Tennessee, Cotham and Clarence Thomas: We are not in a good place | Opinion

Al Gore played the sucker, Jimmy Carter the naïve fool.

That’s the lesson of the day. Decency doesn’t matter in the world’s supposedly oldest democracy. Ethics don’t. The powerful don’t care about avoiding the appearance of impropriety.

During the 2000 presidential campaign, the Gore campaign received a secret recording of George W. Bush’s debate prep. They packaged them up, refused to examine the video and documents, and quickly gave the package to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Gore also stiff-armed Bill Clinton because of Clinton’s unpresidential behavior. Those principled acts probably cost him the presidency, which was decided by the Supreme Court and a razor-thin margin in Florida.

Gore believed democracy was bigger than his personal largesse. Carter, more beloved as an ex-president than when he was in office, held similar beliefs. He put his family-owned peanut farm in a blind trust in 1976 to avoid any conflicts of interest. Donald Trump did no such thing. Trump’s campaign sought clandestine help from the Russian government and kept on making money while in office.

ProPublica just reported that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas for the past 20 years has been receiving expensive gifts from a billionaire conservative donor, including lavish vacations that would have cost him $500,000. Thomas also was routinely meeting with people with interests before the court. That’s in addition to his wife’s attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and his refusal to recuse himself from a case associated with those efforts. He knows he’s untouchable. The founders created the ultimate safe space for powerful men like Thomas. He can be impeached for ethical lapses and financial law disclosure violations. He knows, though, like we all know, that only death can do him part from his enormous power.

N.C. Rep. Tricia Cotham showed herself to be as unabashedly power hungry. She abruptly left the Democratic Party. She joined a party known for crafting a law designed to disenfranchise black voters with “surgical precision,” according to a federal judge. It would be a waste of time to quote her for it makes no sense to believe anything she says. She sold herself to Democratic voters to gain their votes then denigrated those very voters, claiming Democratic colleagues weren’t nice enough. She did so while invoking her faith and God, a particularly galling cherry on top of a pile of unapologetically-unethical behavior. She could have resigned and run as a Republican, or waited before switching parties. But that would be too much like right.

Tennessee Republicans topped them all. They expelled two Democrats for joining in a protest by young people wanting their state to ensure fewer of them will be slaughtered in school, demands coming on the heels of yet another school shooting. Republicans ignored their pleas, preferring to continue their idol worship of guns. Democrats Justin Jones, Gloria Johnson and Justin Pearson used a bullhorn during the protest in the legislature. They were stripped of committee assignments, which is where this would have ended in a healthy democracy. What we have is neither.

Republicans ousted Jones and Pearson, overturning the will of hundreds of thousands of voters simply because they could. It wasn’t coincidence that the two ousted lawmakers, Jones and Pearson, are black, and the lawmaker who survived the attempt is white. Jones and Pearson got a good talkin’ to by white Tennessee Republicans as well, in the way that white men in the South have long felt entitled to talk to black peers. At least they refrained from calling them boys.

We are not in a good place. Though neither party is perfect, the GOP has become the party of insurrection, censorship laws, book bans, the demonization of marginalized people, and unabashedly-unethical leaders who know they can get away with just about anything because their base will protect them even at the cost of our democracy. We are not in a good place and should stop the train and reassess before we lose what we thought we had.

This story was originally published April 9, 2023 at 7:28 AM with the headline "Tennessee, Cotham and Clarence Thomas: We are not in a good place | Opinion."