At the Chicago Tribune, John Kass suggests that Democrats might want to support a Scalia-like nominee to the Supreme Court as the best case scenario:
If Democrats are serious with all their caterwauling and shrieking about Trump, if they are truly worried about a chief executive running amok, there’s one thing they must do:
Support Trump’s nomination of a conservative candidate for the Supreme Court in the mold of the late, great Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
If not, then all the Democratic hair-on-fire theatrics, all the handwringing about Trump and “alternative facts” when they were silent about Obama administration falsehoods — it all tells Americans a story.
It tells Americans that Democrats aren’t remotely serious, and that all the left is really doing is screaming about lost power.
I actually think that a purely obstructionist stance on the part of the Democrats would be worse than that. I think we’re on the brink. Rather than inducing people to turn to the Democrats to save them embracing a radical “the worse, the better” strategy could be the last straw.
An obstructionist strategy hasn’t worked in Illinois. Gov. Bruce Rauner’s approval rating is low but House Speaker Mike Madigan’s and General Assembly’s approval ratings are even lower.
It would be far better to support what you can and oppose what you must.
I disagree. I’ve been on the fence about this, but I’m coming down on the side of total obstruction. It certainly worked for the Republicans.
The competition is on for 2020 and right now Kirsten Gillibrand is moving out front because she’s standing up.
No business as usual with Putin’s marionette. No business as usual with this corrupt regime. No business as usual with a man who lies every time he opens his mouth. No acceptance of his hatred, bigotry, ignorance and stupidity. He is unfit. He is mentally incapable.
It may say Section 4, but Trump is Section 8. Tissue rejection is the model: we aren’t having it.
As I say, it hasn’t worked in Illinois and although it’s hurt Rauner it’s hurt the Democrats more.
So, if your objective is to hurt Democrats, you’re probably siding with the appropriate strategy.
I’ll give you a counter-example: we’ve all but exterminated the Republican species here in California and as a result things are better. We have complete control and we are much happier.
Dave, we’ve been playing nice. We keep playing nice while the GOP abandons everything it once believed to embrace a fascist thug and put him in the White House. Enough. We are done playing nice.
Michael, you live in a bubble. You’ve labeled Trump and the “other side” as corrupt, ignorant, hateful, liars, mentally incapable and so on. However, that’s how the “other side” views you guys in your creation of such an intolerant, strident social progressive society.
As for CA being so great…that certainly is not my POV! CA shuffles it’s debt around, chases small businesses out of the state through it’s insatible taxation of the “rich,” putting fiscal burdens on city governments to meet foolishly structured pension demands, and is a state waiting to collapse under a perfect storm of bad progressive policies, coddled by our ideological super majority whom you love so much. Perhaps CA will fall apart sooner rather than later should the Calexit movement collect enough signatures for succession, followed by people, like those recently donning pink p***y hats and sponsored by far left Soros-funded partnerships, stupidly vote for it.
Jan:
You have no intellectual integrity.
By that I mean that you care nothing for the truth and will rationalize and justify literally anything, without the slightest concern for consistency, logic or truth. If Trump reopened Manzanar and started rounding up gay people you’d rationalize it.
People lacking intellectual integrity are a waste of time. Like talking to a toaster.
Michael,
Thank goodness I am not tethered to a belief system stoking an ego with affirmations of my superiority over others, as you appear to be. It must be a real drag mingling with the masses, having such an imperialistic intellectual diagnosis as to the depth of someone else’s logic, experiential truths, integrity or innate abilities to calibrate and then self direct themselves into taking right versus wrong actions. You have my sympathy…..
1) Only half the country considers Scalia a great justice.
2) It may not work in Illinois, but it worked well in Congress. The
GOP gained seats in Congress and the Senate and won POTUS. How do you make the case it won’t work when it actually did? WE can go down a list if you want, but they obstructed enough things to make the prior administration much less able to do some even basic, very popular things. At the least, it certainly worked on keeping Garland out of SCOTUS.
Also, if the Dems don’t approve of Scalia Jr, then they aren’t serious? Non sequitur much?
Steve
Ultimately, people will fault the president for not getting things done, whatever the cause.
That’s what we’ve learned for the last 8 years.
It’s not clear to me that obstruction is what resulted in the GoP doing relatively well this cycle. As was pointed a million times, Trump usurped the GoP (meaning the core GoP veterans were all soundly defeated by him) and he really only won because Clinton and the Democrats blew the election. The GoP were also assisted by a lot of Democratic own-goals – nominating Clinton in the first place, greatly overpromising and under delivering on Obamacare, an economy that wasn’t a good as people expected, ect. A few thousand votes in a few states and we’d have a President Clinton and no one would be talking about the supposed success of obstructionism.
So it doesn’t automatically follow that obstruction is the factor or even a primary factor that worked for the GoP although it certainly appealed to the base. They might have done a lot better with a different approach.
Overall, I think obstruction is only really effective at motivating the base. The sort of total obstruction that Michael wants (as opposed to strategic obstruction which is always necessary in politics) isn’t likely to appeal to the swing voters that Democrats need to actually win elections.
Just about everything Michael has written since November 9th ——–>
“It tells Americans that Democrats aren’t remotely serious, and that all the left is really doing is screaming about lost power.”
Andy- By obstructing the passage of the ACA until Kennedy died, they kept the House and Senate versions from being reconciled. Bother versions had some flaws that would be fixed up in joint committee. Didn’t get a chance. 1 Next they obstructed it at the state level and keep Medicaid from being expanded further. 2 They obstructed on exchanges, which are really just markets, so should be beloved by Republicans. 3 Immigration reform. Passed in Senate. Obstructed in House. 4 Obstructed everything in 2nd term. Lead to use of EOs, which lead to claims that Obama was a tyrant and had most Eos ever in the world. (When he actually had fewer than Bush) 5.
Might this have worked better of the GOP if they had tried to work with Obama? I don’t know. I do know that it looks like obstructing helped, or at the least, they did not suffer for it.
Steve
Number of executive orders by president:
Obama issued many more presidential directives—710, compared with 83 (Clinton), 653 (Bush). I can’t make anything much out of that. FDR issued more than 3,500 EOs.
This seems like good advice.
“By obstructing the passage of the ACA until Kennedy died”
Well, that’s just BS. The Democrats had a filibuster proof majority so the GoP could not obstruct anything. The reason the bills didn’t get passed and reconciled before Kennedy died is because Democrats couldn’t get enough votes in their own caucus and it took them forever to develop something that could actually pass. In the Senate they had to essentially purchase support (cornhusker kickback, etc.). In the house they had to deal with Stupak’s coalition and other moderate groups. This was all inside the Democratic party. The GoP was only able to obstruct once Massachusetts (!!!) sent a replacement Senator (Brown) who vowed to block the bill – which came more than a year after President Obama took office.