The Inevitable Law of Political Gravity

October 18, 2020 / Kurt F. Stone

Could it possibly be true? Are we actually beginning to see Republican rats abandoning an inevitably sinking ship? Just the other day, Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse - B.A. Harvard, Oxford University, M.A. St. Johns College, M.A., PhD Yale - unload on Donald Trump in a constituent call saying a number of unflattering things about the President, including that he's "flirted with White supremacists" and "kisses dictators' butts.” The Republican senator went on to say “The United States now regularly sells out our allies under his leadership. The way he treats women and spends like a drunken sailor. The ways I criticized President Obama for that kind of spending I've criticized President Trump for as well. He mocks evangelicals behind closed doors. His family has treated the presidency like a business opportunity. He’s flirted with White Supremacists.” (As a response, POTUS has begun referring to the Nebraska senator as “Little Ben Sasse,” and has informed the world that “Sasse doesn’t have what it takes to be great.”

Ben Sasse isn’t the only Republican senator beginning to scurry down the gangplank. Just the other day, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said he hasn't visited the White House in two months because of how it has responded to the coronavirus. Among other things, he explained to a gathering in Kentucky, "[I] personally didn't feel that they were approaching the protection from this illness in the same way that I thought was appropriate for the Senate." Texas Senator Ted Cruz has been warning about a “Republican blood bath of Watergate proportions;” even South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham one of the president’s most vocal allies, predicted the president could very well lose the White House. It should be noted that Senators Sasse, McConnell and Graham, none of whom supported Trump during the 2016 primaries, have something else in common: they’re all up for reelection, don’t want to go down to defeat, and sure as hell are frightened to their very marrow about seeing both the House and Senate - not to mention the White House - under Democratic control. As a result, many Republican office-holders are finally becoming aware that they are being dragged down by what one former COP member of Congress (Carlos Curbelo of Florida) insightfully termed “the laws of political gravity.” They are finally beginning to speak up publicly against ‘45’s spending mania, his love affair with QAnon and white supremacist conspiracy theories, his dismantling of American influence in the world and his classless disparagement of anyone and everyone who will not march in lock-step with him. Why now? Because they are terrified of losing their positions of power. Why not sooner? Because up until they recognized that the law of political gravity works, they were afraid of him - afraid of their leader taking reprisals against them. But that no longer seems to be the case. They simply cannot see themselves sinking into the hellish political abyss with him.

So what can we the people do? First and foremost, I believe that with whatever time we have left before November 3, we must contact every Republican senator and let them know that if they are to redeem themselves in the eyes of their constituents, they must announce their change of mind and heart about the confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. At the same time, we the people must make sure that video captures of these same senators firmly avowing that a presidential election year is the absolute worst time to push through a Supreme Court appointment (as they did with Judge Merrick Garland back in 2016) - that these videos bloom like crocuses in the autumn. Put their two-faced duplicity on public display and then let the voters decide.

It’s not just that Judge Barrett has refused to answer a single question posed by Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee; we already know where she stands on birth control, the repeal of Obamacare, same-sex marriage and a host of other significant issues. It’s that she was nominated mostly to save POTUS’ political tuchas when political gravity drags him down to an inevitable defeat. And she claims she has no knowledge about this! That’s about as believable as when POTUS claimed he really did not know Paul Manafort all that well or really didn’t know shinola about QAnon of the Proud Boys . . .

The public must be warned of precisely how much damage Judge Barrett will inflict on the people of this country. Suddenly, millions of people with pre-existing conditions will be without access to health insurance - and in the middle of a pandemic which will be treated as a “pre-existing condition”; discrimination on the basis of religious scruple and who one loves will set us back at least a half century; ‘45’s filthy fingerprints will continue staining everything it touches for years and years to come through his hand-picked judiciary. . . even if he is languishing in jail, living in exile or has shuffled off this mortal coil.

By now, after nearly 4 years in office, ‘45 has his base so well-trained that they seem totally ignorant of the fact that if he gets his way with Barrett and the American judiciary, that it will wreak havoc with real living, breathing human beings. Take, as but one example same-sex couples whose very status is likely to be endangered to the max. They are totally freaked out.

The other day, I received a brief email from Mark Kallick and David Moore, a loving couple I have known for more than 35 years. Mark and David met on April 14, 1983 in Cincinnati, where David would spend 42 years (1972-2014) playing viola with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Mark teaching and selling real estate. As happy and emotionally healthy a couple as anyone would choose to know or befriend, they have spent a lifetime working on behalf of progressive political causes; Mark especially, has never been one to merely sit back and permit discrimination, bigotry or outright stupidity to go unchallenged. Even back in the early 1980s, we would hold “evening salons” in my rooms (we lived at the fabled “Rose Hill” in the North Avondale section of Cincinnati) and engage in heady political discussions with people of all stripes. Some things never change: just this past February, Mark and David put together a panel discussion on the topic “Can Hate Ever Be Conquered?” up in Ormond Beach, Florida (where they winter) with the southern head of the ADL, former Ambassador Nancy Soderberg, leaders of the transgender and lesbian communities (among others) and yours truly. By this time, Mark and David had finally become a legally married couple.

As Mark recounted in his recent email: “We had to wait for thirty years to become legally married on September 25, 2013. Additionally, we had to travel to the state of New York. The Federal Marriage Equality Act had still not been passed by the Supreme Court; there were still only a few states that had legalized same sex marriage . . . . During our first thirty years we celebrated many married couples anniversaries, went to countless weddings, sent endless cards and gifts...happily.”

“We were denied the opportunity to enjoy a marriage that was legally recognized by our fellow citizens.
We had to forego the family health insurance provided for us by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. I had to go out of my way to ingratiate myself to David’s doctors so that I could properly look after him during illness and surgeries; I could have been legally denied.”

I dedicated so many of my years working (even going door to door) for the betterment and furthering of the Nation’s LGBTQ community; being a founding board member of Equality Cincinnati, Fairness Kentucky, Carolcole House (an AIDS hospice) amongst many other endeavors; there were bitter setbacks and some hard fought victories.”

Mark concluded his missive with the following heartfelt thought: “On Tuesday I watched many hours of the senatorial hearings to replace the Supreme Court seat of the late Justice Ginsburg. The proposed nominee will render monumental decisions effecting profound facets of our private lives; including the fate of the marriage that David and I have been enjoying since September 25, 2013. One proposal is to make same sex marriage have less recognition and legal rights. I pray that we’ll be able to enjoy our legal marriage, in good health for all the years we have left together. This nominee will be confirmed and we will have to endure the challenges that will inevitably come before the United States Supreme Court, seeking to void our marriage. Other married couples may be wishing us well... but only same sex families will actually sit with baited breath... waiting and praying to G-d. I would not wish this indignity on another family.”

When one puts real faces living real lives and telling real stories, it becomes far more difficult to turn one’s back on them. I heartily urge everyone reading this essay communicate with their senator (or someone else’s if yours isn’t up for reelection), and tell them in the strongest possible terms that their reelection hinges on standing with people like Mark and David . . . and those who are about to lose their healthcare, and those who are about to have their votes invalidated just so a racist, bigoted xenophobic homophobe with a penchant for lies and lucre can continue being president of a country whose citizens he cares not a fig for.

And may the inevitable law of political gravity drag him and his colleagues down to Doggerland, the land beneath the sea.

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