Indivisibles,

It’s biweekly-ish newsletter time. Mitch McConnell announced his
soon-to-come retirement. The MAGA-packed Supreme Court he helped Trump
create just delayed Trump's coup trial for months. And any reasonable
person paying attention can’t help but be spitting mad at this
nationally-humiliating miscarriage of justice. So, enough preamble. Let’s
get to The News, the Brag, and the Discussion.

The News: McConnell’s retirement and the Supreme Court’s dirty deal

You may have heard the celebratory cheers last Wednesday morning. [ [link removed] ]Mitch
McConnell announced he would step down as the Republican Senate minority
leader at the end of this year. 

Historians will write more about what carnage this man brought down on our
republic. But I’m not a historian, so I’ll tell you what I saw with my own
eyes: obstruction and destruction. 

Obstruction

I started as a young legislative staffer on Capitol Hill in 2008, the week
Lehman Brothers failed. It was a wild time with the economy imploding, a
massively unpopular warhawk president exiting, and an historic blowout
election that delivered a massive Democratic trifecta with a mandate for
change. “Yes we can!,” we chanted in the streets in celebration that
election night.

I’ll never forget Mitch McConnell’s response: “[ [link removed] ]The single most
important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term
president.” Use of the no-effort filibuster for the purpose of obstruction
[ [link removed] ]hit new heights while McConnell was minority leader during Obama’s
presidency. During the first six years of Obama’s presidency, Minority
Leader [ [link removed] ]McConnell used the filibuster 643 times to kill legislation.
Mind-boggling levels of obstruction.

And his power to obstruct reached beyond legislation.

After Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died in 2016, McConnell refused
to even allow a debate on a replacement! It was an incredibly brazen act
of obstruction -- and he got away with it. The seat stayed vacant all
year, Clinton lost, and Trump won the power to appoint Neil Gorsuch to the
court after McConnell changed the senate filibuster rules to get him
confirmed. Four years later, McConnell steamrolled through an
uber-conservative replacement after Ruth Bader Ginsburg died -- delivering
the MAGA majority that would soon overturn Roe.

Then it was 2021, and we got a new Democratic trifecta, this time with Joe
Biden at the helm. McConnell’s response? “[ [link removed] ]One-hundred percent of our
focus is on stopping this new administration.” That year, [ [link removed] ]McConnell
made it his top priority to kill our attempts to pass a democracy bill to
get money out of politics, end gerrymandering, and protect voting
rights. The year-long fight ended with him winning Joe Manchin and Kyrsten
Sinema over to his side, filibustering the bill to death in early 2022. 

Destruction

It’s darkly poetic that the same week McConnell announced his retirement,
the Supreme Court announced it was handing Trump a major political win by
delaying his coup trial for months. 

Chris Hayes covered it well this week ([ [link removed] ]thread here, [ [link removed] ]on-air
commentary [ [link removed] ]here). In short, it’s an enormous political gift to Trump
and incredibly damaging to the legitimacy of the court. 

And this is what I believe history will most remember McConnell for -- not
just the obstruction of democratic processes but the destruction of
democratic institutions. 

At just about every step of the way, when presented with options to
acquiesce and go along with Trump or use his unique position of power to
assist the fight against MAGA extremist attacks on our democracy, our
society, and our freedoms -- McConnell followed Trump’s lead.

When Trump welcomed and encouraged Russia to interfere in the 2016
elections, [ [link removed] ]McConnell [ [link removed] ]backed him up.

When Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives after the world
discovered he had extorted Ukrainian President Zelensky for political
gain, [ [link removed] ]McConnell [ [link removed] ]ran defense for Trump.  

After the murderous insurrection at the United States Capitol that
threatened his own damn life and those of his fellow members of Congress,
[ [link removed] ]McConnell [ [link removed] ]voted against convicting Trump a second time. 

Now the court McConnell helped pack is protecting the guy who helped
launch the attempted coup! 

It’s so monumentally, ludicrously corrupt and bad that sometimes it’s hard
to fully accept that this is the real world we live in and not some poorly
scripted Netflix show that develops a cult following for its campy
writing.

Yes, it was MAGA that brought the tiki torches, but it was McConnell who
drenched the Capitol in gasoline. This cartoon is as good as any long
analysis: 

[16]A cartoon where Mitch McConnell stands at a lecturn in front of a
burning, crumbling Capitol. His speech bubble reads: My work is done
here...
Cartoon by Mike Luckovich

The Brag: Reconstruction after obstruction and destruction

We can wallow in despair at this destruction, or we can rush to put out
the flames and plan to rebuild. How do we go about reconstructing what
McConnell and MAGA have destroyed? What is the realistic vision for the
future?

Well, have I got a book for you.

Earlier this week, I held a book club discussion with Senator Jeff Merkley
and a few hundred Indivisible members from across the country. We were
discussing Merkley’s (and his former Chief of Staff Mike Zamore’s) new
book, [ [link removed] ]Filibustered: How to Fix the Broken Senate and Save America.

I was surprised by this book. I’m a congressional nerd and so of course
I’m going to like a book about the filibuster. And yes, I learned a lot
about McConnell’s favorite obstructive tactic and the practical,
real-world way we can change it. But beyond that, this is an engrossing
book about American history, dysfunctional democracy under the Articles of
Confederation, the precarious democratic norms created with the
Constitution, weird accidents in history that turned into massive
problems, and bitter, bloody, political fights. It’s a damn good read.

While I was interviewing Merkley about the book for the Indivisible book
club, I saw a lot of comments in the chatbox along the lines of, “This is
terrible! But what do we do about it?”

The answer is: We win a simple single senate vote to amend the rule. And
we’re painfully close to the votes we need. In 2022, we came two votes
away from reforming the filibuster to pass democracy reform. Sinema and
Manchin sided with McConnell. That November, we picked up John Fetterman
in Pennsylvania, who supports reform. That puts us one vote away in the
Senate. If we hold our vulnerable seats (minus West Virginia) and replace
Sinema with Ruben Gallego this November, we’ve got the votes we need to
reform the filibuster, pass democracy reform, and codify abortion rights
next year. 

Is that a lot of ifs? Yes. Are we all worried because of the polls, the
corrupt court, and political shenanigans to come? Of course. Even given
all that, is this a reasonably plausible path to saving democracy? You bet
it is.

Now, I’ll use a time-honored rhetorical trick to transition from actual
content you may have wanted to yet another request for money:

Let me tell you an anecdote that made my blood boil.

It’s a [ [link removed] ]quote from an article in this week’s Washington Post covering
McConnell’s speech announcing his coming resignation.

"McConnell’s most emotional greeting came from Sen. Kyrsten Sinema
(I-Ariz.). McConnell wrapped her in a long hug, then grasped her hands as
the two spoke quietly. When Collins gave impromptu remarks after
McConnell’s speech, Sinema sat alone on the GOP side of the chamber and
wiped away tears." 

We’re going to defeat Kyrsten Sinema. We’re investing in winning Arizona
right now. We’re going to get an abortion rights constitutional amendment
on the ballot. We’re going to replace Sinema with Ruben Gallego. We’re
going to reform the filibuster to start reconstructing everything
McConnell has spent a lifetime destroying. [ [link removed] ]And we’re going to do that
with grassroots donations. [ [link removed] ]Your [ [link removed] ]grassroots donations…that you
invest in this effort by clicking here. So thank you :). 

The Discussion: Building toward a national launch of Neighbor2Neighbor

One of the big ways we’re planning to get that 50th vote for filibuster
reform, abortion rights and democracy is with our new relational
organizing/canvassing tool that I wrote about last week --
Neighbor2Neighbor. That’s the one that we’ve found is about two times as
effective as traditional GOTV methods, and that will be the star feature
of our voter contact program this year in target races across the
country.  

Our challenge this year will be to get as many people as possible involved
in the effort to defeat Trump and MAGA, so thank you to everyone who wrote
in with thoughts about how to recruit for this work. Some good ideas that
stood out: working with folks in continuing care communities, working with
volunteers to recruit other volunteers in a snowball effect model, having
community launch parties to bring in new volunteers, creating a
leaderboard to motivate and gamify the voter outreach, and working with
folks in blue/uncompetitive races to recruit for Neighbor2Neighbor in
competitive places.

Lots of great ideas to kick around here -- thanks all who helped us
brainstorm how to make this as big as possible. We’re preparing for a
national launch of the program in the spring, so stay tuned!  

In keeping with our developing norm where I don’t give you too much
homework -- we’ll save the next deep discussion question for the next
newsletter. But if you could, grade my newsletter by clicking on a grade
here: 

[ [link removed] ]A

[ [link removed] ]B

[ [link removed] ]C

[ [link removed] ]D

[ [link removed] ]F

[ [link removed] ]Feel free to add additional comments (I like constructive critical
feedback!), but even just clicking one of those grade links will give me a
sense of how this is resonating -- thanks!

A not-so-uncommon suggestion from the last newsletter was that I write
fewer words. So with that:

In solidarity,
Ezra

Ezra Levin

[28]Indivisble Co-Executive Director

Pronouns: He/him

PS: You may have noticed that we don’t include adorable pictures of Zeke
and Lila at the bottom of these newsletters anymore. I assure you, they
are still adorable. With the election heating up and things getting
crazier, we’ve decided to cut back on public images of them for the time
being. But I’ll share this: Zeke is fully obsessed with Moana, and is
counting down the days until Moana 2 comes out this fall. Lila is as
voracious an eater as Zeke was picky at her age, but in a Shakespearean
twist of tragedy, she doesn’t yet have teeth. Better days are ahead for us
all.

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