"Mitch McConnell’s reputation has always been that of a master tactician.

He was the guy who in 2009 convinced a soundly defeated rump Republican caucus of only 41 members (40 after Arlen Specter defected) to hold the line against all of President Obama’s initiatives. He got all but three members of his caucus to vote against Obama’s stimulus package and the Dodd-Frank financial reform act, and every single one to vote against Obamacare.

Once his colleagues in the House retook a majority, McConnell worked with them to force trillions in budget cuts, first in the 2011 spending fight and then in that summer’s debt ceiling showdown. He held the line against countless executive and judicial nominations until Democrats finally went nuclear and eliminated the filibuster for those in 2013. And against all odds, he was able to keep Obama from replacing Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court, and blew up the filibuster for that too when necessary to get Trump’s pick approved.

It’s a fairly impressive résumé. Whether you loathe or admire it, McConnell’s defeat of Merrick Garland’s Supreme Court nomination was an unprecedentedly successful form of Senate obstruction that no leader before him had even attempted to pull off.

But as Vox’s Andrew Prokop notes, McConnell really doesn’t have a major legislative achievement to call his own. He was able to disrupt the passage of Harry Reid’s major achievements (Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, the stimulus) but not prevent it. At the very least, with an allied president and a Senate majority, he should be able to repeal some of what Obama and Reid achieved.

Except McConnell has shown he can’t do that. It became very clear that he couldn’t repeal Obamacare in its entirety, both because of reconciliation rules and because plenty of Senate Republicans considered that a bridge too far. And now it’s clear that he can’t even repeal it in limited form, either. Skinny repeal was an exceptionally narrow subset of Obamacare repeal, and even it caused three Republican defections, enough to kill the effort.

McConnell hasn’t accomplished nothing in his first six months under unified Republican governance. He has seated a Supreme Court justice and repealed plenty of Obama-era regulations under the Congressional Review Act. But he has yet to pass major legislation, and he’s running out of time."

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/7/28/16055592/winners-loser-senate-health-bill-skinny-repeal

Maddie @ 28/7/2017 1:39

I think all Democrats are eating their words from earlier in the week right now lol.

Not really, since if he hadn't bothered to show up and vote to start debate it wouldn't have created the predicament in the first place.

vladykins @ 31/7/2017 6:28

Maddie @ 28/7/2017 1:39 I think all Democrats are eating their words from earlier in the week right now lol. Not really, since if he hadn't bothered to show up and vote to start debate it wouldn't have created the predicament in the first place.

Oh I just meant all of the people who were really shitting on him and saying he flew across the country to heartlessly strip millions of Americans of healthcare. I was one of those people lol. But I see your point.

LEL the mooch is out

Will he do the fandango?

lol

that was fast

Boneitis claims yet another unnecessary victim. When will all the bloodshed end?

I can't believe he sold his company, skipped the birth of his child, split up with his wife, and lost his new job within 10 days.

Maddie @ 1/8/2017 1:23

I can't believe he sold his company, skipped the birth of his child, split up with his wife, and lost his new job within 10 days.

Overachievers like that make the rest of us look bad

vladykins @ 31/7/2017 7:28

Maddie @ 28/7/2017 1:39 I think all Democrats are eating their words from earlier in the week right now lol. Not really, since if he hadn't bothered to show up and vote to start debate it wouldn't have created the predicament in the first place.

You don't think that was calculated?

Trump needs to just bite the bullet and hire Baghdad Bob

Primate @ 1/8/2017 8:37

vladykins @ 31/7/2017 7:28 Maddie @ 28/7/2017 1:39 I think all Democrats are eating their words from earlier in the week right now lol. Not really, since if he hadn't bothered to show up and vote to start debate it wouldn't have created the predicament in the first place. You don't think that was calculated?

Oh it, was calculated and stupid. If he really wanted the bill to die, he just wouldn't have shown up. Vote would have been 49-50 and debate on the bill wouldn't have happened.

John McCain is a massive political opportunist so it didn't really shock me.