And my objective was to make sure the Republican Party had a lock on government for the benefit of my donors in perpetuity, would I even allow hearings on a Supreme Court nominee? How would that benefit my party?
The senate only has to advise and consent. With Pence’s tie breaking vote, why do I even need to put on a dog and pony show?
Also, there is a possibility, not remote, that the entire Republican Party is complicit in the Russian affair in one way or another. Do I really want that to get out? With the right judge in place, it doesn’t have to.
I guess I would have to worry about repercussions in November but there are a couple of things to consider:
1.) My Party wouldn’t have done anything to prevent Russia from meddling or even tampering with the elections. Just let it happen and ask for forgiveness later.
2.) If I make this appointment all about abortion, I can keep my base on my side. It’s NOT about abortion but my base doesn’t spend a lot of time thinking things through. Let’s pull at its emotional heartstrings.
3.) If the Democrats make a big stink about Trump trying to appoint a loyal judge who will prevent Mueller from doing him any harm, the base will think this is a political problem and will ignore it.
I might just pull a fast one, ram a justice through, not have any hearings, just a vote. I can always say that my caucus vetted him before Kennedy resigned and I don’t need the Democrats because all they’re going to do is obstruct.
By the time MoveOn organizes protests, it will be all over and there won’t be a thing Democrats can do about it but stew in their juices. The justice will be appointed as soon as Kennedy steps down and even if the Democrats take back both houses of Congress in November, they’ll be challenged on every piece of legislation that they pass and it will be done in by my ultra conservative, Trump loyalist Supreme Court.
That’s how McConnell thinks. His party pushed the envelope and the Democrats didn’t push back so it pushed even further the next time. It kept pushing because the Democrats and media have dismantled the Clinton coalition leaving a power vacuum. There is no one to push back now with any visibility or clout except for the women’s march and the #neveragain protestors.
Great job, Nancy and Chuck.
You guys better think of something quickly because when Mitch is ready, it’s going to happen so fast there won’t be time to react.
Filed under: General |
The Confluence 
McConnell pulls out on the stops when he has to, as with Garland. This time, he certainly has the votes. No matter what the nominee will say in hearings (and it will be vague and polite as always), the Republican majority will get him or her through. So he doesn’t have to risk criticism by not holding hearings, that is only when hearings would hut him, as with Garland. He is economical, is Mitch, only showing his fascistic side when he has no cover.
A minority is running this country, and the goal for them is to ensure that they run it in perpetuity. The Constitution was a wonderful document with regard to the Bill of Rights, but it dd not do well with regard to elections. The Electoral College is ridiculous; as is the fact that the votes of people in small states count for more than those of people in large states. California should have 190 or so electoral votes if Wyoming has 3, based on population, but we have only 58 or so. The system was always flawed, but once the Republicans figured out that the mostly racist South had closer to Republican values than those of Democrats whom they used to vote for reflexively because of the Civil War, they have concocted a way to win presidential elections even with less overall votes, which is obscene.
As you wrote the other day, all the outrage now is coming too late. How hard was it for voters, even the rather ignorant and certainly spiteful Bernie people, to figure out that a loss for Hillary would cost us the Supreme Court for 40 years? But they wouldn’t hear it. The Right is wholly evil, and the Sanders Left is abysmally ignorant of political realities. Yeats said, “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” Smart people on our side have been yelling about the Supreme Court for the last eight elections or so, but too many simply did not understand or care. I just realized yesterday that Republican Justices take some sort of implicit oath to never retire until a Republican can replace them. That means that the new Justice will be 45 or so, will stay on the Court for 45 years. Democrats will literally have to win ten straight elections to be able to replace Radical Right Federalist Justices with decent ones. That could happen, but it is a long way off.
Actually, the paradox now is that if Democrats fight on this, they will just lose Senate seats in Red States. Republicans won North Dakota and West Virginia and Indiana by 20-40%. Pragmatically, since we cannot stop the new appointment, we are probably better off trying to win those Senate races and maybe having more power next term. But of course if we do not fight (and I always favor fighting for important things, even though this is too late), there will be a big Democratic revolt, and the Sanders types will refuse to vote for any of those Senators, and probably not vote in the Presidential election if someone they do not favor gets nominated. Republicans always had the advantage of bloc solidarity. Democrats mostly look for ideological purity, until it is very late in the game. The only reason they supported Bill Clinton is that they were desperate to win; otherwise they would have gotten him defeated, too. Most of these have not even learned from the present horrors, they are still yelling about Hillary being a neoliberal, and making a speech at Goldman Sachs. Useful idiots is an apposite term. The Nader experience should have wrenched them out of it, but it did not. Republicans are beset by no such moral dilemmas, they plow along in the quest for absolute power.
Just a short postscript. I do think that your argument. now taken up by others, that s president who is under investigation should not be able to appoint someone who will rule on those issues regarding him,, is the strongest one. But again, it is all about votes, and no argument will stop 50 Republicans from voting to confirm. The only way to perhaps stop this would be to shut down the Senate, but that could really backfire. And again paradoxically, if the Democrats somehow prevail in an argument that this should wait until the midterms, that will simply ensure that Heitkamp, Donnelly, probably Manchin, will lose, as Trump will exhort those Red-Staters to get the appointment through by defeating them. I guess the only hope would be a bunch of indictments in the interim, but that probably would not change the result of less Democrats in the Senate, and a Radical Right Justice who has no regard for the force of the last 100 years of laws and jurisprudence.
Great post, RD. Summarizes where we are (or rather where the Republican mfers are). Democrats shot themselves in the foot playing with the devil in 2008 primary, as simple as that. They needed a strong fighter after Bush II was installed in 2000 and he fucked it up royally for the Rs but they instead had to install a milquetoast.
I just keep going back to the 70s in India and emergency rule instituted by Indira Gandhi and boy, did she make a mistake in calling elections because the voters were beyond enraged and booted her out. Media was a BIG factor in bringing justice and democracy back. I unfortunately don’t have the same faith in the American media now or the elections. Maybe we will be so exhausted by 2020 to just say get rid of this trump fucker (even that is difficult with the stupid electoral college) and without him or the GOP paying any price at all for their ‘collusion’ with a foreign adversary.
We need investigative journalism, idealistic reporters. Like that WSJ reporter Carryrou who exposed the fraud at Theranos, we need brave reporters/journalists (and their owners) to expose what is happening to America. Fuck Murdoch and his Fox news. Bezos has money –set up shop in every county for fighting misinformation/disinformation. FB/Google/Twitter need to clean up their act.
Trump said he would announce his nominee on July 9th. The Democrats already have protests planned.
Today Democrats are protesting a policy that is no longer in effect anyway. They also want to abolish Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Good luck with that.
NOT we, you motherfuckers. You stole their children and who knows what else you have done to those poor children. And in your incompetence and cruelty, you may never reunite those children with the parents. SHAME!
Russia is on an extortion mission with your guy;
China is on an extortion mission with your guy and hurting farmers in red states;
NK is on an extortion mission with your guy;
Saudis are on an extortion mission with your guy;
Canada is retaliating with tariffs that would affect only red states;
EU is retaliating with tariffs on Harley and your guy was BEGGING Harley ‘I was so nice to you’ LOL…
YOUR GUY! but he puts babies in jails and you are happy… Goodluck with that!
I wouldn’t want to be in Jared’s tasseled loafers today.
I see the cr@wd@d has taken time out from his busy schedule of wanking to tentacle pr0n while his Great Dane buggers him up his spirochete-ridden arse. 😈
I cracked your code!
😈
😆
Went to an Alexandria immigration protest rally (couldn’t make it to the DC one this morning). About 200-300 people were there. Organized by a local church, real Christians who care about families and children!
I wish he was deported. We would not have to go through this nightmare now.
Never forget! Boot him out early and decisively in 2020. He is nothing but a trump sympathizer and Democrat killer.
Why does trump go after Maxine waters? Here is why.
and because he is a racist, sexist,…
You left it to me to finish: Traitor to the United States of America.
Always, 😊
Nope, not as simple as that. Why or how he bailed him out and the mere fact he was involved in a shady transaction and the details of which that SCOTUS Kennedy may not have wanted out is enough hold for trump over Kennedy.
Mr. Wright deliberately or foolishly misses the point. The point is that there is, as always, a connection, a comity, between various “conservatives, who then help each other out. There was a personal relationship between Trump and Kennedy, and Kennedy’s son had a part in that. “Owing a favor” is not the point. Kennedy being amenable to helping out Trump by resigning in time for a Republican Senate to confirm Trump’s nomination, and to leave before the cases on double jeopardy and can a president pardon himself are heard, is the point. It is absolutely wrong for a Supreme Court Justice to have a personal relationship with a President. But Republicans do it. Bill Clinton, out of office for 18 years, runs into the AG on a tarmac, in plain view of media, and people are horrified, as if somehow he would choose this site to have a discussion about his wife. But the fact that Kennedy’s son worked for a bank which was the only one to give loans to an indigent Trump,; and that Trump went out of his way to praise Kennedy at Gorsuch’s ceremony, are just pleasant coincidences. As I have said before, there is a web connecting virtually every one of these people, it is like a secret and corrupt college fraternity., a cabal.
Stephanie Ruhle also makes the same mistake. She says that Kennedy’s son worked in a different high level of the bank. Why did Trump openly praise Kennedy’s son when Kennedy was administering the oath of office to Gorsuch? Why would Trump know Kennedy’s son, much less enough to tell Kennedy that he had a wonderful son? How can supposedly well-meaning “pundits’ be so obtuse as to not see the connection, and the obvious fact that Kennedy wanted to help Trump out of he could? Kennedy had already named his clerks for the next term, leading court watchers to be almost certain that he would return; and then suddenly he decides to resign effective in less than a month. Just one of those crazy Republican things.
Yeah, I saw Ruhle’s tweet and I want her to explain it.
Please newly minted Democrats, stop saying you’re going to disband ICE if and when you take over the House. You’re just handing the Trumpians a winning issue on a silver platter.
Are you sure that’s a winning issue after the exposure of the Kiddie Koncentration Kamps?
I do think ICE needs a complete overhaul but disbandment sounds too much like completely open borders and that is a loser. After 9/11, it appears that fear trumps compassion most of the time at least to these people “…You’ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know . . . morons”
There is a difference between border patrol agents and ICE. Calling for ICE dissolution does not mean getting rid of border control police and yes, Democrats have to make it very clear what they are talking about so that the liar in chief cannot abuse their words and gin up fear among his base.
Obviously, Democrats are not a monolith like Republicans. But they have to run against them. And Republicans, and even more so with Trump, love to misrepresent Democrats’ positions. “Democrats are for open borders;; they love MS13 because they hate America, hate White people.” Never has a President spent every single day trying to foist Big Lies on the American people; and he has a state network to enhance them. Democrats mostly want to do good things, but they never seem to realize that their most enthusiastic initiatives either do not resonate, or more likely, cannot be achieved. Democrats cannot get rid of ICE under this President, so why say it? They can win on health care, on trying to save the safety net, on the deficit, trade, all sots of things. But just because someone won a primary in New York by a couple of thousand votes, does not mean that “Democratic Socialism” is the new rage. ICE is becoming like the Gestapo, and must be fixed, but that is a better campaign issue than getting rid of it. Republicans cannot win if the above issues are highlighted, so they try to come up with other ones, like flag burning or standing for the anthem.
Exactly so.
THIS.
This cat is too humane. A trump cat would have eaten that bird up.
Since Sue mentioned this passage from Blazing Saddles: 😛
Love it.
This made me LOL…
Not that woman!
https://twitter.com/MollyJongFast/status/1013481624401600517
Wow.
Molly is just photo-captioning what others may have thought about Hillary.
Yet, so close.
My own mother did not even complete high school. But she was well read, learnt classical music, taught her grandchildren the English alphabet! She was married to my dad when she was 12 years old and he was19 (early 1940s) but they appeared to have a happy marriage because I didn’t see them fight (only couple of times, maybe) and she exercised her free will and he let her and of course, he gave me the most independence (to her consternation because she worried).
Who would have thought, who would have thought that we’d have to fight those battles all over again? David Hogg and company grow up fast.
What a difference a generation makes! All the trumpanzees being older, maybe they will conk off in the next decade and David Hogg’s generation can make it right again.
Pray to God. Whatever God/dess you secretly rely upon, may she make it so. Help us because, sadly, it’s still true as America goes, so goes the world.
Class Action was an also-ran New Wave band from around 1985, but I did not know they had existed until the early part of this decade, when I found this on YouTube, though I forget how I came to it.
A share is a share is a share… NYT Motherfuckers…let the country burn but they make money
Happy Birthday (July 2) to Tsumugi Kotobuki of K-On!