Democrats in Congress teed off on the Supreme Court’s decision this week gutting affirmative action. Just don’t expect them to do a whole lot about it. … That attitude reflects the fatalism with which many in the party have come to view the Supreme Court’s conservative tilt. Even if they controlled both chambers of Congress and the White House, Democrats lack the 60 Senate votes that are necessary to realistically promise action on reversing controversial landmark decisions on issues like abortion, affirmative action and student loans.
POLITICO: Why Dems aren’t campaigning on affirmative action
This is what I was getting at yesterday in my exchange with Ms. Kanefield. She was counseling that we must vote Dem to give Biden big wins so Dems have the mandate to reverse terrible SCOTUS decisions. I asked “how big, like Obama’s 57, 58, 59, and 60 seat Senate through 2009-10? When there was always a Liebermann to muck up that agenda?” She deflected and I responded “so… bigger than a 60-seat Senate, then?”
This was all in the context of Biden tamping down calls to expand the Court, the only reasonable way to fix this issue in my lifetime, as the chance Thomas and Alito die in the same time as Dems hold White House and Senate is slim without either “Justice” strategically retiring when a GOP holds the White House (I don’t see a Dem Senate pulling a McConnell seat theft; hell, they’d help GOP POTUS find an “acceptable moderate”).
Of course, the bill to increase SCOTUS would face the same 60-vote Senate hurdle. But at least Dems would force the issue and appear to be fighting for the women, gays, and Blacks who’ve lost rights during this 6-3 Court and have always reliably voted Dem and hear “we need to vote Dem!” and think “muthafuqas, we DID!” (I’m aware white women don’t reliably vote Dem. My point is that the women who’ve been declared brood mares in red states who do vote Dem can’t be motivated by “vote Dem!”) Folks who saw the end of Roe coming for months (even before the leak) and then saw Dems scrambling when it happened as if surprised.
Folks like me who’ve watched a Democratic Party pummeled by Reagan in the 80s, who responded to those electoral bloodbaths by incarcerating its Black base with Biden’s Drug War in the 80s and Biden’s Crime Bill in the 90s, by selling out its worker base with NAFTA and with welfare reform that Biden supported in the 90s, by betraying its youth base by sending them to desert wars based on lies Biden and Dems went along with in the 00’s, by betraying them again by making student debt immune to bankruptcy in a bill Biden wrote, by abandoning its LGBT base by tiptoeing around DADT, DOMA, and “Civil unions,” in the 90s and 00s, (but I gotta give Biden props for his gay-marriage-is-okay gaffe), and who let GOP steal SCOTUS and allow Russian Trump-boosting in the 10s while Biden was vice president, why, we would relish going on offense for once. Hell, if a re-elected President Joe Biden just promised to undo everything Senator Joe Biden and Vice President Joe Biden fought for, we’d be ecstatic!
Why vote Dem when their leaders take abolishing the filibuster and expanding the Supreme Court off the table? Every other agenda item fails when a minority Senate and a supermajority SCOTUS can nix it all. Do you think if the situation were reversed, the GOP wouldn’t hesitate to pack the Court from 6–3 liberal to 7–6 conservative?
GOP understands gaming the system in a way Dems don’t. They figured out that locking in a conservative SCOTUS, keeping it that way by McConnelling the rules, protecting it with a Senate filibuster, and enhancing it occasionally with an Electoral-College-chosen popular-vote-loser, means they don’t have to compete on ideas and policy for votes anymore.
But do Dems push the unfairness of this to the voters?
Nope, it’s “vote for more of us to work in the system where 41 GOP Senators and 6 GOP ‘Justices’ can undo our efforts to thwart the agenda of the GOP POTUS fewer voters ‘elected.'”
Take the Electoral College (please!). Here’s something that’s gifted us the two worst presidents of modern history who lost their initial elections, then ushered in climate change, unlimited electoral bribery, regular gun massacres, our longest war, and cemented in the 6-3 SCOTUS that’s undone 60 years of precedent in taking away Constitutional rights from female, gay, and minority people.
Remember when Dems focused the attention of Americans outraged by Bush v Gore in 2000, or by Trump losing by 3,000,000 but “winning,” and held televised hearings on an amendment to abolish the Electoral College? Like, maybe when Obama had a 60-seat Senate? Or after Nancy Pelosi and the Dems clawed back the House in Trump’s term?
Of course you don’t. Because when Dems had the power, they introduced such bills then let them die in committee. In 2009–10, with 58% control of both the House and Senate, they introduced bills in both chambers to abolish the Electoral College. They got zero cosponsors and zero hearings. In 2019–20, with a fresh 54% House majority with a mandate to repudiate Trump, who was only there because of the Electoral College, they at least got 2 Senate and 11 House co-sponsors, but again, zero hearings.
Meanwhile, did you hear that one time, there was this attack on an embassy in Benghazi?
Dems will see an issue critical to its base, mention it once on a Sunday show, feel fierce reaction from the GOP, then back off, expressing that voters “aren’t ready.”
GOP sees an issue critical to its base and blasts it out on a massive multimedia network its donors funds at 150dB on repeat until it’s driven into everybody’s skull.
The Dem message should be that we’re permanently f×cked on climate change, civil rights, gun reform, addressing homelessness, etc. unless we:
- End the Filibuster
- Expand the Court
- Abolish the Electoral College
Those are the triple pillars of minority white supremacy rule and all part of one winning issue: fairness. Democrats — be the party of Democracy! Go all in on Party of Fairness. Elect us and we’ll fight to make the system fair.
I mean, sheeit, fairness is the cloak Republicans always don when striking down someone’s rights! It’s not fair to make the hypothetical Christian web designer build sites for gay weddings! It’s not fair that people who already paid their student loans should have to pay off other people’s! It’s not fair that some kid gets into Legacy University just because he’s Black! It’s not fair that my daughter has to race against a trans girl! It’s not fair to keep parents out of the loop on their child’s gender identity, sexual orientation, or potential womb-baby!
Go political jiu-jitsu and use their longing for fairness against them for once. “You want fairness, but support a Senate where the losers can stop the winners? You want fairness, but support a Supreme Court that isn’t bound by rules every other court must follow? You want fairness, but won’t expand it to undo appointments made by cheaters and losers so it actually represents what people want? You want fairness, but you support an Electoral College that lets vote losers win?” Frame it as “winners” and “losers.” They believe “to the victor belong the spoils,” so use that against them. They support political affirmative action for losers. They are the party of Participation Trophies and Snowflakes who need gubmint assistance to get by.
“Vote more Dem!” without addressing the fairness issue is pissing in the wind. Everybody who DID vote Dem is losing rights unfairly. Those who don’t vote see Dems who can’t succeed because of unfairness, so why bother? Those who vote 3rd party are protesting that voting Dem got us where we are because of unfairness—if my values can’t win because Dems won’t tackle fairness, I’ll at least have a clear conscience voting for someone who would fight for me if she could.
I believe Bernie Sanders got the traction he did because he was relentless in his messaging about “the 1%,” which is at its core a message about fairness. He educated voters about a system that is patently unfair and illustrated that Democrats are complicit in maintaining this unfairness (Nancy Pelosi stock trades, anyone?) by not calling it out. I believe Hillary Clinton failed to beat an obviously unfit mobbed-up criminal conman serial lying rapist reality TV star traitor* because she embodied the neoliberal don’t-buck-the-system Democrats who sold us out in her husband’s administration.
These days, politics is a bit like cosmology. We can measure all the matter in the Universe, but gravity behaves in a way that suggests the existence of dark matter we can’t see. So, too, we can take all the polls of the American voters, but politics behaves in the way that suggests the existence of “dark votes” we can’t see.
Those “dark votes” are capital.
When you think of Dems and GOP fighting for people’s wants, none of this makes sense. The GOP clearly fight against what people want, and Dems clearly don’t fight hard enough to change the system so they could fight for what people want.
But when you see politics as Dems and GOP fighting for what capital wants, it becomes crystal clear. GOP wants a hierarchy where the top can scoop up all the money. Dems want diversity so there’s more money from more people to scoop up.
However, it’s always about scooping up money.
For instance, codifying Roe into law during Obama’s 60-seat Senate would’ve done something the people want. But he had “other priorities,” unspoken among them was that the Sword of Damocles hanging over Roe is a great Dem fundraiser.
What do the people want to happen on the triple pillars of minority white supremacy rule? On expanding the Court, most Dems and Independents agree, especially in strong Dem base demos.
In a Marquette Law School poll released Wednesday, 51% of respondents said they either strongly or somewhat favored increasing the number of justices on the Supreme Court, versus 49% who were strongly or somewhat opposed. Expansion was supported by 51% of independents, 72% of Democrats and just 27% of Republicans.
Expanding the court was favored by larger majorities of a number of groups: 63% of Black respondents, 61% of Hispanic respondents, 60+% of those ages 18-44, 60% of women and 56% of those making less than $30,000 per year.
Yahoo! News: Poll: Slim majority of Americans support expanding Supreme Court as confidence wanes
On ending the Senate filibuster, more Americans strongly oppose it than strongly support it, but most don’t know very much about it (why is that?) and barely support it overall; however, Democrats oppose it at 56%.
Do you support or oppose the U.S. Senate’s current filibuster rule, which lets a minority of the 100 Senators
YouGov: Daily Survey: Senate Filibuster June 27–30, 2022
prevent voting on a bill unless 60 Senators vote to end the filibuster?
Strongly support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17%
Somewhat support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17%
Somewhat oppose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13%
Strongly oppose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23%
Not sure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29%
On abolishing the Electoral College and directly electing the President and Vice President, almost two-thirds of all Americans agree, and 80% of Democrats agree.
Around six-in-ten U.S. adults (63%) say the way the president is elected should be changed so that the winner of the popular vote nationwide wins the presidency, while 35% favor keeping the current Electoral College system, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted June 27-July 4, 2022.
Pew Center: Majority of Americans continue to favor moving away from Electoral College
Dems don’t attack the Electoral College, the Senate filibuster, and expanding the Supreme Court, I deduce, because capital doesn’t want them to.
* I don’t care how much ratf×cking the FBI did, how much CNN sanitized Trump, how long Bernie stayed in, or the f×ckery of the Electoral College, when you get your 3-decade-experienced First Lady/Senator/Secretary of State candidate beat by that guy when your party holds a popular successful two-term incumbency, you really suck at politics.
