Here's a quick look at the federal judiciary as of today:
Aside from the Supreme Court, it's pretty close to 50-50 even after Mitch McConnell's four-year demolition derby. By the time Joe Biden's first term comes to an end Democrats will probably control a majority of the seats at all levels of the judiciary except the Supreme Court.
But that's the rub, isn't it? The Supreme Court. Still, I'm not sure the story of the highest court in the land is quite what most progressives think it is. Here's what's been filling up my Twitter feed today:
- Democrats don't care as much about the judiciary. This is true, and yet judgeships are split pretty evenly despite Democrats holding the presidency for only nine of the past 21 years. Caring more doesn't really seem to matter that much.
- Democrats aren't ruthless enough. Mitch McConnell's refusal to hold hearings for Merrick Garland was surely a new level of ruthlessness. But when Republicans continually blocked Democratic nominees in 2013, Harry Reid nuked the filibuster. I'm not so sure Democrats lack ruthlessness.
- We have to expand the Court. Sure, except we don't have 50 votes to do it. This is just pointless jibber jabber at the moment.
Here's what I'm not hearing:
- We need to do whatever it takes to keep control of the Senate. Like it or not, this means moderating some progressive views in order to win seats in purplish states. We don't seem willing to do that.
- More of us should have voted for Hillary. I don't care if she doesn't quite tick all your boxes. If there had been less Hillary loathing among liberals she would have won the presidency and the Supreme Court would currently be majority Democratic.
- We are now paying the price of not doing these things. You can carry your AR-15 openly anywhere you want. The government can't mandate COVID vaccinations in the workplace. Women in red states have lost control over their own bodies. And God only knows what's next.
So that's that. You may now all proceed to get pissed off at me.
I know what's next! West Virginia v. EPA nukes the EPA's former mandate from the Supremes to regulate CO2. Probably put forth under the "major questions doctrine" which is basically method for conservatives to ignore what congress said in the enabling legislation.
Bunch of bottom feeding scrotum sucking hacks.
But Kevin! There was no difference between Trump and Hillary! None at all! Why, Trump ran to the left of Hillary!
Thanks, BernieBros. Thanks, Steinbots.
In fact, in many ways, Hillary was worse. & so many of her supporters were unequivocally, diabolically cringe.
Not sure you know what "fact" means.
Exactly!
Facts are cringe.
That's why I opposed Shrillary's pick of Tim "Forced Birther" Kaine as VP.
The only way a honorable competent person could say that is if they are a hardcore conservative.
Clippie is a snark artist.
You mean, Thanks establishment Dems. In a race when the Dems had a prime chance to show how they care about people in a way that Republicans and especially Trump don’t, they instead jammed a person down our throats who has never exactly been a people person. Hillary didn’t lose cause of Bernie bros. That’s ridiculous. Hillary lost because of Hillary.
Umm, Sec. Clinton won the vote of the people. She lost the Presidency because of an antidemocratic institution called the Electoral College. It needs to go. Twice in five elections it gave us a President the majority didn’t want. Both were crappy, but the second did considerably more damage. Vox populi, eh?
Stop stating the score to a game that was never played. Popular vote is irrelevant. And if that is what determined the presidency than campaigns would operate completely differently and prior popular vote tallies would have been different anyway.
Popular vote is hardly irrelevant - only three times in US history has a candidate lost the popular vote and won the EC. Two of those times gave us the stupidest war since, oh 1812, and the wars against voting rights, majority rights and women's rights waged by our Supreme Court.
Yes, the EC is one of the rules, but anyone who claims to be a small-d democrat should find this abhorrent.
I think campaigning would be different with a direct popular vote also, and the evidence is that Democrats would win the Presidency more often.
How different the world would be today if only someone had told the Clinton campaign about this little known institution!
Enough to get a full throated laugh out of me, thanks Mitch
No kidding, if you do everything you can to lose Ohio and Wisconsin it’s hard to know what to except. I blame Nate Silver and the pollsters, she thought she had it in the bag
As bad as trump was, GWBush was from a practical viewpoint worse. Started and lost two significant wars. Caused the 2nd worst economic catastrophe in US history. On foreign policy Trump was only slight worse than neutral. On domestic policy, bad, but not catastrophic. Trump alienated our allies but not in such away that the damage couldn't be quickly rectified. (If he had been re-elected and succeeded in disbanding NATO as he wanted, that would be another matter. But I expect congressional republicans would have prevented that.). Yes his Covid response was disastrous, (first CDC director didn't want the job and refused to do it for 12 months unitl fired, 2nd CDC director a SOP to pro-life nutjobs because he had killed 100s of thousands of Africans with AIDS).
You mean, as in winning by popular vote -- by a large margin -- in the primaries against several other candidates? THAT kind of "jammed...down our throats"?
+1
>> who has never exactly been a people person<<
She was the most admired woman 16 straight years between 2002-2017. She won the popular vote by 2%. She lost in the electoral collage by a few thousand votes in a few states because:
The Comey letter
Bernie or Bust voters
Russian interference
She is a woman
Clinton was exactly the type of centrist Kevin thinks the Democrats need. I’m not sure who the Democrats can run against the Republicans to win the type of overwhelming victory they would need to win the Presidency considering the high price of gas and the Republicans willingness to cheat.
You forgot the third party voters who shriek far too loudly that they weren’t at all responsible for her loss. The ones who never took a poli sci class, cause it’s pretty well established that, in 2-party first-past-the-post systems like ours, any vote for a third party is effectively a vote against the candidate in the dual party system that is closer to your goals than the other candidate.
I never realized that, but it’s true - third-party candidates rarely are more centrist than the majors (John Anderson was an exception), so they generally get votes out at the fringes.
I would guess that people who vote third-party are therefore more ideologically-motivated than most voters; they aren’t there out of tribalism.
Yes, the margin in '16 was razor-thin, and had any one of a number of factors gone the other way, HRC would have won. I do think the Comey letter and those 11 days of worrisome headlines was the last straw.
Kevin: "If there had been less Hillary loathing among liberals she would have won the presidency and the Supreme Court would currently be majority Democratic."
I agree with the first part of that, but am not so sure about the second. Not with a GOP Congress, which was in the cards whether she won or not. A very likely outcome: Her agenda would have been DOA. Her presidency would been one phony scandal after another, and likely an impeachment. The GOP would have carried the midterms (and maybe won enough statehouses to rewrite the Constitution), and they'd have torpedoed the kind of relief that Dems passed for Trump during the pandemic. The economy would have fared much worse in '20 and Clinton would have paid the price on election day.
In that scenario, McConnell would never have let her fill Scalia's seat, or RBG's. Kennedy would not have retired. Her term would have had a 4-4 split or 4-3 R majority on the court. Today, the R's would control it 6-3 and Roe would be just as dead.
Counterfactual history is a parlor game. Nobody knows what really would have happened. But I don't think anyone should assume a Clinton win in '16 automatically would have saved abortion rights across the country.
this is not counter factual: if hrc had won, none of trump's appointees would be on the court today regardless of moscow mitch.
Bingo!
GOP appointees would form a 6-3 majority soon after a GOP president took office, likely Jan '21. It wouldn't matter if Trump appointed them or the next guy.
It's hard to imagine any Dem-majority court without a Dem-majority Senate, and that's an unlikely scenario.
But all of these things or their likelihood were known when the Democrats were choosing their candidate. And they were known during the campaign. It was the job of the candidate to adapt and overcome adversity; not to simply whine about it.
At this point in his presidency, Ronald Reagan was in the exact same position that Biden is in today. Economy was in much, much worse shape than today (1982 Unemployment was 9.6%, Inflation 6.2%, gdp growth -1.8%, then the business cycle turned) and he was getting all the blame. If the economy follows the most likely scenario Biden will win re-election in a cakewalk,
The problem here is that Ronny could blame Carter for starting it (or somebody but himself at least). Not sure how much credit you get for solving a problem people perceive you as causing (and I used perceive on purpose, obviously it’s not really his fault that much)
I agree with this. People forget how unpopular Reagan was. The only popular thing he did first term was survive an assassination attempt. Going into the midterms his approval was in the low 40s and going down to 37%. He survived the second dip of a double-dip recession and went on to win a landslide reelection and eventual sainthood.
I don't know about a landslide or sainthood, but a solid reelection win for Biden in '24 is definitely a possibility.
At this point in his presidency, Ronald Reagan was in the exact same position that Biden is in today. Economy was in much, much worse shape than today (1982 Unemployment was 9.6%
Unemployment actually reached 10.8% if memory serves.
The big contrast on this score between Reagan and Biden in my view is that, as grim as it looked for Saint Ronnie, he got his recession out of the way fairly early in his first term. But the time the midterms had arrived, the recession was lifting (although voters weren't aware of it yet). Which teed up two strong years of GDP expansion and falling unemployment headed into the 1984 election.
Biden's recession, if he has to deal with one, may not even have started yet.
Someone with less baggage hopefully. Like a non-senile Joe Biden
Just do what they did for Hillary, but for someone who is not despised. Pick any Senate backbencher from a working class Rust belt-ish state and they’ll win handily. There’s gotta be a DFL Rob Portman somewhere around here hasn’t there?
Thanks establishment Dems. In a race when the Dems had a prime chance to show how they care about people in a way that Republicans and especially Trump don’t, they instead jammed a person down our throats...
She beat Sanders by millions of primary votes. Maybe Bernie would have done better against Trump. And maybe not. We'll never know. But she really wasn't hand-picked by the establishment.
(If we had gone back to smoke-filled rooms for the 2016 nomination process, it's pretty unlikely Hillary would have gotten the nod, either: Democratic operatives were aware of her vulnerabilities via extensive polling. I'd guess they'd have gone for Biden, or maybe someone like Sherrod Brown. In short, don't overestimate the wisdom of crowds. They're often quite stupid).
But, in fact, Trump did run to Hillary's left in many areas. He completely abandoned the GOP's commitment to globalization (post-DNC convention, Hillary returned to being an unabashed free-trader), he abandoned the GOP's traditional hostility to Social Security and Medicare and pledged to protect both (something which Hillary sometimes waffled on and sometimes outright refused to do).
And, of course, Trump actually showed up to campaign in places and constantly he shored up his core of support. Hillary did neither of those things. She was an absolutely unbending ideologue. She knew that she was in trouble with African Americans, young people, and liberals but she did nothing to address their concerns except to tell them to "vote harder".
A specific example: Hillary was repeatedly told by people on the ground in Wisconsin that she was hemorrhaging African American support (including being warned by the hated "Bernie Bros". She did nothing to reach out to African Americans in Wisconsin and couldn't even be bothered to visit the state. The "Bernie Bros" weren't responsible for Hillary's not shoring up her base or for not bothering to campaign in Wisconsin.
https://onmilwaukee.com/articles/how-hillary-lost-wisconsin
Political scientists have been saying for decades that in the US campaigning has almost no influence on voting. Biden's election more or less confirmed that.
Fixed!
I think the 2014 election, when the Democrats lost control of the Senate, was the real disaster. That year, we dug such a deep hole for ourselves, it took six years to get out of it, and then with just a 50+VP majority.
If you want to control the judiciary you must hold the Senate.
When Justice Thomas was confirmed in 1991, Democrats held the Senate majority.
I think this is back when most Democratic Senators believed the sitting President should be allowed to put his choice for the Supreme Court on the bench.
Trying to be just to the left of Republicans has been the Democratic strategy since at least Bill Clinton. Democratic primary voters chose Biden as the embodiment of that. If he did move to the left after election, that was not responsible for the stalemate in the Senate. In other words, being "centrist" is what led to the current situation. Is more of the same going to do something different?
Who would you have liked to see as the Democratic nominees in the competitive Senate races? All leftists?
Maybe people of the center-left whose policies have been consistently more popular over time. The Democrats have been moving right (to match the Republicans) for the last sixty years and the results have been disastrous. Where Democrats previously had the most states governments, now it's the Republicans. Where Democrats had stronghold in the Midwest, now we've got New York and California.
I think you need to address Skeptonomist's point that we've been following a strategy of dramatically declining utility for a long time rather than creating a "leftist" straw man.
There's also the reality that the Democrats also can't win without their base and that base is increasingly demoralized and alienated. I have received countless appeals for money from Democrats but the leaders of my party have offered no way forward. They're against expanding the courts. They're against pressuring the two assholes on the filibuster. They're against adding PR and DC as states.
What's the way forward to achieve the results that the base wants? Will more racism, more guns, and trying to occupy the center-right political space really create a better American or just fuel the decline that already taking place?
"Maybe people of the center-left whose policies have been consistently more popular over time."
George McGovern was the most "center-left" candidate since FDR and he lost in a landslide.
Walter Mondale was the last of the New Dealers and he lost in a landslide.
Michael Dukakis was a "new kind of Democrat" (I believe they were called Atari-Democrats) and he lost in a landslide.
And people wonder how we got Bill Clinton.
I think you have a valid point. And it’s also true that the Democrats suffered from a combination of internecine power struggles ranging from the involuntary ouster of the Dixiecrats fellow travelers to the Vietnam war to the civil rights movement. All of which could have been handled better.
And identity politics and the weirdness that accompanies it has cost the Democrats. And probably the last really top notch political campaigner was LBJ. Which, regrettably, is followed by Clinton and Obama
But, on balance, I don’t think it’s unpopular center left policies that have brought us to this low point in American history.
"Where Democrats previously had the most states governments, now it's the Republicans. " this was true because FDR managed to create a coalition that contained both the Klan and african americans. Obviously that was inherently unstable. Democrats made the moral choice to keep african americans but abandon the klan, (now known as the base of the republican party.) Unfortunately til the last 15 years, the clan represented more voters than african americans.
The coalition was unstable and LBJ knew that in the 1960's when the party chose the path of civil rights. But even into the Clinton and Obama administrations, Democrats had significant, if not overwhelming power at the state level, but simply took it for granted that the party always would and so did remarkably little to hold on to it.
The Democrats did nothing to entrench their power in the majority of states and the national party focused almost exclusively on national elections and fundraising. Indeed, the relentless fundraising is the dominant characteristic of the institutional Democratic Party at the moment. It is, however, fundraising for the sake of fundraising and not to achieve political goals—the party leadership has been pretty clear that they've got no interest in a way forward, just in fundraising.
I wasn't using a straw man. I wasn't trying to be too fine about it, but if you don't want candidates of the right or the center, that leaves the left. "Center-left" if you prefer. But it would be nice if someone would name center-left candidates who can win Senate seats in Wisconsin and North Carolina. I think Fetterman can win in Pennsylvania; do we agree that he is center-left? Is Tim Ryan of Ohio center-left, or just center?
I think almost any Democrat who runs as a Democrat can win almost anywhere at this point. The problem is the Democratic leadership not the popular policies or even the Republicans. Candidates are stymied because the party has made it clear that there’s no way forward, which means a lot less reasons to turnout and vote.
What is coming next is that SCOTUS will rule that Congress can't delegate functions to the executive branch, at least not when it comes to identifying and regulating toxins, carcinogens, carbon dioxide, and other pollutants. Each individual pollutant will require 60 votes in the Senate before it can be regulated which effectively means they won't be, I'm guessing things like meat inspections and OHSA are on the way out as well.
What's next?
The right to clean water and clean air.
If the founding fathers had wanted that it would be in the Constitution.
The ignorance! It burns!
No SCOTUS and, as far as I know, no Supreme Court Justice has ever issued a ruling that there is a right to clean water or clean air.
I believe you are being ignorant - remember when folks always assumed a that police were required to "protect and serve"? Then the Supreme Court said, nope, that's not true. You assume a right to clean air and water but that's only because the Supremes haven't taken it way yet.
Only idiots believed that the police were 'required' to protect and serve by anything other than if a statute said that. The concept of police hadn't even been invented at the time of the founding,
People forget that SCOTUS is designed to settle issues of constitutional law, which mostly describes the bits and pieces of inner workings of government. Then they tacked on some negative rights (meaning stuff that government CAN’T do to you) as an addendum
It’s a founding document, not meant to be all encompassing. I’m of the opinion that a founding document should not look like Homer Simpson’s car, it’s necessarily limited in scope and purpose
If you want more stuff on top, then elect people who will pass a law. The monstrous sprawling beast that constitutional law has become is just silly to behold. If you use undemocratic means (like 9 unelected idiots on a court) to resolve divisive political issues that’s how you end up in the mess we’re in now. “Fixing things” on the court has clear downsides
I've yet to read a persuasive argument explaining exactly what "moderating some progressive views in order to win seats in purplish states" means in practice, in concrete terms. It's on a par with the increasingly irritating Ruy Teixeira's advice that "A party that is serious about winning would be wise to start ignoring these [progressive] organizations and concentrate on what is really important: connecting to the values and concerns of the broad majority of the American electorate."
I suspect that in both instances, it's code for "tell the BLM and LGBTQ and all the other activisits to shut up and go away because Democrats agree with Trump Republicans that they're dangerous extremists who are undermining American Values".
Most Americans roll their eyes at all the alphabet stuff.
I’m not sure why the Democratic Party decided to go all in on transgender people and “drag queens”. It was entirely unnecessary. To me it seems like after Marriage rights were achieved the activist organizations needed another issue on which to fundraise. They should have just declared victory and disbanded but then what would they do with their lives? Instead, on Friday, I had to defend my employer posting an interview with an drag Queen in full costume as if that was something other than just entertainment…. Rather like a clown ???? really. Ugh. No one would come to work in that get up.
That's a rather overwrought way to express it. Perhaps a less shout-y version might be something like: "Democrats should sharpen their focus on--for example--progressive economic ideas (which they have mostly ignored throughout the forty-year Republican ascendancy) and talk less about issues of cultural identity." I mean, what percentage of self-identified "Democrats" do YOU think actually thinks supporters of BLM and LGBTQ rights are "dangerous extremists"? I'd go with, I dunno, Joe Manchin and maybe like a few thousand other people. Point is, we all in general support the same things. Maybe just talk a little more about poor people for a while?
Most current Republican voters don’t care at all about the poor. At least not enough to sway their votes. Elected Republicans almost always pass laws, regulations and budgets that make the lives of the poor harder, and yet the middle class (and even some poor people!) keeps voting for them.
Democrats had consistent majorities throughout all of the Jim Crow era, especially in the South (which now is electorally more important than ever). It only took totally throwing all minorities’ concerns out the window. Maybe Kevin means for us to do that again, cause yeah I’m hard pressed to come up with any other progressive values that could be jettisoned so thoroughly that it would attract anybody who isn’t voting for us to come over to us.
Bingo! The logical conclusion of the seemingly innocent argument to be "less progressive about identity politics" is basically an argument to coax the Dixiecrats back the to party. The only way to do that is to turn on the needs of the rest of the base of the party.
White guys who are left of center but afraid of losing power to women and minorities need to decide which side they are on, you are either for multiculturalism i.e. be kind to everyone and share power with 'em or you are consciously or subconsciously wanting to maintain the white male patriarchy but with a thin veneer of tokens to claim you're not like the Trumpists.
Kevin in the past has actually advocated for Democrats to be more tolerant of, and accept some degree of racism to get some support from the right, because of course, it wouldn't be him who would be affected by that degree of accepted racism.
"moderating some progressive views in order to win seats in purplish states" " Partly it means don't label transferring the police responsibility to deal with the menatlly ill to mental health professionals with the corresponding funding as "defund the police". AVeragec americans hear that phrase and thinks it means eliminate all funding for the police. And the media finding non-democrat complete nutjobs who actally believed in that and putting them on TV as representing democrats made that 10 times worse. Partly it means don't connect environmentalism with socialist economic doctrine and calling it the green new deal. It means talking about what you will do with new revenue rather than concentrating on making the rich pay higher taxes for it's own sake.
Find a way to win working class whites. Those are the people killing us in every election. Don’t have to win over Q followers but Jesus just say you hate foreigners stealing American jobs and you want to protect workers or some shit, and something about how law abiding people should have whatever guns they want, and you hate crime. You don’t have to actually do any of it (look at Trump, he didn’t do shit), just say it. It’s not rocket science
It’ll make certain corners of Dems upset but who cares, they don’t have any other options. And Ohio, PA, and WI are gonna stay white and working class for a while so you’d better buck up and swallow your pride
“ Like it or not, this means moderating some progressive views in order to win seats in purplish states. ”
That means electing more Joe manchins, right? How much do we have to “moderate” the Dems’ national views just to win in the least Dem states?
Can’t we just have Dems who promise their states’ voters that they will do everything they can to stop the Dems?
If you want to win in West Virginiam yes, you need politicians who who will campaign on defeating the stupidest ideas coming out of the democrat field.
It is NOT possible to elect more Joe Manchins - he is the last of his breed. The voters are either multicultural or not that's the huge dividing line in politics today, it crowds out all other issues. The way to win in mixed states is via Charismatic candidates who are adept at campaigning in various groups needed to win along with building up the needed infrastructure to GOTV.
I think what cool charts miss in this instance is that women feel the founding documents of this country ought to recognize their equality -- and rightly so -- and if those documents don't recognize their equality (as Alito and friends say they don't) then women think the founding documents suck. And they've got a point.
As soon to be late-of-Caltech physicist Sean Carroll says "It's a farce". I submit it's a bad thing in a democracy for the top dogs in law to be so farcical. Undermines the whole system.
"The Supreme Court matters, and it shouldn't come down to when Justices die, choosing young unqualified candidates just because they will serve for decades, and the charade of pretending not to have opinions during confirmation hearings. It's a farce."
https://twitter.com/seanmcarroll/status/1540418271047888896?s=21&t=xiV8VaiyzIHTWPHqvSZbAQ
Until it is changed, lifetime seats means that mortality statistics must be considered. Longer time in office means a better chance for a retirement and replacement with a similarly-minded justice.
So, what's the scorecard? Over the last 30 years, average age of nominees:
Republican president: 50
Democratic president: 56.8 (including Garland)
Republican nominated SCOUS justices have 1½ more presidential terms at their disposal for strategic retirement.
Republicans know how to play this game. Democrats have yet to figure it out.
Alito prefers documents that take us back far more centuries than our US Constitution. His leaked opinion was a reach back to opinions that served men well - when justifying the treatment of women as witches.
If you think there is a problem with the US Constitution there is a clear process to amend it. Get to work.
Reminds me of the Jim Crow era voting laws. “If you think there’s a problem with how we’re running South Cackalacky, black people, there is a clear process for registering to vote and running for office. Get to work counting the number of jellybeans in this jar!”
https://www.wpsdlocal6.com/decision_2020/how-many-jelly-beans-in-this-jar-voter-suppression-throughout-history/article_0c1d9db2-1b10-11eb-8c54-cbcf166f9be9.html
The “clear process” for amending the constitution is only slightly easier to navigate successfully than the clear process was for black people to vote and run for office for a hundred years following the Civil War.
Just couldn’t resist drawing a comparison to racism, huh
Hate to break it to you but term limits on SCOTUS have little to nothing to do with Jim Crow. The point remains, if you want term limits then make it your issue, no more opportune time than now I would guess
Michael Friedman — Oh I see. Kinda like how “gun rights” supporters organized and got most of the legislatures to pass language clarifying that you don’t have to be a member of a militia at all to carry a handgun to the mall, right? What a well established process! I’m on it!
Yeah, for sure! That's exactly right.I mean, I'm reading the NYT this morning and thinking, these galactic assholes think things written in 1789 and 1868 actually "say" something recognizable in the modern world about abortion rights specifically or the concept of natural rights as applied to women more generally? Of course they don't. I mean, Tommy et al couldn't conceive of a world in which women had the capacity for rationality that would allow them to vote even. That's not to condemn them--that's how they thought; that's what their education and training inculcated in them.
The treatment of the Constitution as a sacred, ahistorical text is pure insanity.
The treatment of the Constitution as a sacred, ahistorical text is pure insanity.
Yep. It's just a manual for regulating the government. Nothing more. Nothing less. Written in the main by British Empire elites deeply invested in the enslavement economy. Some of it is quite good, and has held up and worked well over the years. Much of it is clearly second rate compared to the parliamentary model favored by most other high income democracies.
Nailed it for me DFPaul. I still grieve over the death of the ERA - I was only a teenager when it died but it was a key moment when the tide started turning back.
The US of A is the only country claiming to be a democracy where (some) judges and prosecutors comes with a suffix that explains their party designation
A small reminder from a Swede
As if judges in other countries "claiming to be a democracy" aren't ever aligned ideologically with any political party! Removing the labels here wouldn't change the actions - & "Federalist Society" says more than a mere letter.
Mr. Peterson's comment to you days ago was right on target. I should have answered your tirade when you mischaracterized what I had said.
Delayed answer to our "Swedish friend's" diatribe of June 14th:
I didn't say that you mentioned Sweden - did i?
I didn't say that you said that Teslas (no apostrophe needed; they are used to form possessives, rather than plurals) are the solution - did i?
I merely pointed out that this country likely cannot solve its climate problems as readily as Sweden can using the transportation changes seen as solutions by you & others because many more people here are apt to be working 2 or 3 jobs (which I have done to support 2 other family members), making public transportation not a viable option - & I referenced the fact that we are not all living in a Tesla culture because most of us cannot afford such vehicles, for which there are as yet relatively few charging stations. Our country is much larger than yours, & public transportation is simply not available to nearly all of our population- we have entire counties where there are no hospitals, let alone universally "green" options.
You may not have made an odious comparison of our countries on this thread - I missed the notification of your remark due to push-message overloads recently- but you always imply that you know better than others, that because our nation is affluent in general, that we simply need to be prodded or maybe shamed into action. The poor here may seem well-off by comparison with poor people in poorer countries, but it is also much more expensive to live here in even a poor manner. I do recall your referring to people dying in gutters here as if it is occurring on a massive scale - but due to personal freedom usually overruling government control, the people most likrly to die unhoused are not the able-bodied & mentally sound, but those with psychological problems, addictions, or fear of crowded shelters who cannot always be legally forced into shelters.And I am better acquainted with this issue than you. You mention as a new phenomenon the attitude of some that some countries are being blamed for pollution that others have contributed to longer but have cut down to less per capita. This isn't really new - developing nations have encountered much the same argument for years. Wishing you well, but I notice that another commenter had a recommendation for you.
I have had this discussion with many Americans and what you (and many of your fellow citizens) are saying is basically
.One cannot expect the United States of America to change because we are BIG !
.One cannot expect the United States of America to change because we are exceptional, different
.One cannot expect me to change
The question of climate justice is important. If your dog has crapped on your neighbors pouch … who’s responsible for cleaning it up ?
If we in the rich countries has caused climate breakdown and Indians are dying out of it …. who is responsible for handling it ?
… about dying in the gutter. Okay if you call it an essential part of the US version of freedom, so be it , but you are correct in stating it’s not the young and healthy who are dying in the gutter
I never say that it isn't possible because the country is so large & varied- but it is much harder than you & Greta think. & all the blaming & air of moral superiority does not help us, despite how good it makes you feel.
And I have both BEEN homeless due to police failure to follow the law & lying about it,* & have through two organizations - both long prior to that & after my return to having a place - worked for & with unhoused people in DC, & as an individual where I now live. I have never been complacent about lives lost due to anyone's real fear of shelters - denied to me because the first question was whether or not I had small children.
* one sentence, two clauses, two lies - contradictory ones; "This is a community-property state, & all your property belongs to your husband." Knowing history & reality, I still didn't argue with me with badges & bullets.
The juridical system isn’t separated from the political system.
No country in the world does judicial appointments quite like the United States. Where else do individual high court judges so often become household names, or the subject of breaking news, or grist for the political mill?
The selection process for the U.S. Supreme Court appears unusually political compared to other democracies and now are basically all social progress you have succeeded to implement these last 50 or 60 years at risk.
Remember also that USA is the only country, claiming to be a democracy, where some judges and prosecutors are elected and subsequently comes with the suffixes of (D) or (R) . Being prosecutor is often the first step on a political career. It’s also a truth that money , donations, are extremely important in USA compared to the situation in more successful democracies
Ignore this asshole. He’s always right and lives in a paradise where part of the joy apparently comes from looking down at the people who don’t live in paradises and mocking them.
Not ignored. Why ignore what is largely the truth?
This asshole is not what it pretends to be.
If you didn't vote for Clinton, then I'm ignoring you. You simply don't have the cognitive chops to be up after bedtime with the adults.
Don’t feed the troll
Oh brother, yet another one of those voted to negate RvW. And in my troll rolodex too, whadda surprise. You do have a history, you know 😉
You going to hold onto that grudge all the way to the pearly gates, are you?
The last thing a good general does, is sit around and bitch about a major strategic error made in the distant past. You have a war on your hands and you need to direct a strategy to win that war.
But I get it. Everyone's foaming-at-the-mouth angry and can't think straight.
I think women's rights trump all things. I think making abortion, Title IX, the expired child tax credit program, and the lack of a federal paid parental leave as parts of the package of women's rights that need to be codified should lead the way in 2022 midterms.
Women should have been guaranteed equal rights, but they weren't. The right of women to vote was not grounded in history. Under the Alito framework, if not for 19A, that right would have been pulled back.
I would urge Democrats to make Women's Rights the centerpiece of 2022 midterms and the core of the Democratic Party.
Agree. The one fly in the ointment is the surprising number of women willing to help restrict Women’s rights, for women’s place in society to be somewhere between the hired help and a favorite dog.
To be fair, some of those women simply want to be treated as a man’s property, like how children are often treated as parents’ property in the US today.
Old white men have a lot to answer for, but in the physical world, the most fervent anti-abortion crusaders that I have encountered have all been women.
Speaking of, how hungover is Liz Bruenig right now?
Did Matt have to make her a Barney Stinson Hangover Elixir to sober her up?
"…for women’s place in society to be somewhere between the hired help and a favorite dog."
You haven't met any Mormons yet, apparently. In my experience, the "favorite dog" ranks well above where many of the wives, either within the same family or not, reside.
It's not so much religating past battles as it is determining who has a seat at the table. Which the Bros, Jill Steiners, et al. who abstained from voting for Clinton most definitely do not.
Not unless they admit they were wrong, that is, and to show again just how unsuitable they really are to have any say, just how likely do you think that is?
Oh, also, pass a new law that restricts the total number of SCOTUS appointees in any given presidential term to ONE.
If SCOTUS is left with a smaller court, clearly Republicans have no qualms (Garland).
The right solution is to increase the number of judges in the court to 30 - 50. That eliminates all the issues with the current court.
And what if 35 of those 50 judges are appointed by Republican presidents?
I wonder if the large number might reduce the tendency to vote their politics.
Just make all Federal judges automatically Supreme Court judges. Or make the Supreme Court a rotating bank selected from all federal judges that changes once every 6 months. Nothing in the constitution forbids this. The constitution says next to nothing about the supreme court other than that there shall be one and judges will server on good behavior (basically meaning for life).
Unfortunately none of this is likely to happen. For some reason the US is the most conservative country in the world when it comes to things like this. If FDR could not expand the court no one else will be able to.
Yeah, I think both enlarging the panel and rotating assignments would help. And term limits.
Or make the Supreme Court a rotating bank selected from all federal judges that changes once every 6 months. Nothing in the constitution forbids this.
And in our current era, there wouldn't be substantive arguments about people having to move, either (to DC) given the existence of remote work technology. Although if it wanted, Congress could allocate funds to build a housing facility for judges if they did prefer to move to the capital for their stints as justices.
I'd go with one every 2 years, but that would need to be 2 per term in case the Senate is in the other party's hands. After 18 years on the bench, they probably won't retire...
Under this set up, no replacements for when a person on the court dies.
Of course, we'd better do this quickly.
"You may now all proceed to get pissed off at me."
Nope. All correct.
When it comes to the Supreme Court, Democrats should be tactically smart. But they aren't.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
2003 - presidential election year (!). With a lot of fanfare, in February, San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom issues invalid marriage certificates to gay couples.. This triggered (Rove engineered) conservative initiatives in 11 states. Helped Bush get re-elected. He subsequently appointed Alito to the court.
SALON: Did this man cost the Democrats the election?
https://www.salon.com/2004/11/06/gay_marriage_19/
[from article] To say he cost Kerry the election "is quite simplistic," he said. "But I'll live with the burden of never knowing," he conceded.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
2014 - at age 81 and already two cases of cancer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg declines to step down from the court. Her reasons:
1) Wanted her tenure to at least match the 22 years of Justice Louis Brandeis [1993]
2) Later said she had a new "model" in Justice Stevens, who retired at age 90. [post 2009]
Ginsburg dies in 2020. Her seat goes to Barrett.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
In both cases, emotional thinking celebrated actions that were unwise politically.
Yes, the Electoral College should be abolished.
Yes, D.C. should be a state (to help Senate imbalance).
Yes, SCOTUS should be expanded.
But until those goals are met, you have to do as best you can with the existing situation. Democrats are unwilling to be cold and calculating.
2003 isn’t a presidential election year.
RBG should have retired sooner, it's true, HOWEVER, Democrats lost the Senate in 2014, so, it's far from clear McConnell would have allowed her successor to be named by Obama. Also, her successor's (A.C. Barrett) vote was not needed for either the gun decision or the Mississippi abortion ruling (those were 6-3).
There is no point, NO POINT, in holding and expanding congressional lead unless the incoming candidates pledge to be pro-choice and act on it. A House full of Cuellars and a Senate full of Manchins will mean f-all in terms of gaining back lost ground.
Dems should implement a litmus test for all newcomers. You can't expel the incumbents based on new laws; it would set a bad precedent. But asking for votes and money at this moment without a firm commitment that this will convert into something useful for the base is pointless. Might as well keep reading poems on live TV.
(Disclosure: Not in or from the USA)
That is an excellent point, one I have made time and time again. It's not that every new Democratic representative needs to be AOC - no but they do need to be on board with a basic concept - Diversity and Inclusion - that means in practice equality of the sexes and power sharing with various ethnic groups. If you aren't - pro-choice you're not for equality of the sexes.
Yes, Democrats have to stand for inclusion and equal rights, period.
There is no point, NO POINT, in holding and expanding congressional lead unless the incoming candidates pledge to be pro-choice and act on it. A House full of Cuellars and a Senate full of Manchins will mean f-all in terms of gaining back lost ground.
But that's the paradox of the Democratic Party isn't it? Because without the Cuerllars and the Manchins you will not have a majority and ultimately no party at all other than a rump Leftist faction governing few polities across the country. You're basically saying a diverse party of both views, races and religions cannot exist in this country. If that's true, well then, enjoy being in the minority. However, with Roe being overturned, you're right that it may well force Dem candidates into taking such positions to win a primary no matter the location. But that's up to the voters to decide.
Cuellar is less fervently antiabortion than Heath Mello.
Try again, homey.
A House full of Cuellars and a Senate full of Manchins will mean f-all in terms of gaining back lost ground.
Neither Democratic conference is "full of" lawmakers who oppose reproductive freedom. A reticence to support relevant legislation (or prioritize the same in other areas such as, say, healthcare, or judicial confirmations) has become exceedingly rare in the Democratic Party of 2022.
Maybe it’s time to meet your state representative and state senator.
I still cannot believe how many people whine and complain about government (I am not an elected person) and I ask, have you attended any meetings, have you tried to communicate with your representatives, whether local/city, state or Federal? Inevitably the answer is no. If they are not raving lunatics (I know), I will offer to accompany them to meetings.
SCOTUS is now SCOTGOP - Supreme Court Of The Grand Ol` Perverts .
Just want to add (on a hopeful note?) that I keep thinking I want to tell conservatives, "be careful what you wish for, you just might get it."
We can't predict the repercussions of this seismic shift.
One point missed, the Republicans do a lot of fundraising off abortion, and do their fleece the flock right wing "Christian" preachers.
Democrats do some, but most of that goes to Planned Parenthood to help provide a range of health care services.
Again with the “Like it or not, this means moderating some progressive views in order to win seats in purplish states.” Followed by no mention of what views need moderating. Our stance on racial equality is *the* view that changed in living memory and caused us to lose the South (as well as rural areas in the North and West). Is that the view that needs moderation, Kevin?
Every comment of yours is about race. I doubt most of the rural places that go heavy for Trump (which are 90+% white) really give a shit. The ones who actually care are the suburbs Republicans which the Dems are for some reason obsessed with pandering to
They mostly care about jobs and the economy, because that’s what actually affects them. I read a good article in Politico which captured many of my thoughts about the matter, worth a read if you’re interested
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/06/24/democrats-white-working-class-00041807
Do not feed the troll.
There are twice as many job openings as there are unemployed; unemployment rate is near 50-year lows; layoffs are down. And why, do you suppose, have the Democrats lost many more votes among the white working class than working people of color? For crying out loud, the Politico article you cite is only about the white working class!
There’s a clear rural/small town vs urban divide in the electorate right now. I would posit the fact that the demographic which Democrats lost touch with live primarily in rural, white-dominated areas and don’t care about race as their primary voting issue. The black working class is typically urban and so is more affected by racial and urban politics
There may be historical reasons for the demographic divide but either way polling evidence suggests that rural working people trust Republicans more with the economy (which I agree is crazy). Anecdotally, the white working class small town people I know (mostly family connections) say they don’t like Trump’s persona but vote because of economic issues
Lots of jobs open but blue collar union gigs that you could support a family of 5 off of are mostly a thing of the past. People are understandably upset and at least Republicans make an effort to tailor their message to those people. That’s why the Rust belt is not a sure win for Dems anymore, and it makes winning national elections hard
I think Ruth Bader Ginsberg's refusal to resign in a timely manner, knowing how ill she was and how precarious was the balance on the Supreme Court, deserves a mention.
Unfortunately, overturning Roe is just the start. The religious right (evangelicals and conservative Catholics) are feeling their oats and they want more. They want a nationwide ban on abortion. They want to overturn Griswold and let states ban contraceptives; and to overturn Obergefell and let states ban same-sex marriage. Clarence Thomas came out and said just that:
"Supreme Court should rethink precedents on contraception access and LGBTQ+ rights, says Justice Thomas"
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/supreme-court-roe-v-wade-abortion-contraception-lgbtq-marriage-clarence-thomas/
They do want more and are going to try for it. But just because Clarence said it, they are not necessarily going after contraceptives. Maybe (I'd like to say probably) what they did on abortion will hurt them politically. Banning contraceptives certainly would.
Thomas probably is serious about this, and Republicans are OK with him saying it, because it' red meat to keep the base stirred up. They won't go there, though.
"Republican promises to vote to ban contraception if given the chance"
https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2022/05/republican-promises-vote-ban-contraception-given-chance/
"After Abortion ban, Idaho Republican Rep. plans to ban IUDs and Plan B contraceptive pills"
https://www.bolnews.com/trending/2022/05/after-abortion-ban-idaho-republican-rep-plans-to-ban-iuds-and-plan-b-contraceptive-pills/
"Roe Vs. Wade: Tennessee state leaders and the fear contraceptives could be banned"
https://www.newschannel5.com/news/roe-vs-wade-tennessee-state-leaders-and-the-fear-contraceptives-could-be-banned
All it will take is one red state passing a ban on contraception and the Supreme Court upholding the law.
The court can't actually ban contraception, but they could rule that a state could do so. They'd need a case though. Are any states likely to ban contraception? Serious question. I think even the most conservative state governments are unlikely to do this. Gay marriage is another matter.
Also, look for a suit claiming that fetuses are protected from harm by the 14th amendment or something, and that abortion itself is unconstitutional. That's the next campaign. Barring a couple of untimely deaths on the court this will happen within the next 5 to 10 years.
The court can't actually ban contraception, but they could rule that a state could do so.
Let's be careful making pronouncements about what this lunatic court can and cannot due. They're plainly beyond the reach of the political process, for the time being (zero prospect of impeachment or court-packing in the foreseeable future), and that has fuelled hubris and arrogance.
Also, look for a suit claiming that fetuses are protected from harm by the 14th amendment or something, and that abortion itself is unconstitutional.
This is exactly what I'm referring to. I'm not saying such a development is likely. But it's far from unimaginable. And were this to occur, abortifacient contraceptives would presumably be rendered illegal.
Yes, I second that. Democrats are not second when it comes to ego.
I'm guessing she really wanted her slot to be filled by a woman president...
Just want to second the mindless rejection of Hillary Clinton by "progressives".
That, and Democrats well-noted aversion to voting (especially midterms) means that in many ways we deserve what we got.
At least Democratic liberals succeeded instigating a war by Russia. Be grateful.
"At least Democratic liberals succeeded instigating a war by Russia."
Care to be specific about the "facts" behind your assertion?
Because Putin was angry that Trump was not re-elected? You call that instigation? You seem to be as insane as good buddies Trump and Putin.
“Like it or not, this means moderating some progressive views in order to win seats in purplish states.”
I agree with this in principle, it’s why I voted for Clinton even though I was very annoyed with her for running in the first place.
But, is it actually possible to convince the voters that matter that Democrats have moderated their positions?
I fear it is not. Republicans believe we are evil, full stop, thanks to Fox News et al.
And given the reality of the American media landscape, independents seem far more likely to hear the Fox News viewpoint than not, and the Fox News viewpoint is that regardless of any actual positions, all Democrats are kooky, extreme far left types.
So how do we actually convince people that we have moderated our positions, and which positions do we moderate?
All it would take is like 10 minutes of pride-swallowing and high profile pandering to working class whites to swing a few over
We have sorely missed those people since they left during Clinton. Since then, we have required exceptional political talent to swing enough back to handily win a presidential election (Clinton, Obama). I thought Biden would lose for this reason, but he squeaked out a win because Trump fucked up COVID so badly
All you need to do is very blatantly state you’re going to protect blue collar jobs and American workers, and you hate free trade, then some BS about gun rights. You’ll win over more welders than you’ll lose suburban liberal moms, so why not try it
I am all for trying it, but my skepticism is, “would it actually work?”
The right wing media environment is powerful as hell, and a lot of the people we would need to sway only get their news from that environment.
And I appreciate the specifics on some things to try.
I agree the right wing media empire is a challenge. That’s why I added “high profile”, which is to account for inevitable spin. Presidential debate, press conferences, important speeches (like a SOTU address) where it’s harder to contain the message
In my naïveté I believe (until proven otherwise) there is a limit to how much you can smother a big messaging change like that with Fox News spin. Either way I think it’s worth a shot
So, you’re saying that the Democrats should run Bernie? Because, except for the overt racism and authoritarianism, you’re describing him almost exactly.
Bernie's pretty racist.
Evidently not racist enough to suit Kevin.
Didn’t he get arrested protesting during the civil rights movement?
https://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/Felsenthal-Files/March-2016/Bernie-Sanders-Arrest-Kartemquin-1963/
Your claim appears dubious Mongoose
I didn’t say anything like that. Did you read anything I wrote? Confused.
Possibly an error in using WP’s technology. I was replying to XI who was, no doubt inadvertently, describing Bernie.
Bernie has more of an activist aesthetic than one that will appeal to working class people. Regardless, I think a Bernie-like figure would be a big improvement over what we have now (he’s maybe a bit too old now)
The Democratic losses among the white working class began under Nixon and accelerated under the union-buster Reagan. It had nothing to do with the economic interests of working people; it was ‘law and order’ and ‘welfare queens’.
I think there is a divide between what politicians say and why political trends occurred. Reagan started the myth that Republicans are better on the economy which has persisted until now, which explains nearly 100% of his success (when you couple it with his charisma)
People got understandably upset at the social conservatism and racial politics of Reagan, but that’s not why he won I think. As other above have said, he was unpopular the first half of his first term until the economy turned around. If he won off “welfare queen” messaging you would expect him to be revered from the start. Not so it seems
I seriously disagree with Kevin on several key points, one of which is the implication of his points that more people should’ve voted for Hillary and that people should generally accommodate more racism and social conservatism for the greater good. And yet, when push came to shove, Kevin and Hillary both refused to even slightly moderate their own political views: so Kevin’s argument is who should get the political right of way and who needs to yield.
Remember that before there was a general election, there was a Democratic primary in which the party chose a candidate who was immensely and almost uniquely unpopular with an astonishingly large part of the American body politic. Hillary was loathed by the right, by the left, and by a great many liberals, too. Fairly or unfairly, she had more baggage than any other candidate in history.
From the start, it was widely understood that the only Republican that Hillary could beat was Donald Trump; just as it was understood that the only Democrat he could beat was Hillary.
Hillary was a disaster in the general election. She ran a crappy, incompetent, leaderless campaign and she also an absolutely unbending ideologue who refused to compromise her centrist beliefs in the slightest even when it was clear that reaching out to the Obama coalition (perhaps with a younger VP or a running mate from the center-left) was her last remaining hope of victory, she simply refused to acknowledge her situation and instead chose a DLC retread. She ran a campaign which ignored both the Electoral College and her difficulties in key Midwestern firewall states on the assumption that people there would somehow “vote harder”.
My point is that if more “centrist” Democrats had voted for someone else (probably anyone else) instead of Hillary, the Democratic nominee would almost certainly have been elected and we wouldn’t be in this situation today. But Kevin is totally blind to the idea that either the Democrats should’ve nominated a better candidate or Hillary should have moderated her views as he suggests other people should do.
The last time the Democrats held the presidency for more than two terms was Truman in 1948. In the last 100 years, Republicans did it twice (Hoover in 1928 and GHWB in 1988).
Holding the presidency for more than two terms is very, very hard. It simply isn't true that a different candidate could have won in 2016.
I’m proceeding on two assumptions: I think Hillary Clinton almost certainly was the only Democratic candidate that Donald Trump could have defeated. Her unfavorables were second only to Trump’s and she had an immense amount of baggage plus strong enemies in places like the New York Times and generally in the mainstream media. None of the other potential Democratic candidates labored under Hillary’s massive handicaps.
Second, even with Hillary and her baggage and her incompetence as a candidate, the election was extremely close. I’m assuming that a candidate who was less of a ridged ideologue and a better campaigner would’ve made the difference against an historically weak and unpopular candidate like Trump.
A better campaigner would, for example, have been worried about declining support in a key electoral college state like Wisconsin and would have at least tried to shore up support rather than simply taking black voters for granted. I think a capable campaigner would have beaten Trump.
Please stop with this. First, we’re sure as hell not letting the damned New York Times pick our candidate (and I was a subscriber for many years). Nor the ‘mainstream media’. Second, if she was such a lousy campaigner, what does that say about Bernie, who lost to her in open and closed primaries? You may like it or not, but she was the firm choice of the nation’s largest political party.
First, I’m not the one who has chosen to endlessly re-litigate the primary election. That was Kevin’s choice, not mine. But I am not prepared to declare Hillary a blameless martyr and assign Bernie and everyone who supported him as a foolish person who is responsible for the loss sustained by the Democratic candidate. She lost the election because of her poor campaign, her poor judgement about taking Wall Street money right before a campaign, and her ideological inflexibility
It was her choice not to have a plan to deal with her significant baggage and low favorability rating. Her only plan for dealing with the hostility of the press, including the highly influential NYT, was to ignore it and occasionally whine about it. Her plan for dealing with the betrayal of Bernie’s supporter in the hacked emails was to whine about that but never to demean herself to engage with an entire wing of the party.
It wasn’t Bernie who chose to blowoff the midwestern firewall states even after she was told about rapidly declining support in those states among African Americans, union Democrats, and young people. As far as Hillary was concerned, it wasn’t her job to get people to vote for her or even to find out why Democratic voters were planning on staying home. Hillary would not even lower herself to campaign in Wisconsin.
And the primary should have been a wake-up call. Bernie started late, with no money, no organization, and no real name recognition. And yet, he did extremely well in the primaries and exploded some of Hillary’s weakness as a candidate. But instead of working on those weaknesses, she ignored them. But, of course, that’s not her fault.
Second, since Kevin has chosen to reopen the wounds by questioning Democrats choices in the general election it seems to me that peoples choices in the primaries could use some re-examination. We should think about why the party chose someone with so much baggage, with the second lowest favorability rating, who generated so much hostility among a wide swath of the electorate. Maybe you and Kevin should think about how you came to support the only Democrat on the face of this planet who could’ve lost to Donald.
O'Malley would have won.
Yes, he would’ve won.
You cannot possibly be serious? I do hope your snarking.
O'Malley was infamously unpopular with Black Marylanders, I mean he was so infamous he was a character on The Wire. There are very good reasons why he went nowhere fast in the 2016 Primary - he was a "Blue Lives Matter" candidate - that is a huge nono in Democratic primary.
Clippy is always snarking.
Interesting dilemma for the Democrats. Hillary’s the best, unbeatable candidate in the primaries. Dominates with African Americans who are an important part of the party and this support allows her to build an early insurmountable lead.
But she’s deeply flawed as a candidate for the general election and, ironically, during the campaign Hillary hemorrhages African Americans support (which becomes an important reason for her eventual loss).
I really do think pretty much anyone without Hillary’s baggage would have won. Pretty much everyone from the never-Trump right to Noam Chomsky to the actual Communist Party of the USA set aside their agendas and grievances to defeat Trump. If people who really disliked Hillary could set aside their differences, I am hopeful that African Americans would have held their noses and voted for O’Malley.
The Democrats as the gingerbread man who can’t run until he gets hot but can’t get hot unless he runs.
Clinton lost because misogynist and stupid people like Guthman are plentiful and excellent at rationalizing their disastrous decisions.
Agreed. These people _knew_ the odds were good we'd get the SCOTUS that we in point of fact got. They voted out of spite anyway. I'm guessing that these people really don't care about the legality of abortion anyway.
Either that or their spite is larger than their regard for the equality of women.
Yep, our failures are other people’s faults and not our own, so we shouldn’t try to do anything about it!!!
Let’s just stick to our charted course which obviously sucks balls because we don’t want to admit we were wrong. Couldn’t agree more
What exactly would you change? The Democratic Party has a much more democratic process for choosing its nominee than it had decades ago. The candidates of 2016 and 2020 were the clear choices of the party rank-and-file. If you want different nominees, you have a lot of Democrats to sway.
Not only did I vote for Hillary in the general election but I supported her in the primary against Obama because I thought that she would have been a much better president and I still think so.
As you may recall, during the primaries, I argued against making Hillary the candidate because I felt that her enormous amount of baggage was too great of a handicap and that she wouldn’t be able to win against Trump. Hillary chose to do completely politically insane things like taking Wall Street money even though she’d already vacuumed up over $100 million. Just as she chose to run even knowing how low her favorability ratings were and how disliked she was across an astonishingly wide range of the political spectrum.
Nevertheless I voted for her in the general election. But I also saw the big drop offs in support for her among key constituencies after the convention. We know from published articles and books that Hillary was told about her problems, particularly in the failing firewall states in the Midwest. She was told exactly what groups (African Americans, union Democrats, and young people) were drifting away but she didn’t care and couldn’t be bothered to demean herself by talking with those groups and learning why she was losing their support in states that she absolutely needed to win.
Hillary lost because of Hillary.
A centrist ideologue? Is that even possible? I guess we'll have to define our terms. From where I sat her entire campaign was about inclusion, and helping people and seemed like the most liberal presidential campaign of my lifetime, well to the left of Obama on pretty much everything. I thought she was to his left in 08 as well, which is why I voted for her in the primary that year.
The crazy email story that never went away just killed her campaign. That's all it was. She might not have properly followed email policy while Secretary of State and that was pretty much the only news story about her for all of 2016. The fact that she nearly won in spite of that insanity is what is really amazing.
"From where I sat her entire campaign was about inclusion, and helping people ..."
Hillary's campaign slogan was "Stronger Together."
I think her campaign justifies that description. She was resolutely a DLC centrist until Bernie, after which she scrambled to save her candidacy but immediately after the convention she returned to form and made zero concessions to the young, to African-Americans, and to liberals even though she knew that she was hemorrhaging support and needed to shore up and energize her base. Instead, she stuck with the DLC party line and even chose a DLC guy as her running mate. No concessions, no reaching out, no nothing except the strict DLC party line—which I think makes her an unbending ideologue.
The crazy email story is something that she needed to aggressively deal with instead of just whining about it. But given her horrible relationship with the media, and particularly the NYT, a media vendetta was totally predictable and, again, she needed a strategy for dealing with it rather than just endlessly whining.
+1
I agree with much of what you've said but Sorry no Tim Kaine is NOT a DLC retread. He was a Virginia Civil Rights lawyer who was mayor of Richmond then Lt. Gov then Gov of VA before running for the Senate. He is a kind and decent person who cares deeply for the downtrodden. His persona as a walking Dad Joke maybe wasn't the best of optics but a ticket without a White Guy might have tanked worse.
Whatever Tim Kaine’s merits, his selection at a moment when Hillary must have known that her campaign was staring into the abyss and could only be saved by an energized turnout was a colossal mistake. Hillary’s last best hope was to shore up her support among the party’s base and create a degree of enthusiasm that would drive turnout. Again, we can disagree about Kaine’s merits, but my point is that the symbolism was disastrous.
This was her opportunity to show that she understood that the Obama coalition was the future of the party and that she was ready to pass the torch to a new generation tomorrow in return for their support today. There were plenty of younger, center-left white guys who would’ve fit that bill and energized the base. Instead, Hillary chose a centrist member of the DLC to symbolize that the future would belong to the DLC-people just like the past belonged to them—and everyone else needed to just “vote harder” for the DLC because the alternative was Trump.
So, in my view, Hillary blew her last chance to win because she couldn’t bend enough to offer the other wings of the party anything more than selfies with Katy Perry.
Tim Kaine is basically Gentile Doug Emhoff.
Ooooooh that's #1 prime snark there, fits too as Kaine is a deeply religious lefty Catholic.
"that people should generally accommodate more racism and social conservatism for the greater good."
Do you perform your mind-reading act onstage? I'll buy a ticket.
It's just amazing how you could take the phrase "moderate some progressive views" and look DEEP into Kevin's mind through TCP/IP and figure out what he REALLY meant!
[claps--in pregressive]
No mind reading necessary, Kevin has publicly called for accommodating some racism and social conservatism to win Republican votes.
I can’t help noticing that the proponents of the strategy very rarely say what policies should be rejected and which should be embraced. Anybody gets to write on a blank slate. If you think Kevin’s bring unfairly maligned, you need only persuade him to be more specific. Until then, it seems to me that my guess about what he meant is as good as anybody's.
The Democratic Party firing squad has assembled, as usual. Tom Sullivan writes:
"Conservative billionaire-funded think tanks and supported activists have worked relentlessly toward this moment for decades. The current leadership of the Democratic Party, whatever their accomplishments and skills, idled along and assumed progress was irreversible."
I wonder when Democrats had the opportunity to pass leglislation that enshrined the right of reproductive choice. In the 50 years since the Roe decision, Democrats held the presidency and both houses of congress for a total of eight years (1977-1981; 1993-1995; 2009-2011). I just don't see many opportunities over the last half-century.
A radical Supreme Court can waive away any legislation it doesn't like. The only answer is an unequivocal constitutional amendment and that won't happen in our lifetimes. Perhaps a constitutional amendment that enshrines the right to privacy -- which underpins both reproductive rights as well as the right to same-sex marriage and the right to access to contraceptives -- is more doable.
“Democrats held the presidency and both houses of congress for a total of eight years (1977-1981; 1993-1995; 2009-2011). I just don't see many opportunities over the last half-century.”
And given how animated Republican opposition would have been and the reality of the Senate filibuster, we are really talking about House, presidency, and a super majority in the Senate.
".. we are really talking about House, presidency, and a super majority in the Senate."
We had that (barely) for a few months in 2009. And that 60-vote super-majority included some conservative Democrats. In reality, we'd need something akin to LBJ's 68-vote super-majority in 1965.
Indeed. Democrats never enshrined abortion rights in law because it would have animated the hell out of Republicans, and Dems may very well have fIled in the effort any way, even when they were at their strongest.
And as we see now, unless it was a Constitutional amendment, said law could just be struck down by this extremist court.
And a Constitutional amendment is impossible and has been for decades given the reality of our system of government.
There was never a 60-vote majority to codify Roe in the Senate. Out of the question.
Yes, that is the point I was making.
I would somewhat disagree. Over the decades, Republicans (including Republican supreme court justices) have adhered pretty faithfully to Lenin’s famous maxim “You probe with bayonets: if you find mush, you push. If you find steel, you withdraw”. To a very large extent Republican aggressiveness has been a product of Democratic timidly and fecklessness. I think it’s telling that President Biden’s response to the repeal of Roe v. Wade was to reaffirm that Democrats would not retaliate in any way (including reaffirming his refusal to expand the court).
Similarly, Pelosi’s response to the decision and to several justices having blatantly lied during their hearings was to read a poem and encourage people to give the Democrats money even though the leadership is clear that there’s nothing they plan on doing if they’re able to keep the house and White House.
I think if they thought there’d be a sustained, relentless “no holds barred” retaliation, the Republicans would be a lot more restrained. As it is now, there’s no reason to hold back or be careful.
The Supreme Court has gutted the Voting Rights Act, and without the supermajority, even a very watered-down attempt to reinstate some protections failed. The Equal Rights Amendment failed to be adopted. Progressive causes have always faced an uphill battle in the US; there are far more reasons for this than mistakes by the Democratic Party.
"Like it or not, this means moderating some progressive views in order to win seats in purplish states."
I'm curious what views you had in mind because compared to the extremist Right Republicans and the whining, carping Far Left the Democrats are the moderates. Defund the Police? Not in the party platform. Anti-trust reform? Gun control? Do tell.
I hope Ruy Texiera wrote his last Substrack post before the Court's ruling because if he hadn't he would look absolutely stupid today. Safe, legal and rare? A nice, ideal thought but impossible now without Roe. Legal with some restrictions? Ha! If anything abortion law in Blue states are going to be more permissive now than they were under Roe including third trimester and partial-birth abortions. And there's no way any Democrat is going to oppose such things lest they wish to lose a primary. Hyde Amendment? Done! Kaput! Not without Roe. I'm sorry Ruy but extremism begets extremism and if you spent sometime criticizing the latter, you might have more credibility.
"If there had been less Hillary loathing among liberals she would have won the presidency and the Supreme Court would currently be majority Democratic.
Agreed, although I'm convinced Trump may very well have been elected in 2020 in the wake of the pandemic after one-term of Hilary and Roe may well have gone down by the end of the decade but that's neither here nor there. Bottom line for right now is, and despite and bad campaign, letting the perfect be the enemy of the good ruined her.
As someone who supported Johnson in 2016, I never would have thought in a million years a Libertarian candidate would have wound up hurting the Democrats. If anything one would have thought Johnson would hurt Trump among Republicans who couldn't stomach him. Yet the opposite happened. Maybe that's because Johnson as former Governor and more of a lifestyle Libertarian (pro-marijuana) was a more acceptable candidate to park one's "protest" vote against Hilary than some anti-tax resister (ala Chuck Bendarik) that the LP had nominated for President in the past. As a result, the LP had its best showing ever in a Presidential election and it cost Hilary big time (along with Stein's two percent. Anti-Trump divided) It's not a coincidence Biden won in 2020 because those parties were rendered irrelevant in 2020.
We have to expand the Court.
In all my years of being on the Right I never heard this phrase among anti-abortion types. Amazing. They just buckled down and won majority. It took 50 years but in historical terms, that's nothing.
And that's really the point. For all the rage that's going on, the bottom line is like it or not it wasn't Marches for Life that ended Roe but political activism and yes, voting, No amount of anarchy or street theater will reverse this decision. You have to get a majority of the Supreme Court (or expand it if you get the votes). The Republicans are making a serious bet: that the strong majorities in favor of keeping abortion legal are just electoral fictions and that they can get away with taking radical action because it will not hurt them at the ballot box. Fine, we'll find out this year if they're right. We'll find out if they're right that Culture Wars animate their voters more so than those on the Left. Maybe they're right, I don't know. Protests in NY, LA, DC, they're nice but there need to be protests in Boise, Jefferson City and Chattanooga for the GOP sit up and take notice.
As for those damning the Democratic Party right now, all I've got to say is you've got two choices: 1). Go form your own Left-wing party if you feel the Dems aren't "fighting hard enough". Or join an existing one. There's plenty out there. How about the Greens? Here's what's happening with the Green Party in Colorado, a state you'd think would be primed for a strong Green Party (https://twitter.com/Politics1com/status/1511442158380892169?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1511442158380892169%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Findependentpoliticalreport.com%2F2022%2F04%2Fnews-notes-internal-fighting-consumes-colorado-green-party-salt-lake-mayor-back-mcmullin%2F). Take it from a former third-party advocate the grass ain't greener on the other side. I had thought in the late '90s and the aughts that the time was ripe for a Right third party and conservative activism away from the Republican Party. Didn't happen. Pat Buchanan failed in 2000 with the Reform Party and Constitution Party tore itself to pieces in the aughts over sectarian religious differences between Evangelicals and Mormons (yeah, you read that right!) The bottom line is those on the Right out of the mainstream and not in the establishment used Trump to take over the GOP and used his popularity to make the party bend to his and their will. He was third party in 2016. The Sanders people tried something similar in 2016 and 2020 and failed. It shows whose party establishment was stronger doesn't it? Oh by the way, voters in the most liberal city in the country dumped Chelsea Boudin and the far-Left members of the San Francisco School Board in the past few months. These people would presumably would be part of any far-Left party. Keep that in mind Leftists. You're just not that popular.
2). That leads to the second option which is party takeover, which, as we saw with Bernie, didn't happen although the gave it their best shot. But perhaps more realistically, maybe the party's younger members in Congress and elsewhere can taking leadership positions instead of whining about how your leaders are old men and women. Why haven't they taken the flame yet, hmmm? Nancy Pelosi isn't Speaker because a majority of the House caucus is 70-plus. It's because she's damn good at what she does and no one else has the confidence in their own abilities to lead such a fractious group. The same with Schumer. They're not there by accident nor the other leaders. All I'm going to say is, after 2022, if the Dems still have the same leadership in Congress as today, those whining about "gerentocracy" need to shut up because you certainly didn't "put up". There's a reason why Biden is President and the "youngins" lost in 2020 and thinking they're somehow they're better now than they were two years ago is ridiculous.
Apart from the bullet to the head Mrs. Lincoln, Abraham would be doing remarkably well...
1 million percent correct, especially those last 3 bullets and ESPECIALLY the 2nd of those last 3 bullets. Until progressives are willing to say "we really f****d up in 2016 with all that "DNC cheated!" and "No TPP!" bullshit," this will continue. Many on the left are not willing to do that. I daresay they are just as pigheaded, if not more so, than the MAGA cult.
Oh, but at least we are all learning the correct "vocabulary," such as "pregnant persons." That'll work.
" I daresay they are just as pigheaded, if not more so, than the MAGA cult."
Talk to any MAGA person and the reason they love Trump so much is "He fights!" That's it. That's the only reason. "He's no RINO!" Yeah well, for the far Left it's the same thing. If they ever look in mirror some time, they'll see someone in a red hat waving right back at them.
"With Reagan, we're standing tall."