February 12th 2020

By Joan McCarter

Daily Kos

Senate Democrats tried again Tuesday morning three times to bring election security legislation to the floor. Democratic Sens. Mark Warner of Virginia, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, and Oregon's Ron Wyden all tried to bring bills to the floor for unanimous consent. Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn was Moscow Mitch's henchwoman for this round.

"America is 266 days away from the 2020 election, and Majority Leader McConnell has yet to take any concrete steps to protect our foreign elections from hacking or foreign interference," Wyden said. He added that refusing to take the simple step included in one of the bills of banning states from connecting their voting machines to the internet is like "stashing our ballots in the Kremlin." Blumenthal warned that after the Senate Republicans' acquittal of Trump, "There is no doubt that he will only be emboldened in his efforts to illegally enlist foreign governments in his reelection campaign." Warner and Blumenthal have legislation that would require campaigns to notify law enforcement when foreign nationals offer assistance. "The appropriate response is not to say thank you, the appropriate response is to call the FBI."

Blackburn, who apparently wants to make sure Putin knows that Republican doors are still open to him, didn't just object to the unanimous consent requests, she got nasty. "You would think that after spending weeks in this chamber litigating the finer points of their disagreements with the president's foreign policy that our friends in the minority would be weary of picking another partisan fight, but here we go again." Because keep foreign government out of our elections is now a partisan thing. To prove how virulently partisan she is in calling out partisanship, Blackburn then introduced her own bill to have the Government Accountability Office "look into the debacle in Iowa."

It's hard to come to any conclusion other than Republicans inviting interference from Russia or any other country they think will help them win. It's okay if their impeached president does it, so they must figure why the hell not.

Posted with permission