Photo; Ron Edmonds/AP
The evening of September 18, 202 Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away. There is little I can say here that will be more evocative of the legacy she has left for us to be inspired by and to follow. So, I won't try.
So where do we go, given the political climate we find ourselves in? There are a few things to consider;
- We are in the home stretch of a Presidential election year in which the incumbent is trailing in the national polls and many of the battleground states.
- The incumbent President is unpopular, and has a low job approval rating especially in his handling of the COVID pandemic, and the resulting economic fallout.
- One party controls the Senate, and the other controls the House, the balance of the Senate is in doubt.
- Since the police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota this past May, and the police shooting that left Jacob Blake paralyzed, the partisan divide among middle and working class voters has been exacerbated, to say nothing of the partisan divide among the political class.
- The Senate, in 2016 under GOP control, to refuse to even hold hearings on the nomination of Merrick Garland in an election year (on an opening created by the passing of Scalia in January 2016), and the pledge by Majority leader McConnell the night of Ginsburg's passing (less than 2 months before an election) that there will be a floor vote for a Trump nominee.
So what does all that mean, and where do we go then? Quite plainly it means the people who are on the political left need to make their voices heard. If there were a legitimate principle for Senator McConnell to refuse a vote to the Garland nomination 10 months before a Presidential election, and pledge a vote for a to be determined nomination 6 weeks before a Presidential election, I am not aware of it.
Simply, it's about power. The GOP in the Senate has it, knows there's a significant chance that they will lose it. The modern Republican party does a good job of exercising power. The modern Democratic party does a poor job of it. Why is that? There are a few reasons. First, the modern Democrats are not of the political left. They're really absent any cohesive ideology. So we have 2 major political parties in the United States. One is determined to get power, and then exercise it to enact change in the United States that consistent with its ideology, and the ideology of its donors. The other just wants to win enough elections to keep donors happy and convinced that they're gonna turn the corner. To use analogize to the NFL the Republican franchise is a team that does everything to win; hires free agents with criminal histories, push the rules right to the edge, work the refs to no end, whatever it takes. Just win. The GOP are the Patriots. The Democratic franchise does just enough to keep ticket sales healthy; keep popular players past their prime, don't sign players that fans don't like, continually lobby official channels about rules, and enforcement, go .500 or a little better year after year with an occasional flourish like a deep playoff run. Democrats are the fucking Bengals.
So what does the political left do? The political right has an easy answer, vote Republican. For the left it's not a plain answer. Democrats are not of the left. If you think they are of the left, you need to go back to history books, and read what actual left movements have done. Democrats haven't been politically left since the Johnson Administration. The most the the Democrats have ever been is during the Franklin Roosevelt Administration, and the New Deal is a far, far, far cry from Lenin and Trotsky. Given contemporary reality, the political has to take to Democrats to the left.
What does that look like? People in the streets now, and people in the streets after the election, and people in the streets after the inauguration. In context of the next Supreme Court Justice, it's calls and emails to your Senators supporting anything and everything; from every parliamentary procedural stunt to delay votes and hearings. If we learn anything from how Republicans exercise political power it's this; anything goes.
What?! "Anything goes?" Yup. Expect pearl clutching when from Republicans cry foul should the Democrats grow some political balls and use tricks to delay a nomination vote either in committee or on the floor. "It's the job of the President to nominate SCOTUS Justices!" "It's up to the Senate - regardless of leadership!" Call bullshit. That's what it is. Because now, all of a sudden, with 6 weeks to go before an election, the GOP says voting on a SCOTUS Justice is priority, and the voters do NOT deserve the same deference McConnell says they deserved in 2016 10 months before the election then. "Well it's different because Obama was a lame duck." Bullshit. Trump's candidacy is far from a sure thing. In fact it's dubious.
So the battle now is hold off filling the Ginsburg vacancy by any means until whomever is elected, is inaugurated.
The war, should Biden win, is for the political left to wake the fuck up, and take over the Democratic party. All the Democrats are now, by and large with few exceptions, empty suits with money and consultants behind them. There need to be actual liberal, and leftists, pushing the Democrats, and Biden to the actual left by using political power to force them to enact actual liberal policies that are broadly popular with United States voters.
