“Democrats, Don’t Blow It”: Ask Yourselves, Whom Would You Prefer To Name Future Supreme Court Judges?
The death of Antonin Scalia has set off yet another epic partisan struggle as Senate Republicans seek to deny President Obama his constitutional right to nominate the next Supreme Court justice. They want to wait out Obama’s last year in office, hoping his successor will be one of their own.
If the Democrats choose Bernie Sanders as their presidential candidate, Republicans will almost certainly get their wish. Furthermore, the Republican president would probably have a Republican-majority Senate happy to approve his selection.
The makeup of senatorial races this November gives Democrats a decent chance of capturing a majority. Having the radical Sanders on the ballot would hurt them in swing states.
Some Sanders devotees will argue with conviction that these purplish Democrats are not real progressives anyway, not like our Bernie. Herein lies the Democrats’ problem.
No sophisticated pollster puts stock in current numbers showing Sanders doing well against possible Republican foes. The right has not subjected Sanders to the brutality it routinely rains on Hillary Clinton — precisely because he is the candidate they want to run a Republican against. Should Sanders become the nominee, the skies will open.
One may applaud Sanders’ denunciation of big money in politics, but a moderate Democrat in the White House could do something about it. A democratic socialist not in the White House cannot. Campaign finance reform would be a hard slog under any circumstances, but a seasoned politician who plays well with others could bring a reluctant few to her side.
Some younger liberals may not know the history of the disastrous 2000 election, where Republicans played the left for fools. Polls were showing Al Gore and George W. Bush neck-and-neck, particularly in the pivotal state of Florida.
Despite the stakes, prominent left-wing voices continued to back the third-party candidacy of Ralph Nader. You had Michael Moore bouncing on stages where he urged cheering liberals to vote for the radical Nader because there was no difference between Gore and Bush. Republicans, meanwhile, were running ads for Nader. That was no secret. It was in the papers.
When the Florida tally came in, Bush held a mere 537-vote edge. The close results prompted Florida to start a recount of the votes. Then, in a purely partisan play, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court stopped the recount, handing the election to Bush.
The bigger point is that Gore would have been the undisputed winner in 2000 had Nader not vacuumed up almost 100,000 Florida votes, most of which would have surely gone to him.
Same deal in New Hampshire, where Nader siphoned off more than 22,000 votes. Bush won there by only 7,211 ballots.
Now, Sanders is an honorable man running a straightforward campaign for the Democratic nomination. One can’t imagine his playing the third-party spoiler.
But what makes today similar to 2000 is how many on the left are so demanding of ideological purity that they’d blow the opportunity to keep the White House in Democratic hands. Of course, they don’t see it that way. This may reflect their closed circle of like-minded friends — or an illusion that others need only see the light, and their hero will sweep into the Oval Office.
The other similarity to 2000 is the scorn the believers heap on the experienced liberal alternative. They can’t accept the compromises, contradictions and occasional bad calls that attach to any politician who’s fought in the trenches.
The next president will almost certainly be either Clinton or a Republican. Democrats must ask themselves: Whom would you prefer to name future Supreme Court judges?
By: Froma Harrop, The National Memo, February 16, 2016
“Nothing Or Nothing At All”: Trump Or Cruz, It Sucks To Be A Republican Senator
If, as seems reasonable, Greg Sargent is correct that the spectacle of Senate hearings on an Obama-nominated Supreme Court Justice will empower hardliners Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, the Republican Establishment has a powerful incentive not to allow them.
At this point, though, we’re almost to the point where the Establishment should just give up on the prospect of having anyone other than Trump or Cruz as their nominee. We’ll soon know more when we get the results from South Carolina’s primary, but right now it looks very likely that Trump will win there, possibly in a walk, and that Cruz will come in second place. Among the also-rans, only Marco Rubio seems to be showing any life. And, after watching him get eviscerated by Chris Christie in New Hampshire, do the Republicans really want to hitch their wagon to the remote hope that Rubio will surge to win the nomination and then prove a match for the Democrats’ candidate?
Part of the problem with this whole plan to reject any Obama Supreme Court selection is that the Republicans are looking so unlikely to get their act together in time to win in the fall.
We can debate where this whole subject falls on the damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t scale, but I’m not convinced it helps the Republicans’ cause in November to simply refuse to consider any nominee by declining to give them the courtesy of a hearing and a vote. The logic of it is that the Republican base will be so dejected if partisan control of the Court is lost before the election that they won’t turn out. If, on the other hand, they think control hangs in the balance, they will turn out in droves. They won’t turn out to vote for a nominee they might hate or distrust, but they’ll turn out to keep the Court from flipping to a liberal majority.
That makes a lot of sense, and I’m sure that they would experience different turnout numbers depending on which road they take. But base mobilization is more of a midterm strategy than a general election strategy. The Republicans have only succeeded in winning the popular vote once in the last twenty-eight years (in 2004), and they barely won the Electoral College that year. They need to change the shape of the electorate in their favor, because their base just isn’t big enough.
And, consider, since 2012 they’ve definitely done damage with their prospects with Latino and Asian voters. They’ve further alienated the academic/scientific/technical/professional class with their anti-science lunacy. They’ve lost the youth vote over a variety of issues, including hostility to gay rights. They’re doing everything they can to maximize the black vote. Muslims will vote almost uniformly against them despite sharing some of their ‘family values.’ Women won’t be impressed if Cruz or Rubio are the nominees because they both oppose abortion including in cases of rape or incest. They’ll be unimpressed with Donald Trump because he’s a sexist, womanizing boor. I don’t think any of these groups will be more favorably inclined to the Republicans if they block Obama’s nominee without a hearing.
Realistically, as this point they almost have to go with Trump because his fame and lack of orthodoxy will change the shape of the electorate. It’s not likely to change it favorably, and many life-long Republicans will bolt the party, perhaps never to come back. But it will change it.
Unless John Kasich catches fire there’s no hope of the GOP rebranding in a way that will undo the massive amount of damage they’ve done with the persuadable middle. Jeb would present a softer face to the party, but there’s no way a Bush is winning the general election in 2016.
The way I see it, the best deal the Republicans are going to get is right now. Obama will compromise with them. He might pick a relatively moderate Justice if he has assurances that they’ll be confirmed. People have mentioned Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval, for example, who is a pro-choice Republican. He might pick someone older, like George Mitchell. He might pick a colleague of theirs. I think Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota is his best option. The Republican senators like her and she’s no radical.
But, if they lose the general election, which the wise among them must know is becoming almost a certainty, they’ll also lose a bunch of Senate seats. They’ll be in a much weaker position to block Clinton or Sanders’s nominee or (if necessary) nominees. And they’ll probably have to deal with a nominee who is further to the left and much younger.
Why not use their considerable power now to get some real concessions rather than roll the dice on Donald Trump or Ted Cruz being our next president?
And, as Greg Sargent points out, who knows who Trump would nominate? He was pro-choice until he decided he needed to pretend otherwise if he wanted to win the Republican nomination. Why trust him?
So, it’s really down to Ted Cruz.
Cruz or nothing.
That’s how they want to go.
Except they universally loathe Ted Cruz with the heat of a thousand supernovas.
It sucks to be a Republican senator.
By: Martin Longman, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, February 18, 2016
“Marco Rubio, Gen-X Fraud”: The “John McCain Of The Millennial Set”
On the surface, Marco Rubio is such a perfect 2016 Republican nominee you might think he was created in a lab. He ticks off all the demographic boxes that the GOP has struggled with for the past decade: A young (43) Latino who likes Tupac! He is adept with social media, talks like a person who watches the same dumb TV as you, and is pleasantly self-deprecatory when the occasion calls for it. Pundits and consultants are giddy with the prospect of a “generational choice” between Rubio and the rest of the field—not to mention Hillary Clinton.
Analysts aren’t wrong to suppose that a race against Rubio, in either the primary or the general, will expose a generational fault line. But it’s far from certain that Rubio will be one with the youth vote on his side.
Take away Rubio’s biography and look at his positions and he becomes less the voice of his generation and more Benjamin Button. If I told you about a candidate that was anti-marriage equality, anti-immigration reform (for now), anti-pot decriminalization, pro-government surveillance, and in favor of international intervention but against doing something about climate change, what would you guess the candidate’s age to be? On all of those issues, Rubio’s position is not the one shared by most young people. The Guardian dubbed him the “John McCain of the millennial set,” which isn’t fair to McCain, who at least has averred that climate change exists.
Indeed, with those opinions, the only demographic Rubio can plausibly claim to represent is old white guys. Well, even old white guys support marriage equality these days—63 percent of all Americans do. But Rubio has the olds on other issues! Americans 65 and older are the only age group with a majority against marijuana decriminalization and the only group who deny anthropogenic climate change; those 50 and older are the only group with a majority that believes the government surveillance “has not gone far enough.”
Advisers have bragged that, unlike other candidates, Rubio would not be “competing for who can be the whitest, oldest rich guy,” a claim which is both obvious and beside the point. Of course, he’s not competing to be a rich old white guy, but he’d be a fool not to be competing for the whitest, oldest rich guys. Staking his nomination on the non-white or youth voters of the Republican Party would be a comically doomed strategy: The GOP primary electorate is 95 percent white. In every state with an early primary (Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida), over half of those who cast Republican votes are over the age of 50. (In Florida, 70 percent of primary voters are over 50.)
Indeed, the Rubio team’s assuredness about his youthful appeal may come from the fact that they’re all in Florida. Winning “the youth vote” in Florida amounts to sweeping the retirement communities rather than the nursing homes.
What’s more, Rubio has competition to be one of the non-whitest, youngest guys in the GOP’s crowded field: There is at least one honorary Hispanic (Jeb Bush) and one black candidate (Ben Carson), and several who are close to Rubio in age: Scott Walker (47), Rand Paul (52), Ted Cruz (44).
The redeeming quality of Rubio’s “youth strategy”—why it just might work!—is that it is fundamentally insincere. Which is to say, he’s not competing for the youth vote at all—he’s competing for the old rich white guys who think they know what the youth of the country want.
All those electoral post-mortems have apparently convinced at least a few of the GOP’s decision-makers that they are no longer the most influential demographic in America. But they didn’t finish reading those reports, I guess, because they don’t seem to realize why they aren’t as influential. They think it’s just about age and race, and so we get Republicans in mid-life-crisis mode, without thinking through what issues made young people reject them.
This is the latest in conservative identity politics, a facile assumption that all you need to do to win someone’s vote is to run someone that looks a little like them. But millennials in particular have proven to be demographic-agnostic when it comes to picking their heroes and spokespeople. They’ve made meme-worthy icons of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Betty White. A recent survey found that the business person millennials most admire to be Bill Gates (59), not Mark Zuckerberg. In politics, it was John F. Kennedy, who might considered permanently young, but he surely doesn’t represent the future.
As far attracting young voters, Rubio’s campaign will probably go about as well as most old-people-try-to-guess-what-the-young-people-want strategies go. Marco Rubio is the GOP’s Cousin Oliver, a desperate gimmick by the out-of-touch to spark interest in a moribund brand. That Rubio is a gleeful participant in this exercise makes his distance from the actual dreams and desires of this country’s young people all the more apparent.
By: Ana Marie Cox,
“Staying Stupid”: Why The ‘Hip’ Young Republicans Can’t Change Their Party Or Themselves
Savvy Republicans know that something is deeply wrong with the GOP – frequently mocked these days by Republicans themselves as “the stupid party” — which has lost the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections. Some have noticed as well that their congressional majority is so widely despised – its main achievement being historically low public approval ratings — as to be sustainable only by gerrymandering. During the last election cycle, those fearsome Republican SuperPACs, funded by the overlords of Wall Street and Las Vegas, spent hundreds of millions of dollars – with no discernible impact on an alienated electorate.
The result is a burgeoning self-improvement movement on the right, generating introspective articles and interviews in which Republicans ask: “What is wrong with us? How can we change? What must we do to avoid partisan extinction?”
But like many troubled people grappling with serious life issues, they aren’t truly ready for change. They want to maintain the status quo while giving lip service to reform – and changing as little as possible beyond the superficial. They would do anything to project a fresher image, more attractive and effective, without confronting their deeper problems.
The deceptions involved in this process are perfectly exposed in Robert Draper’s fascinating excursion among the urbane young Republicans whose frustration he skillfully reported in last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine. His account is well worth reading, if only to observe these self-consciously “hip” conservatives confronting the reality of last November – and failing utterly to comprehend its meaning. Early in Draper’s article, a GOP technology consultant notes that the youth vote for President Obama grew by 1.25 million in 2012 over 2008 (precisely the opposite of what most pundits and pollsters predicted). But he doesn’t seem to realize that the youth gap cannot be remedied by stronger social media or updated voter files.
The young Republicans bitterly mock the Romney campaign’s technological ineptitude, and complain more broadly about the party’s repellent reputation among young voters, minorities, gays, immigrants, women, and everyone sympathetic to them. They largely seem to believe that if the Republican National Committee would hire people like them – and if Rush Limbaugh and Todd Akin would simply shut the eff up – then the party could expand beyond its narrow, aging, white, and religiously conservative base.
As they hasten to assure Draper, these dissidents would adopt a friendlier attitude toward those who are different, and are even eager to engineer a few minor platform alterations to accommodate immigrants or gays.
But why would they make such concessions to decency? Not out of any sense of justice or shame. They are not interested in social justice and they only feel ashamed of losing. Rather than honestly confronting the harm done by pandering to bigotry and division, they’d prefer to paper it over with a smiley face and move on.
By proclaiming that their defeats are due mainly to technological inferiority or bad messaging, the young Republicans ignore the underlying source of popular disdain for their party. It is true that their technology was feeble, their candidate and consultants were incompetent, and their messaging was often repellent. But the self-styled hipsters of the right are in fact not much different from the Tea Party octogenarians in their hostility to government investment, social insurance, health care, education, and industry – and both are in conflict with the evolving attitudes of young Americans across all demographic lines.
The disgruntled figures who spoke with Draper represent almost nobody in the GOP, compared with the legions commanded by Limbaugh and the religious right. But if their fantasy could be made real, what shape would it take: A tech-savvy, gay-friendly, 21st-century Calvin Coolidge? A composite of Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, and Rand Paul?
Good luck with that.
By: Joe Conason, The National Memo, February 19, 2013
“The End of Newt”: The People Have Spoken, Decisively, All 10 Of Them
Well, the results of the latest wave of primaries are in. The people have spoken, decisively. All 10 of them.
I am exaggerating. In Rhode Island, well over 3 percent of the eligible voters flocked to the polls on Tuesday, as the overwhelming majority declared their enthusiasm for Mitt Romney as the Republican presidential nominee. We are totally talking mandate.
And I cannot tell you how much excitement there was in New York. Six percent turnout! In my neighborhood, the atmosphere was electric. Voters had not been so politically exercised since that year we had a primary pitting a recently deceased congressman and a member of a cultlike group led by a Marxist psychotherapist.
And, wow, no more Newt Gingrich.
Newt is reportedly planning to drop out of the presidential race on Tuesday. The crushing blow was the Delaware primary, where the Gingrich campaign had hoped to win a dramatic come-from-behind victory under the theory that only a couple of Republicans would actually vote and that they would be the same people who once nominated Christine O’Donnell for the Senate.
Unfortunately, a whopping 16 percent of the eligible electorate showed up, way too big a crowd for the fragile Gingrich candidacy to withstand. This has been a terrible month for Newt. His campaign is millions in debt. His pet billionaire, Sheldon Adelson, seems to have deserted him. He was bitten by a penguin at the St. Louis Zoo. And now this.
Did you ever notice how many of the Republican candidates seemed to have animal issues? Rick Perry shot that coyote, and Jon Huntsman got bitten by a goat — really, that was the high point of the Huntsman campaign. Also, Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, the veep front-runner, recently imitated a chicken on television. You will be hearing more about this incident because I think I speak for the entire national media when I say that we are planning to discuss possible Republican vice presidential candidates nonstop through the spring and summer.
And the winner is the guy who drove to Canada with the family dog strapped to the roof of the car!
“My guess is you’ll see a dramatic difference in the youth vote this time — part of it is you have a younger, more dynamic Republican candidate,” said a Romney surrogate, former Senator Hank Brown.
Take that, young Americans. You can’t find jobs because the baby boomers are never going to retire. The Republicans in Congress want to raise the price of student loans. And, in politics, 65-year-olds get to be the youth candidate.
We are now in for six months of Mitt Romney versus Barack Obama, and with the polls showing the race to be very close, you could argue that it is going to be really exciting. Except for the fact that it’s Mitt Romney versus Barack Obama.
Ignore the polls, I beg you. It will just make you nervous and crazy for no good reason. When it comes to their political preferences, the American people are like a bunch of middle school students picking their best friend on Facebook. Do you know who one of the most popular political figures in the United States is right now? Hillary Clinton! Nearly two-thirds of Americans are crazy about Hillary Clinton, and only 27 percent view her unfavorably. Do you remember when she was the most polarizing name in politics? Do you remember when she lost to Barack Obama and we all said it was like the cool popular guy versus the hard-working student council treasurer? Barack Obama would kill for Hillary Clinton’s favorability ratings now.
Romney is now busy with a passel of closed-door fund-raisers in states like New Jersey and New York, which he will never, ever, visit for any other reason than closed-door fund-raisers. Newt’s future plans are unknown. Perhaps he will go back to that great job he had before, getting $300,000 fees for his advice as a historian to corporations with big financial interests pending in Congress. And what about Rick Santorum? You can’t spend the rest of your life not endorsing Mitt Romney. The only guy who seems to have his future plotted out is Ron Paul, who is apparently planning to continue running for president while we all ignore him.
So many surprises to look forward to. What humanizing interchange will Mitt have with the public next? Will it be as good as the last one, when he insulted the cookies at a Pittsburgh community center? Will he win over the loser Republicans’ billionaires? Their celebrity supporters? Rich guys are one thing, but Gary Busey will take some wooing.
Will he ever release all his tax returns? Will he keep the Kid Rock theme song for his campaign? Have we ever had a presidential nominee who walks on stage to a song that seems to suggest he is “wild, like an untamed stallion?” When we did, would you have imagined it would be Mitt Romney?
By: Gail Collins, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, April 25, 2012
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