In the last Congress, Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont had the option to serve as the ranking member of Appropriations or Judiciary. He chose to take that role on the Judiciary committee which graciously allowed Sen. Barbara Mikulski to, at long last, finally have the privilege of leading the Democrats on a full committee. But Mikulski did not run for reelection and now Leahy is taking her place on Appropriations. That means that when the Senate begins the confirmation hearing for Trump’s nominee to replace Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court, it will be Diane Feinstein of California who will lead the skeptical opposition.
I’m not sure if Chuck Schumer will continue to serve on the Judiciary Committee now that he’s been elevated to Minority Leader. He probably will not. A good replacement would be Senator-Elect Catherine Sanchez Masto who has served two terms as Nevada’s Attorney General and who has experience working in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C.
The other Democrats on the committee (at least for now) include both of Minnesota’s senators (Franken and Klobuchar), Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Chris Coons of Delaware, and Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois.
Arrayed against them will be newly reelected chairman Chuck Grassley and an assortment of zealots. Jeff Sessions will probably join the Trump administration in some capacity, but the joyous duo of Ted Cruz and Mike Lee will be in attendance, as well as John Cornyn of Texas and Orrin Hatch of Utah. Freshmen David Perdue of Georgia and Thom Tillis of North Carolina will take up positions on the far right of the stage. If anyone might cause problems for the Trump administration it will be either Jeff Flake of Arizona or Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
I don’t actually expect either of them to cause problems on a Supreme Court nomination, but this committee would also handle the nomination for Attorney General. They’ll have some concerns about Trump’s deportation plans, I’m sure.
There will be no filibusters for executive branch appointments since Harry Reid did away with them, and the same is true for lower federal court nominees. There probably will be an opportunity to filibuster the Supreme Court choice, at least initially. If the filibuster proved successful, however, it might just be removed as an obstacle.
In general, therefore, it will be up to Feinstein and her colleagues on the committee to block people the old fashioned way. Remember that Robert Bork got an up and down vote and lost it.
If nominees cannot be blocked, they can at least be exposed and a political cost attached to their appointments. Will they ram home someone like Rudy Guiliani with all his conflicts of interest and temperament and truthfulness problems?
Some of these appointments will be handled by the Foreign Relations committee where it looks like Ben Cardin of Maryland will be presiding for the Democrats against chairman Bob Corker (assuming Corker doesn’t join the administration). But a lot of the action will take place in the Judiciary Committee.
Diane Feinstein, who will be 84 in June, may be nearing the end of a long Senate career, but she’s about to get a lot more famous.
I’m troubled by our leadership team, the fact that someone so tight with Wall Street (not to mention AIPAC) is our Senate leader. How can Schumer credibly message on things like antitrust or the need to get money out of politics? I get that some of this has to do with seniority and that’s how things have always been in the Senate. But this is a time of crisis and doing things the old way doesn’t serve us.
How can he lead the fight that democrats need? They need to show that they can stand up for something, anything.
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So Democrats will oppose a Christian fanatic but not another Wall Street stooge. Figures.
The best thing to do is leave the seat vacant. OTOH, it’s hard to envision anyone worse that Scalia anyway. Maybe that crazy Supreme Court Judge from Alabama, what was his name?
Believe it or not, Scalia was NOT the far right voice on the Court—that spot is held by either Alito or Thomas. Scalia is to their left because of a few First and Fourth Amendment decisions he authored or joined. Indeed, CJ Roberts is likely to the right of Scalia as well, if one ignores one Obamacare case.
Don’t get me wrong, we are dealing with guys at the very far end of spite-filled “conservatism”, but Scalia technically scores, say, in the low 90s on the standardized Conservative Monster test, while Alito gets perfect marks!
It is very hard to get one’s mind around just how crazed and results-driven these guys are as judges. The best word is zealot, I guess. We are in the hands of absolute zealots masquerading as judges. And Trumpco will now give us another, because you can never have too many!
Roy Moore. The name just came to me.
OK, time to contact Feinstein and tell her what we want from her. http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/state-offices?
And here is a hint everyone. Call, don’t write. Also call the state offices rather than the office in D.C. Staffers will run up the flagpole what they have to spend time talking about.
Unless you are a big donor, don’t bother calling your Congressman.
With comments like these, it’s no mystery why I have grown to mistrust this community. Too many cooks stirring poison into the soup.
For those interested in fighting for good policies which defend vulnerable Americans, call as many Congressmembers as you can. We can prevent a lot of damage. It’s very important to do so.
And someone actually upgraded it!
I’ve lost faith in this site. You can’t even post a diary without the republicans and their enablers shitting all over it. One member then deleted his diary, and got critized by the same people who ruined it.
I assume this is what Booman wants.
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Yes, it has become an echo chamber like DailyKos.
This is kinda depressing. The incoming senator from California, the outgoing Attorney General of California, Kamala Harris needs a seat on the Judiciary Committee. There may be a rule/practice against having two senators from the same state and the same party on a high profile committee, and if so, that’s a shame.
Harris needs to be promoted for leadership, and Feinstein, should do what it takes to make that happen.
There isn’t. Both Franken and Klobuchar are on the Judiciary.
The Democratic Party just set up a leadership team (check out Mark Warner and Joe Manchin) that kills the last best hope of mankind and uses Sanders and Warren as scapegoats. It is clear who has the power in this bunch, and they are ready to roll over and ask Trump to tickle their bellies.
That’s overwrought.
Tell me that in two years.
Why is it overwrought? Seems about right to me. I just noticed nalbar, above, re Schumer:
Good lord, man. If you’ve lost nalbar you’ve lost America. Faith in the Democrats is seeping away.
I’ll take that as a compliment, although these days (around here) it could be a gross insult.
What I have lost faith in is this site.
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nalbar, it wasn’t meant to be an insult, gross or otherwise. I was going for something closer to gentle teasing — but I was surprised to see you expressing skepticism about the Democrats.
Out of curiosity, what state do you live in? Reason I ask is, inasmuch as one does not join the national DP but rather a local unit of a state DP, I can see how the condition of the DP in the state you’re in could drive your view of the organization more broadly. And I’ve had this debate with acquaintances of mine that live on the west coast — and these people are leftists, far from liberals.
Anyhow, as I’ve mentioned here many times before, the DP where I live is a fundamentally broken organization. I keep beating on this point, perhaps more than I should, trying to get a response out of someone who will say, “hell yes — the Democratic Party in my state is a strong organization with an active, engaged membership that fights successfully for the interests of the people it represents.” And around here I hear nothing but crickets (although, my friends in California will push back a little against me).
Now, you may be thinking that I’m slyly making a straw-man argument. But consider the following proposition: “the Republican Party in my state is a strong organization with an active, engaged membership that fights successfully for the interests of the people it represents.” In Wisconsin that is a valid statement — and I will submit, the fact that the Republican Party is so strong here is quite related to the fact that the Democratic Party is so weak. And though I don’t know for a fact, since there are 32 other states where the Republicans control both houses of the Legislature and the Governorship too, I suspect it may be a valid statement elsewhere as well.
But it may not be valid where you live. If so, consider yourself lucky. Here, we’re approaching the point that it’s almost useless to engage in electoral politics.
I know it wasn’t meant that way. I’m in a mood these days, so it was aimed elsewhere.
I’m in California, Issa’s district. And damn, I was sure we had him. But then, I was sure Clinton would win, so what do I know?
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Ah. That explains a lot.
FWIW the leftists here threw everything we had into getting Clinton, and Feingold, elected. And it wasn’t nearly enough. And I was sure, right up to the moment that the returns started coming in, that Clinton would win — even though what we were hearing on the doors should have told us otherwise.
Everyone here is, or at least was, shocked and confused. Some are frightened and with good reason. But lots of people are stepping up and saying that they want to push back on this shit and now we’ve got a different problem: How do we pull these folks in, how do we develop and present a plan that they’ll want to take up as their own and get behind?
That will take us until about the end of next week to figure out. Then the work begins — but my point is, in California the opportunities to bring people together and start pushing back have to be almost limitless.
The Democrats aren’t the vehicle for this — certainly here, probably there too. We’re OK with this, used to it in fact; now the challenge is to build new vehicles.
I’m not as worried long term. People will step up. But huge damage will be done in the next 4 years.
You (I) like to think people learn their lessons. But my heart says no.
I’m the local leader of a small not for profit. It’s national, but it’s divided up almost state like. I lead one of the ‘states’. I deal with a certain membership that is beyond reaching. They believe the unbelievable. I have given up trying, and basically have told them they are irrelevant. That has not helped the situation at all, but it’s given me peace of mind, and allowed my to do my work within the organization.
I wonder if that has lead me to where I am with Trump supporters, and their enablers. I think that when you cast that vote for such a man, you are probably unreachible.
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You may turn out to be right but based on my experience I’d say: not here, and not yet.
Let me tell a story. I went out knocking on doors during the campaign with two groups of people. One of them made the decision to work in the far south suburbs of Milwaukee Co., focusing on a guy who we thought had a long-shot chance of winning an Assembly seat, and trying also to get out votes for Clinton and Feingold. These suburbs are solidly working-class and predominantly although by no means strictly white, and span the income spectrum from decidedly modest to well-off McMansions. This group I was with has done a lot of this stuff in the past; we’re not newbies at this so the approach we took, instead of starting out with “vote for the Democrats” (because we know better), was to start out with a conversation about the “rigged economy” and try to pivot to an argument that the candidates we were supporting stood on the same side of the economy as the voters did and would fight for their interests.
It was the first time I had been down in this part of the County so I had some trepidations for the first half hour or so of doing this until I realized: I was dealing with people who, in their experiences, their background, and their view of the world were not all that different from my own. They had just made up their minds that it made more sense to vote for Trump. Poorer voters seemed to be more critical of Clinton’s class politics; more well-to-do voters seemed to pay more attention to the corruption argument and believed that the Clintons operate as though the rules for everyone else don’t apply to them.
There were exceptions to be sure: more women than men for Clinton, public employees (esp. teachers, a very politicized group here) for Clinton as well. But that was the general pattern.
I’m going on at length about this because I’ve talked to a lot of my liberal (not leftist) friends since the election who seem to believe, and this is what I’m getting from your “heart says no” comment, that these voters have made a moral choice that will last forever and places them completely beyond the range of people we should consider as holding the same values as our own. If that’s what you truly think, then haven’t you ruled out ever reaching them? And aren’t you ensuring thereby that you’ll always lose?
It seems to me that before the election there was a popular theory going around (among liberals, interestingly) that “demographics is destiny” and that there were not enough right-wing voters for the Republican Party to succeed on a national level so there really was no need to engage them. Now that that theory has been disproven, the new theory is that these same voters are moral pariahs so it’s impossible to engage them. Now I admit I’m caricaturing a little here and I’m not sure you hold either of these positions although you do seem to come close to the second — but doesn’t it seem like these both lead to a dead end?
Or to put it another way: liberals always are asking, “why are these voters always voting against their interests?” But that question implicitly concedes the premise that there’s a contradiction between their interests, and their votes. If you believe that then why does your “heart say no”, why do you rule out that people will “learn their lessons”?
There are only two ways that I know of to square this circle. One is to believe that white people are so thoroughly steeped in white supremacy and racism that they’re incapable of understanding their interests. This is the so-called “white blindspot” theory, it’s been a fixture on the left since at least the 1970’s (probably before) and it always leads to doing nothing vis-a-vis white people because nothing is the only possible thing to do.
The other is to believe that there’s some shortcoming with the liberal theory of working-class people’s interests.
REALLY good comment.
What I meant by the admittedly imprecise sentence ‘people learn their lessons, but my heart says no’ is that ‘some’ Trump voters will get buyers remorse, and come around, if not in 2 years, then in 4.
But my heart says, no they won’t.
Going back to my not for profit experience. 8 years ago when I was a relative peon in the organization, I ran for election. I won a contested (very very minor, no big deal) election and was later asked ‘now what’s your goal?’ I answered with such an outrageous goal (I cannot be explicit) that I was literally laughed at. It involved inclusiveness (this is a huge issue for me) of a highly controversial nature, with huge opposition. I explained that when my time was up in two years, this demographic WOULD be with us. Then I went to work. I did not play by the ‘normal’ rules. I was hated. I was insulted. But two years later….I won. Contrary to what my opposition said, there was no, zero, impact by including this demographic. I proved them wrong.
But 8 years later the same opposition is still opposed. Still making comments. If they could, they would ban this group.
That’s because they are what they are.
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OK — understand you’re being vague for a reason but what I gather is that you won a political fight against determined opponents who, even though defeated and proven wrong are still dedicated to promoting bigotry. And dedicated too to being your opponents.
First of all, congratulations on the win. But you make a valid point, it’s demoralizing to realize that victories are only contingent things; your enemies remain your enemies. They never concede, they never go away and they’ll come back to stomp you in a heartbeat if they can.
Thing is, defeats are contingent things too. And I think you somewhat agree with this if I understand your “some Trump voters will get buyers remorse” correctly. You’re also saying that some won’t, and I agree: they’re beyond hope but if we believe our analysis about the conflict between interests and votes then we have to believe they are in the minority. And indeed, the neighborhoods I mentioned voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012 (in fact he carried Wisconsin) so that argues for a view that 2016 was an anomaly.
That was what was behind my comment about “not here and not now”. It is possible for people to get consolidated in a backward view of the world. The only thing we can do to prevent that is to be better organizers than our opposition — and our opposition is very good.
Yes!
Victories are contingent, but defeats are contingent too. I like that very much. I very much agree.
And you describe my victory correctly. On this site I have been accused (in a pejorative sense) of being a Social Justice Warrior. It’s not an insult to me. In my minor way, I fought for such Justice, and won. I’ll savor that my whole life. And in that two years I suffered defeats (it did take two years, after all), but those defeats were contingent, and I adjusted my tactics.
So, while I am worried about the next 4 years, I’m not all that worried about 4 years from now.
BTW, over the last couple days I was also called a weasel on this site. Who told that person my Patronus is a stoat?
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Overwrought? Perhaps and here’s hoping it is so. But we know Trump has some nasty people on his staff who have extreme agendas. It will take a strong team to fight it.
Schumer is a disaster.
I have no problem with Manchin.
If we are going to win rural votes, we may need to involve people from rural.
But these leadership appointments aren’t going to make a material difference.
From Robert Naiman, a petition that moveon.org is willing to sponsor if people want it :
Keith Ellison has been a champion against the TPP and failed trade policies like NAFTA that have hurt workers who voted for Trump [6]. Ellison led the fight of the Sanders forces in the Democratic Platform Committee to adopt explicit opposition to the TPP as part of the Democratic Platform. Ellison’s opponents in the DNC race are corporate lobbyists. [7]
Lee Saunders of AFSCME, Randi Weingarten of AFT, Mary Kay Henry of SEIU are all members of the Democratic National Committee and members of the Democratic Platform Committee. They opposed adding explicit opposition to the TPP to the Democratic Platform. [8]
Urge AFSCME, AFT, SEIU to support Keith Ellison for DNC chair and oppose corporate lobbyists by signing our petition.
http://pac.petitions.moveon.org/sign/senatedems-back-keithellison
In opposing far right justices, Dems have been the Gang that Couldn’t Shoot Straight, Roberts, Alito, etc, they couldn’t lay a glove on ’em. Bork is a long time ago and frankly from a bygone era, when rightwing partisanship wasn’t anywhere near as highly developed as today. Now, ALL senate Repubs agree that a justice MUST be a far rightwing extremist, no exceptions, and that’s exactly what we will get. So don’t get your hopes up over 84 year old Feinstein’s Fightin’ Dem Brigade.
In Roberts’ case, Dems insanely acted (and apparently thought!) that the guy was some sort of centrist! They didn’t even demand his time records when his firm had him running the GOoPer FL operation in Bush v. Gore. If Dems couldn’t figure out that CJ Roberts was a conservative activist masquerading as a judge, they can’t see their hand in front of their face.
Trump is and will be a spectacular incompetent who won’t read the briefing books, but his young white male DOJ lawyers will certainly present him with a list of a few 50 year old white extremists for Scalia’s seat, likely with excellent credentials along the lines of Roberts. So Dems won’t have much to work with, and nothing that a conservative judicial extremist says is going to be “disqualifying” any more–as I say, the days of Bork are another era entirely. Indeed, as we enter TrumpAmerica, the days of St. Reagan look like a golden age of good gub’mint, ha-ha.
And if Trump does happen to pick an obviously unqualified person for Scalia’s seat, he’ll be confirmed as well, because we have entered the Age of Incompetence.
The defeat of Clinton certainly ends the flickering hope of a new liberal Court, but it was not gonna happen even if she had eked out a victory, because we we going to lose the senate. So re-taking Scalia’s seat looks like it was never in the cards. And frankly a new rightwing extremist merely preserves the balance of power on the Court, and keeps Kennedy as the swing justice.
How long that can be maintained with all these old justices is up to the Fates now, but most likely (under expected actuarial tables) the Supreme Court will be lost to “conservatism” for 30 years under the regime of Der Trumper, and that includes reversal of those few victories of the past 3 years or so.
So I’ll be pleasantly surprised to see some actual fight out of Team Feinstein, but I have to say I sincerely doubt it. New Justice Conserva-Turd will be the first triumphant chapter in TrumpAmerica, unless the repeal of Obamacare gets that distinction…
It was during these nominations that Harry Reid said he was “keeping his powder dry”, presumably for bigger things. Unfortunately, as it proved out, these were the bigger things.
Agree with a quibble. The Clarence Thomas nomination wasn’t all that long after Bork’s. Nominated to replace Thurgood Marshall. That was the largest shift of one seat from far left to far right that we’ve seen at least since the 1930s or possibly ever. (But perhaps FDR got one or two through where the shift in a seat from right to left was of similar magnitude.) This is why Senate Democrats (who at that time held the majority should have rejected that nominee.
Scalia moved into the Rhenquist seat and that meant no change and the best that could be expected when the GOP controls the WH and Senate as it did when Scalia was nominated. Similarly, Roberts replaced Rhenquist, effectively no change right or left and again the best that could be expected when the WH and Senate were under GOP control.
Not so with Alito. On women’s and civil rights, he’s far to the right of O’Connor. She was very conservative on other matters, but probably wouldn’t have taken too much effort to find that Alito was further to the right in those areas as well. Democratic Senators should have pushed back much harder in opposition to this one.
Oh I certainly agree with all you say here. The enormous ideological shift of Thomas to Marshall would be hard to find a precedent for, but I have to say I don’t recall it being much discussed at the time. Marshall himself called on Daddy Bush not to nominate “the wrong negro”, but that call was certain to fall on deaf ears. All to placate the “conservative” movement in hopes of a fourth(!) term for Reaganism.
I’d even go further than you (perhaps) on Alito—he’s basically occupying the rightmost position on the Court, and with Roberts, Thomas and Scalia as his competition, that’s pretty terrifying.
Even worse, Der Trumper isn’t going to be nominating another Scalia like he says, he’s going to be nominating another Alito. The next justice will be rolled out as a Scalian, but will actually be to the right of Scalia. So Alito will soon have some competition for his position–because you can never have too many rightwing extremist Justices, essentially adopting whatever insane, unprecedented position the Federalist Society lawyer teams dream up!
As for the Dems, they did demonstrate that Thomas was clearly unqualified for the position and was simply a mediocrity groomed for the position because he had made the (sensible) career decision to manufacture himself into a Black Conservative. Every door was opened after that. Wasn’t he confirmed with like 51 votes? The humiliation and bitterness of his confirmation steeled him with a bottomless hatred of lib’ruls, determined to stay on the Court longer than the Great Chief Justice solely to spite the lib’ruls who destroyed his name by looking into his actual record of, um, public service.
There’s also some idea still out there that the public is going to find something out about the decision making process of the nominee, and what they think about certain crucial precedents and doctrines, and that this will make them somehow unacceptable to the nation as outside the “mainstream”. (And after Alito, what could possibly be outside the mainstream, ha-ha)
But obviously that’s been non-operative since Bork. The nominee says nothing substantive, answers nothing, there’s some senatorial spluttering, and the senate confirms them. So we learn nothing from them, we only know that they must have privately pledged to uphold Absolute Conservatism to the DOJ lawyer team that nominated them.
If they have been indiscreet in previously revealing the vitriol of their “conservatism” and have somewhere called for, say, discrimination in some form or another (like Alito) that comes out, but has no effect other than to embitter the nominee that their true colors have been (slightly) revealed. Likely even they (and their families) have some level of shame in holding the vileness of “conservatism” as their faith.
So basically, a prez beholden to the “conservative” movement and base will nominate an extremely far right justice, who will be confirmed if Repubs hold the senate. That’s the “process”. Everything else is Bread and Circuses.
What’s your bet? I’m wondering if they don’t opt for one of Bush Jr’s extremist white ladies on one of the circuit courts. But the odds on favorite still has to be a young white male. They’re the True Victims these days!
Clarence Thomas was confirmed 52-48. Of the 43 Republicans in the Senate at the time, 41 voted to confirm him. Eleven Democrats voted to confirm him. Seven of them were Southern Democrats who needed African-American votes for re-election. That was a different era.
Strangely,some Democrats argued that the question before them was “Has Anita Hill proven that Thomas sexually harrassed her?” Of course, the question was not whether to believe Hill or Thomas, but “Is Clarence Thomas qualified to serve on the Supreme Court?”
It helped Thomas that his views weren’t well-known. When questioned in the Judiciary Committee he managed to conceal his far-right positions. That’s more difficult to do these days.
I think the question for the Democrats is whether to try to let the “least worst” candidate for the Supreme Court be confirmed on the assumption that the administration will continue to nominate extremists — this is what led to Alito’s confirmation, in my opinion — or whether to push back on all right-wing extremists. Instead of complaining about Schumer and Feinstein, I think we need to put relentless pressure on them.
Agree. Although, “Der Trumper isn’t going to be nominating another Scalia like he says, he’s going to be nominating another Alito.” may be distinction with little difference.
(Pardon the length of my response but SC nominations fascinate me several levels. Not as long as it would have been if I had reached back further than 1981.)
It wasn’t. I never is. Yet, we can see how operative it has been in most nominations that received confirmation. The senate opposition to the WH party sends a signal to the WH as to how far they’ll go with the replacement nominee. Sotomayor was more ticks to the left from Souter than GOP senators would have been inclined to go along with if that were the only seat expected to be vacant during Obama’s first two years. It was well known that Stevens would leave and the GOP could get back the ticks to the left with Sotomayor with an equal amount of ticks right with Stevens replacement. Plus, not replacing O’Connor with a woman, the GOP had a deficit on diversity that they made up by confirming Obama’s first two nominees.
What the GOP never does is give up a tick to the right that they get with a tick to the left with their next nominee for a net zero combined change. Must factor in the seat and who is in the WH, Senate majority, and timing. For example, in 1981 RR may have been able to get Bork confirmed to replace Stewart which would have been steps and not ticks to the right. However, the political cost could have been huge. The “Saturday Night Massacre” wasn’t that far in the past and Bork would have reinforced RR’s not fully entrenched reputation as a rightwinger. Add in that the ERA wasn’t yet dead but floundering. So, he offered up a woman. A mixed bag to replace the Stewart mixed that when their pluses and minuses were totaled were roughly equal. The bargaining chips of both parties were played. Fem-Dems preserved most of Roe and the GOP got the ERA to die quietly and preserve the Senate majority through at least 2004.
RR’s next nomination was played as a twofer to replace Chief Justice Burger. Promoting Rhenquist got them rightward ticks and one can argue if Scalia replacing Rhenquist was comparable or additional rightward ticks. This came just over a month before the ’86 midterms and I guess neither party wanted a big battle at that time.
Next up for RR was Powell’s seat who not nearly as moderate as his reputation. However, Bork was still an extreme choice and still controversial. And the GOP had lost its Senate majority in the ’86 midterms. Senate Democrats beat that one back and the GOP had to settle for what appeared to be a comparable with Kennedy, mostly correct until very much later.
GHWB’s Souter nomination wasn’t a comparable. Not nearly as far to the right as the GOP expected and Democrats feared. Still, it did change the balance on the court. Tricky position for Senate Democrats that were still feeling some sting from rejecting Bork. It would be easy to give Ted Kennedy and Senate Dems credit for having perceived that Souter wasn’t as conservative as advertised and therefore, they made the right call in letting the nomination go through on a 90-9 vote. Still they might have merely been rolling the dice to keep their powder dry and got lucky. Either way, they still muffed the play. For public consumption and they guy in the WH they should have made it well-known that Souter was a bridge too far as Brennan’s replacement. However, as Souter is a decent man and none of likes a battle royale over SC nominations, we’re going to let this one go through. But President Bush and Republican Senators should not abuse our generosity in this instance by viewing it as a precedent. Another bridge too far won’t make it through the Senate.
Had they not muffed that play, we may never have seen the Thomas nomination to replace Marshall, and if we did, Senate Dems would have been well-positioned to defeat it and not have ended resorting to Thomas’ boorish/creepy behavior towards women in a last ditch rejection effort by fem-dems. (Who still seem not to get it that Republicans don’t forget and will always throw down a tit for a tat that liberals throw down first. If the slowest among us should have gotten that when Congressional Republicans were mouthing “payback for Nixon” in the Clinton impeachment.)
Whether Ginsburg and Breyer were in combination comparable to White and Blackmun can be debated, but what isn’t arguable is that there was no tick left while there had been significant ticks right with the five then most recent GOP appointments. And let it be known that in the future Democrats will return the favor for future Republican presidents by only considering comparables for successors to conservative SC seats. Then they would have had a giant peg to hang their hats on in rejecting the Alito nomination. (Not so easy to make a case that Roberts’ wasn’t a comparable, but the truth shouldn’t stand in the way of making at least some noise that it was.)
Obama could have cashed in some of his popularity chips with the Garland nomination. Republicans were on thin ice holding out on this for a better offer. They didn’t expect a ’16 WH win and if Hillary had gotten her expected landslide, they couldn’t count on her not to unsweeten the offer. Fem-dems played for that more left leaning nomination from a President Clinton. Obama played checkers and lost big time. It tested his authentic political and oratorical skills. Not half as good as advertised.
Rasputin:Nicholas & Alexandra
Diane Feinstein, who will be 84…
This is what’s wrong with the Democratic Party and much of the GOP too. i sure hope she is retiring at the end of this term.
I talked to Leahey at the convention – who seemed very old to me as well.
Patrick Leahy 76 nearly 77
About the same age as Bernie. He looks and sounds much older than Bernie.
It’s much worse for the DP because their bench is thinner and older than the GOP’s. Two decades of not putting its muscle behind younger candidates that are less inclined to walk in step with the party’s neoliberal orientation left the party with a paltry pool of younger talent from which to select. So, they end up with younger candidates that lose general elections.