Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson writes that now is the time to take the gloves off:
This is a moment to get mad and to get even. The way to do that is to crush President Trump and pulverize the Republican Party in the coming election.
If the Republicans want to push through a conservative justice to replace Ruth Bader Ginsberg -- and Lindsey Graham says they have the votes -- they will. And the Democrats won't be able to stop them. That means they have to focus on the election:
Democrats can make them pay by taking their power away. All of it.
If you’re angry about how the GOP is tilting the Supreme Court, the first thing to focus on is booting Trump out of the White House and into well-deserved obscurity.
Four years ago, too many Democrats — especially young people and African Americans — stayed home on Election Day. Just 80,000 more Democratic votes spread across Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania would have given Hillary Clinton, not Trump, the power to nominate three Supreme Court justices, shaping the high court’s ideological makeup for decades to come.
I don’t know who those Clinton-appointed justices would have been, but I know they wouldn’t be Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and whoever Trump picks later this week. The Supreme Court has to be made a turnout-driving issue for Democrats, the way it has long been for Republicans.
That doesn’t mean, however, letting the battle over replacing Ginsburg become the central issue in the campaign. Joe Biden needs to continue hammering away at Trump’s weaknesses: his abysmal and tragically dishonest performance on the covid-19 pandemic; the economic devastation that resulted from his failure to contain the virus the way leaders of other rich countries did; and his decision to respond to the movement against systemic racism by championing Confederate monuments and channeling bitter White grievance.
That means that, first and foremost, Trump must be sent back to Park Avenue to face the Manhattan district attorney. But the Democrats must also take back the Senate:
GOP Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Martha McSally of Arizona and Thom Tillis of North Carolina trail their Democratic opponents; while Cory Gardner of Colorado, Joni Ernst of Iowa, Steve Daines of Montana and Graham are also in serious trouble. If Democrats win any four of those seats, then even if Democrat Doug Jones gets ousted in deep-red Alabama, McConnell’s majority is gone.
It can be done. It's been done here. Remember that 1992 election when the Conservatives were reduced to two seats in the House of Commons? It all depends on how many people come out to vote.
Image: The Guardian
8 comments:
Young people stayed home in 2016 because young people tend not to vote. But of those who would vote, most of them are idealistic. And they saw nothing to cheer for in Hillary's campaign, or her career, or her party that reflected those ideals.
African Americans stayed home in large numbers because they didn't want to legitimize the farce of US-American "democracy," especially since it was merely choosing between two sets of abusers.
Biden was a major architect of the "anti-crime" legislation that Bill Clinton used to create mass incarceration. Clinton's attacks on welfare disproportionately affected African Americans because the racist economy renders so many of them unemployed or employed in the lowest paying occupations.
Obama bailed out the banksters, attacked the protesters who wanted them held to account and then continued to protect the banksters when they (often illegally) foreclosed on people's homes.
I said after the Democrats' 2-years of controlling the presidency and both houses of Congress that the only option was to reject the sham of electoral politics and do the hard thinking required to bring about real change through other means.
Throughout this time the Republicans remained the most dangerous and disgusting of the two parties, but voting for the "lesser evil" has led US-Americans to the sorry state they now find themselves in. (And if Hillary had started a shooting war with Russia in 2017, the results might have made today's 2020 seem like the lesser evil.)
You argue, as Chris Hedges does, that both parties are unreliable, thwap. But the unfortunate fact is that Americans only have two choices. There is no proportional representation there. Four more years of Trump will mean the end of the republic. It really is crunch time down there.
America needs healing. It's a people deeply riven and that's steadily worsening.
Many Canadian liberals scoff at Barack Obama for failing to implement the changes he promised in his campaigns. Yet, from his first inauguration, McConnell proclaimed the business of the US Senate would be to thwart any legislative initiative proposed by the executive branch.
For the first two of Obama's eight years the Dems had majorities in both houses of Congress but they were only filibuster-proof for the first 72-days. That meant the Republicans could derail anything in the Senate until they reclaimed it.
The Republicans declared bipartisanship dead when Obama was elected. It's been dead ever since. Since the Dems reclaimed the House, McConnell simply refuses to take up legislation the Dems send to the Senate.
McConnell exemplifies the worst in American politicians. He lives in mortal fear of the radical right that has captured his own party, his caucus. He doesn't hold a principle he wouldn't sacrifice for expedience, another way of saying he's totally unprincipled. I don't know why the evil old bastard doesn't just retire.
The Dems don't have the votes to block a SCOTUS confirmation, but there's no reason they can't rag the puck and run out the clock. It's only 120 days to the inauguration of a new Senate, hopefully one in which McConnell is reduced to minority leader. Current judges took between 69 and 114 days from nomination to appointment. All the Dems need to do is stall. Don't attend and deny quorum. Bog down appropriation hearings with amendments. Impeach a few people. Do whatever it takes.
Cap
He won't retire because he enjoys the power, Mound. Henry Kissinger once called power a terrific aphrodisiac.
The Republicans have been doing that to Democratic legislation for twelve years, Cap. If the Dems can pull it off, it will be richly deserved poetic justice.
The Republicans have been doing that to Democratic legislation for twelve years..
So true but it would solve nothing as the filibuster and winner take all politics is now ingrained in the US psyche.
A revolution of thought is required for the US to improve it's lot, before the nation turns upon itself , which is slowly happening.
A change in US thought will only come about when the US becomes inconsequential, an outcast perhaps, to world events.
TB
It's clear to everyone else on the planet that the United States has forfeited its role as a world leader, TB. The questions now are, "Can it go quietly into decline? Or will its decline be full of sound, fury, and violence?"
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