How American women caught up with Mitch McConnell and obstructionist Republicans

In a sig­na­ture line from Nor­man Lear’s fond­ly remem­bered 1970s TV sit­com “Maude,” the impe­ri­ous lib­er­al matri­arch (played by actress Bea Arthur) would glare at hus­band or a fam­i­ly mem­ber and say: “God’ll get you for that.”

The line offers one path of expla­na­tion for the unex­pect­ed twists of Elec­tion 2022 and a set of thwart­ed ambi­tions. Con­sid­er the fol­low­ing sequence of events:

• Ultra­con­ser­v­a­tive U.S. Supreme Court Jus­tice Antonin “Nino” Scalia died in his sleep on Feb­ru­ary 13th, 2016, while on a quail hunt­ing trip to Texas. Pres­i­dent Oba­ma had the con­sti­tu­tion­al duty of send­ing the nom­i­na­tion of a suc­ces­sor to the U.S. Sen­ate for confirmation.
• With­in hours of Scalia’s death, how­ev­er, Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Mitch McConnell declared that the vacan­cy should not be filled until after the 2016 elec­tion. Repub­li­cans held a 54–46 Sen­ate major­i­ty. McConnell and Sen­ate Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee Chair­man Sen­a­tor Chuck Grass­ley refused to even to hold a hear­ing on Obama’s nom­i­na­tion of Mer­rick Gar­land, a U.S. Court of Appeals judge and now the Attor­ney Gen­er­al, to fill the vacancy.
• Don­ald Trump cap­tured the pres­i­den­cy and nom­i­nat­ed con­ser­v­a­tive appel­late judge Neil Gor­such to fill the Scalia vacan­cy. A major Trump regime goal was to fill the fed­er­al bench with judges approved by the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety. Gor­such won con­fir­ma­tion on a large­ly par­ty line vote, the Sen­ate being split 52–48.
• Trump then got to fill two more vacan­cies on the Supreme Court. Jus­tice Ruth Bad­er Gins­burg suc­cumbed to can­cer weeks before the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. Did McConnell fol­low his 2016 prece­dent and await judg­ment of the Amer­i­can peo­ple? Nope. He rushed through con­fir­ma­tion of nom­i­nee Amy Coney Bar­rett in lit­tle more than a month.

The Coney Bar­rett appoint­ment was unveiled at the height of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. A most­ly mask­less ultra MAGA crowd cel­e­brat­ed on the White House lawn. It turned into a super­spread­er event. Trump con­tract­ed COVID-19. So did Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame pres­i­dent Father John Jenk­ins, pic­tured with­out a mask despite his stern instruc­tions to stu­dents back on campus.

The three Trump-appoint­ed jus­tices have formed the bul­wark of a new right-wing super­ma­jor­i­ty on the Supreme Court. In June of this year, the high court hand­ed down the Dobbs rul­ing, over­turn­ing Roe v. Wade and depriv­ing mil­lions of  Amer­i­can women of a right that has been theirs for just short of fifty years. The opinion’s author, Jus­tice Samuel Ali­to, went on a vic­to­ry tour, gen­tly mock­ing crit­ics at a speech in Rome and bask­ing in cheers at a Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety dinner.

The shock of Dobbs gave way to action. Amer­i­can women swelled vot­er reg­is­tra­tion rolls. A con­ser­v­a­tive state, Kansas, vot­ed down by 59–41% a bid to repeal abor­tion rights. Mea­sures guar­an­tee­ing choice went on the bal­lot in Michi­gan and Cal­i­for­nia. In the mean­time, Sen­a­tor McConnell hint­ed at a nation­wide abor­tion ban. Sen­a­tor Lind­say Gra­ham, R‑South Car­oli­na, pro­posed a bill to ban abor­tion after fif­teen weeks of pregnancy.

Repro­duc­tive free­dom became a mar­quee issue in the 2022 midterms.

A McConnell-spon­sored PAC, the Sen­ate Lead­er­ship Fund, poured as much as $30 mil­lion into indi­vid­ual Sen­ate races, hop­ing to put Repub­li­cans back into con­trol of the Sen­ate, and in a posi­tion to take up Graham’s legislation.

It wasn’t to be. Women com­prised a major­i­ty of vot­ers, and abor­tion helped make them a bul­wark of Demo­c­ra­t­ic strength. Sin­gle women vote Demo­c­ra­t­ic by a split of 66–31%. The result: Abor­tion rights defend­ers won Sen­ate seats from Ari­zona to Wash­ing­ton, from New Hamp­shire to Ari­zona, from Col­orado to Neva­da. Embat­tled pro-choice Demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nors were returned to office in Michi­gan, Wis­con­sin, Kansas, Maine and and New Mexico.

And Democ­rats kept con­trol of the Sen­ate, in a break from most of the recent midterm elec­tions in 1994, 2006 and 2014. Those occurred dur­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­cies and each result­ed in a loss of con­trol of Con­gress’ upper chamber.

Mitch McConnell won’t get to return as Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader in the 118th Con­gress. Nor will he be able to stall the chamber’s busi­ness. A Demo­c­ra­t­ic-run Sen­ate has con­firmed eighty-three fed­er­al judges in the past two years and has one hun­dred and sev­en­teen nom­i­nees await­ing action. McConnell indi­cat­ed a Repub­li­can major­i­ty would block any Biden nom­i­nee to the Supreme Court.

Won’t hap­pen.

While the price they paid is steep, Amer­i­can women have deliv­ered a come­up­pance to Mitch McConnell. The Sen­ate Repub­li­can leader sowed the wind in Feb­ru­ary of 2016. He is reap­ing the whirl­wind in 2022.