Today in parliamentary easy mode:

"It's only undermining the will of
the people when Democrats do it."

I take issue with nuclear option. Like, the practice of, but also the term. As you may have read today, actual worst person on earth and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the also kind of terrible, but must mostly just cowed by their base, Senate Republicans invoked the nuclear option today in order to get some low-level Trump appointees confirmed with a simple majority instead of the sixty votes it would have required yesterday. You know, because democracy is hard.

And we can't even get on too much of a high horse about this since Democrats have used it in the past, but what's particularity terrifying now is that the President doing the appointing is a vindictive goon who loves to appoint people to jobs that they're either aggressively unqualified for, openly contemptuous towards, or both.

Yeah, I actually can't tell which one it is
with her. She might just hate children.

"Because AOC!"

-Republicans

Anyway, the worst part...well, second worst part, I suppose the worst part would be that the former host of The Apprentice now gets to hand out political appointments that the GOP will just rubber stamp. The second worst part is listening to Mitch McConnell pretend that the GOP is somehow the aggrieved party because Trump keeps nominating shitty people that Democrats can't possible sign off on. And then he goes in front of the cameras and acts like he has no other choice but to launch the legislative ICBMs.

Pictured: the real victim here.

I mean, listen to this nonsense:

"This systematic obstruction is unfair to our duly elected president and, more importantly, it is disrespectful to the American people who deserve the government they elected."

-Senate Majority Leader
Mitch McConnell, suddenly giving
a shit about the democratic process

Hang on, the government they elec-oh, sorry, I thought he was done.

Less controversial nominees
such as this literal garbage fire.

"We cannot set this new precedent that the Senate minorities will systematically keep an administration understaffed down to the least controversial nominees anytime the wish somebody else had won the election."

-the guy who stole a Supreme Court

appointment from Barack Obama
warning us about the slippery slope

Many important scholars have pointed out
that the Electoral College can go fuck itself.

Ok, so it's not so much a new precedent as it is a system designed specifically to keep a party with a slim majority from running roughshod over the legislative process and putting idiots picked by a goon into positions of power. Also, since he brought it up, someone else did win the popular vote. And the American people do deserve the government they elected and not the one a two-hundred year old electoral system designed to keep underpopulated rural states from feeling under-appreciated, handed us.

The fact that Democrats control enough seats to force the GOP to put up acceptable choices for appointments isn't obstructionism, it's how the Senate works. The nuclear option isn't a tactic of last resort, it's like cheating at poker. Like changing the rules mid-hand so that your three jacks now beat a straight, and then explaining to everyone else at the table that you had to change the rules because they had better cards and democracy depends on it.

Hey, get me, I made a poker reference!