Josh Marshall is hosting a characteristically thoughtful and multi-faceted intra-party debate/discussion on “The Critical Question Facing Democrats & The Court”. Click over to TPM and read the varied opinions of Marshall, Theda Skocpol and TPM reader “MS” for how Senate Democrats should respond when Trump nominates Justice Anthony Kennedy’s successor; then come back for a broader historical and strategic perspective.
(Pause.)
Welcome back.
This debate exists because Democrats today are in the rare—but not unprecedented—position of enjoying majority popular support but minority governmental power:
- They’ve won the popular vote in 6 of the last 7 presidential elections.
- They routinely win an overall majority of ballots cast for House seats.
- Democratic senators represent a substantial majority of the nation’s population (Republicans represent a substantial majority of the nation’s acreage);
- On a broad range of political issues—everything from taxation to immigration to health care to civil rights—Democrats have majority popular support; and,
- Their support is growing as a demographic wave of millennials and the following generation slowly and inexorably replaces baby boomers and their parents;
- And yet they hold no levers of power in the federal government.
Since this situation is both rare and runs counter to our national myths, Democrats are (understandably) scrambling to make sense of their situation and how to respond to it. Here’s where history can be of some help:
- This has happened before. It happened in the 1850s when the electoral college and the 3/5 rule kept slaveholders in power despite a growing anti-slavery majority (fueled in part by mass immigration from Ireland and Germany). And it happened in the 1920s when a rural, white, Protestant minority desperately clung to power in the face of mass migration from southern and eastern Europe, and the beginnings of the Great Migration by African-Americans out of the South.
- If history is any guide, there’s no way this ends without massive and disruptive change. The conflicts of the1850s resulted in the Civil War and Reconstruction. The 1920s ended with the Great Depression, followed by World War II.
- Again, if history is any guide, the changes wrought by the emerging majority when it takes power will be worth it. Or at least, they’ll be considered worth it by that new majority—e.g., the end of slavery, the New Deal, the defeat of fascism.
When it comes to the tactics of a SCOTUS nomination, Democrats ultimately have no power to control anything about the process. A Republican president will decide who to nominate and when. A Republican Senate will decide what hearings, debates and votes to hold and when. If Republicans unite behind a nominee, Democrats are powerless to stop that person from becoming a Supreme Court justice.
Democrats do have the power to decide on what terms and with which tactics they will engage the fight over this Supreme Court nomination; and by doing so, to make it as costly as possible for Republicans to seat a Trump nominee on the Court.
That’s what Pelosi did when W. Bush tried to end Social Security. She united her side, fought, and thereby made it clear that any weakening of Social Security would belong solely to the Republicans.
A Supreme Court confirmation battle differs from a legislative fight; and there’s every reason to think Trump will eventually fill Justice Kennedy’s seat. The strategic imperative for Democrats is to make that victory as costly as possible for Republicans.
Early in the Civil War, after the Battle of Shiloh and its unprecedented casualties, President Lincoln replied to those who called on him to fire Gen. Grant, “I can’t spare this man; he fights.“
Better than any general of his era, Grant understood the fundamental power dynamics of the Civil War. The Union had at its command more people and more resources. Therefore, its strategy ought to be to unite its forces, and take the fight to the secessionists, fighting on terrain as favorable as possible, but fighting regardless.
Personally, I think fighting this nominee on the grounds that no president being investigated for obstruction of justice and conspiracy with a hostile foreign power to defraud the US of free and fair elections is the way to go. But what I think doesn’t matter. What matters for Democrats is that they unite and fight; and then, like Grant, that they do it again and again and again.
It’s the only way a powerless majority ever takes power.
Crossposted at: masscommons.wordpress.com
. . . corruption prosecutor” ( = “TPM reader MS”?) suggested in email to Josh:
And as I suggested, cite/quote that verbatim when you contact your Senators, whether Dem or Banana Republican, as this argument is unassailable on its face, with no inherent “taint” of partisan political or policy advantage (e.g., sustain or overturn Roe v Wade, political gerrymandering, etc.) either way. It is simply the only right thing to do.
Not that that means it will carry the day, obviously. Giving Merrick Garland fair consideration was also simply the only right thing to do, and we all know they still didn’t. But I agree: it’s the best argument/strategy available, and — even if it fails — the one that will carry the greatest shaming value on moral/ethical grounds.
Thanks, I enjoyed this.
The Great Depression was brought on by lassez faire unregulated capitalism, demanded by the Robber Barons of their bribed Repub reps. 1920s financial con-men (very like Donald Trump in their mendacity) corrupted the banking and securities markets through massive fraud, bringing on an enormous financial crisis, which was then grossly mismanaged by a Repub prez. This was a Repub-dominated era, but I’m not sure that Repubs were not the actual political majority at the time. The idiocy of unregulated capitalism as an economic panacea was a generally held belief, just as it is today.
As for the 1850s, the South ultimately called the question by rashly and petulantly seceding–an event which we (hopefully!) would willingly agree to today. But in any event, we can’t resolve the abject failure of 21st century America by violent civil war, since the federal government (and military) is in the hands of the Confederates, and their domestic nuts are the ones with the home arsenals. They’d happily gun down lib’rul children.
I am skeptical that our own history has much to teach us about the current condition of FailedNation, Inc. We are not really in a regional conflict, we are in an urban/rural conflict, where rural America has disastrously been given greater political voice through our failed constitution than urban America. Our system cannot really be reformed in any meaningful fashion, especially with a Supreme Court that permits all Repub election ratfucking schemes and simply does not agree that there is a universal right to vote. The civil war, of course, resulted in a completely revised constitutional system, which is impossible today.
There is no point to an urban majority impotently demonstrating in their own cities or acting out by wrecking them–that’s what the reactionary white minority wants to see. The key point now is what’s the vision of the resistance? Like the 1850s, civil disobedience is likely the only option since the government is not only paralyzed but in the hands of the Confederate enemy. Economic boycotts of the plutocrats? That hurts workers. Refusal to pay federal taxes for militarism and fascism, like Thoreau? Perhaps the answer is the simple breakup of the union and retreat into an impotent collection of Red and Blue states and a Blue boycott of the federal treasury?
Since the “conservative” movement has now given citizens a first amendment constitutional right to refuse to pay public union dues if one simply disagrees with the political positions taken by the union recipient, why can’t I refuse to pay federal taxes when I strongly disagree with the political positions taken by the federal government? What’s the functional difference?
. . . test case to end up before this rightwingnut-majority SCOTUS?
Please don’t forget to let us know how it turns out.
Thanks for your response, and for the kind words.
In its Declaration of Secession, South Carolina reserved the most words for its outrage at the massive (and effective resistance) across the North to implementation of the Fugitive Slave Act.
Individual acts of tax resistance (like Thoreau’s) played a tiny part in the struggle (largely because there was no federal income tax, and most federal revenues came from tariffs).
Collective acts of resistance—from the Underground Railroad, to local and state laws blocking coordination with the federal government to enforce the FSA, to massive crowds, to raising money to buy the freedom of escaped slaves—grew in scope and scale throughout the 1850s until, by the end of the decade, the FSA was effectively null and void in at least 15 states.
In addition, the North was demographically and economically more powerful than the secessionists.
Another factor: the science and practice of large-scale nonviolent resistance to dictatorial state actions is far more developed today than it was 170 years ago.
“Another factor: the science and practice of large-scale nonviolent resistance to dictatorial state actions is far more developed today than it was 170 years ago.”
I can try to boil that science down for you,
You have to be willing to take a beating. Then, when you’re all healed, take another, worse beating. You can never, ever lash out in anger and resort to violence. If you do, you have to stop all demonstrations, reorganize with concentration on discipline, and then start again. You will always be defined as violent by the powers that be, and the only way to overcome that is by making the accusation laughable on its face. People will die, and you must keep you hands in your pockets.
.
You are correct – and I am simply awed by people who are able to do what you describe.
This scene has always resonated with me.
Can you imagine the courage?
.
. . . as I read your previous comment.
I wonder if that courage exists here anymore. Suspect we’ve gotten too fat and lazy, spoiled by privilege, complacent, and taking for granted the rights, freedom, and independence those folks lusted after to the point of consciously and voluntarily subjecting themselves to certain injury and possible death to win it.
And it took a certain genius to understand that this, not violence, was the strength that would overcome the vastly superior colonial military might.
Any mass movement for change risks taking a beating.
However, according to scholars like Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan, those that use nonviolent strategies and tactics are 1) more likely to succeed, and 2) more likely to suffer fewer casualties, than those that use violent strategies and tactics.
“They find that nonviolent resistance presents fewer obstacles to moral and physical involvement and commitment, and that higher levels of participation contribute to enhanced resilience, greater opportunities for tactical innovation and civic disruption (and therefore less incentive for a regime to maintain its status quo), and shifts in loyalty among opponents’ erstwhile supporters, including members of the military establishment.
Chenoweth and Stephan conclude that successful nonviolent resistance ushers in more durable and internally peaceful democracies, which are less likely to regress into civil war.” — https://cup.columbia.edu/book/why-civil-resistance-works/9780231156820