Congratulations, it's a Democrat by @BloggersRUs

Congratulations, it's a Democrat

by Tom Sullivan

Well, it looks as if Pat McCrory won't be stealing North Carolina's governorship from sitting state Attorney General Roy Cooper after all:

Four years after becoming the first Republican to win the North Carolina governor’s office in more than two decades, McCrory made the concession in a video message posted around noon Monday as a recount he requested in Durham County entered its final hours. Durham officials finished the recount later Monday with virtually no change in the vote tally there.
I use after all because McCrory (of HB2 "bathroom bill" fame) conceded yesterday after making multiple allegations of "voting irregularities" in Durham and elsewhere:
McCrory had refused to concede for almost a month, using a flurry of ballot complaints filed by Republicans to decry widespread voter fraud in the state. But the Republican-led state board of elections effectively dismissed all complaints about voter eligibility last week, and the board on Saturday rejected another complaint alleging that absentee ballots were improperly filled out in Balden County.
As in, there was no there there. We covered the unintentional hilarity of the Bladen hearing on Sunday. Now that it appears after all that McCrory won't be throwing the close election to the Republican legislature to settle. Besides McCrory resurfacing as the Trump administration's bathroom monitor, all North Carolina has to worry about now is, after the GOP lost the majority on the state Supreme Court on November 8, the legislature using a special session to pack the court. A special session is scheduled for a week from today. It is ostensibly about Hurricane Matthew relief.

Paranoia? It's not paranoia if they really are out to get you. Say, after all the surgically precise gerrymandering and voter suppression legislation. Oh, and Republicans in the U.S. Senate flagrantly stealing a sitting Democratic president's U.S. Supreme Court pick.

David Waldman (KagroX on Twitter) suggests a way Democrats in the U.S. Senate can show the country they're tired of having sand kicked in their faces. Karoli at Crooks and Liars explains:
On January 3, 2017, Democrats will hold the majority in the Senate for a few minutes, until the newly-elected Senators are sworn in. Biden could convene the Senate in those few minutes and call for a vote. The majority could then suspend the rules and vote in Merrick Garland.

The key here is that VP Biden would have to be willing to convene the Senate and recognize Senator Dick Durbin instead of Mitch McConnell. Durbin moves to re-nominate Garland, and Senate Democrats then vote to confirm him. They will have a quorum for those few minutes.

It's bold. Garland would be confirmed by 34 Democrats and no Republicans. It will certainly enrage Republicans, but they're already enraged and full of hubris about how they're going to screw Democrats anyway, so what do they really have to lose?

Not much. It takes courage. It takes a resolve to do what's right for this country, to reclaim the Supreme Court nomination Republicans think they stole from us. It takes backbone.
There's the rub, Hamlet said.

Send Biden to the Senate on Jan. 3 w Garland's renomination & instructions to recognize Durbin before swearing in. https://t.co/KUNbf8qF8a

— David Waldman (@KagroX) November 25, 2016

@CatrionaMDW On 1/3, before new Sens. are sworn, 67 seated Sens. & Biden are in the chamber. Biden turns to Durbin instead of McConnell. Go.

— David Waldman (@KagroX) November 22, 2016

@CatrionaMDW 67 Senators are seated. 34 is a quorum. Rs walk out & it's unanimous instead of 34-30.

— David Waldman (@KagroX) November 22, 2016

Here's Samantha Bee lampooning McCrory in May: