In alleged deal with McConnell on Ky. judgeship, Joe Biden is our Charlie Brown president

Fool me once, shame on you.

Fool me 5,487 times, shame on me.

Or here’s another one for the gerontocracy that rules the national Democratic Party these days. Remember Lucy and Charlie Brown and that damned football?

The cartoon “Peanuts” is from a kinder, gentler time that President Joe Biden must be thinking about as he apparently enters an absurd deal with the devil we know, Ky. Sen. Mitch McConnell. Back then, the Senate was a kinder, gentler place, where gentlemen made gentlemen’s deals with each other to ostensibly make progress with our democracy. With mixed results.

But as we head toward America’s post-democracy era, we have Biden potentially appointing a Federalist Society, former Bevin flunky, abortion-opposing lawyer named Chad Meredith for a federal judgeship in the Eastern District of Kentucky, allegedly in some kind of deal with McConnell so he won’t hold up more federal judicial nominations.

We learned about this scoop — via Rep. John Yarmuth and the Courier Journal’s Joe Sonka — on Wednesday, the week after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, along with a lot of other terrible rulings that will eliminate the separation between church and state, oh, yes, and accelerate climate change. On Friday, (surprise!) we found out that long-time U.S. District Judge Karen K. Caldwell of Kentucky’s Eastern District is planning to step down. (And that she dated McConnell once? This story has everything.)

That Supreme Court, in case Biden has forgotten, was created because of some very dirty dealing that Mitch performed to create a conservative majority. Remember, Joe? First, Mitch held up Merrick Garland’s nomination nine months before the end of Obama’s second term, saying the voters should decide. Then one month before the 2020 election, he went ahead and pushed through Amy Coney Barrett.

Honestly, at this point, it’s like taking candy from babies. Grown-up babies who talk a big game about women’s rights and then do the exact opposite. I’m sure Biden’s nominations will just gush through confirmation now, like a McConnell-powered lazy river. It’s not like McConnell sees locking down the entire federal judiciary as his life’s work or anything.

The best part of this (and by that I mean the worst) is that Meredith is not some high-minded establishment Republican. He worked for Matt Bevin, for heaven’s sake. He worked to attack Kentucky’s abortion laws, and helped Bevin with the lunatic pardons and commutations that Bevin floated before he left. Meredith also worked for AG Daniel Cameron in successfully defending a state law in the Kentucky Supreme Court that stripped Gov. Beshear of his emergency powers to make COVID-19 rules to try to save our lives.

Now maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Biden has a deal inked in McConnell’s thin, blue blood that ensures he will stop undermining democracy for his personal power-mongering. But I wouldn’t trust even a blood oath from McConnell, and neither should anyone else who doesn’t want Kentucky further locked down in conservative fetters. It’s an easy, throw away gesture for Biden because in his eyes, Kentucky is already a lost cause. Shame on McConnell, for everything always, but let’s heap more shame on Joe Biden and the Dems, our hapless Charlie Brown leaders, as they run at the football once again. It’s only Kentuckians who will be the losers.