Tuesday Open Thread

13 thoughts on “Tuesday Open Thread”

1. OK, America…

   The New Republican party IS the Trumplican party. There were some signs in the recent primaries that CHBs’ GOP is still breathing, though I still see the Grand Old Party as worthy of being listed as endangered.

   The Trumplicans assert the principle that it is they who should be driving the bus. Every Trump supporter and apologist is responsible. They are blindly following a man (..and I definitely use that term loosely) who tells them they should be able to be their worst selves. And…they seem to be acting accordingly.

   They follow a narcissistic megalomaniac who believes he should be the King of America. He is encouraging those who ignore our Constitution, our laws, and our traditions. He is subverting and eroding every institution of American life, simply to feed his insatiable ego…and to keep his ass out of prison.

   I have very serious doubts that the GOP can, and will, free itself from the cancer that devours it. The voters of this nation must restore our country…no one else can do it.

   Mitch McConnell has been working the long game very effectively. Those who give credit to Trump for this activist Supreme Court are misguided. This is the Senate Majority Leaders’ doing. By hamstringing Congress into ineffectiveness and stealing SCOTUS seats, Mitch has given legislative proxy to the conservative majority on the high court. Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas are now in charge.

   It is a sad day.

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   1. We are now seeing the clear results of Senator McConnell’s long campaign to remake the federal judiciary.  While a Democrat was in the White House, outside conservative groups urged “their” judges not to retire from the bench.  If they did and there was an opening, McConnell used a wide set of tactics to deny or delay nominations.  When a Republican was in the White House, McConnell did his best to get a President to nominate as conservative a judge as could be confirmed, and then move as quickly as possible to confirm the nomination. 

      Now, with a 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court, a significant number of circuit courts with Republican-nominated and confirmed judges, and a sizeable over-representation on district courts, the results are clear.  Biden, former chair of the Senate Judiciary committee, has to be aware of current status, and is doing what he can to nominate and urge the Senate to promptly confirm judges to fill vacancies.  McConnell is back to a limited status of having some denials and delays.  If Republicans become a majority in the Senate, the campaign will have a new set of tools and Biden’s nominees will face a more difficult gauntlet.

      My only question is whether McConnell’s campaign will trigger a backlash beyond his expectation.  Perhaps he believes the backlash will be inchoate and ineffective in bringing change.  But with success, the Supreme Court has now issued deeply unpopular and poorly justified decisions, ones that could be beyond what McConnell considers judicious. 

      In response, advocates are proposing a broad range of modifications, including ideas once on the far fringes of policy options. We can hope that McConnell’s success is short-lived and has consequences once thought impossible.

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      1. Two Ways to Save Abortion Rights, from Josh Marshall:

         The clearest tools Congress has to rein in a corrupt Court are by either removing this issue from the Court’s appellate jurisdiction or simply adding more Justices to the Court. Both are clearly within Congress’s constitutional powers.

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      2. 

         One minor quibble.  A gauntlet is a glove.  You run a gantlet.

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   2. You just accurately described a minority leading the majority in a system that works by majority control.  Why the system does not work in past 30 years. 

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   3. Trump was only ever the guy willing to be crass enough to execute all the Republican dreams. The broader GOP with few exceptions would still go on with the same work without the Trump figurehead. Govs. DeSantis and Abbott are in a race to out-Trump Trump and each other on policy and practice, with several other GOP governors failing only on the publicity front. Republican officials at every level from national to local practice and preach the GOP Bible on elections, bigotry, and guns.

      Trump was just the guy pulling the trigger these past few years. The party itself is to blame for accumulating the nutcases now driving the crazy bus.

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2. Not even the perfunctory thoughts and prayers….

   Trump-Backed, Illinois Governor Hopeful Tells People to ‘Move On’ Hours After Mass Shooting, Later Apologizes | Watch (msn.com)

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   1. From what I know he had very little chance of winning to begin with.  This probably killed what little chance he had.

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   2. 

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   3. I read that quote to my wife and she asked, "What idiot said that" I told her and she said, "He just blew his campaign." Reminder: she grew up in Chicago, so she knows.

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3. “Why It’s Critical to Pass a Roe Law No Matter What the Court Does” from Josh Marshall at TPM

   As I’ve pressed the case for centering the 2022 election around the House and Two More Senators (‘Roe and Reform’), one of the most consistent rejoinders I get is “What’s the point? The Court will just throw out the law.” Or “There is no point unless you reform the Court at the same time.” These are reasonable questions. But they’re wrong both as politics and law.

   Here’s the short version: The near-term threat of the Court rejecting such a Roe law is real but overstated. But ‘Roe and Reform’ is the best strategy regardless of what the Court decides to do. The details – the long version – are important, though. So let’s go through them.

   The country is now in the midst of a long struggle with a corrupt High Court. It’s the anchor of minoritarian rule and the country can’t move forward with this Court’s corruption or pretensions. That struggle won’t be settled by a single decision, a single law or a single election. Here the issue is abortion. But the story is the same with guns, regulation, election law, health care generally and a bunch more. The current battle is part of that larger context and we should see it that way.

   How do you build support and a constituency to rein in the Court if it doesn’t exist now? Easy. Basically have the Court strike down a Roe law.

   It’s worth walking through just how that scenario plays out. That scenario would mean that the Court overruled Roe and that this triggered a backlash in which what seemed like the certain losers in the midterm election came back and won the election on the basis of that backlash. With that mandate, the new Congress passed a law making Roe’s protections the law of the land. Then immediately the Court concocted a new set of purported founding principles that determine Congress wasn’t allowed to do that.

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4. A Theocratic Dictatorship is the goal

   The shape of the Christian nationalist movement in the post-Roe future is coming into view, and it should terrify anyone concerned for the future of constitutional democracy.

   The Supreme Court’s decision to rescind the reproductive rights that American women have enjoyed over the past half-century will not lead America’s homegrown religious authoritarians to retire from the culture wars and enjoy a sweet moment of triumph. On the contrary, movement leaders are already preparing for a new and more brutal phase of their assault on individual rights and democratic self-governance. Breaking American democracy isn’t an unintended side effect of Christian nationalism. It is the point of the project.

   Americans who stand outside the movement have consistently underestimated its radicalism. But this movement has been explicitly antidemocratic and anti-American for a long time.

   It is also a mistake to imagine that Christian nationalism is a social movement arising from the grassroots and aiming to satisfy the real needs of its base. It isn’t. This is a leader-driven movement. The leaders set the agenda, and their main goals are power and access to public money. They aren’t serving the interests of their base; they are exploiting their base as a means of exploiting the rest of us.

   Christian nationalism isn’t a route to the future. Its purpose is to hollow out democracy until nothing is left but a thin cover for rule by a supposedly right-thinking elite, bubble-wrapped in sanctimony and insulated from any real democratic check on its power.

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   1. Thanks for the post. In order to read it, I have to re-create an account with the Times, which I don't want to do at this time.

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