republican Senate aide chirped. “The night is still young.”) To others, she looked just plain inept, especially for a candidate who wanted to knock off McConnell.
Forgotten amid the chorus of hoots and jeers was the news that should have emerged from McGrath’s moment in the spotlight as McConnell’s new challenger: In spite of everything, she’d raised a record $2.5 million in the first 24 hours after her launch video dropped. National donors never stopped ponying up for McGrath, especially as no viable Democratic challengers emerged until Booker stepped forward. Her campaign’s anti-McConnell messaging was often sharp and timely on social media and in her daily e-mail blasts. She ran a general-election campaign from the beginning, which seemed like a safe thing to do. By April, Booker had climbed into second place, but with only 11 percent.
Booker, who likes to note that he lives in one of the poorest zip codes in Kentucky, the predominantly African American West End of Louisville, ran on a bold and clear set of progressive ideas (universal basic income, a Green New Deal, and systemic criminal justice reform). He wowed Democrats from the start with his “hood to the holler” message of bringing together working Kentuckians across racial and geographic divides—or at least he wowed the Democrats he could reach, without much money to advertise and with the pandemic preventing him from whipping up support in person across the state. Liberal donors nationally had long assumed that McGrath was the anti-McConnell candidate for 2020, just as Schumer intended, and Booker garnered little attention outside Kentucky. Until everything changed.
On May 28—three days after the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police ignited protests across the country and 26 days before the primary—audio of the fatal police shooting in Louisville of medical worker Breonna Taylor two months earlier became public. The West End rose up immediately, followed by protests across the state, and Booker quickly emerged as a leading and powerfully resonant voice of both calm and defiance. On June 1 he showed up for the only Democratic debate of the primary, fresh from the streets. His campaign-long message was made for the moment; McGrath was not ready for it. When a moderator asked whether she’d been “on the ground with the protesters,” she admitted she hadn’t. Why? “I’ve been with my family,” she said, “and I’ve had some family, um, things going on.”
Booker, with donations finally pouring in, turned McGrath’s deer-in-the-headlights moment into a devastating ad, juxtaposing it with footage of him speaking into a bullhorn as a “good troublemaker.” He soon picked up endorsements from the state’s major newspapers and from national politicians, including Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; he also led rallies around the state and soared in the polls. In all his time covering Kentucky politics, Cross had never seen the likes of it. “He just caught fire—caught a wave like no candidate I’ve ever seen,” Cross says.
Turnout in the Democratic primary was far higher than anticipated, no doubt because of the first-time voters Booker had inspired. On election night he was in the lead, but since most ballots were mailed in, it was a week before the final tally. McGrath was probably saved, barely, by the ballots that were sent in before Booker’s surge. “If the primary had been postponed or all the ballots cast in the last week,” Cross says, “he would have won.”
McConnell has richly earned his reputation as a master of the art of political destruction, ever since his first local race in 1977. He learned it in part out of necessity. Blessed with almost none of the assets that typically make for a winning politician—charisma, eloquence, ideological passion, wealth—he decided early on that his surest path to victory was to make his opponents even more disliked than he is. For Team Mitch, nothing is off-limits. McConnell has used marital strife, allegedly corrupt family members, inherited wealth, prescription drug habits, and membership in a fox-hunting club to paint his opponents as corrupt, darkly menacing, out of control, or elitist and alien.
“McConnell’s campaign style is personal destruction,” writes Matt Jones, the founder and much-loved host of Kentucky Sports Radio, in his book Mitch, Please! When Jones was merely pondering a Democratic run for the Senate, he found that he already had a McConnell tracker following him; a private investigator was digging for dirt. McConnell himself captured the spirit of the operation in a secretly recorded 2013 meeting about a potential opponent. “When anybody sticks their head up,” he told his minions, “do them out.” To destroy the reputation of an opponent in the comprehensive way that McConnell prefers, it’s essential to have an overwhelming financial advantage to drown out the Democrat’s defenses. “As I always say,” McConnell writes in his 2016 memoir, The Long Game, “the three most important words in politics are ‘cash on hand.’” From the start, he’s been a relentless fundraiser, someone who does generous favors for his corporate and wealthy benefactors and, of course, expects generous returns from them. As former Republican senator Alan Simpson told McConnell’s biographer MacGillis, “When you raise the flag and somebody hollers from the back of the room, ‘Does anyone want to go to a fundraiser and raise some bucks?’ Mitch will be right there…. It’s a joy to him. He gets a twinkle in his eye and his step quickens.”
It’s this idiosyncrasy that allowed McConnell, possessed of none of the back- slapping bonhomie that usually helps senators climb the leadership ladder, to move up through the years. He also became the most ardent foe of campaign finance reform in the chamber, even when it was being championed by fellow Republicans like John McCain. While others in the party were reluctant to speak out against the McCain-Feingold Act, the most ambitious effort to rein in political money in recent decades, McConnell took on the fight. After the bill passed, he challenged it in court and founded a legal center dedicated to overturning it, and his efforts bore fruit in the Citizens United decision that created the dark-money-driven chaos of today.
Not surprisingly, McConnell is pretty darn good at exploiting the system he did so much to create. In his two most recent races, he had $10 million and $12 million advantages over his Democratic opponents. Through the first two quarters of this year, he raised more than ever: $36 million, almost 90 percent of which came from out-of-state donors (aka Wall Street & Co.). Even so, McGrath raised more. Supplementing her efforts, the Ditch Mitch Fund, a PAC operated by political operative Ryan Aquilina, had raised $14 million by early September that will be used to go after McConnell on talk-radio stations in Kentucky, on Fox News and social media, and in other spots where Trump voters who dislike McConnell may roam. “There’s so much money coming in, for her campaign and our fund, that we’re able to get a little creative,” Aquilina says. “When you talk to people [in Kentucky] who voted for Trump, the reason they like him is the reason they hate McConnell. A lot of them still believe Trump is taking on the establishment; they all think McConnell is part of the swamp and just in it for himself.”
In the past, McConnell ran against experienced politicians with voting records, donors, allies, years of speeches, and financial disclosures that could be exploited and exaggerated. But McGrath spent almost her whole adult life either at the Naval Academy, where she later taught, or in the Marine Corps. She has three young children, she’s never been divorced, and her husband is a Republican. Team Mitch will find something to use on her, no doubt. But McGrath’s life doesn’t appear to offer much grist for the Team Mitch mill.
Since McGrath entered the race, McConnell’s campaign has been left to revive and repackage the two gaffes that Barr used against her in 2018. The campaign’s reaction to the news of her narrow win in June was typical: “Extreme Amy McGrath…is just another tool of the Washington Democratic establishment who has no idea what matters most to Kentuckians,” said McConnell’s campaign press secretary, Kate Cooksey. “It’s clear this self-proclaimed most liberal person in Kentucky who supports government-run health care and abortion even in the ninth month does not represent Kentucky values.”
This is stale, boilerplate stuff—unworthy, really, of a McConnell campaign. But that’s the same note it has been sounding for 13 months. And branding McGrath as a left-wing extremist is a harder sell after Booker and Mike Broihier, the other progressive candidate who challenged her in the Democratic primary, ran ads throughout May and June castigating her for being too moderate, too Trump-positive, and not even a real Democrat. In a sign that a screw is loose somewhere in McConnell’s campaign, Team Mitch released an attack ad in early July called “Reviews,” which quoted negative comments about McGrath during the primary campaign and had Booker castigating her for peddling “BS” to Kentuckians. “That’s a completely different argument than the one they’ve been making all along, that she’s too extreme,” Cross says.
While Team Mitch is apparently still searching for something to hit McGrath with that isn’t already well-worn, her campaign and the anti-McConnell PACs and groups have what can only be called an embarrassment of riches when it comes to angles of attack against him. Name any political sin you like, and the chances are exceedingly strong that McConnell—like the Democratic Senate leader of yore to whom he’s sometimes compared, Lyndon Johnson—has committed it repeatedly for four decades and counting.
While McGrath’s campaign for the Senate has already been left for dead twice, one close political observer who’s never stopped taking her seriously is her opponent. Team Mitch began hitting “Extreme Amy” the moment she stepped into the race (and then stepped in it), and McConnell’s refusal to miss a day of recess when he can be in Kentucky campaigning doesn’t suggest that he’s feeling a sense of blithe confidence about what awaits him this fall. Of course, he has never been one to take victory for granted; it’s one big reason he’s never experienced a defeat.
But in mid-July, there was one tangible sign that McConnell has his worries. The Senate Leadership Fund, run by McConnell’s former chief of staff, which raises megamillions to help other GOP senators fend off challenges (and keep them loyal to their leader), announced that it had bought $10 million worth of TV time in Kentucky for the fall. Soon after, another McConnell-affiliated PAC booked $4.5 million worth of airtime in Kentucky for August. “I know it’s a cliché,” Aquilina says, “but money speaks volumes. Why are national Republicans spending $15 million, so far, in a state that Trump won by 30 points? To take it away from Kansas and Montana and Colorado, that says a lot. Clearly, they think Kentucky’s a competitive state.” Maybe. But if it comes down to a choice between helping other Republicans who are struggling to hold onto their seats—or even the party’s majority in the Senate—and his own survival, McConnell has shown that he will choose the latter every time.
McConnell has his challenges—not least the fact that, as Senate majority leader without a functioning president, he can’t avoid doing some governing and legislating during a running national emergency. He won’t be able to avoid sharing the blame if the pandemic continues to rage out of control, especially if it spikes in Kentucky. Thus far it hasn’t, because of the steady leadership of Governor Andy Beshear, a Democrat who defeated incumbent Republican and Trump disciple Matt Bevin last fall. Beshear’s victory buoyed the hopes of Kentucky Democrats for 2020, but it’s a slender reed: His party still lost every other statewide election. “If anything, Kentucky is getting even more red,” wrote FiveThirtyEight contributor Perry Bacon Jr. last November after the off-year elections. But key suburban voters, who are rebelling against Trump all across the country, have been trending blue in Kentucky since 2014.
And McConnell is tethered to Trump, which is its own special hell. The senator looked decidedly uncomfortable during the Republican National Convention, appearing in a taped segment from a location identified only as “Kentucky.” After praising the president and boasting, “I work beside him every day,” McConnell segued into a litany of conspiratorial red meat. “They want to tell you what kind of car you can drive, what sources of information are credible, and even how many hamburgers you can eat.” He tried to chuckle.
Still, there’s no question that McGrath faces the longer odds. If Trump’s popularity doesn’t bottom out, she still has to persuade a lot of the president’s Kentucky fans to switch sides on the second line of the ballot. At the same time, she has to convince Booker’s fans that she’s worth bothering to vote for. That would be a tough combination for even the nimblest of politicians. But one advantage to the fact that she’s been in general-election mode since July of last year is that McGrath has had a lot of time to sharpen her message about McConnell.
Last summer, when I first interviewed her for almost an hour in her Lexington campaign office, McGrath was still figuring it all out. She still had awkward things to say about Trump and partisan boxes, and she meandered around policy questions. But whenever the talk turned to McConnell, she switched on. Suddenly she knew what she wanted to say, and she just said it. “I want guys like Mitch McConnell out because they’re making the rest of America cynical. The dysfunction, Bob! We’ve got an entire generation of young Americans that don’t know how a functioning government works. Because of him. He isn’t in the swamp. He is the swamp.
“His narrative has always been, ‘Look at me, I’m so powerful, I do so much for Kentucky.’ Meanwhile, we have the highest cancer rate in the country. One in four Kentuckians have diabetes. We have the second-highest per capita spending for prescription drugs in the country. We have an opioid crisis, where we have two times the death rate in comparison to the national average. And we have a senator who over and over again wants to throw people off health care! We have a senator who does not want to do any work on getting drug prices down. He’s bought off by Big Pharma.” And when his party had all the power and the presidency, what did he do? “He passed a massive tax windfall for people like him, for millionaires like him. That’s the only major piece of legislation that he did, Mr. Powerful Man.”
This version of Amy McGrath just might get somewhere, I thought. It took a while, but McGrath—who after her near pratfall in June replaced her original campaign manager with a former organizer for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton—has become a sharper and more comfortable candidate, less prone to grasp for anodyne talking points. In July, she was a guest on The View and smiled her way through one of Meghan McCain’s characteristic attempts at a gotcha. Didn’t she think, McCain asked, that the reason she almost lost her primary had something to do with the fact that 96 percent of her contributions came from out of state? Did she really have any connection to Kentucky at all? Was that her problem? “Mitch McConnell gets about 95 percent of his money from outside of Kentucky, too,” McGrath snapped back. “My average donation is $35. And when that vet from Iowa gives me $25…he’s not handing me draft legislation at the same time.” The clip soon trended on Twitter, one year after the Kavanaugh mess. In a good way this time.


thenation--2020-09-22--Trump Is Feeding the Monster

Trump Is Feeding the Monster

Support independent cartooning : join Sparky ’ s List—and don ’ t forget to visit TT ’ s Emporium of @ @ @ @ @ book and plush Sparky !

Support independent cartooning: join Sparky’s List—and don’t forget to visit TT’s Emporium of Fun, featuring the new book and plush Sparky!


thenation--2020-09-22--Russ Feingold on Why We Need to Talk About Expanding the Supreme Court

Russ Feingold has thought longer and harder than most Americans about the US Senate ’ s handling of Supreme Court nominations , and he knows something has got to change .
As the former chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee ’ s subcommittee on the Constitution , and as the current president of the American Constitution Society , he has fought to maintain the deliberative process by which the Senate is supposed to provide advice and consent in a finely balanced system of checks and balances .
But as Republicans coalesce in support of a drive by President Donald Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ seat a replacement for the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg before or immediately after the November 3 election , Feingold says , “ What ’ s happening now is a mockery of what everybody believed was the appropriate way to handle those nominations.
” Like most progressives , the former senator from Wisconsin supports delaying action to replace Justice Ginsburg until after a president is sworn in on January 20 , 2021 .
If Senate Republicans succeed in “ ramming through ” a nominee to succeed the justice , as many now fear @ @ @ @ @ @ @ need to be “ a very serious and public discussion about the need to take serious measures to provide reparations for what could be the theft of a second Supreme Court seat.
” As part of that discussion , the ACS president says , there has to be recognition of “ the fact that it is perfectly appropriate for the Congress to determine that there should be more justices on the Court.
” Here ’ s our discussion of Justice Ginsburg ’ s legacy , the current nomination fight and the future of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a few justices in a generation or two where you just realize that they sort of stand out as combining legal ability with a truly principled approach that looks to the future of the country and not just to the past .
She was brilliant at doing that , and that ’ s what we need on the Supreme Court .
Ruth Bader Ginsburg : ‘ My Most Fervent Wish Is That I Will Not Be Replaced Until a New President Is Installed ’ Susan Collins Is Donald Trump ’ s Essential Ally @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to Upend the Election Is Being Implemented in Plain Sight The Supreme Court can ’ t simply be an attempt to somehow replicate what the founders thought , which of course is not always possible to know , but to appropriately interpret and adapt the Constitution to the reality of the diverse country that we are now .
Justice Ginsburg was in many ways one of the most preeminent justices to be able to do that .
JN : That ’ s something we should be reflecting on .
Instead , there is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Mitch McConnell to replace her .
RF : Well , the problem here is of course intensified by the fact that we ’ re in a presidential election .
But the reality is that the people that are running most of this country , from the executive branch and United States Senate , would have exploited this situation in any event , at any time , as they proved with the theft of President Obama ’ s seat to nominate Merrick Garland .
What we ’ ve been subjected to—and this needs to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ measures—is we essentially had a political death watch for Justice Ginsburg across this country for quite a few months .
I found it gruesome and terribly unfortunate that a wonderful person like this had to be put through this because people were fearful that the right in this country and those who are willing to exploit the nomination process would use any opportunity to advance their far-right ideological agenda .
This gruesomeness has been taken to a new height .
Within minutes , the Senate majority leader is talking about immediately trying to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ end of the year—with no respect for Justice Ginsburg , no respect for the court , no respect for unity in this country .
That ’ s where we ’ re at , and it is really a very bad moment for the court itself and for our democracy , and it somehow has to be met with a response .
JN : What should that response be ?
RF : We ’ re going to have to look at some things that in the past many of us have been squeamish about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I believe you were with me when I had my wonderful opportunity to visit Hyde Park to receive an award from the Roosevelt Foundation .
I was of course given the tour of the place the night before the awards by [ Nation magazine publisher and editorial director ] Katrina vanden Heuvel , and I was asking questions .
I made some reference to the court-packing plan , and she said , “ Senator , we refer to that here as the court reform plan.
” I was very amused by that , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ concept is at this moment .
I don ’ t think it should be referred to as court packing .
I think we should talk about court reform , and I think we need to take a very serious look at the fact that it is perfectly appropriate for the Congress to determine that there should be more justices on the court .
I would normally not like that sort of thing being done .
But when there is a ruthless willingness to destroy the norms and traditions of judicial appointments in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to in a way to prevent the locking down of the courts for one ideology the next 40 or 50 years .
So I expect that there will be serious proposals to increase the number of justices and—depending on , of course , the outcome of the election—that could be the kind of response that would be helpful .
It may involve as well something that I ’ ve been squeamish about in the past…and that is it ’ s possible that there would have to be at least an exception to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ make this happen .
But you know , this isn ’ t just any piece of legislation or any nomination .
This is about whether or not the Supreme Court of the United States is to be a legitimate institution .
So although the American Constitution Society does not specifically endorse legislation , we will be engaging in a very serious and public discussion about the need to take serious measures to provide reparations for what could be the theft of a second Supreme Court seat .
JN : I know from talking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ past that , for you , it really is a big deal for you to be talking about making an exception to the filibuster and expanding the court .
RF : Yes .
I never thought I ’ d be saying these things , and that ’ s because I didn ’ t believe people would be so ruthless in exploiting the rules and traditions [ for handing ] nominations in the Senate .
If We Don ’ t Reform the Supreme Court , Nothing Else Will Matter What I always like to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ want to listen , about the filibuster and the holds and the various rules in the Senate is that these are all in place to be used on certain occasions .
But when people use certain techniques or rules so extremely and so abusively that it undermines the entire institution , something has to be done about it .
I remember when I was in the Senate and the filibuster really was unusual .
For example , somebody would be upset about what was being done to the dairy industry .
They ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Or [ onetime Wisconsin Senator ] Bill Proxmire would get up to the floor and do a filibuster on the Genocide Treaty .
But it wasn ’ t a standard procedure .
To use and abuse Senate procedures in this way—to manipulate things in a way that you don ’ t take up nominations of Democratic presidents but you jam through nominations of Republican presidents—is such a serious abuse that it does lead me , personally as well as as the president of the American Constitution Society , to say we have got @ @ @ @ @ @ @ really means that you [ are going to ] allow those to abuse the rules to run the show .
JN : You were talking about things that could happen with a new Senate , with a Senate that quite frankly could be controlled by Democrats .
In the immediate moment , Mitch McConnell has said that he intends to have a vote on it before the end of the year .
How should we think about that ?
What are the proper responses , both in the context of the Senate and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Constitution Society , and progressive groups generally , are in strong agreement that we believe it is entirely inappropriate to take up a nomination prior to January 20th , until we know who the president will be at that point .
[ South Carolina Senator ] Lindsey Graham actually said that a year or so ago .
Others have said it .
People know that this is a complete violation of fairness to go and try to jam this nomination through .
You can look at history in that regard .
Or you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you ’ re in the middle of a presidential election that ’ s imminent , when the country is in tremendous turmoil with regard to Covid-19 , the economy , and racial injustice , putting somebody on the bench for life is not something that has to be rushed and should not be rushed .
The only reason it is being done is for purely political reasons , and it flouts the whole idea of the Senate as a deliberative body that would seriously consider a nomination .
I voted for six justices @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them , I was on the Judiciary Committee .
It was a very deliberative process , you know ?
Individually , as members of the Judiciary Committee , we would gradually meet with each of the nominees for an hour ; and we would have , as you know , a couple of weeks of hearings , and then it would go out to the floor , and this is after the president usually took a little time and was careful in who they would nominate .
What ’ s happening now is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the appropriate way to handle those nominations—and that is the way they were handled even under Bush .
There was not an attempt to immediately jam through those nominations .
In fact , in the one case with Harriet Miers , she was nominated and was considered for a while , and then the nomination was actually withdrawn .
So there was a deliberative process .
Essentially , what these people are showing is that they could care less about the way in which this country should choose its justices .
The Constitution @ @ @ @ @ @ @ consent , not simply jam something through .
JN : Obviously , you were an elected official for a long time .
You ran in many elections .
How does what just happened affect the 2020 election ?
People already said it was the most important election of our lives in many cases .
This obviously ups the ante as regards the election itself .
RF : Well , of course it does , but you know , this was true in 2016 .
One of the concerns that we have at the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for people across the country to really realize the stakes that are involved when you choose a president or a Senate , and that this kind of thing , this issue of who is on the Supreme Court , is easily one of the most important things an election ’ s about .
Frankly , conservatives have been far more effective at convincing their supporters that that ’ s the case .
We have to do a better job of making this clear .
If the loss of Justice Ginsburg doesn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ don ’ t know what will .

Subscribe to The Nation Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month! Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month!
Get The Nation’s Weekly Newsletter Fridays. The best of the week. Email By signing up, you confirm that you are over the age of 16 and agree to receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Fridays. The best of the week.
Thank you for signing up for The Nation’s weekly newsletter.
Repro Nation A monthly newsletter on the global fight for reproductive freedom. Email By signing up, you confirm that you are over the age of 16 and agree to receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here.
Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue
Subscribe to The Nation Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month! Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month!
Support Progressive Journalism The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter. The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter.
Sign up for our Wine Club today. Did you know you can support The Nation by drinking wine?
Russ Feingold has thought longer and harder than most Americans about the US Senate’s handling of Supreme Court nominations, and he knows something has got to change. As the former chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on the Constitution, and as the current president of the American Constitution Society, he has fought to maintain the deliberative process by which the Senate is supposed to provide advice and consent in a finely balanced system of checks and balances.
But as Republicans coalesce in support of a drive by President Donald Trump and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell to seat a replacement for the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg before or immediately after the November 3 election, Feingold says, “What’s happening now is a mockery of what everybody believed was the appropriate way to handle those nominations.” Like most progressives, the former senator from Wisconsin supports delaying action to replace Justice Ginsburg until after a president is sworn in on January 20, 2021. If Senate Republicans succeed in “ramming through” a nominee to succeed the justice, as many now fear is likely, Feingold says there will need to be “a very serious and public discussion about the need to take serious measures to provide reparations for what could be the theft of a second Supreme Court seat.” As part of that discussion, the ACS president says, there has to be recognition of “the fact that it is perfectly appropriate for the Congress to determine that there should be more justices on the Court.” Here’s our discussion of Justice Ginsburg’s legacy, the current nomination fight and the future of the high court.
—John Nichols
J ohn N ichols: Let’s start by putting Justice Ginsburg’s service in perspective.
Russ Feingold: There are only a few justices in a generation or two where you just realize that they sort of stand out as combining legal ability with a truly principled approach that looks to the future of the country and not just to the past. She was brilliant at doing that, and that’s what we need on the Supreme Court. More From John Nichols A GOP Debate Without Trump Is the Definition of Pointlessness August 11, 2023 A Win for Abortion Rights, a Win for Democracy: Ohio Voters Reject Issue 1 August 9, 2023 The Biggest Threat to Donald Trump Could Be the Constitution Itself August 4, 2023
The Supreme Court can’t simply be an attempt to somehow replicate what the founders thought, which of course is not always possible to know, but to appropriately interpret and adapt the Constitution to the reality of the diverse country that we are now. Justice Ginsburg was in many ways one of the most preeminent justices to be able to do that.
JN: That’s something we should be reflecting on. Instead, there is this hyper-political rush by President Trump and Mitch McConnell to replace her. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann
RF: Well, the problem here is of course intensified by the fact that we’re in a presidential election. But the reality is that the people that are running most of this country, from the executive branch and United States Senate, would have exploited this situation in any event, at any time, as they proved with the theft of President Obama’s seat to nominate Merrick Garland.
What we’ve been subjected to—and this needs to be said as people look at reform measures—is we essentially had a political death watch for Justice Ginsburg across this country for quite a few months. I found it gruesome and terribly unfortunate that a wonderful person like this had to be put through this because people were fearful that the right in this country and those who are willing to exploit the nomination process would use any opportunity to advance their far-right ideological agenda.
This gruesomeness has been taken to a new height. Within minutes, the Senate majority leader is talking about immediately trying to fill this seat—or doing it before the end of the year—with no respect for Justice Ginsburg, no respect for the court, no respect for unity in this country. That’s where we’re at, and it is really a very bad moment for the court itself and for our democracy, and it somehow has to be met with a response. Current Issue View our current issue
JN: What should that response be?
RF: We’re going to have to look at some things that in the past many of us have been squeamish about or thought was a bad idea.
I believe you were with me when I had my wonderful opportunity to visit Hyde Park to receive an award from the Roosevelt Foundation. I was of course given the tour of the place the night before the awards by [Nation magazine publisher and editorial director] Katrina vanden Heuvel, and I was asking questions. I made some reference to the court-packing plan, and she said, “Senator, we refer to that here as the court reform plan.” I was very amused by that, but now I realize how important that concept is at this moment.
I don’t think it should be referred to as court packing. I think we should talk about court reform, and I think we need to take a very serious look at the fact that it is perfectly appropriate for the Congress to determine that there should be more justices on the court. I would normally not like that sort of thing being done. But when there is a ruthless willingness to destroy the norms and traditions of judicial appointments in the Senate, it has to be responded to in a way to prevent the locking down of the courts for one ideology the next 40 or 50 years.
So I expect that there will be serious proposals to increase the number of justices and—depending on, of course, the outcome of the election—that could be the kind of response that would be helpful. It may involve as well something that I’ve been squeamish about in the past…and that is it’s possible that there would have to be at least an exception to the filibuster rule put forth in order to make this happen.
But you know, this isn’t just any piece of legislation or any nomination. This is about whether or not the Supreme Court of the United States is to be a legitimate institution. So although the American Constitution Society does not specifically endorse legislation, we will be engaging in a very serious and public discussion about the need to take serious measures to provide reparations for what could be the theft of a second Supreme Court seat.
JN: I know from talking to you about these issues in the past that, for you, it really is a big deal for you to be talking about making an exception to the filibuster and expanding the court.
RF: Yes. I never thought I’d be saying these things, and that’s because I didn’t believe people would be so ruthless in exploiting the rules and traditions [for handing] nominations in the Senate. Court Reform If We Don’t Reform the Supreme Court, Nothing Else Will Matter Elie Mystal
What I always like to explain to classes, and people that want to listen, about the filibuster and the holds and the various rules in the Senate is that these are all in place to be used on certain occasions. But when people use certain techniques or rules so extremely and so abusively that it undermines the entire institution, something has to be done about it.
I remember when I was in the Senate and the filibuster really was unusual. For example, somebody would be upset about what was being done to the dairy industry. They’d stand up for their state. Or [onetime Wisconsin Senator] Bill Proxmire would get up to the floor and do a filibuster on the Genocide Treaty. But it wasn’t a standard procedure.
To use and abuse Senate procedures in this way—to manipulate things in a way that you don’t take up nominations of Democratic presidents but you jam through nominations of Republican presidents—is such a serious abuse that it does lead me, personally as well as as the president of the American Constitution Society, to say we have got to do something about this or it really means that you [are going to] allow those to abuse the rules to run the show.
JN: You were talking about things that could happen with a new Senate, with a Senate that quite frankly could be controlled by Democrats. In the immediate moment, Mitch McConnell has said that he intends to have a vote on it before the end of the year. How should we think about that? What are the proper responses, both in the context of the Senate and also politically?
RF: The American Constitution Society, and progressive groups generally, are in strong agreement that we believe it is entirely inappropriate to take up a nomination prior to January 20th, until we know who the president will be at that point. [South Carolina Senator] Lindsey Graham actually said that a year or so ago. Others have said it.
People know that this is a complete violation of fairness to go and try to jam this nomination through. You can look at history in that regard. Or you can just look at common sense—that when you’re in the middle of a presidential election that’s imminent, when the country is in tremendous turmoil with regard to Covid-19, the economy, and racial injustice, putting somebody on the bench for life is not something that has to be rushed and should not be rushed. The only reason it is being done is for purely political reasons, and it flouts the whole idea of the Senate as a deliberative body that would seriously consider a nomination. Rest in Power Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Dying Wish: DISSENT! Elie Mystal
I voted for six justices as a senator. For four of them, I was on the Judiciary Committee. It was a very deliberative process, you know? Individually, as members of the Judiciary Committee, we would gradually meet with each of the nominees for an hour; and we would have, as you know, a couple of weeks of hearings, and then it would go out to the floor, and this is after the president usually took a little time and was careful in who they would nominate.
What’s happening now is a mockery of what everybody believed was the appropriate way to handle those nominations—and that is the way they were handled even under Bush. There was not an attempt to immediately jam through those nominations. In fact, in the one case with Harriet Miers, she was nominated and was considered for a while, and then the nomination was actually withdrawn. So there was a deliberative process.
Essentially, what these people are showing is that they could care less about the way in which this country should choose its justices. The Constitution provides that the Senate should advise and consent, not simply jam something through.
JN: Obviously, you were an elected official for a long time. You ran in many elections. How does what just happened affect the 2020 election? People already said it was the most important election of our lives in many cases. This obviously ups the ante as regards the election itself.
RF: Well, of course it does, but you know, this was true in 2016. One of the concerns that we have at the American Constitution Society is making it possible for people across the country to really realize the stakes that are involved when you choose a president or a Senate, and that this kind of thing, this issue of who is on the Supreme Court, is easily one of the most important things an election’s about.
Frankly, conservatives have been far more effective at convincing their supporters that that’s the case. We have to do a better job of making this clear. If the loss of Justice Ginsburg doesn’t make it clear to people, I don’t know what will.


thenation--2020-09-22--‘The Nation’ Unveils New Look, New Logo With Inaugural Redesigned Issue, ‘The Drowned and the Saved’

New York , N.Y.—September 22 , 2020—The Nation , America ’ s leading source of progressive politics and culture , is unveiling a wholly redesigned print magazine—and a new look with a new logo—as of our October 5/12 , 2020 , edition .
With 20 percent more pages in each issue , and four special , 64-page double issues per year , the new Nation offers even more room for vivid reporting , long-form analysis , and hard-hitting investigations .
Nation editor D.D .
Guttenplan introduces the redesign and explains the logic and logistics of our new aesthetic in an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ writes : Why change the way the magazine looks ?
Because our relationship to our readers and to the world we cover has changed .
From 1865 until some point in the last decade , The Nation functioned partly as a weekly news magazine—and looked it .
We still break important stories , often agenda-setting stories , by award-winning writers .
But we do that now every day of the week , on TheNation.com .
When we asked print readers what they wanted more of , their answers were clear : more investigative @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and more analysis from The Nation ’ s distinctive progressive perspective .
More great stories .
More strong arguments .
More fearless reporting .
With more time between issues to enjoy each print edition of The Nation .
So that ’ s what we ’ re going to deliver .
The reimagined product offers a clean , crisp , and modern refresh of our print magazine that better serves the kind of journalism our readers want most .
It is an investment in The Nation ’ s orientation toward impact—and its commitment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pace of today ’ s news cycle , The Nation ’ s print issue gives pause , grounding , and brings context and history to bear on the present moment .
It is also a decision about how people get their news today , what kind of journalism makes sense for which platforms , and how to best reach our growing audiences with the content our readers want—when and how they want it .
In the rapid-fire , 24/7 media marketplace with so much breaking news online , including at TheNation.com , many @ @ @ @ @ @ @ online and want greater depth in print .
And the redesign is unabashedly print .
A page feels like a page .
The redesign lets long-form , expansive journalism breathe , rather than try to mash the website experience into print .
The result is sharp , intentional , and uncluttered .
In a world where we consume so much online , there is renewed appreciation for the value of , and affection for , print as a medium : This redesign creates a richer and better experience with that print product .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ our creative director , Robert Best , and it will inform a digital overhaul in 2021 .
The redesigned logo , marking the broader redesign , retains the history of the magazine ’ s logo , yet brings it forward : The classic logo type is now layered with a clean modern red square , and there is a strong contrast echoing the past and marking the next chapter .
The new look is bold , eye-catching , and leans to the left—all appropriate for The Nation .
With 20 percent more pages @ @ @ @ @ @ @ issues per year , the new Nation offers more space to : • Do more high-impact investigative stories , spotlighting injustice in action , the causes most deserving of our readers ’ attention , and the movement-building , organizing and fights-yet-to-be-won across America and around the globe .
• Experiment , lift up new voices , spotlight creativity in politics as well as the arts , and create the kind of implicit dialogue between writers and subjects that distinguishes a magazine from a website or an aggregator .
• Comment on the current @ @ @ @ @ @ @ editorials with a signature mix of dispatches and data-driven news .
• Publish stories that force us to question our assumptions—and stories that give us the hope and strength needed to carry on our struggle .
• The Nation has long—and uniquely—been a place where radicals and liberals argued with one another .
And , lately , where one generation of activists engages with another .
• Give serious consideration to the literary , artistic , and cultural life of our time—and more space to attend to a wider range of cultural and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to online gaming and film .
• Develop richer and more compelling themed issues , with more depth and more detail , tackling the most pressing debates of today ’ s left landscape .
In the inaugural print issue , “ The Drowned and the Saved , ” a two-part cover story for the first redesigned issue , marks The Nation ’ s signal commitment to one of the most pressing crises of our moment : Why real climate justice is so hard .
Daniel Judt reports on Britain ’ s long road @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fuels ; why that isn ’ t a political issue in the UK , and why that ’ s a problem .
On the ground from the Bahamas after Hurricane Dorian , the Category 5 monster storm that pummeled the north in September 2019 , Sonia Shah witnesses how in the Bahamas , as across the globe , the world has failed the people most vulnerable to climate change .
And a searing profile of Mitch McConnell , “ the jowly old swamp monster from Washington , D.C. , ” by longtime contributor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s signature blend of wit , political acuity , and colorful reporting on one of the most dramatic campaigns of the upcoming election cycle .
In addition to regular editorials and commentary from our terrific columnists like Katha Pollitt , Elie Mystal , Eric Alterman , and Kali Holloway , new regular front-of-book rubrics will offer fresh ways to engage with , provoke , and galvanize our readership : “ The Argument ” offers a concise , occasionally contrarian , always pointed case for or against a pressing issue of public importance .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ showcase and decode the leaks and FOIA ’ ed documents obtained by our DC bureau—and translate them into plain English .
“ Dateline ” and “ Postcards ” will feature dispatches from the places across the country—and around the world—that we think you need to hear from .
And “ The Debate ” will host a rigorous , rotating cast of contributors weighing in on opposite sides of propositions roiling the progressive community .
And , finally , in “ Books and the Arts , ” the freshly redesigned magazine will feature even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ some of the country ’ s leading intellectuals , novelists , academics , and critics .
Ever since the “ back of the book ” was inaugurated , it has been home to writers tackling some of the most pressing questions of the day—whether relating to American democracy or contemporary literature—and the magazine will now feature an expanded section , full of even more cultural commentary and intellectual debate .
This week ’ s issue features Adom Getachew on Orlando Patterson and the postcolonial predicament and Michael Kazin on the ever-present thorn in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ get rid of the electoral college ?
The forthcoming Fall Books special issue will feature Randall Kennedy , Manisha Sinha , Elias Rodriques , Anya Schiffrin , Lovia Gyarkye , Jeet Heer , and Charlie Savage .
Nation editor D.D .
Guttenplan and Robert Best , the creative director who shepherded the redesign to fruition , are available for select interviews .
For requests or further information , please see contact information above .
ABOUT : Founded by abolitionists in 1865 , The Nation has chronicled the breadth and depth of political and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the telegraph to the rise of Twitter , serving as a critical , independent , and progressive voice in American journalism .

Contact: Caitlin Graf, The Nation, press [at] thenation.com, 212-209-5400
New York, N.Y.—September 22, 2020—The Nation, America’s leading source of progressive politics and culture, is unveiling a wholly redesigned print magazine—and a new look with a new logo—as of our October 5/12, 2020, edition. With 20 percent more pages in each issue, and four special, 64-page double issues per year, the new Nation offers even more room for vivid reporting, long-form analysis, and hard-hitting investigations.
Nation editor D.D. Guttenplan introduces the redesign and explains the logic and logistics of our new aesthetic in an editor’s note today. He writes:
Why change the way the magazine looks? Because our relationship to our readers and to the world we cover has changed. From 1865 until some point in the last decade, The Nation functioned partly as a weekly news magazine—and looked it. We still break important stories, often agenda-setting stories, by award-winning writers. But we do that now every day of the week, on TheNation.com. When we asked print readers what they wanted more of, their answers were clear: more investigative journalism, more political news unavailable elsewhere, and more analysis from The Nation’s distinctive progressive perspective. More great stories. More strong arguments. More fearless reporting. With more time between issues to enjoy each print edition of The Nation. So that’s what we’re going to deliver.
The reimagined product offers a clean, crisp, and modern refresh of our print magazine that better serves the kind of journalism our readers want most. It is an investment in The Nation’s orientation toward impact—and its commitment to truth-telling. Rising above the frenetic pace of today’s news cycle, The Nation’s print issue gives pause, grounding, and brings context and history to bear on the present moment.
It is also a decision about how people get their news today, what kind of journalism makes sense for which platforms, and how to best reach our growing audiences with the content our readers want—when and how they want it. In the rapid-fire, 24/7 media marketplace with so much breaking news online, including at TheNation.com, many have told us they get their news online and want greater depth in print.
And the redesign is unabashedly print. A page feels like a page. The redesign lets long-form, expansive journalism breathe, rather than try to mash the website experience into print. The result is sharp, intentional, and uncluttered. In a world where we consume so much online, there is renewed appreciation for the value of, and affection for, print as a medium: This redesign creates a richer and better experience with that print product.
The print redesign was handled in-house by our creative director, Robert Best, and it will inform a digital overhaul in 2021. The redesigned logo, marking the broader redesign, retains the history of the magazine’s logo, yet brings it forward: The classic logo type is now layered with a clean modern red square, and there is a strong contrast echoing the past and marking the next chapter. The new look is bold, eye-catching, and leans to the left—all appropriate for The Nation.
With 20 percent more pages in each issue, and four double issues per year, the new Nation offers more space to:
Do more high-impact investigative stories, spotlighting injustice in action, the causes most deserving of our readers’ attention, and the movement-building, organizing and fights-yet-to-be-won across America and around the globe.
Experiment, lift up new voices, spotlight creativity in politics as well as the arts, and create the kind of implicit dialogue between writers and subjects that distinguishes a magazine from a website or an aggregator.
Comment on the current conversation, showcasing incisive columnists and bold editorials with a signature mix of dispatches and data-driven news.
Publish stories that force us to question our assumptions—and stories that give us the hope and strength needed to carry on our struggle.
The Nation has long—and uniquely—been a place where radicals and liberals argued with one another. And, lately, where one generation of activists engages with another.
Give serious consideration to the literary, artistic, and cultural life of our time—and more space to attend to a wider range of cultural and artistic work, from fashion and theater to online gaming and film.
Develop richer and more compelling themed issues, with more depth and more detail, tackling the most pressing debates of today’s left landscape.
Introduce more foreign reporting, profiles, and analysis.
In the inaugural print issue, “The Drowned and the Saved,” a two-part cover story for the first redesigned issue, marks The Nation’s signal commitment to one of the most pressing crises of our moment: Why real climate justice is so hard. Daniel Judt reports on Britain’s long road to a just transition phasing out fossil fuels; why that isn’t a political issue in the UK, and why that’s a problem. On the ground from the Bahamas after Hurricane Dorian, the Category 5 monster storm that pummeled the north in September 2019, Sonia Shah witnesses how in the Bahamas, as across the globe, the world has failed the people most vulnerable to climate change. And a searing profile of Mitch McConnell, “the jowly old swamp monster from Washington, D.C.,” by longtime contributor Bob Moser, presents The Nation’s signature blend of wit, political acuity, and colorful reporting on one of the most dramatic campaigns of the upcoming election cycle.
In addition to regular editorials and commentary from our terrific columnists like Katha Pollitt, Elie Mystal, Eric Alterman, and Kali Holloway, new regular front-of-book rubrics will offer fresh ways to engage with, provoke, and galvanize our readership: “The Argument” offers a concise, occasionally contrarian, always pointed case for or against a pressing issue of public importance. “The Leak” makes space to showcase and decode the leaks and FOIA’ed documents obtained by our DC bureau—and translate them into plain English. “Dateline” and “Postcards” will feature dispatches from the places across the country—and around the world—that we think you need to hear from. And “The Debate” will host a rigorous, rotating cast of contributors weighing in on opposite sides of propositions roiling the progressive community.
And, finally, in “Books and the Arts,” the freshly redesigned magazine will feature even more pages of essay-reviews and criticism from some of the country’s leading intellectuals, novelists, academics, and critics. Ever since the “back of the book” was inaugurated, it has been home to writers tackling some of the most pressing questions of the day—whether relating to American democracy or contemporary literature—and the magazine will now feature an expanded section, full of even more cultural commentary and intellectual debate. This week’s issue features Adom Getachew on Orlando Patterson and the postcolonial predicament and Michael Kazin on the ever-present thorn in our democratic side: Will we ever get rid of the electoral college? The forthcoming Fall Books special issue will feature Randall Kennedy, Manisha Sinha, Elias Rodriques, Anya Schiffrin, Lovia Gyarkye, Jeet Heer, and Charlie Savage.
Nation editor D.D. Guttenplan and Robert Best, the creative director who shepherded the redesign to fruition, are available for select interviews. For requests or further information, please see contact information above.
ABOUT: Founded by abolitionists in 1865, The Nation has chronicled the breadth and depth of political and cultural life, from the debut of the telegraph to the rise of Twitter, serving as a critical, independent, and progressive voice in American journalism.
###