Barack Obama badly misplayed his hand with Merrick Garland... [A] bolder choice—like, say, a young, progressive, black woman—would have put enormous pressure on the GOP to hold a vote for fear of looking, well, racist. And even if Mitch McConnell held the line, the possibility of a SCOTUS seat going to someone like that might have gotten some more Democrats, particularly of the progressive stripe, to the polls to hold their noses and vote for Hillary Clinton. Possibly even enough to swing the election. After all, a net change of 77,000 votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin (out of 13.3 million cast in those states) would have led to a second President Clinton. By contrast, very few people are going to get excited about getting another middle-aged white guy on the Court. In this case, Obama was demonstrating -- yet again -- his firm belief that if he acted reasonably, the GOP would meet him halfway and act reasonably in return. But that is, to be blunt, not the MO of the modern-day Republican Party. They are, and have been for at least a decade, an "ends justifies the means" kind of organization [worth noting, obvious tho' it is, the "ends" here are wealth concentration and white supremacy--d]. It may be that the Democrats are unwilling to respond in kind. On the other hand, maybe the blue team will decide that enough is enough, and that the time has come to fight fire with fire [worth noting, Republicans control all the branches of government making Democratic fire a lukewarm business, and the Democratic base has a tendency to fracture in ways that dilute the only firepower we have -- voting, to the extent that that has not already been diluted as well by disenfranchisement, gerrymandering, electoral-college skewage, and disinformation--d]. Particularly if McConnell moves forward with his plans, and brazenly applies a very different set of rules for voting on a nominee when a Republican is in office than he did when a Democrat was on office.
Thursday, June 28, 2018
Lessons In Civility -- Supreme Court Edition
via electoral-vote.com:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Liberals in the US often seem to act like battered spouses thinking they can placate their partners. It does not work. Call a helpline and make plans that do not cater to them. Your political enemies will have more respect for you if you do not pander to them.
Yes, for sure -- it is encouraging that it is becoming a commonplace across the left to respond to the projection, trolling, gaslighting, and so on from the neoreactionary/white supremacist organized right in the US/EU in the way we respond to abusers and bullies more generally. After generations of both-siderism (for thee!) and political incorrectness (for me!), it would appear that folks have finally begun to have had it. Who knows if media consolidation/social mediation have taken too solid a hold for good sense to prevail in time to regulate the deception and break up the monopolization and re-orient media to education and organization to prevent (even more) climate catastrophe and resource wars in time. I'm much more pessimistic than I used to be, though the bright beautiful righteous young people I teach do still give me hope...
Post a Comment