668

UPDATE: I’m happy to see that the Dems themselves are asking if they’re the wet rag party-that’s a good thing.

This Sunday morning it’s becoming clear that it wasn’t enough for them to plow Kavanaugh through, they have to spike the ball, indeed, rub the faces of the majority of the country in excrement.

We now have an illegitimate Kavanaugh Court put there by an illegitimate ‘President.’ McConnell also can’t stop strutting:

Even Mike Pence had to strut-there was no reason for him to pound the gavel yesterday.

Well they can laugh now because they won’t be laughing later. Come November 6 their gloating stops. The fight over Kavanaugh is not over, it’s just beginning.

It’s on us to wipe the smiles off their faces.

As for ‘Justice’ Kavanaugh he shouldn’t get too comfortable. He’s not going to be there long.

UPDATE: Actually a fight over Kavanaugh really didn’t start on November 6. It’s now 10 months and Kavanaugh is pretty secure right about now. Nadler had vowed to hold hearings but we never heard about it again post election.

The base, however, has not forgotten and there are signs that the House Democrats may finally be doing something.

 

End of UPDATE:

I don’t know that Eli Mystal is running for anything-but if not he should be. He was on Joy Reid Saturday morning and has the kind of fire the Dems are going to need over the next couple of years.

At the very least HA Goodman can certainly go ‘fly into the sun’ as during the election he explicitly said it-Bernie or Bust. The idea that we could lose a couple of Supreme Court Justices in HA’s mind that was worth it as the price for making sure THAT WOMAN never got to be President.

Goodman who hasn’t been heard from the last 27 months since he wrote that explicitly handwaved away the issue of the Supreme Court. 

“Hillary Clinton is on wrong side of everything: Stop telling me I have to vote for her because of the Supreme Court”

“These justices aren’t going anywhere. Hillary’s been slow to evolve on everything that matters, and is not for me.”

These justices aren’t going anywhere. Huh? What does that even mean? If he meant nothing would change on the makeup of the Court in a couple of years he was totally wrong-just like he was that Clinton would be criminally indicted by the FBI.

Goodman’s predictions about Clinton being found guilty of criminal activity didn’t exactly ‘age well’ as they put it, and his predictions on the Supreme Court in retrospect don’t pass the laugh test either-though  the coming Kavanaugh Court is no laughing matter at all.

“Ruth Bader Ginsburg is fine and the New York Times writes that she has “no interest in retiring.” Justice Scalia isn’t stepping down from the U.S. Supreme Court soon and will only contemplate retirement when he “can’t do the job well.” Anthony Kennedy is in “no rush” to leave the Supreme Court. Justice Breyer has no plans to step down but will “eventually” retire one day.”

I mean these are awful predictions. Scalia would pass away soon after Goodman wrote that. Kennedy was ‘in no rush’ to leave the Court until there was a Republican ‘President’ willing to make a deal to put Kennedy’s former clerk Kavanaugh on the Court.

As for Ginsburg we can only hope and pray she can hold on till at least 2020. If there’s a Dem Senate we get a little margin for error but Goodman’s reckless advice doesn’t look too good. He never seemed to understand that a President who serves for 4 or 8 years is one thing but a Justice-even in theory a faux ‘Justice’ like Kavanaugh-serves 30 to 40 years. If Kavanaugh serves till Ginsberg’s current age he’ll still be there in 2050. Sure 32 years of Kavanaugh-an accused sexual assaulter, serial perjurer, cum partisan hack, who doesn’t believe Roe is ‘settled law’ whatever sweet nothings he very well may have whispered in Susan Collins ears- to avoid 4 to 8 years of Clinton-who ran on a $12 MW and agreed to $15 in negotiations with Bernie, supports a Universal Basic Income (UBI) and who civil rights activist Eric Dyson argued would have done more for Black people than Obama himself- sure sounds worth it to me.

Then again, Kavanaugh clearly hates the Clintons as much as HA does so maybe it sounds worth it to him.

UPDATE: HA has now stopped pretending and come out and endorsed Trump 2020-why not? He did everything to elect Trump in 2020 this time he’s not even pretending. Just like so many Bernie Bros it was always actually about Clinton Derangement not TRUE PROGRESSIVENESS.

Indeed, in the case of HA it’s clear he’s about as much a true progressive as Julian Assange-who’s actually on the Far Right.

Like Assange, it would appear that Goodman was always nothing but an agent provocateur who helped the Right by depressing the turnout of the Left. After Bill Barr’s fake exoneration letter Goodman declared that since Mueller found ‘no collusion’-this is a lie, actually Mueller found tons of collusion he just didn’t charge it-Trump should pardon Michael Flynn in HA’s latest post he’s back to Lock Her Up. 

So back to Elie Mystal. I couldn’t agree with him more-HA Goodman can go fly into the sun. He also put the Dems’ current predicament well: we’ve tried it the Chris Coons way now it’s time to talk about court packing.

Listen-nothing against Senator Coons. He’s a good guy. But let’s face it-all his bipartisan moments with Jeff Flake the Flake got us was a phony ‘investigation’ to give this phony Trump ‘resister’ and phony GOP ‘moderate’ Susan Collins cover to do what they both clearly intended to do all along: plow through phony ‘President’ Trump’s phony ‘Justice’ Brett Kavanaugh onto this illegitimate ‘Supreme Court.’

Again, I don’t know that Mystal has ever considered running for anything but you kind of wish he was as he has the right attitude. His response to those fastidious Democrats who say there’s no point impeaching Kavanaugh as you can’t force him out of office anyway was perfect: the Dems need to blitz on every down.

Yes! I’ve made this same point regarding Trump-I don’t care if we have the votes in say, 2020, to force him out of office in the Senate or not-it’s possible if the politics changes in the next two years as they did in 1974. But even if the GOP remains as obstructionist as they are today the Dem House still needs to impeach him-naturally only if that’s where the facts lead-Chapter A. 

Never mind the Senate math illegitimate ‘President Trump’ and his illegitimate nominee ‘Judge Brett Kavanaugh’ need to be impeached-if that’s where the facts lead, as I believe they do, though we have to do the investigations.

Ryan Cooper rightly states the Dems must be ready to start investigating Kavanaugh on day one and impeach him-if that’s where the facts lead.

Yet ironically, it isn’t-the rather Marxist leaningRyan-Cooper-but recovering Republican, Jennifer Rubin, who uses the P-word-court packing. 

“Republicans, too, could win this fight for the swing Supreme Court seat, but they cannot bestow legitimacy upon Kavanaugh or erase their record of weaponized misogyny. Progressives will seek his recusal in every case of political significance. Every 5-4 decision in which Kavanaugh is the deciding vote will be denounced as illegitimate, the work of a partisan judge elevated to the court by nefarious means. The decision will be respected legally in the short term, but in the future, it will be argued, the decision should carry zero precedential weight. Those he once accused of participating in a left-wing cabal will seek to vacate cases they lose in which Kavanaugh was the deciding vote. In future cases, they will urge  justices and lower court judges to downgrade the importance of these decisions, in effect treating them as unpublished opinions that should not impact future cases.”

“Democrats will ferret out the witnesses whom the FBI ignored and subpoena FBI officials to testify. They will leak the full FBI report at some point and disclose any communications between the FBI and White House that reveal efforts to curb the FBI investigation. They will seek Kavanaugh’s removal, and maybe even his disbarment.”

Indeed. One more word on the folly of not impeaching Kav unless the Senate math lines up perfectly beforehand, once he’s impeached, he’s impeached. It’s possible the Dems could, say, impeach him in 2019, not have the votes to remove initially but maybe in a year or two-perhaps after 2020 acquire the votes. Here’s the beauty of it: if Dems don’t investigate/impeach/remove him-if they don’t fight for these things that might be the straw that finally breaks the camel’s back for a Democrat as loyal as I am-he’d be expected to serve until 2050 or later. Just so, even if he is able to last 5 years after being impeached he will have a huge giant asterisk hanging from his neck. Demanding his recusal won’t be hard at all. Even if we never managed to remove him, you’d rather him serve 40 years as an impeached Justice than one who is not impeached.

UPDATE: It’s really rather striking to see what Rubin predicted the Democrats would do and what they have-very little until now-though as the above tweet suggests they are asking for his records now.

Then Rubin mentions the P word.

“When a Democratic president eventually wins the White House with a Democratic Senate majority, you can count on a court-packing scheme. Most critically, any decision Kavanaugh renders in Trump’s favor on the Russia probe might ignite a constitutional conflagration in which the majority of the country sees an illegitimate justice protect a president illegitimately elected with the assistance of the United States’ foe, Russia.”

That was Thursday, and this morning-Saturday morning-Elie Mystal already went there. Overall, the Dems need to-as Mystal says-blitz on every down. I love Nancy Pelosi but I hope she doesn’t really mean this. 

“We are not about impeachment,” she said Tuesday at the Atlantic Festival in Washington, D.C.

Again I love her but hope she’s just framing the issue in a cautious way or something. She’s going to be Speaker of the House again-despite the ignorant rumblings of some against her. But she should know that her base is totally about impeachment.

UPDATE: Over 10 months later it’s hard to argue she meant what she said-she’s not about impeachment no matter what the offense-apparently the Founders goofed in giving Congress this power. The one thing she has in common with Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell is they are also not about Trump or Kavanaugh’s impeachment.

As Chapter A shows I strongly supported her to return as Speaker. Ironically everyone that opposed her renomination-Seth Moulton, Marcia Fudge, Kathleen Rice, even Tim Ryan, support impeachment.

Today the folks who don’t believe Pelosi meant what she said we’re not about impeachment are those Democrats and Resisters who defend her on Twitter. They insist she’s not committed to not impeaching Trump at any price-she’s just biding her time. Sure hope she’s right but hope is not a strategy. If we want actual accountability we can’t just hope they do the right thing we must compel them to do the right thing. 

It really is on us:

As I’ve noted before in previous Whip It posts, it’s still on us to make this happen by showing up at town halls our representatives have over the summer recess, by calling their offices in D.C. or locally, by sending faxes or using Resistbot to make our sentiments heard.

Congressional switchboard: (202) 224-3121

Call your representative (and only your representative) and ask them to support an impeachment inquiry. If your representative has already thrown their support behind an inquiry, do be sure to thank them.”

End of UPDATE.

Again, blitz on every down. I’m in the same boat as Amy Siskind:

It’s a time for righteous indignation as there’s a battle for the Soul of America where we either #MakeAmericaLegitimateAgain or Trump, Lindsay Graham, and Kavanaugh consolidate his illegitimate regime. It’s also a time for being bold and coloring outside the lines.

 

On the other hand it’s not the time for this. 

When I first saw this I wanted to believe it was satire. It wasn’t. Even worse-who was a top Dem making this outrageous assertion? My-and Amy Siskind’s-very own Governor Cuomo.

This is the opposite of blitzing on every down. It’s Cuomo coming in and telling Team Democrats the GOP has a valid point and to do less blitzing.

Right now both Cuomo and Avenatti are prospective Dem 2020 nominees. As far as I’m concerned, Avenatti is lapping Cuomo based on this one. I want the guy who says ‘when they go low we hit harder’ rather than the guy saying ‘Susan Collins was right in what she said yesterday, we Democrats overplayed our hand.’

Avenatti is exactly right. At every step of the way Dems have gotten played. Regarding the 2000 recount fight-Bush v. Gore-it’s been said that the Dems brought a knife to a gun fight.

This same dynamic applied to the Kavanaugh confirmation fight. 

Obama had thought by choosing someone very centrist and nonideological in Merrick Garland, he’d force McConnell’s hand. We know how that conjecture worked out. Avenatti is also all in for packing the Court.

So after Rubin predicts court packing, we already have two calls for it today.

As for the GOP they are crowing tonight-having Pence call the votes and bang the gavel was clearly meant to spike the ball and everything McConnell, Grassley, and friends say is meant to rub salt in the wounds. But in time they will rue the day they plowed him through and Kavanaugh will rue the day Trump chose him to protect him from the Russia probe.

At the hearing with Dr. Ford, Kav had fretted that he may never get to teach or coach again after the accusations. Amen-oh that it will be so. And let it be so that the day will come in the not too distant future when he will never get to preside over a court room again.

UPDATE: Speaking of Reid he just came out to end the legislative filibuster this week but is Chuck Schumer listening?

Meanwhile court packing has happily become a kind of litmus test among the 2020ers.

Of course MSM pundits tend to look askance at this idea and declare it isn’t the way to depoliticize the Supreme Court.

Egged on by progressive activists, some 2020 Democratic presidential candidates are expressing interest in the idea of increasing the number of seats on the Supreme Court. It’s easy to understand why the idea of “packing” the court with new justices appeals to Democrats, but it’s a bad idea that would further politicize a court that has already moved too far in that direction.

The size of the court isn’t fixed by the Constitution, and Congress is free to add or subtract seats. But since 1869 the court has comprised a chief justice and eight associate justices, despite the famous failed attempt by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1937 to persuade Congress to enlarge the court.

To increase the number of justices, the Democrats likely would need to control the White House and both houses of Congress. And, of course, only if the political stars aligned perfectly (and they could be assured the new seats would be filled by Democrats) would they want to do so. That makes court-packing a longshot.”

Not really. To achieve it they simply need to win the WH next year-which seems imminently doable-and the Senate-which is admittedly a little more of a longshot.

In theory if they won back both the WH and the Senate all they’d need to do it is have the Senate end the filibuster. They could then pass legislation in the Senate and House that a President Kamala Harris or President Elizabeth Warren would sign.

FN: Biden for his part probably wouldn’t support either court packing or even ending the filibuster. BTW pointing this out seems like a more effective strategy to take down Biden for his opponents than harping over gaffes over even digging down into the minutiae of policy differences.

“The best way Democrats can ensure that a president of their party will get to appoint justices is to defeat Trump next year.”

The Brennan Center for Justice argues similarly-it will  politicize the Court.

The trouble with this facile advice is that after the stolen Merrick Garland seat, the ram through of Kavanaugh, and the collective years of dirty GOP tricks-starting with the stolen 2016 election- it will could be years until the Democrats get to appoint the replacement for a conservative Justice.

 

Currently the only two SJCs who are 80 or above are liberal Justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.

A Democratic President’s most likely appointment will be RBG’s replacement. Comparatively only one conservative Justice is even 70 years old-Clarence Thomas.

Ergo the only chance the Democrats will likely have to change the Court’s ideological balance in the next few years is court packing.

As noted above HA Goodman had risibly claimed that it was no big deal for progressives if Clinton lost in 2016 and Trump got to replace a few Justices. Of course, we now conclusively can say he was a GOP hack all along which explains such absurd ‘advice.’ 2016 was the election to win as two conservative judges were replaced during Trump’s illegitimate ‘Presidency.’ A win in 2020 by the Democrats will at most simply enable them to maintain the current 5-4 conservative status quo.

In what should be a 6-3 liberal court is 5-4 conservative with the earliest likely chance for the Dems could get to change this coming maybe in the 2030s-assuming Thomas stays in the Court into his 80s as is typical.

This is why the failures of the Left in prioritizing the Court are so profound. Even now all we hear from the MSM and Dem leadership is the Dems just need to defeat Trump. Even if we do we won’t get to defeat his Supreme Court any time soon-which is also why the Democrats really need to take the investigation of Kavanaugh they maybe are starting seriously, and why you can’t rule out court packing unless you are cool with what will likely be 65 years of unbroken GOP rule of the SJC by the time Clarence Thomas reaches RBG’s age .

South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg has floateda complicated (and arguably unconstitutional) proposal that combines expansion of the court to 15 members with a change in how some of the justices are appointed. The court would comprise 10 justices “confirmed in the normal political fashion” and five chosen by the other 10.

In an interview with Politico, Warren said: “It’s not just about expansion; it’s about depoliticizing the Supreme Court.” But action by a Democratic president and Congress to add seats to create a majority of Democratic appointees would be a quintessentially partisan act.

Because justices have life tenure and can’t be voted out of office, it’s a problem for the court’s legitimacy if it’s perceived as a partisan institution. Sadly, such a perception exists, despite the fact that many decisions are unanimous.

A few points: I think Mayor Pete’s proposal is overly complex. I’d prefer to simply add a few more seats to the Court. I do agree with the LA Times op-ed page that it would be a partisan act which is why Warren used the wrong word. I’m not arguing to pack the Court in order to depoliticize the Court to the contrary. My point is that it’s already been totally politicized-it’s been GOP dominated for 50 years. Can anyone honestly post Bush v. Gore seriously argue it isn’t already totally politicized? The very notion that the SJC is above partisan politics has probably always been something of an illusion-that only has the liberals tricked.

Court packing isn’t going to magically make the Court any less partisan it will simply readdress the partisan balance after years of GOP dirty tricks and chicanery-Nixon blackmailing Abe Fortas to step down. Bush v. Gore, gutting the Voting Rights Act-not just a terrible decision on principle but one with totally partisan effects as it helps GOP candidates across the country-Merrick Garland, stealing the 2016 election, the ram through of Kavanaugh.

The SJC has been a partisan Republican institution for 50 years-with likely at least 15 more before the earliest the Dems can change this-knowing their luck the GOP will probably had rigged another election by then-Pelosi’s determination to let Trump off the hook will look brilliant then-packing the imbalance.

https://psmag.com/ideas/court-packing-wont-happen-but-calling-out-the-court-as-partisan-can-work-just-as-well

 

A fascinating portrayal of John Roberts

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/03/john-roberts-biography-review/580453/?_ga=2.6457904.382384618.1565798719-573467367.156579871

As chief justice, Roberts has proved a committed conservative whose defection in the 2012 Obamacare decision and then in a 2015 follow-up case somehow rendered him permanently squishy to true believers. He has sided with the right in 87.5 percent of 5–4 decisions, according to a 2015 articlein the Journal of Legal Studies. Roberts voted to deregulate campaign finance in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, to constitutionalize gun ownership in District of Columbia v. Heller, and to restrict school-integration plans in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1. The most significant, and destructive, decision of Roberts’s career so far was his 2013 opinion striking down the heart of the Voting Rights Act, in Shelby County v. Holder. Despite his frequent invocations of judicial modesty, Roberts has been willing to reach such results by overturning established precedents, and by deciding matters the parties have not raised.

UPDATE: Now we’re talking:

https://thinkprogress.org/five-democratic-senators-just-declared-all-out-war-on-the-supreme-court-7601fed719e6/

 

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