Bern warning

There are 395 bills passed by the house languishing right now on Mitch McConnell's desk, bills destined to never see the light of day, much less a vote. My GOP friends (yes, I still have many) are giddy about this, no bills means limiting government in their way of thinking.

We could argue about the wisdom of this but why bother, no one is moving off their positions these days, the country being so politically balkanized. The center, as I repeat ad nauseum, is dead.

But if you think that things have crawled to a standstill in this political dynamic, try to imagine a future where Bernie Sanders is President. It will be pitched warfare. You think Mitch McConnell will move a finger to help enact his agenda? Beyond doubtful.

The left says, well, we have to take back the Senate too but in this safely divided and gerrymandered country that we live in, what is the real possibility of that? Very slim I think. With Bernie leading the nation and an entrenched GOP senate we are guaranteed to stay at a dead stop. With Trump at the helm and the current Senate in place, just watch what happens to Medicare and Social Security, that is why Mitch won't hold budget discussions before the election.

I am old enough to remember a day when Democrats and Republicans worked together across the aisle, they put aside their differences and worked together for the good of the country; Ted Kennedy and Orrin Hatch, the Concord Coalition, Tsongas, Cohen, Rudman, Baker. That bipartisan train has long since left the station. We now live in the Senate Majority Leader's twisted version of bloodsport, winner take all with never any talk of compromise.

The current rancid climate didn't start with Donald J. Trump but he poured gasoline on the fire and brought the presidency down to a place with the dignity and cultural equivalence of naked mud wrestling. He has been utterly enabled by a bunch of GOP hypocrites who won't utter a peep about his despicable behavior as long as they get their agenda enacted. The hope, or my hope one day, is to watch these rats scurry off a sinking Trump ship and trip over themselves disavowing any connection to the stench of this Presidency.

I am not a Bernie Sanders guy. If I had my druthers, Biden having entirely lost his fastball, I would pick Pete or Amy this time.

My hope is for the country to start working towards the middle again, to find a way out of our cultural civil war, if at all possible.

But the rise of a poisonous autocrat with no respect for the law like our current incumbent is causing the pendulum to swing and the result might just be a move to a nearly equally pernicious left.

People are angry, the national demographics are changing, income inequality is a fact of life, many of the young and minorities feel completely disenfranchised and the blowback could be powerful and even lead to a Sanders presidency.

My position is anybody but Trump. Bernie would be my last choice on the Democratic side but if we have lived through the Trump debacle and travesty, I guess we can live through Sanders's reign too. Anyone but Trump.