When I first heard that Justice Anthony Kennedy was retiring I performed a heroic face palm that lasted probably three minutes or more. Then, the first optimistic thought I had was along the lines of the following:
Within hours of Wednesday’s surprising retirement announcement from Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, two moderate Republican women in the Senate became an important focus of Democrats seeking to prevent President Donald Trump from appointing a new justice who could reshape the court for decades to come — or at least temper how far right it might bend.
With little power to defeat a nominee outright on their own, Democrats began to look at Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska as potential allies in their cause.
Both are moderates who support abortion rights and they are likely to face growing pressure should Trump put forward a conservative nominee who might threaten to severely curb those rights.
My optimism lasted maybe fifteen or twenty seconds until my senses got the better of me. Hoping for either of those two women to protect abortion rights when they’re finally put to the test is almost certainly a fool’s errand. They will both fold.
Then I thought, well, what if pressure was brought to bear like we’ve never seen before? What if a million women showed up in Maine or Alaska in these senators’ home towns and simply refused to leave? Of course, men would be welcome to join, too, just as they were in the Women’s March in Washington DC and other locations around the country. In addition to the organizers of the women’s marches, I thought about the kids of Stoneman Douglas High School who briefly mobilized a nation and convinced the Florida legislature to finally pass some modest gun violence legislation. Maybe my vision wasn’t just a fantasy. Maybe it could happen?
I can’t think of anything else that might work, and a person needs a reason to have some hope. Right?
As bad as thinks are, you really have to laugh at the media. The author of the NBC article calling Murkowski and Collins `moderates’ just shows their cluelessness.
Collins and Murkowski would crawl over a million female dead bodies to vote for whomever the nominee is.
And once appointed, that is figuratively what they will have done.
They are rich, and they are white. They, and at least 4 generations of their descendants are immune from anything this Supreme Court could decide.
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Yeah, Collins wears a Moderate hat sometimes, but underneath she’s just another coward. She and Murkowski both fold faster than cheap lawn chairs when any pressure is put on them. Don’t bet the farm.
I do hope that women will again rise to their feet and fight for Roe v Wade as well as the other laws that will be in Republican sights. I was never so proud as when women marched after the Inauguration. Does it make a difference? I think it does, as the collective hearts and spirits of people come together in protest. Trump can never live down the fact that women marching in DC made his crowd look like a lawn party.
What will really matter, though, is getting voters registered and into the voting booths. I’ve already contacted my Senator and hope others are doing the same. Collins and Murkowski can’t be relied upon to do the right thing. But we have to.
Collins is useless but Murkowski is a bit different. Having lost her primary, she won as an Independent and has an Alaskan family legacy. I don’t know that would overcome a nominee’s likely response: “Oh no, Roe is settled law; I would never vote to repeal.” Stare desisis means nothing to judicial conservatives unless it is laws they like. Citizens United would be settled law for them but Miranda? Not so much.
Serious question: would Republicans actually take the Anti-Abortion Bullet out of their campaign gun by going through with a Roe V Wade reversal?
That particular wedge issue played a huge role in building the “Religious Right,” purged the GOP’s moderate center, likely served as another campaign finance pass through like the NRA, and is only second to White Racial Resentment in turning (and keeping) flyover country “red.”
Seems like it would be a ultimate act of hubris by conservatives to think they don’t need legal abortion anymore.
Exactly what I’m thinking. You know guys like McConnell don’t want to see Roe go down. However, they’ve backed themselves into a corner which makes it all but inevitable (unless Mitch is making secret calls to Collins and Murkowsky: “Please Susan, please Lisa — don’t fold! We need your sweetness and concern for all the little ladies.”
This
They won’t over turn it, but hollow it out. Then, after a few years of it being just a billboard with nothing behind it whose only purpose is to rile up the base, they will remove it as `useless’.
They have had years to plan this, and don’t think for one minute McConnell and Roberts have not spoken about it, and planned it all out.
But the whole abortion issue is really a distraction. Over turning Roe is not, and never has been, the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal is to end, or make extremely difficult, the ability for women to control their reproductive health.
The ultimate goal is the Pill.
Over the next couple years States will pass laws restricting Plan B. Then restricting the Pill. The Court will declare every law constitutional.
It’s actually already happening with the laws allowing pharmacists to opt out for religious purposes.
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they will go after the privacy. right to the heart of it. because they no longer need to compromise with squeamish Justices. they will have five hardline anti-privacy votes. they will kill Griswold and the rest will follow.
At the very least, we should never expect the Court to find anything like Medicare for All or a repeal of Citizens United constitutional.
Exactly. Policy-wise, the “pro-life” movement has always been about defending White Male Patriarchy and creating medical apartheid.
My father practiced medicine on both sides of Roe V. Wade. We always cite the back alley abortions and women forced to travel aboard pre-RvW, but he told me there were plenty of OBGYNs/GPs in America more than willing to do them for middle/upper income white women in America hospitals, in plain sight, and forge the paperwork afterward.
So needless to say, Mike Pence’s children and grandchildren will always be able to an abortion when they need to cause no one is going to require private suburban hospitals medical records be audited.
I wonder about this too. They would their biggest wedge issue over the baby-killing Democrats.
Depress evangelical turnout, enrage non-evangelical female voters.
In the past, no, they wouldn’t have.
Now?
Now, they will burn the country to the ground to confirm the fifth vote to overturn. But they won’t need to if the two pro-choice Republican senators are willing to vote with them.
I don’t doubt they’ll push to sit a fifth vote….but will they follow through right after with another Wingnut Welfare funded lawsuit to force the vote and reverse the law or, as others have pointed out, just use that vote to find a bunch of horridly discriminatory state restrictions constitutional, but keep RvW standing, so they can still win those +5 to +10 R districts?
Cause that is about the margin of Republican votes that are Pro-Life single issue voters who would stop voting or become swing voters.
What about Senator Flake? He said just a week or two ago that he would withhold his vote for all nominees to Federal Circuit Courts until Congress held a vote on Trump’s insane tariff tangent. Flake has a ton of leverage right now, doesn’t he?
I know, just kidding. What sanctimonious statement will Flake make when he folds and hands over his vote for a Dominionist white supremacist? It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
Those two women are nothing more than place holders. They vote how the men tell them to and serve no other purpose.
I get the frustration but remain grateful they didn’t fold on Obamacare. My work brings me into contact with people who would be dead or bankrupt if not for Obamacare and, as of a few months ago, my family might be among them — as my 3 year old was in the ICU and hospital for five days and we’re now wrestling with a lifelong condition that, if not managed well, could kill him.
The only malleable integer is cable media.
Boycotts.
Not just Fox advertisers, but advertisers for every greedy damn irresponsible show.
Get Judge Jeanine off the air. But also
make Don Lemon frown. Make the languorous Rachael Maddow say a single thing that isn’t Trump reactive.
Cable news elected him.
They keep him powerful.
They keep him as the only subject in the realm.
Maybe we give them a spanking and a million protesters won’t be represented for two days of news cycles by a dozen antifa teenagers.
Hmmm, doesn’t seem like I’m seeing a “how” in your message.
Lots to say about this post but a couple points stand out. It’s very hard to say what Roberts attitude will be regarding Roe/Casey. He’s happy to overrule any precedent if the result will harm the Dem party and help Repubs maintain illegitimate anti-democratic control—see Citizens United, Shelby County and the recent Texas racial gerrymander. He’s also happy to overrule any precedent that hems in the plutocrats and CEOs he spent his entire career enriching and being paid off by.
His strange aberrational vote upholding Obamacare indicates he has some political boundaries about doing simply everything that the “conservative” movement demands. But he did vote with the anti-Roe forces in the last 5-4 abortion case which said that Tex-ass had gone too far by essentially closing 90% of women’s health clinics. With Kennedy’s complicit retirement, that case is now doomed. At a bare minimum Roberts will join/author opinions upholding every type of abortion restriction a state wants to enact, as will any Justice on the Federalist Society list that their puppet Trumper is looking at. Roe/Casey will be a dead letter whether it is explicitly overruled or not.
It’s certainly wishful thinking that the useless Collins/Murkowski/Repub woman would oppose another Federalist Society Scalia clone that their menfolk select for them. These women are not statesmen, they are Stepford wives. The more interesting question is why the two retiring white male Trump haters (Flake and Corker) would give our political criminal another illegitimate Justice. Yes, because they are pro-corporate “conservatives” and that’s all that matters. But does that really trump (so to speak) the fact that Putin’s Boy destroyed their political careers? Anyway, I’d put some pressure on them, not the utterly useless ladies, whose empty promises are risible. Collins simply sounds braindead at this point.
As for what all these doofus Repub senators “know” about a nominee, the only fact that matters is that every Trumper nominee has been thoroughly vetted for Scalia-clone uniformity. They will all be hostile to Griswold, Roe/Casey, and the gay rights cases, as they believe them all to be illegitimate decisions. They are not going to enforce any of them, even if they don’t overrule them. The question for the nation is why should we have an entire court of Scalias? What kind of a serious nation with an independent high court system would do such a thing?
The answer, of course, is that only a third rate potemkin government like that of the USA would do such a thing. We are a military superpower with a third rate domestic government, sort of like Bismarck’s Reich. That is the true legacy of “conservatism”.
Finally, both the French and Russian revolutions understood the importance of shutting down the national capitol to rid themselves of their third-rate failed governments. Our asset is our marchers, hundreds of thousands strong. They could be organized to blockade the Congress in alternating waves, and simply shut down the streets around the Congress from Sept until Nov—so no senate meetings with Trumper’s illegitimate nominee, no hearings, no votes. Spectacles of a million marchers for a day are inspiring, but they don’t cause too much difficulty for McConnell’s Monsters. Repubs simply ignore them, as their plutocrat masters order.
The (illegitimately) governed have to start actively withholding their consent, because there is simply no institution left to resist white nationalist strongman Trumper and his fascist militarist corporatist party. We have been pushed to the brink of the abyss.
One could argue, Robert’s Obamacare ruling was more Machiavellian genius than principled stance.
As long as Obamacare exists, Republicans can ratfuck it from the long over due healthcare legislative step that Obama anticipated we’d work to improve on INTO a horrendous high cost/low care zombie that we need to repeal and NEVER try to reform healthcare again.
…..AND (and this is the political genius of Robert’s “betrayal”) Obama and the Democrats get 100% of the blame.
We’re already to a point that most moderate swing voters and a lot of progressives damn the legislation while refusing to acknowledge (or downplaying) Republican efforts to force its failure.
I would agree with you that Roberts’ gutting of the Medicaid expansion in the SCOTUS ruling was awfully Machiavellian; that part of the decision displayed racial animus as well.
The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court has presided over one racist 5-4 decision after another. He’s a more consequential racist than all the white-hooded Klansmen combined. This is not a controversial conclusion at this point.
However, community member Parallax explains in their comment below why your broad summary of the ACA is more than a little off.
I’d also encourage you to observe the results of recent elections. Voters are NOT blaming Democrats for the conservatives’ ratfuckings of the ACA.
Regarding Collins and Murkowski, just look at their voting records. As with Flake, they vote with Trump far more often than not. The thought that these two women would suddenly become women first when they have always proven to be republicans first when it gets right down to it, is definitely a fools errand.
As for Trump, I don’t think abortion and satisfying a long standing goal of the right is his main concern. What Trump is after is a stacked court that will pull his butt out of the fire when the indictments come down.
If I were the democrats instead of the sucker play of trying to shame McConnell using hypocrisy, i.e. we should wait until after the election since that was your argument in preventing a vote on Obama’s pick, knowing they are immune to it, they should argue that given he is under a criminal investigation, there should be no pick from the President until that is resolved, favorably.