“Tribalism Vs Moral Imagination”: The Two Stories Of America On Display In This Election
From Jeffrey Goldberg’s interview with President Obama, I’ve already written about how he isn’t enamored with “free riders” and how his foreign policy is a challenge to the Washington playbook. The president also talked about how tribalism is the root of the problem in the Middle East right now.
One of the most destructive forces in the Middle East, Obama believes, is tribalism—a force no president can neutralize. Tribalism, made manifest in the reversion to sect, creed, clan, and village by the desperate citizens of failing states, is the source of much of the Muslim Middle East’s problems, and it is another source of his fatalism. Obama has deep respect for the destructive resilience of tribalism—part of his memoir, Dreams From My Father, concerns the way in which tribalism in post-colonial Kenya helped ruin his father’s life—which goes some distance in explaining why he is so fastidious about avoiding entanglements in tribal conflicts.
“It is literally in my DNA to be suspicious of tribalism,” he told me. “I understand the tribal impulse, and acknowledge the power of tribal division. I’ve been navigating tribal divisions my whole life. In the end, it’s the source of a lot of destructive acts.”
Tribalism isn’t merely a phenomenon in the Middle East. It is also obviously animating the “white nostalgia” of Trump’s supporters. We’ve seen similar reactions in Europe. So it’s interesting to contemplate what is driving all this.
Following President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in 2009, he was interviewed by Will and Jada Smith and discussed our options to the fact that – due to advances in technology – the world is shrinking.
In response to globalization, we can either pull back into our own identities (race, tribe, religion) or we can work to expand our moral imagination. The latter is why the President so often talks about expanding our definition of “we.” In the context of the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, that is not merely a call to do so across the lines of race, class, religion in this country – but to expand our moral imagination to encompass the world of a young mother in Bangladesh.
As President Obama said, to retreat into tribalism at this moment is dangerous. While the forces of a changing America and increasing globalization are unsettling and challenging, it is a recipe for disaster to simply identify with those who think/look like ourselves and draw battle lines with those who don’t. The goal is not to assume we can all agree with each other on everything – but to be able to see and value the humanity of those with whom we don’t.
As Jon Favreau wrote recently: “Every election is a competition between two stories about America.” Right now, one of those stories is about tribalism – the need to “take our country back” to a mythological day when a lot of white people assume that things were better. That story rests on demonizing, expelling and/or punishing those who are blamed for the changes that we don’t like.
The other story is the one President Obama is talking about…the potential we have to expand our moral imagination. That is not some ideal that humans are incapable of reaching. We see people do it every day. And it is old enough to be embedded in every major religion as something resembling the Golden Rule: “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Here is how Barack Obama spelled it out in his speech back in 2004 that brought him into the national spotlight.
A belief that we are connected as one people. If there’s a child on the south side of Chicago who can’t read, that matters to me, even if it’s not my child. If there’s a senior citizen somewhere who can’t pay for her prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it’s not my grandmother. If there’s an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties. It’s that fundamental belief – I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper – that makes this country work. It’s what allows us to pursue our individual dreams, yet still come together as a single American family. “E pluribus unum.” Out of many, one.
The story of this election isn’t so much about the fact that people are angry – it is about what we chose to do with that anger. Do we retreat into tribalism in the face of these challenges or do we work to expand our moral imagination?
By: Nancy LeTourneau, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, March 14, 2016
“The Electability Conundrum”: Scalia’s Death Only Reinforces The Need For Democrats To Choose Their Nominee Wisely
The death of Antonin Scalia has brought home two truths about the presidential race to voters in both parties. First, there may be no more important issue in the campaign than the Supreme Court (which some of us have been saying for some time). And second, if that’s true, then there may be no more important criterion in picking your party’s nominee than who has the best chance of winning in November.
Unfortunately, electability is a difficult thing to predict, no matter how much you know about politics. During the 2008 primaries, for instance, many intelligent Democrats believed there was no way that the voting public would ever elect an African American with a name like “Barack Hussein Obama.” Four years before, many Democrats thought that John Kerry was the most electable Democrat because Republicans couldn’t possibly attack the patriotism of a war hero, especially with a couple of draft-dodgers like George W. Bush and Dick Cheney at the top of their ticket. Neither of those assessments turned out to be correct.
Nevertheless, it’s an impossible question for partisans to ignore, given the stakes of the election. And just how high are they? Someone (usually someone running for president) will always say “This is the most important election of my lifetime,” and it’s easy to dismiss. After all, no matter what happens, the republic will survive. If you’re a Democrat, you can console yourself with the fact that it survived Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, as much damage as they might have done; if you’re a Republican you can say the same about Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
Nevertheless, there are some reasons why this election could be particularly consequential, particularly for Democrats. The first is the Supreme Court, and Scalia’s passing is only part of that story. When the next president is sworn in, Ruth Bader Ginsburg will be 83, Anthony Kennedy will be 80, and Stephen Breyer will be 80. What if Republicans succeed in keeping President Obama from seating a replacement, then a Republican is elected, and some or all of those three fall ill or retire? You could have a Court made up of seven relatively young conservative justices and only two liberals, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. The days of liberals losing cases by a 5-4 margin would be but a happy memory, and the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the end of affirmative action, and the crushing of labor union rights would be only the beginning of a judicial scorched-earth campaign that would not only lay waste to rights liberals hold dear, but would keep doing so for decades to come.
And then there’s the matter of what a Republican president would be able to accomplish through legislation. If the GOP nominee wins in November, it will almost certainly also mean that Republicans have held on to the House and the Senate. That president might or not not be a radical conservative, though Donald Trump looks like the only contender with a chance who couldn’t be described that way. But Congress certainly will be radical. The Republican Party has been moving sharply to the right in recent years, and with unified control for the first time in a decade, it’s safe to say they will pretty much go nuts. Repealing the Affordable Care Act, slashing upper-income taxes, gutting the safety net, rolling back environmental regulations, passing federal restrictions on abortion—if it’s in any Republican’s fantasies, it’ll be able to pass through both houses and get signed by the president. And don’t think Democrats having the filibuster will stop that train; given the respect Republicans have shown for norms and traditions, do you think they’ll let that stand in their way?
So if you think electability ought to be part of your calculation, what do you need to consider? The Democratic primary makes it a little easier because there are only two candidates, but it’s still complicated. Here are the variables to consider:
- The reward to be gained from a Bernie Sanders presidency
- The reward to be gained from a Hillary Clinton presidency
- The chances of Sanders winning in November if he’s the nominee
- The chances of Clinton winning if she’s the nominee
- The consequences of a Republican victory in November
That’s not to mention how each Democrat would match up against any given Republican, which introduces another dimension of complexity. But here’s the basic calculation you have to make: Figure out whether, for your preferences, (1) is larger than (2) or vice-versa, and by how much; then figure out whether (3) or (4) is larger, and by how much; then weigh both of those figures against (5).
For instance, you might decide that Bernie Sanders’s presidency would be superior to Hillary Clinton’s, but Clinton has a higher chance of winning in November, and since a Republican presidency would be so dreadful, you’ll support Clinton even though you like Sanders better. Or you might decide that a Sanders presidency would be so good that even if Clinton might have a slightly better chance in November, it’s worth some measure of risk in nominating Sanders because the reward of him winning is so high.
The truth, of course, is that because we aren’t rational people we constantly construct post-hoc justifications for the choices we make. In this case, that means we’ll convince ourselves that whichever candidate we prefer is also the more electable one. While it might seem logical that Clinton has a higher chance of winning a general election than Sanders, I’ve yet to encounter a Sanders supporter who actually thinks so. They say that Clinton has her own electability problems (undoubtedly true), and that Sanders will bring in so many new voters that it will overcome the effect of the attacks Republicans will launch on him for his leftist views. Clinton supporters, on the other hand, find this argument laughable; they’ll tell you that Republicans will positively disembowel Sanders, and by the time they’re done with him he’ll seem like he’s too much of an extremist to get elected to the Burlington City Council.
I’ve also found that Sanders supporters are more likely to minimize the negative consequences of a Republican presidency. That might be because they don’t see as much of a difference between Clinton and the Republicans, but it’s also because they’re focused on the first variable, the potential rewards of a Sanders presidency. Clinton supporters, on the other hand, have no sweeping expectations from their candidate; for them, staving off disaster is more than enough reason to support her.
Even if your heart goes aflutter at Sanders’s mention of things like single-payer health care and free public college tuition, you’d have to grant that achieving those goals is anything but guaranteed even if he wins the White House. And most of what he would do doesn’t differ from what Clinton would do. That’s particularly true of the Supreme Court: Any Democratic president who had a chance to name a new justice would be choosing from the same pool of liberal jurists now serving in federal appeals courts or perhaps a few state supreme courts.
But even if you find the substantive differences between Clinton and Sanders to be enormous, it’s hard to see them as actually being bigger than the difference between them on one hand and the tsunami of change that will occur if a Republican is elected on the other. Which leaves Democratic voters with no choice but think hard about which candidate is more electable—even if there are no perfect answers to the question.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect, February 15, 2016
“History Isn’t On Their Side – And Neither Is The Calendar”: Justice Kennedy’s Confirmation Debunks Key GOP Talking Point
Soon after Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s death was announced, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said in a statement, “The fact of the matter is that it’s been standard practice over the last 80 years to not confirm Supreme Court nominees during a presidential election year.”
The fact of the matter is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee should have done his homework before getting this wrong.
The “80 years” talking point spread like wildfire in Republican circles – it was repeated by Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio during Saturday night’s debate – to the point that the GOP has convinced itself that at no point in the modern era has the Senate confirmed a Supreme Court justice in an election year.
About 14 justices were confirmed in election years, and perhaps the most pertinent example is Justice Anthony Kennedy. As the Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne noted this morning:
A Senate controlled by Democrats confirmed President Reagan’s nomination of Anthony Kennedy on a 97 to 0 vote in February 1988, which happened to be an election year.
Yes, in Reagan’s eighth year, nine months before Election Day 1988, the Democratic-led Senate confirmed Kennedy with ease.
Chuck Grassley, who’d already been in the Senate for seven years at that point, delivered remarks on Feb. 13, 1988 – exactly 28 years to the day before Scalia’s passing – urging the Senate to confirm Kennedy during that election year.
Grassley voted for Kennedy’s nomination on the Senate floor soon after. So too did a young man by the name of Mitch McConnell, a Republican senator from Kentucky in his first term.
At the time, Ronald Reagan, stung by two failed nominees to the high court (Douglas Ginsburg and Robert Bork), said at the time that if Senate Democrats played election-year games by stalling on Kennedy’s nomination in 1988, the “American people will know what’s up.”
And on this, he was correct.
But we know, of course, that Democrats didn’t bother. There was a vacancy on the Supreme Court; the White House nominated a qualified and credible jurist; the Senate considered his qualifications; and he was confirmed in an election year without much of a fuss – even though the Senate was controlled by Democrats and Reagan was a Republican president.
It’s true that Kennedy was first nominated in late 1987, but the point is the right is now arguing that election-year confirmation votes have no modern precedent. Or as Grassley put it, “[I]t’s been standard practice over the last 80 years to not confirm Supreme Court nominees during a presidential election year.”
The Kennedy example proves otherwise.
If this were December 2016, Senate Republicans would be in a far better position to balk. But it’s mid-February, and the Senate’s to-do list for the next several months is quite thin. History isn’t on their side – and neither is the calendar.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, February 15, 2016
“The GOP’s Worst Nightmare SCOTUS Nominee”: Let America Watch Republicans Tie Themselves In Knots
Here’s a name you need to get to know: Tino Cuellar. Who is Tino Cuellar? The potential Supreme Court nominee who could tie the Republican Party in the most Gordian knots of any of them, and who could thereby alter the presidential race dramatically as well.
Yes, yes; Barack Obama should choose the person best qualified for the job with whom he is most intellectually comfortable. But should that person be Mariano Florentino Cuellar, there could be plenty of benefits aside from having a brilliant, young, Latino person on the Court.
Cuellar, 43, is an associate justice on California’s State Supreme Court. He was born in Mexico. He is a naturalized U.S. citizen. He grew up on the border, and his family moved to California’s Imperial Valley when he was a teenager. He was smart and decided he wanted an education. He got one, all right. Get this resume: undergrad, Harvard; law school, Yale; master’s and doctoral degrees, Stanford.
Here’s his full Stanford bio, so you can give it a gander, but it’s incredibly impressive. He worked at the White House, he worked in the Treasury Department, he taught law at Stanford. “He’s a brilliant guy,” says Samuel Bagenstos, a law professor at the University of Michigan who knows Cuellar. “He’d be the justice with the most wide-ranging intellect since William O. Douglas.” (Bagenstos asked me to note that he is backing no single candidate and thinks the president has many good choices.)
He was elevated to California’s high court by a unanimous bipartisan vote, and given the highest possible rating by the California Bar Association. He is married to a U.S. District Judge, Lucy Koh, who is a formidable intellect in her own right—the Senate confirmed her unanimously, 90-0, when Obama nominated her to that position in 2010. And they have two kids.
Now assuming there’s no skeleton in the old closet, suppose Obama sends Cuellar up to be nominated. Oh what fun it shall be.
We know almost to a certainty that the Republicans will oppose anyone. Mitch McConnell said it, all the presidential candidates said it, everyone says it, and everyone knows it. For a Republican senator to vote for Barack Obama’s replacement of the great Antonin Scalia would be as sure a form of instant political suicide as one can imagine in this country. There is just no way. And it may not even get to a vote. They’ll just sit on it, not even scheduling confirmation hearings, saying the American people deserve a voice in this nomination.
And Obama will say, as I noted yesterday, that I’m still the president and am going to be president for a while yet, and we have no modern precedent for letting the Court have an even number of members.
And then Americans will learn about Cuellar’s life story. The fancy universities, the four degrees, the testimonials to his intellect that will stream in. And of course he’d be not the first Latino, but still, the second out of nine, and the first Mexican-American (Sonia Sotomayor is Puerto Rican), who constitute by far the largest demographic group among American Latinos.
This is Reince Priebus’s perfect nightmare, is it not? Let America watch as old white-guy senator after old white-guy senator goes on TV to say “Oh, it’s nothing against Mr. Cuellar, it’s all about Obama, and the people’s voice.” And let America watch as nominee Donald Trump says the same thing. Or even Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz—in some ways that’s even worse for the GOP, to have a Cuban-American (or Cuban-Canadian-American) stand up and say this Mexican-American doesn’t belong on the Supreme Court. There are around 33 million Mexican-Americans in the country—and around 2 million Cuban Americans. How well do you think the math on that works for the GOP?
So Priebus, who in his silly little autopsy in 2013 insisted that Republicans were going to be the inclusive party and who still has the gall to talk like that today, even as his party’s voters convert a howling xenophobe into their front-runner, would have quite a situation on his hands. And we get to Election Day, and poor Cuellar has been sitting there for seven months after nomination without even having had the courtesy of a committee hearing.
What percentage of the Latino vote is the Republican nominee going to get then, if the party has precipitated a veritable constitutional crisis by refusing to perform its constitutional role and refusing to vote for this obviously qualified man? Maybe 12, 15, 18 tops? Tops. Remember, Romney got 27 percent, and it was considered a disaster. If the GOP nominee gets 18, winning Florida is an impossibility. And if winning Florida is an impossibility, then winning the White House is, too. Even Arizona is probably unwinnable for the Republicans with a number like that.
Now obviously, that is, as I said, Priebus’s worst nightmare. Things could be different. And again, I don’t think Obama should nominate Cuellar for these political reasons. But if he decided to nominate him, boy would it be great to see those people squirm.
By: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, February 15, 2016
“Fringe Appeal”: Sanders’ And Trump’s ‘Us vs. Them’ Mentality Won’t Win Over America
If you want a window into the state of U.S. politics, the speeches given by the first- and second-place finishers in New Hampshire’s presidential primary were revealing. But what was striking was that the commonalities among the candidates did not follow party lines as much as they related to the candidates’ “outsider” or “establishment” status.
The outsiders won last night, of course: Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, while having been elected to the U.S. House and Senate, did so as an independent and considers himself a democratic socialist. Donald Trump, a real estate developer and reality television personality, has held a variety of positions on political issues and contributed to both parties, but has never before held political office.
The runners up, Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican John Kasich, embody their parties’ establishments: Clinton was a first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of state. Kasich served as U.S. congressman, chairman of the House Budget Committee and is the popular two-term governor of Ohio.
But in their victory speeches, the outsiders sounded more like each other than they did their partisan colleagues. Sanders and Trump piqued the frustrations and angst of their respective parties’ primary voters.
For Sanders, it was American versus American: Wall Street, the billionaire class and Super PACs versus the victims of the “rigged economy.” His solution: a “political revolution” to make the rich pay their “fair share” so the rest of us can have free college, health care and retirement.
For Trump, it was Americans versus non-Americans: China, Mexico, immigrants and terrorists. His plan is to “earn world respect” and “make American great again” by constructing a border wall and rebuilding the military to “knock the hell out of” the Islamic State group. Unlike Sanders, Trump at least tempered his typical campaign demeanor and rhetoric during his victory speech in an apparent combination of glee and recognition of the fact that he had a national audience in prime time.
Clinton and Kasich, on the other hand, acknowledged and assuaged the insecurities of their parties’ bases by invoking core American values and desires.
Clinton, always politically calculating and often poorly advised, made a somewhat brief attempt to sound the Sanders theme, vowing to “fight Wall Street,” before falling back on her natural strengths. She promised to “work harder than anyone,” and reminded voters of her lifelong commitment to public service (which has proved that she does, indeed, work harder than anyone). She described a “growth and fairness economy” and vowed to support human rights for “every single American.”
Kasich vowed to “re-shine” America. He discussed the importance of the opportunity to work, the desire in each of us to help our families and neighbors and the preference to look to government as a last resort. Kasich promised to heal divisions, “leave no one behind,” and solve problems not as Democrats or Republicans, but as Americans.
Unfortunately for Sanders and Trump, most Americans still reject the “us versus them” mindset, whether internally or externally focused, espoused by Democrat or Republican. This approach is not just “outsider,” it is “fringe.” That fringe appeal proved to be a successful primary strategy in New Hampshire, but it is neither a viable general election strategy nor a way to govern an already insecure and divided nation.
In contrast, during their New Hampshire primary night speeches, both Clinton and Kasich appeared to have adequately addressed the concerns of their partisan voters while simultaneously appealing to the national electorate that they hope to face in November. To the extent that the term “establishment” correlates with judgment of the sort that Clinton and Kasich demonstrated on primary night in New Hampshire, we might just want to consider using the more appropriate term “qualified.”
By: Michael C. Barnes, Thomas Jefferson Street Blog, U. S. News and World Report, February 10, 2016
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