Why Opposing Trump Isn't Like the GOP Obstructing Obama
In the 230-year period between the ratification of the U.S. Constitution and Barack Obama's election, opposition parties blocked a grand total of 68 presidential nominees. In the three years and 10 months between Obama's inauguration and then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's move to eliminate the filibuster for lower court nominees, Republicans had blocked 79 of them – that's 54 percent of the historic total in just under four years.
Last week, the current Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, moved to eliminate the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees after the Democrats filibustered Donald Trump's pick, Neil Gorsuch, who had come off as aloof and unresponsive during his confirmation hearings and offered no reason for refusing to meet with two (women) Democratic senators. But as Media Matters noted, the political press largely portrayed the Republicans' choice to do away with the filibuster as the fault of Democrats – they said the Democrats forced McConnell's hand, and in some cases blamed both sides for generic "dysfunction." This followed weeks of stories about how the party's "liberal base" was forcing Democrats to block Gorsuch, and wondering if Dems would have the courage to stand up to their constituents.
Obama's nominee for the seat, Merrick Garland, is the only candidate in the history of the United States to be denied a hearing by the opposition. As one might expect, Democrats and progressives are outraged that Republicans effectively stole a seat that might have shifted the Court's ideological balance to the left for the first time since 1971. But the both-sides-do-it reporting we've seen makes their fury seem illogical, a simple case of sour grapes.
It's pure gaslighting – making someone think they're crazy when their sanity isn't the issue. For the most part, it's unintentional, a natural consequence of the Beltway press's tendency to see everything in strictly partisan terms. But even so, it's maddeningly common in reporting on the resistance to Trump, both in Congress and among the grassroots.
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