I'm writing this while watching the Senate confirmation hearing on Judge Brett Kavanaugh. As usual for Supreme Court confirmation hearings, it is fascinating to watch. However, also as usual, it is likely going to be absolutely meaningless, because Republicans are going to have the votes to confirm him in the end. The Democrats are fighting hard, but they're going to lose this one, to put it more bluntly. It was essentially a done deal before the hearing even began.

Elections have consequences, of course. One of those is the president's power to appoint judges. This is now a turbocharged process. Democrats are on the powerless end of the stick right now, which is why Kavanaugh will be confirmed. Moving forward, there are three big ways to fight back against this situation: vote more Democrats into office, Democrats in office need to champion better laws, and don't be so shy about suggesting amendments to the Constitution. Those are really the only choices, when you look at the big picture.

The first is pretty obvious. Elect more Democrats -- enough to take back the House, the Senate, and (eventually) the White House. If Democrats controlled the Senate, Kavanaugh would not be confirmed. All other Trump judicial nominees would be in peril as well. Elections matter. But Republican voters are much more inclined to consider court appointments when voting than Democrats. This has to change, if Democrats are ever going to win this game.

Conservatives have taken a very long view on judicial appointments. They started this effort back in the 1980s, in fact. That's when the Moral Majority (and groups like them) began to see that one good way to fight Roe v. Wade was to see to it that judges were installed who mirrored their own views on abortion. We may be at the end of this road, with Kavanaugh, but it has been a very long fight for them, one they have been fighting for over three decades. They've seen their fight as a marathon, not a sprint.

Democrats simply don't have the same viewpoint. They don't consider the judicial appointment question all that much when voting. This may be starting to change -- the unprecedented takedown of Merrick Garland certainly woke a lot of people up to how important the issue was, and how far the Republicans were willing to break established precedent to fulfill their aim of getting as many conservatives on the bench as possible.

Equally important (if not more so) is to elect Democratic presidents. After all, that's where the judicial nominations originate from. Don't like the fact that Trump is getting so many judges confirmed? Then replace him in 2020, and elect Democrats for the next two or three terms. That will put the shoe on the other foot -- especially if they have a Democratic Senate to work with.

The political pendulum swings. Eventually, Democrats will get their chance at bat again. When they do, the turbocharged factor is going to help. When I use this term, I am speaking of the two "nuclear options" the Senate has gone through in the past decade. Both parties bear some of the blame (or credit, depending on your point of view) for dropping these nukes. First Harry Reid removed the filibuster from all judicial nominations below the Supreme Court level. Then Mitch McConnell did the same for Supreme Court nominees. If he hadn't, we would likely currently have two vacancies on the Supreme Court, since Democrats would have been in the mood for payback after Merrick Garland's treatment.

Sooner or later, Democrats will get the same opportunity that Republicans are now enjoying. And they'll do precisely what Republicans have been doing under Trump -- rushing as many judicial nominations through the Senate as fast as possible. Trump has set records for the number of judges confirmed, but that is a direct result of the two nukes. The process has been streamlined, which is why it has speeded up. But it'll be just as fast when Democrats eventually get their innings.

The second strategy is, after electing enough Democrats to take back at least one chamber of Congress, to push back on Supreme Court overreach by passing laws directly challenging their decisions. If a decision strikes down a law on technicalities, then go back and fix the technicalities and pass the law again. If they punt on a tiny legal issue, in other words, then force them to deal with the broader question by pressing the case.

It has to be said, this will probably fail, at least at first. But if Democrats can even take back the House, then it will be useful politically, if not successful legislatively. By passing a bill directly challenging a Supreme Court decision Democrats feel was wrongly decided, it will focus attention on the underlying issue. This will cause the Republicans to argue the other side, which may be wildly unpopular. It may even (this works only in rare cases) cause so much embarrassment on their side of the aisle to actually get a bill through the Senate (or even get a Republican president to sign it). The key to such rare victories is to mobilize the public on your side in a major way. But to mobilize them, you've got to have a solid bill to rally around.

The final strategy is also mostly a political one, but it can be used to great effectiveness. If the Supreme Court wrongly decides a case on basic constitutional grounds (rather than just ruling on a technicality), then there is only one real remedy to fix the problem: a constitutional amendment.

The Supreme Court interprets the Constitution. But the text of the Constitution includes every amendment, from the Bill of Rights forward. So if the Supreme Court says "this is not constitutional" then a constitutional amendment which specifically states that it is now the law will completely tie the hands of the court. If it is explicitly stated within the Constitution itself (as an amendment) then the court must decide legal cases based on the new amendment, and not on anything they've previously decided.

So where is the unified Democratic Party push to pass a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United? Small efforts may exist in Congress, but so far the party has not made it a top priority -- despite the fact that most Americans simply do not agree that corporations have personal rights under the Constitution (and the Bill of Rights contained within). That is merely one example of what I'm talking about.

Proposing a constitutional amendment can be a purely political act, even if you would happily love see the amendment ratified. Most amendments are not successfully ratified, because the bar is so high. But that shouldn't stop Democrats from merely proposing them. A simple "corporations are not people" amendment is pretty easy to understand by most people, and would undo the damage done by Citizens United. But that's not the only good example.

How about a privacy amendment, which guarantees every citizen's privacy from both corporate America and the government? I'd bet that would be a pretty popular idea. It also might just help shore up Roe v. Wade. How about an amendment legalizing marijuana and regulating it exactly the same as alcohol? Bet that one would also be wildly popular right about now.

If Democrats don't like Supreme Court decisions, and they think they've got the public squarely on their side, then they should push as hard as they can for a constitutional amendment. Even though most (if not all) of these efforts will ultimately fail, merely bringing the subject up will reap political rewards. The Republicans have known this for a long time, and have wielded this political weapon quite masterfully, at times. Remember the hoo-hah about the anti-flag-burning amendment? Or how about the anti-gay-marriage amendment? Both were used to great effect to turn Republican voters out at the polls and excite their political base. Both, in fact, were so popular (at the time) that they caused Democratic politicians to get on board (see: Dianne Feinstein, flag-burning). The flag-burning amendment got fourteen such Democratic votes in the Senate, one vote short of the two-thirds majority it needed. That's a pretty effective political bludgeon, you have to admit.

Democrats can do the same thing, if they'd only prioritize such efforts. Corporate and dark money in politics is pretty much reviled by everyone, no matter their political bent. A "corporations are not people" amendment could garner wide support among the general public, which would leave Republicans to explain why they were fighting against something a majority of their own voters supported. There are any number of issues that could be amendment proposals, in fact. Protecting equal rights and equal pay in the workplace, for instance. Protecting the rights of people with pre-existing conditions to buy health insurance would be another wildly popular idea. Banning the use of non-disclosure agreements in sexual harassment cases might be another. Pick any issue that the Republicans are going to have to play a very uncomfortable defense on, and boldly propose an amendment to fix the problem.

Or do so in direct response to Supreme Court decisions you disagree with. Citizens United won't be the only one to target in the near future, that much seems certain at this point. Democrats are fighting hard in today's hearing, but they're not going to win this battle. The court will soon have a 5-4 conservative majority, for the foreseeable future. They are quite likely to overreach on some issues. Democrats can fight back against these, and everything they do in this regard will have a serendipitous effect on their other efforts.

Get more Democrats elected. Enthuse Democratic voters by making the courts a major issue. Pass laws to force Republicans to defend things that the public doesn't agree with. If that doesn't work, then propose new amendments that an overwhelming number of people would agree with. This will all have the effect of getting more Democrats elected, eventually. It's a virtuous cycle, in other words.

We're going to lose this confirmation battle. But that doesn't mean we should weep and wail and then do nothing else. This, as the conservatives have proven, is a long game. It's a marathon. Democrats -- the politicians, the party at large, and the voters themselves -- should start acting like it, and gird their loins for an extended political battle. Republicans are already fighting this fight, so it's time to fight back using all the weapons available. That's the only way things are ever going to change for the better.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

The Washington Post just unveiled a sneak peek at Bob Woodward's upcoming book about the Trump White House, and so far it looks pretty much exactly the same as every other peek inside the Trump White House. Chaos reigns, Donald Trump is patently unfit to hold the office, and his aides do their best to get important things done while refusing to follow the worst of the unbalanced and angry orders from their boss. As Chief of Staff John Kelly is quoted saying, it is "Crazytown."

Kelly's full quote on Trump is worth repeating, to understand the depth of frustration of the sane adults who surround Trump and try to fend off his worst impulses:

He's an idiot. It's pointless to try to convince him of anything. He's gone off the rails. We're in Crazytown. I don't even know why any of us are here. This is the worst job I've ever had.

Elsewhere, Reince Priebus (the man who used to hold Kelly's job) describes Trump's aides as "natural predators," with a particularly gruesome metaphor: "When you put a snake and a rat and a falcon and a rabbit and a shark and a seal in a zoo without walls, things start getting nasty and bloody." Also, Defense Secretary James Mattis compares Trump to a fifth-grader -- for which he really should apologize immediately... to fifth graders.

Continue Reading »

Happy Labor Day, everyone!

I wrote the following column last year, and sadly it still mostly applies. The Democratic Party has made some progress on the following issues, but by and large it has been individual Democratic candidates who have been left to carry this banner forward -- some of whom have done so in remarkable ways. Many pro-Labor and Progressive candidates have now advanced to the general election as Democratic nominees, which is good news. And, it must be said, when you discount all the hand-wringing happening inside the Beltway over what Democrats should be campaigning on, out in the rest of the country, Democrats have been running pretty solid campaigns on precisely the issues voters want addressed in a positive manner: healthcare, education, and lots of pro-Labor pocketbook issues.

Even so, I thought it was worth a reminder of how Labor issues could and should be at the center of the Democratic Party's agenda, because they are issues that could make life better for millions upon millions of Americans, especially those who don't even have the option of joining a Union. We now have a year and a half of Republican rule (House, Senate, and White House), so comparing the record of what they've done for working-class Americans (not much) to what could be achieved with a little political will is a pretty easy (and stark) contrast to make.

So here is last year's column, which would need very little updating to reflect the current situation (other than drawing those contrasts with the Republicans' actual record, really). Enjoy, and hope everyone had a happy Labor Day weekend.

Originally published September 4, 2017

Since today is Labor Day, I thought it was time to point out something that seems incredibly obvious to me. If you listen to the inside-the-Beltway chatter, Democrats are currently seen as floundering around, searching for an agenda. This is less true than the cocktail-party-circuit crowd believes, but whatever. Simultaneously, Democrats are urged to try to win back the working-class vote, because Donald Trump supposedly seduced them all away with his empty promises. Again, the answer to this perceived problem is pretty obvious. The Democratic Party needs to rededicate itself to the Labor agenda -- thus giving it a solid agenda to fight for, and also a perfect way to woo back white working-class voters.

Continue Reading »

We have to begin today, sadly, by speaking ill of the dead. However, we do so respectfully (unlike some other folks have done this week). We fully realize it is a serious breach of etiquette, but in all the laudatory remarks given this week about the late Senator John McCain, there has been one glaring omission. Because, more than anyone else, John McCain is responsible for regularizing the concept that a know-nothing could be considered presidential. Some might push the blame back further, to George H. W. Bush, who selected Dan Quayle as his vice president, but McCain certainly shoulders the lion's share of this blame for deciding that Sarah Palin was qualified to be president. Anyone listening to her speak for more than two minutes could easily tell how misguided the idea of her running the country truly was, after all. And yet McCain went ahead and selected her anyway.

Palin won't be at John McCain's funeral, since she was on the short list of people "disinvited" by McCain and his family. This list also included President Donald Trump and Steve Schmidt, McCain's former campaign manager. Several other former McCain aides were likewise excluded from the ceremonies. This avoids having any reminder of the McCain/Palin ticket on television screens, but no one should forget that just being a "maverick" isn't always such a good thing. If Palin hadn't been elevated to the national political stage, it is debatable whether Donald Trump would be where he is today. The Republican Party had to go out of its way to defend Palin as a candidate, and by doing so seriously weakened the concept of who should and who should not be considered presidential material by the public. So while we are not detracting from all the good things John McCain accomplished during his extraordinary life of public service, we do feel it necessary to point out that we're still living with the fallout from what was quite possibly his biggest mistake ever.

Continue Reading »

The War On Weed's days are numbered. That should be pretty obvious, by now. State after state has jumped on the bandwagon against the War On Weed, liberalizing their harsh laws on cannabis through decriminalization, legalization of medicinal marijuana, or outright legalization for adult recreational use. In fact, it's getting harder and harder to find any states which haven't done so, in one form or another. Nationally, the public's attitude on the subject has gone through a sea change in the last two decades, and now polls regularly cite public support of complete legalization of marijuana at 60 percent or higher. The weed warriors, obviously, are losing the battle for hearts and minds, and they're losing almost all the battles at the ballot box. This long social warfare, stretching back almost a century, is finally almost over. In the end, sanity will prevail, and the nation's second Prohibition will finally be thrown on the ash heap of failed political and social policy.

That's not to say, however, that the remaining weed warriors will not go down without one last fight. That's the message, at any rate, that BuzzFeed just uncovered at the White House. Here's what has recently been happening behind closed doors:

Continue Reading »

Primary season is winding down, which means the slates have mostly been set for the midterm general election races across the country. Last night, two Progressives won Democratic nominations for governor, in Florida and Arizona. This means at least four such Progressives will be running in November, when you add in the races in Maryland and Georgia. Progressives haven't exactly swept the board in the primaries this year (many other Progressive candidates in various races have lost to Establishment Democrats), but this is still significant progress. But their chances of winning in November vary, so anyone looking for sweeping conclusions about the superiority (or inferiority) of a Progressive platform is almost sure to be disappointed. All of the candidates are people of color as well, which could also lead to erroneous conclusions by pundits looking to nationalize the story in some way. Different states and different candidates mean there likely won't be one single and obvious conclusion to draw, once the dust settles. You really have to take the races individually in order to accurately assess them on their own. So that's what we're going to do, in alphabetical order.

Continue Reading »

Paul Manafort, now an eight-time convicted felon, could be considering cutting a deal with Bob Mueller to avoid his second (and more serious) federal trial. The Wall Street Journal (not exactly a left-wing news source) is reporting that Manafort's team already explored the possibility of such a plea deal during the four-day period when the jury in his first trial was still deliberating. The plea talks broke down and no deal emerged, but the fact that such a discussion took place at all shows that Manafort's legal team knows full well the serious jeopardy their client is in. Today it was also reported that Manafort's second trial will be delayed for one week, at the request of the defense. Could the extra week be to work out a plea deal before the second trial even begins? Speculation is running rampant on that very question.

Continue Reading »

Today's question is a purely academic one, for the time being. What constitutes an impeachable offense for a United States president? What rises to the level of "high crimes and misdemeanors" and what falls short? The quick (but unsatisfying) answer to that is that anything that a majority of House members find impeachable is impeachable. This still leaves a lot of undefined territory, obviously, but it is indeed the only concrete standard that really exists.

The reason I'm pondering the subject today is because I heard an interesting statement on Meet The Press yesterday. Representative Jerrold Nadler, who is the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee (meaning: if the Democrats took back the House, he would likely become the committee's chairman), was asked by Chuck Todd about statements he had made during the impeachment of Bill Clinton (taken from the transcript).

Continue Reading »

We have to admit, we were torn when selecting this week's headline. The other candidate under consideration was: "Making Flippy Floppy," which of course was a Talking Heads song from the 1980s which contained the immortal line: "Our president's crazy / Did you hear what he said?" What with today's news of the Chief Financial Officer of the Trump Organization flipping after being granted immunity, this did seem like the obvious choice, since it followed the news of Michael Cohen and David Pecker of the National Enquirer also flipping on Trump. Oh, and the news of those 30 hours of testimony already given by White House Counsel Don McGahn, as well. But in the end, we weighted the uncontained glee which liberals everywhere greeted the news of the sixteen guilty verdicts/pleas this week more heavily, and had to go with acknowledging these guilty pleasures. Because no guilty verdicts/pleas have caused this much pleasure on the left since Scooter Libby's fall from grace.

Within minutes of each other, two legal bombshells exploded in federal courts this Tuesday. Paul Manafort's jury returned and announced they had found him guilty on eight felony counts, and it was later revealed that they had voted 11-1 on the other 10 counts. Only one holdout refused to admit the solidity of the evidentiary trail on these counts, meaning Bob Mueller's team is quite likely to get a conviction on all of them if they retry Manafort (and do a better job of jury selection next time). But they may not even bother to, since Manafort's second federal trial is already teed up and ready to go. This will be a much more substantial case, legally. Manafort is already facing a possible 80 years in federal prison for the eight crimes he's been convicted of, so if Mueller wins more convictions against Manafort in the second trial he probably won't even need to bother retrying the 10 counts the jury hung on. One way or another, Paul Manafort is going to be spending many, many years behind federal bars -- unless, of course, Donald Trump pardons him.

Meanwhile, up in New York, Michael Cohen surprised everyone by appearing in front of a federal judge and pleading guilty to eight federal felonies of his own. Yep, Trump's fixer has officially flipped. His allocution was an even bigger bombshell for Trump, since Cohen flat-out accused the president of directing him to commit criminal acts. He didn't name Trump, but when an anonymous individual is described in court as: "who at that point had become the President of the United States," it's pretty obvious who is being talked about.

This is the most pleasing guilt of all, because now Trump can correctly be described as an "unindicted co-conspirator" -- a phrase not heard in relation to a president since Tricky Dick stalked the halls of the White House late at night, talking to the paintings. So rather than "Donald Trump" or "President Trump," every Democrat should immediately start using "Unindicted Co-Conspirator Trump" instead. It just has a nice ring to it, don't you think?

Continue Reading »

What with all the guilty pleas and verdicts for felony corruption in the news, it's hard for any other story to break through -- even one about a senator valiantly trying to end some of the most egregious forms of corruption in the nation's capital. Which is a shame, because Senator Elizabeth Warren's new bill deserves more attention than it has been getting -- maybe now more than ever.

Warren introduced the "Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act" this week, which contains a six-part effort to reform the way Washington currently works. She focused most of her attention on lobbyists and the pay-to-play atmosphere surrounding them. She also takes a big swipe at Donald Trump, because another thing the legislation would do would be to require any candidate for Congress or the White House to publicly release at least eight years of tax returns in order to be an eligible candidate for office. HuffPost had a pretty good rundown of what the bill aims to accomplish:

Continue Reading »