572

There is a MSM meme out that now that the GOP was successful in ‘plowing through’ a nominee credibly accused of mulitple sexual assaults, besides being a serial perjurer, a partisan hack, and Trump’s handpicked nominee to protect him from the Russia probe, the Dems are just going to go quietly into the cold, dark, night and move on. 

This comes from their flawed analysis of the problem in the first place-which is that both sides need to just stop being mean to each other.

Now the theory is the Dems-and American women-should just forget it all and move on. 

The Supreme Court’s legitimacy is in tatters. Conservative forces in the country, led by the Republican Party, have completed a judicial coup, decades in the making.

“Republicans rushed through Brett M. Kavanaugh’s confirmation to avoid the possible consequences of an election. They aborted a full investigation because they feared what it might find. They made themselves complicit in a presidential attack on Christine Blasey Ford, a brave woman who asked only that her case against Kavanaugh be taken seriously.”

“After all these outrages, there will be calls for a renewal of civility, as if the problem is that people said nasty things about one other. But the answer to this power grab cannot be passive acceptance in the name of being polite. The causes and consequences of what just happened must be acknowledged frankly.”

The media thinks we Democrats just  need to passively accept this and go on being polite. A major proponent of this both sides do it school, Kasie Hunt was just on Andrea Mitchell, approvingly arguing that Chris Coons seemed to close the door on going after Kavanaugh hard when the Dems take over. That had better not be true: I’ve been a life long Dem but the one thing that would lose me is if the Dems don’t go after Kavanaugh, Trump and his other obstructors forcefully after winning back at least the House.

FN: Ok so I wrote this chapter on October 8, 2018 and here on July 16, 2019 we have yet to see the House Dems go forcefully after Trump much less Kavanaugh and other obstructors forcefully, If Pelosi has been forceful on anything it’s going after AOC. So right now I have to admit-the Dems are losing me-they have until November 6, 2020 to make this right.

So while the Dem base hasn’t moved on from Kavanaugh the leadership clearly has-moved on to normalizing Trump and passing lots of messaging bills that they seem stunned aren’t dominating the news cycle. Pelosi has a few times let slip that she doesn’t want to impeach Trump-ie protect and uphold the Rule of Law-because that would be a distraction from ‘Our For the People agenda.’ 

We’d love to hold Trump accountable but that would distract from the meaningless messaging bills.

End of FN

The process that rammed Kavanaugh onto the Court was deeply flawed-only 7% of his documents were provided. Now that he’s been successfully ‘plowed through’ it seems we will soon be seeing a lot more documents from his time in the Bush WH-including just how many emails he got about the stolen Senate Dem emails he allegedly knew nothing about.

Now that Kavanaugh has been rammed through supposedly we’re just supposed to ignore all the docs that should have been available during the hearing. Then there is the just despicable way they treated the allegations of Dr. Ford-as well as those of Debbie Ramirez-which despite all the faux outrage that Diane Feinstein knew of Ford’s allegations in July, it turns out that Kavanaugh-and so likely Trump and McConnell-knew all about Ramirez’s allegations by at the latest in July-and Julie Swetnick who has been slandered because of who her lawyer is.

I have to say I’m pretty disgusted at Dems like Chris Coons-whose vaunted bipartisanship got us nothing but a phony investigation to ram through this phony ‘Justice’ by this phony ‘President’-have the nerve to slander Ms. Swetnick without even knowing the facts. Who told Coons they’re not credible-his best friend Jeff Flake?

Let’s be clear on a few things.

1. The Dems didn’t lose because of Avenatti. Honestly the attacks on him are pretty silly. He’s done as much as anyone to get us where we are today-it was thanks to him and Stormy Daniels that we got the SDNY investigation that led to Michael Cohen pleading guilty to eight counts.

FN: It’s true that in retrospect Avenatti turned out to have major problems-even Stormy Daniels ended up suing him-though the payment to Daniels led to Cohen’s conviction and Trump’s status as an unindicted co-conspirator. . That’s still not a legitimate excuse for dropping the ball as the Schumer led Democrats did during the fight-and since, of course, both Schumer and Pelosi have just forgotten the whole thing. The big picture is that Me Too is not as strong as it may seem-at the end of the day as long as you are a Republican you can get away with anything-as the other Republicans will all defend you and Democrats like Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, and Hakeem Jeffries will declare going after you is ‘just not worth it’ and that you are ‘self impeaching’ because the other GOPers are defending you.

So I have no idea why anything connected with him is dismisses out of turn-only because so many ‘Democrats’ seem to get their understanding of the world primarily on what Republicans say. Many think Pelosi is terrible for the party-why? Because: Republicans attack her. We have to find that Dem House leader who the GOP will approve of. The Repugs hate Avenatti? Then we must drum him out of public life in order to get on the good side of Devin Nunes and Mitch McConnell.

2. Democrats are not going to get over this. The condescending attitude of the mainstream media right now post Kavanaugh’s fake ‘nomination’  is very similar to after Trump’s fake election ‘win.’ The media figured with time the Democrats would just shut up and sing ‘Heil Trump!’

FN: But it must be admitted in retrospect the Dem leadership largely has though the base still desperately wants accountability.

They were dead wrong and actually in time the media actually got around to our position-that Trump’s ‘win’ lacks legitimacy and it’s very unlikely that the Russia inference on his behalf didn’t help him win. 

Don’t get me wrong-we Dems are pretty forgiving. As it is, at least prior to the Kavanaugh fiasco, we held both the FBI and Supreme Court in higher stead even than the GOP which is saying something when you remember these two institutions elected the last two Republican ‘Presidents.’

And even after McConnell’s dastardly theft of Merrick Garland’s seat we have basically accepted Gorsuch as a Justice. But Kavanaugh is a bridge too far for a number of reasons: lack of documents, the perjury, the credible accounts of sexual assault and the fact he was chosen to protect Trump from Russia.

The ranking Dem on the House Judiciary, Jerrold Nadler warned that if the Senate failed to vet Kavanaugh properly the Dem House-I’m presuming-would have to. The Senate failed spectacularly.

As Charles Blow says, this is war. 

Darn right and this isn’t over until Kavanaugh is vetted properly and once the vetting is done he is impeached-if that’s where the facts lead.

Blow emphasizes the need to understand the stakes. Trump and the GOP have been talking a lot about ‘rule by mobs’ the last few days. What they really mean is rule by democracy. They are desperate that the minority continue to dominate the majority. Right now as E.J. Dionne Jr-linked above-points out Kavanaugh was nominated by a ‘President’ who received 46% of the vote and confirmed by a ‘Senate’ that won 44% of the vote. We know about Trump’s lack of legitimacy. What is appreciated much less is Mitch McConnell’s lack of legitimacy-the popular vote of his body is even lower than Trump’s.

Since 1992 the GOP has won the popular vote in the Presidential election just once. They lost the House by 7 points in 2012 yet held onto it, they lost the Senate in 2016 yet still preside. No matter what happens in the Presidential or Congressional elections, the SJC moves further to the Right. This begun with Nixon in 1968 who threatened Abe Fortas into retiring. The Dems have not held the SJC since. That’s 50 years of GOP domination of the Court-and please save me the flowery talk  that it’s a nonpartisan body-Bush v. Gore debunked that once and for all.

By the way, some GOP apologists kvetch that liberals think every GOP President is illegitimate. Uh, that’s because:

https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1049003723077369857

Just so can you imagine if a Democrat ever did win the Presidency without winning the popular vote?

A new recent book compares our current age to the US prior to the Civil War. This is very apt. Then the South was only willing to stay in the Union so long as it could dominate it as it had for the past 60 years-prior to Lincoln’s election.

This Trump apologist seems to be arguing that the GOP will only make this an authoritarian hellhole because Democrats made them mad.

In any case, the bottom line is we must stay angry and we must demand a real investigation of Kavanaugh. This is not over it’s just beginning. If you need help staying mad just check out all the gloating Trump, McConnell, Kellyann Conway friends have done over the last three days. 

In any case, we don’t have the luxury of quiet resignation as you give Trump an inch he takes a mile. Plenty of headlines today show he’s only getting more arrogant after his dirty victory.

So we have the first question for the future Democratic investigation of Kavanaugh: what did he discuss with Trump today? Did Mueller come up?

It’s been estimated that the bloody Kavanaugh fight led about 40% of the conservative #NeverTrumpers home to the GOP-ie, they weren’t: #NeverTrumpers at all.

Maybe even Rod Rosenstein has found his way home.

In all seriousness the timid Dems should have demanded Rosenstein recused himself from Kavanaugh.

There are some signs that the elected Dems aren’t ignoring Kavanaugh like Kacey Hunt and friends presume:

FN: Reading this chapter 9 months later is somewhat ironic to be sure as I was defending Pelosi then but am somewhat ambivalent about her now. While she has had a great career I have real problems with the way she’s led-or not led-the fight against Trump and to hold him accountable. Certainly turning against Pelosi because the GOP hated her was silly but having issues with her failure to aggressively investigate Trump is a very real criticism. Ironically all the main ringleaders of opposing Pelosi for Speaker have now come out for impeachment.

If only they’d argued not that the GOP says mean things about her but that she was weak on impeachment-maybe they’d have had a chance.

I’m sure Flake is telling Coons he’d have voted no if only Avenatti hadn’t gotten involved. Just like I’m sure the GOP would have taken Dr. Ford’s allegations seriously if only they’d known of it in July rather than September. That made all the difference.

Here’s the reality check: we never had much of a chance. At the end of the day it was clear from the beginning the GOP had the numbers and they’d ram it through like they did on Bush v. Gore like they did on denying Merrick Garland a hearing, like they’ve done on every issue they have had partisan advantage on since the time of W. This was always baked in the cake and shouldn’t be such a surprise.

In that sense we did pretty well:

https://twitter.com/DavisNZAus/status/1049032971930361857

Still in retrospect it’s clear that as the fight ensued Schumer told the Dems to stand down

Schumer seemed to share Feinstein’s desire for moderation. Grim reports that he “repeatedly told outside allies that a furious stand against Kavanaugh would enrage Trump supporters and only disappoint progressive voters. We have no power, he explained repeatedly.” When Kavanaugh’s nomination was first announced, Demand Justice, an activist group, threatened to run ads against conservative Senate Democrats likely to vote for the judge; namely, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Joe Donnelly of Indiana, and Joe Manchin of West Virginia. Schumer, Grim writes, “was furious” with the group. He had a caucus to protect.

We have no power. As much scorn as deserved to be thrown at the MSM narrative that the Kavanaugh fight only served to fire up Trump supporters this was the Dem Senate leadership’s own view-in that sense the MSM was just repeating Schumer’s own words.

But as pitiful as Schumer’s words were-‘we have no power’ this seems to be the defense of Pelosi’s dismal House leadership in-mostly failing to-hold Trump accountable. The idea that Pelosi has no power-blame McConnell, blame the MSM, wait for the courts-is even more risible when the Dems actually do have the power. Based on this attitude the question begs as to why elect Democrats at all if they believe themselves powerless wether they run their body or not?

So the full title for this chapter is ‘the Dem base won’t forget Kavanaugh but the Dem Leadership is Another Story

 

-find book that documents this Mike: Ryan Grim.  Adam Jentleson on Dems refusing to employ aggressive actions against McConnell’s tabling of Merrick Garland without a hearing.

 

So the full title for this chapter might be No the Dem Base isn’t Going to Forget About Kavanaugh-but What About the Leadership?

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October 28, 2016: a Day That Will Live in Infamy Copyright © by . All Rights Reserved.

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