In 1985, as Marvin Hagler and Thomas Hearns were putting together the most ferocious eight minutes of boxing ever fought, referee Richard Steele noticed that Hagler was bleeding heavily from a cut in the middle of his forehead. Steele asked Hagler if he still could see.

"I'm hitting him, aren't I," said Hagler, who went on to put Hearns out a few minutes later.

So, when you think of Senator Harry Reid, the old slugger from Searchlight, Nevada, and when you think of how he's behaved since the American people handed the Senate over to Mitch McConnell and the Republicans back in 2012, and when you think of the accident he had that put him in dark glasses, ask yourself the same question that Steele posed to Hagler. Can he still see?

He's hitting them, isn't he?

Reuters brings us the action from this round.

He said those Republicans should call on McConnell to confirm Garland, not hold the Supreme Court seat for someone as "radical and unfit" as Trump, a New York businessman who has never held public office. His Democratic Party opponent in the election is former U.S. senator and secretary of state Hillary Clinton. "They spend a lot of time these Republicans, spending a lot of energy trying to separate themselves from Donald Trump. But as long as they're holding a Supreme Court seat open for him, they're his minions. They're his enablers," Reid said. "We're going to ensure that every American knows that as long as Senate Republicans are fighting to let Trump shape the Supreme Court for a generation or more, there's no daylight between them and Trump."

To pursue the original metaphor, this is what you call cutting off the ring.

Garland is preposterously qualified. The Republicans look like obstructionist idiots. Worse for them, Garland is probably the best candidate they're likely to get out of either the current Democratic administration, or out of what is looking increasingly like the next one.

There apparently is some procedural wicky-wacky-woo that Reid could pull to force a vote on Garland's nomination but, right now, he's dangling that nomination out there as a way for his Republican colleagues to distance themselves from the vulgar talking yam that their party nominated for president.

It has to be tempting for McConnell. Right now, it looks like El Caudillo de Mar-A-Lago may take McConnell's Senate majority down with him, guaranteeing that President Hillary Rodham Clinton will make at least two appointments to the Supreme Court and probably more, and she might not need to consult Minority Leader McConnell on any of them. The smart play now is to take Reid up on his offer and give Garland a vote. They could even vote him down and look better than they do now.

Unfortunately for the nation, all the free-floating stupid in the Republican base now has a focal point running for president, and it's scaring people to death.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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