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Sunday, July 1, 2018

Busy day yesterday for the anti-Trump left in Wichita. I made it to the Ice Cream Social at the Wichita Peace Center, along with about forty other people, including two candidates -- James Thompson, running for Congress, somehow escaped my attention, but I couldn't miss Lacey Cruse, running for the Sedgwick County Commission, as she was the featured entertainment. Coming at the end of a long day wrapping up my June Streamnotes, I wasn't in the mood for a folkie singalong, so repaired to a quieter nook of the Peace House. However, she mentioned two demonstrations that day: one on inequality, the other on refugee rights. My wife went to the latter, and guessed about 300 people showed up. The former seemed to be the work of DSA. About a half-dozen people in DSA tee-shirts showed up for ice cream -- only one previously known to me.

I mention this because I've been in a deep, disgusted funk all week, and expected to just go through the motions in this post today. So while my commitment and even interest are flagging, note at least that there are still others who are getting more engaged -- especially much younger ones. That is as it should be. While there are terrible things that the current regime can do to what's left of my life, it's young people today who face the real horrors of America's current political nihilism, and it's their futures that hang in the balance. I've never been comfortable thinking in generational terms, but there are massive differences from the world I grew up in to the one young people inhabit today. We saw that there were inequities that needed work and issues that needed new attention, but we still believed that America's political legacy pointed toward a fairer and more equitable world. We made some real progress on many fronts, but left the door open which allowed moneyed interests and right-wing ideologues to creep back into control.

That, in turn, led to the impoverished, disempowered, manipulated, and embittered world young people today inhabit. That world took a turn for the worse in November 2016 when Trump won the presidency and both houses of Congress. I was literally sickened by the thought. If my capacity to be shocked has since waned, it's not because Republicans have failed to deliver on their threats. It's just because what's come to pass already seemed so inevitable 20 months ago. One such prospect was that right-wing activists would strengthen their grip on the Supreme Court and increasingly use that power to advance their agenda. This week that threat became suddenly real for a lot of people, thanks first to a series of rulings where Kennedy sided with the right, then with Kennedy's retirement, allowing Trump to install yet another right-wing movement judge.

But actually that movement on the court has been growing slowly, at least since Nixon nominated Rehnquist, whose opposition to civil rights was somehow deemed less threatening without a Southern drawl. (Nixon had previously had two nominees rejected, precisely for that reason.) It hasn't gone as smoothly as conservatives wanted, but their game plan has been relentless, and focused on the branch of government that is slowest moving and least responsive to popular political opinion. Actually, until Roosevelt prevailed by outlasting the judges, the Supreme Court had always been a bastion of elite privilege. We are very fortunate to have lived during the one period in American history when the Court regularly stood up for the civil rights of individuals and minorities. Thanks to the 2016 election, the Supreme Court will be a millstone on any recovery of democracy we manage to achieve in the 2018, 2020, etc. elections -- probably for decades to come.

I don't have a citation, but I have a pretty clear memory of Lindsey Graham, back when he was in the House before he became a Senator in 2003, explaining that Republicans have to use whatever power they have to lock in long-term, hard-to-repeal changes whenever and wherever they can, precisely because they realize that they can't expect to hold power indefinitely (and possibly because they fear demographic trends might undermine their standing). The courts, with their lifetime terms, are merely the most obvious example. Indeed, for decades now they've come up with novel approaches to frustrate democracy, including feeding a steady erosion in the confidence people have that they can change lives for the better through political action.

This week has been a banner week for their cynical manipulations. The lesson Democrats should learn is that they need to defeat the Republicans so big that such schemes are overwhelmed.

Some scattered links this week:

• Matthew Yglesias didn't offer to enumerate and explain the week's major political events, but posted the following:

  • Mitch McConnell's politics of shamelessness have won.

  • 3 winners and 2 losers from the June 26 primaries.

  • The new GOP tax "postcard" is double-sided and requires 6 supplementary worksheets.

  • After a ridiculous days-long bad-faith debate on civility, can the press manage to learn self-respect.

  • Democrats need a positive agenda on immigration now that Trump's killed grand bargains: Some good policy ideas here, as well as realization that Trump's stand is purely political, so he has nothing to gain from any compromise that makes the system work even marginally better. He's basically betting his reelection on his hunch that the madder he makes his base, the better his prospects for winning -- no matter how many people he pisses off along the way.

• Jack Goldsmith: Justice Kennedy's retirement leaves the future of U.S. constitutional law entirely up for grabs:

  There are many reasons Kennedy was the man in the middle. He struggled with all sides of a case and brooded more than most justices about the right answer. And though he possessed a latent libertarianism, he lacked rigid ideological commitments that would have placed him consistently on one side of the court.

  Kennedy will be most remembered for his famous progressive opinions -- establishing a constitutional right to same-sex marriage and other gay rights, refusing to overturn the abortion right declared in Roe, extending the constitutional right of habeas corpus to wartime detainees held at Guantanamo Bay despite congressional and presidential resistance, limiting prayer in school and striking down the death penalty for juvenile criminals.

  I reckon that's part of the American dementia, how we remember folks for their occasional nods toward liberalism/progressivism while forgetting their reactionary fits. Kennedy actually had more of the latter, especially lately, and his decision to hand his seat over to Trump and the far right ideologues of today's Republican Party is one that won't soon be forgotten, or forgiven. Also: John Cassidy: As Kennedy Retires, the Supreme Court's Attack on Labor Unions Is a Sign of Things to Come: Note that even with Kennedy still on the Court:

  This week, the Supreme Court doled out victories to three powerful constituents of the Republican coalition. It upheld Donald Trump's travel ban, sided with anti-abortion campaigners in California, and, on Wednesday, struck down an Illinois law that required public-sector workers to pay fees to unions that cover the cost of organizing collective bargaining, even if they don't want to join the union proper. This last ruling -- which came just hours before Justice Anthony Kennedy, a swing vote on the Court, announced his retirement -- delivered a potentially crippling blow to the labor movement and the Democratic Party, with which it is aligned. All three decisions are likely harbingers of what is to come from an even more conservative Supreme Court bench.

  Also:

  • David Dayen: An Extremely Consequential Supreme Court Decision Slipped Under the Radar.

  • Mehdi Hasan: With "Muslim Ban" Ruling, Trump's White Supremacy Has Moved From the Campaign Trail to the Supreme Court.

  • Jon Schwarz: Farewell to Anthony Kennedy, Author of Some of the Most Ludicrous Pronouncements in Supreme Court History.

  • Jeffrey Toobin: How Trump's Supreme Court Pick Could Undo Kennedy's Legacy.

• Dara Lind: It's official: The Trump administration has replaced family separation with indefinite family detention.

• Jennie Neufeld: See the front page of the paper the Capital Gazette put out the day after a fatal shooting, Matt Shuham: Capital Gazette: 'We Won't Forget Being Called an Enemy of the People, and Yvonne Wenger/Jill Colvin: Trump, who calls journalists 'enemy of the people,' offers support after Capital Gazette shootings.

• Madeleine Ngo: The 2018 Mexican election, explained: They vote today for a 6-year presidential term, with left-populist Andrés Manuel López Obrador leading in the polls. [PS: Azan Ahmed/Paulina Villegas: Leftist Wins Mexico Presidency in Landslide With Mandate to Reshape Nation

• Ella Nilsen: The list of Democrats calling to abolish ICE keeps growing: Seems to me like an overreaction -- a reflection of Trump's all-or-nothing immigration suppression strategy -- and I worry that taking such a stand plays into Trump's hands. We clearly need much better immigration and customs policies, and much more sensible and humane policing, but it's hard (and, I think, foolish) to argue that we don't need any enforcement. Of course, maybe the department is so rotten at its core that it cannot be reformed, but in that case you usually start housecleaning at the top -- a problem which presumably can be fixed by electing better people than Trump and his cronies. Yglesias has some sensible policy ideas in the link above. Not exactly what I would recommend, but a good start.

• Emily Stewart: Trump is already talking about another tax bill.

• Matt Taibbi: Can You Think of Any Other Ways to Spend $716 Billion? On the "John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019."

• Benjamin Wallace-Wells: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Legacy of the Bernie Sanders Movement.

• Alex Ward: 9 questions about the 2018 World Cup you were too embarrassed to ask.

• Robin Wright: Giuliani Vows That Trump Will Help Bring Down the Iranian Regime: "In Paris, Giuliani and Gingrich told the exiles that they hoped that next year's gathering would be held in Tehran, marking the regime's demise."

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