The background: Ruth Bader Ginsburg ("the Notorious RBG") died on September 18, leaving both a powerful legacy and a vacancy on the US Supreme Court. The next day, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell promised that the Senate would move quickly to fill that vacancy with the justice nominated by President Trump, just six weeks before this fall's election. This brought quick cries of hypocrisy, since McConnell had acted very differently when there was a court vacancy in 2016. In February of that year -- more than seven months before the election -- President Obama nominated Merrick Garland to the court. At that time, McConnell said, "The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president," and he made good on that promise.

Mitch McConnell was lying in 2016. We all knew that. His refusal to schedule a confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Garland had nothing to do with waiting to hear the will of the voters seven months later. It was a blatant power play to deny President Obama another well-qualified appointment to the Court.

This fall, Senate Republicans completely reversed their 2016 stance, and we should not be surprised that they have no shame in doing so. Today -- 35 days before voting ends in this year's election, and with early voting already started -- they are happy to rush through another Trump nominee, because it advances their political agenda. Once again, they have no interest in hearing the will of the people. Their only goal is to firmly embed their ideology in the court.

To simply call this total reversal of the Supreme Court process "hypocrisy" lets the Republicans off the hook. It makes this year's rushed confirmation sound like a fluke. It suggests that they were telling the truth about their reasons in 2016, and that they've changed their values now.

Both the refusal to consider Garland in 2016, and the fast-track consideration of Ms. Amy Coney Barrett, fit into a long-standing pattern of how politics is done in the United States, especially in the US Senate under McConnell's rigid control.

Remember that in 2017, when newly-inaugurated President Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch for the seat that had been vacant for a year, the Republican majority changed the Senate rules to allow a Supreme Court justice to be confirmed by a simple majority vote -- a move so radical at the time it was called the nuclear option. (And, I guess we should also remember that in 2013, when the Democrats controlled the Senate, they changed the rules, too, so that Obama nominees could be confirmed to other federal courts by a simple majority.)

Li Zhou wrote an interesting article for Vox last Friday examining the recent Republican record on judges. She says that "Republicans' tactics while pushing through more than 200 district and circuit court judges during Trump's term, as well as Supreme Court Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, foreshadowed how they'd approach the latest Supreme Court vacancy." She quotes McConnell from earlier this year when he said, "My motto for the year is 'leave no vacancy behind' " -- and to achieve that goal, the Senate continued to fill court positions even as the pandemic disrupted other government functions.

It isn't just about judges, though. Remember that nine months ago, McConnell and his partisan minions made a mockery of the impeachment process. They announced before the impeachment trial that they would vote to acquit Mr. Trump (even as they took an oath to be impartial jurors), and they refused to call any witnesses who might force a real decision. Their interest was not in seeking justice, or preserving the institutions of government. They acted only to preserve their political party's hold on power.

An opinion column from The Guardian a week ago talks of this kind of behavior as "constitutional hardball," otherwise known by the rest of us as "doing whatever you can get away with." Columnist David Litt sees President Trump as a passionate practitioner of constitutional hardball. As Mr. Trump said, on Fox & Friends, "When you have the Senate, when you have the votes, you can sort of do what you want."

Litt sees the same in McConnell. "In McConnell's view, the purpose of politics is to accumulate as much power as possible by whatever means available. In Trump, he's found a kindred spirit."

Litt's column is very interesting on several levels. He points out that hardball politics is not the domain of Republicans alone. I'm intrigued by his comment: "For decades, Republicans have broken norms whenever they believed they could. Democrats have broken norms whenever they believe they had no choice." He continues with historic and strategic considerations of why the Rs have been more prone to such behavior. In the 1970s, when the modern conservative movement began, an emerging liberal consensus left the right wing feeling it had little to lose by upending our system of government. Democrats, meanwhile, became the party of active government -- and were naturally more wary of the possibility that, in an effort to reform institutions, we might erode their legitimacy instead.

It has been to the Republicans' advantage to push the boundaries and break the norms, and many aspects of the US political system have helped them exercise that power. Litt mentions restrictive voting laws that make casting a ballot disproportionately difficult for lower-income, non-white and young Americans. Unprecedented gerrymandering gives Republicans a built-in advantage in the race for the House. In both the Electoral College and in the makeup of the Senate, there's a bias toward rural states which favor Republicans.

There's a lot to complain about, both in the Senate's "warp speed" effort to confirm an ultra-conservative Supreme Court justice, and in the general workings of hyper-partisan politics. That complaining can serve an important function if it gets us to pay attention to what is really going on, and to name the abuses that are taking place.

Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann, in The Prophetic Imagination, says that the language of grief and complaint is the proper idiom for cutting through the numbness and denial we feel when abusive power is presented as normal.

[R]eal criticism begins in the capacity to grieve because that is the visceral announcement that things are not right. Only in the empire are we invited to pretend that things are all right ... And as long as the Empire can keep the pretense alive that things are all right, there will be no real grieving and no real criticism.

Complaining is constructive only when it leads to real criticism, and to advocacy for more appropriate options. Bemoaning hypocrisy and abusive power is not productive if we quit there. An assertive approach to complaint will lead us to engage more of our neighbors in naming wrong, in demanding change, and in defining better approaches.

As David Litt reminds us in his Guardian column, any political party or faction can engage in hardball politics. We might complain about what the Republicans are doing now, but "vote them out" is not a sufficient action plan. Moral and legal boundaries need to establish parameters within which partisan efforts can be legitimate.

Litt's column makes some suggestions that can lead us into that discernment of goals and appropriate political behavior. He names some legislative initiatives for when the Democrats gain control of both houses of Congress and the Presidency. (May that day come soon, O Lord!) He says that the constitution gives Democrats plenty of ways to restore our democracy without resorting to the abusive power of McConnellism or Trumpism.

They can expand the electorate by restoring the Voting Rights Act, making voter registration universal, and passing comprehensive immigration reform. They can blunt (if not entirely offset) the GOP's Senate advantage by granting statehood, and two senators apiece, to Puerto Rico and Washington DC. They can undo the effects of McConnell's court-packing by expanding the bench -- not just the supreme court, but lower courts as well.

To my mind, restoring the Voting Rights Act is essential. Without that legal protection, there has been far too much voter suppression and disenfranchisement. His other suggestions are good fodder for ethical discussion. Are two new states and more judges an appropriate re-balancing of power, or are those an over-reach?

Another initiative being pushed in the states addresses the failures and biases of the Electoral College. Under the National Popular Vote bill , covenanting states would designate their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote. (My home state of Colorado has joined that movement; this fall's ballot asks Colorado voters to affirm that legislative decision.) Moving to a one-person, one-vote system for electing the President spreads out power among all citizens -- a central principle of democracy.

I am convinced that the first and essential step to restoring democracy and minimizing "constitutional hardball" is a sweeping change through this fall's election. Mr. Trump must be voted out -- and he must be expelled from the White House and from all political power if he refuses to acknowledge the results of the election. The balance of political power in the Senate has to change, because Mitch McConnell will continue his brutal, scorched-earth regime as long as he leads the majority party. That flipping of the Senate seems possible this year, with at least four states where a Democratic challenger can defeat a Republican Senate incumbent.

Beyond that, we -- as engaged activists, as well as the "we" of the general citizenry -- need to work hard at re-defining political norms. What is the role of truth and civility? Where do minority rights need to be protected (as with the threatened Senate institution of the filibuster), and where does a political majority have the legitimate right to enact their agenda?

If there is a real possibility of a profound political change with this election, with Democratic control of both houses of Congress and in the White House, what are the policy initiatives that they should be working to enact quickly and assertively? In addition to the pro-democracy measures named by Litt, there are a raft of other pressing needs: racial and economic justice, climate justice, and ecological health are all at the top of my list.

It is well and good to complain about what is going wrong, but we can't stop there. It is constructive to look at decisive political changes to come from this year's election -- and to work hard in the next five weeks to clarify the issues, advocate for candidates, and get out the vote.

But we also need to be intentional about our goals for after the election, however it turns out. If constitutional hardball and abusive power make us angry now, how will we demand that politicians behave in the future, and how will we hold them to it? If current policies of exclusion and exploitation are wrong, what are the priorities for restoration or reform?

The demise of our beloved RBG has created yet one more dramatic instance of our political system hijacked by those focused on self-interest and political control. Let's complain and grieve, yes. And let's reflect, plan, organize and advocate for better values and constructive policies.