Alito & The Blogs
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Kevin Drum is asking what the confirmation of Alito means for the emerging liberal blogosphere.
Certainly I think it speaks volumes that Washington – that is the elected Democrats and the insular consultants who feed on their failure – still sees blogs as an ATM and not yet a part of their message machine. I think it’s clear that blogs are the liberal version of talk radio (you get more mileage out of getting something on Atrios, Dailykos, etc. than you would on Air America right now, for instance) and if Democratic politicians were remotely interested in doing something more than add some bling bling to their campaign coffers, they’d really work the blogosphere (John Kerry, this means you, who all of a sudden “discovered” blogging last week).
But I think the failure to even present a remotely coherent case against Samuel Alito falls squarely on the head of the legal eagles on the progressive side. The primary reason for groups like People for the American Way, Alliance for Justice, etc. to exist is to be the front line of defense for Supreme Court nominations. These guys were around a long time before anyone had a freaking clue what blogging or the internet were.
It speaks volumes when you fail at your organization’s primary mission. Not that their mission was to stop Alito – I don’t know that that was ever possible simply because we didn’t have the numbers – but that Roberts and Alito both sailed through the process unassailed. The Republicans had Progress for America and the Committee for Justice (among others) on their roster – and the left just got rolled.
Why? For the same reason the national Democrats have been getting rolled – they’re fat and dumb and playing the game by the rules of the ancient. An election is a contest of each party’s ability to get the faithful energized and the swing vote convinced. Something like a supreme court nomination, the intracacies of which bore the heck out of Joe America (for good reason) are supposed to be the kind of thing that a political movement can rally around.
Somehow I don’t think the progressive legal infrastructure has been girding up all these years in order to produce the Phil A. Buster cartoon.
It’s amazing how broken the whole thing is. Time to take a match and burn the danged thing down.
20 Responses to “Alito & The Blogs”
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© 2000-2011 Oliver Willis
Dead on….
They went into Alito the same way they went into Bork, and it is not
the same world
They didn’t have a plan. They relied on their lawyerly skills
to trap the man, and he was tutored too well. (Evasion is the surest path
to SCOTUS. )
Then they relied on manipulating procedures as their
final gambit, and a half-hearted attempt to rally the troops for the
filibuster sagged and dropped to the ground like a lead zeppelin
They did not present a clear message to America why the appointments should not take place,John Roberts just shot by them and Alito came along and instead of presenting a clear agenda from which to work they devided among themselves,and tearing into each other basically accomplished nothing. They should have made the case to America about moving this court to the radical right and how it affects the average person,and in that they could have swayed the public behind them.
Reason,
The problem is that that was what the 2004 election was supposed to be about. If not the Presidency itself then certainly the Senators. We shouldn’t have even been in a position where have to assemble some desperate filibuster just to make a point. We should have elected people who wouldn’t put a radical right winger on the court in the first place.
…………………..then again, hopefiend that I am, maybe they are saving
the big one for the NSA hearings next week.
[...] where complained about Democrat politicians not making liberal blogs part of their message machine. Given the above, it is little wonder mainstream Democrats don&# [...]
Say Any friggin’ thing;
Do you have a substantive comment, or are you just desperate for hits
on your site?
i don’t understand this post. alito only got 4 democrat votes, that’s the fewest from the opposition party in decades. clarence thomas got more democrat votes. what else could the democrats have done and why should they have gone to the effort since it wouldn’t have made a difference anyway?
Does it ever cross any of your minds that the confirmation of a Supreme Court justice isn’t about satisfying your political aims but about whether or not the nominee can interpret the law?
Not even Senator Kennedy could come up with coherent interpretive legal arguments to oppose the man and had to resort to ad hominum, I know what you really think BS.
Based on his qualifications alone, Alito should have been 100-0 confirmed. Based on politics, we get 58-42.
I hope this isn’t the precedent for the future. IF Democrats ever get back in power (not likely for quite a while) and we get a Democratic President (50-50 at this point) I certainly hope that the Republicans don’t act anywhere near as badly as the Democrats did this time.
And Oliver- it’s not so much that it’s “broken.” It’s more like the rest of America doesn’t agree with you.
Rant all you want.
We ain’t buyin’ it.
Marty;
We ain’t sellin’. Unlike your crew which seems to think everything is
freemarket and saleable.
isn t about satisfying your political aims but about whether or not the nominee can interpret the law
According to the right, there’s no way to interpret law, it just “is” (except when they disagree with it).
it s not so much that it s broken. It s more like the rest of America doesn t agree with you.
That would be true if both sides were ably presenting their case. The Republicans are, the Dems continue to act like whipped puppies.
I certainly hope that the Republicans don t act anywhere near as badly as the Democrats did this time.
LOL.
“That would be true if both sides were ably presenting their case. The Republicans are, the Dems continue to act like whipped puppies.”
Or maybe they just don’t know what they believe…
Why wouldn’t they? During the administration of the last Democratic president, they were much worse.
Marty wrote:
Well, it certainly crosses my mind, but, then again, I’m a conservative Republican.
Emily Bazelon wrote about Justice Alito in Slate:
Miss Bazelon saw that as a complaint, that she feared Mr Alito wouldn’t be enough of a champion of “the little guy,” if the law wasn’t already on the side of the little guy.
Me? The idea that a judge dutifully follows the law is about the highest compliment you could give a judge.
Marty wrote:
Based on her qualifications alone, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was confirmed 96-3. Based on politics, what do you think the vote would be were the next Democratic president to nominate Justice Ginsburg’s clone?
To pimp my own site just a bit, I think that the Democrats just cut off their own noses to spite their faces.
Meant to make a link, but forgot: “Democrats are on the wrong side of history”
“Or maybe they just don t know what they believe…”
Or maybe you Republicans listen to each other too much.
Democrats know what they believe. The problem is that they insist on telling you, in boring detail. Republicans are just the opposite – they say nothing, but they say it in quick, sexy, repetitive soundbites, so that it sounds like they’re actually saying something important, but really aren’t imparting any information at all. The phrase “Democrats are on the wrong side of history,” for example, is semantically near null (how can you be on the wrong side of something that doesn’t have sides?) but makes a great talking point, which is why you guys say it over and over and over.
[...] people like Alito on the court. The real tragedy is that we ve done nothing nothing to counteract it.
This entry was posted
[...]
Personally I think the Democrats should have had the balls to stick together and filibuster, forcing the republicans to use their “dreaded” nuclear option. While the neocons are enjoying their victory for now, they may be wishing they had never put this guy on the bench. He is nowhere near the majority of the country on a lot of issues, and may do a few things to piss them off even. At least when the shit hits the fan and the country really finds out what Alito is about, i.e. overturning Row vs Wade, the Imperial Presidency, etc. etc. the democrats could say they did everything they could to stop him from getting on the bench.
Excuse my spelling, it should have been “Roe” but the point is still the same.