Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

And now, the obligatory “I told you so” post

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Way back when the worst we had to worry about on the Supreme Court was John Roberts, I wrote the following:

The WORST POSSIBLE STRATEGY for the Democrats, in my view, is the one that they appear to be pursuing: everyone does what they feel like, with the result that, let’s say, about 20 Democrats vote “no,” about 25 vote “yes,” Roberts is comfortably confirmed, and the Democrats have failed to stake out any ground whatsoever for the next nomination.  Look, we cannot, and probably (in my view) should not, prevent John Roberts from becoming the next Chief Justice of the United States.  But we CAN, and we SHOULD, send a powerful message of some sort to President Bush and the Senate Republicans that Justice O’Connor’s replacement is a different kettle of fish because of her unique role on the Court.  If we fail to do that, we really suck.

Sure enough, we really sucked.  More precisely, the Democrats moved forward on Roberts with no strategy whatsoever – even though useful and viable strategies were certainly available (as I noted here) – and split right down the middle, 22 for and 22 against.

And now, having totally failed to do anything useful with Roberts, we did the same thing with Alito.  Sure, the vote to confirm will be much closer.  But the only vote that mattered – the cloture vote – was 19 for cloture, and 24 against (Harkin of Iowa didn’t vote).  Again, split right down the middle.

Hey, David, you say!  How can you complain about the cloture vote now when you trashed Kerry for pushing for a filibuster a few days ago?  Easy.  The Democrats lost this vote when they split down the middle on Roberts.  Had they taken some kind of stand – any kind of stand – as a unified party, at that time, they would have been ready for Alito.  And had they done that, it might have been possible to mount a successful filibuster.  But they didn’t, so they weren’t, so they couldn’t.  That was perfectly obvious before Kerry phoned it in from Davos, and it remained obvious through all the hue and cry that ensued afterward.  The last-minute push was just a sideshow, a publicity stunt designed to garner press, to cheer up the netroots, and set up positions for the 2008 presidential primaries, and without which we’d all have been much better off – among other things, it publicly humiliated the party and diminished the effectiveness of its quite effective Senate leader, Harry Reid (say what you will, he’s actually done a good job on a lot of things).  And as a result, we are probably looking at many years of unpleasantness from the Supreme Court, starting tomorrow.

Maybe the Democratic party has learned something from this double fiasco.  But I doubt it.

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Comments

  1. this NYT article has some unbelievable stuff in it.  Like this:

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    Democratic aides said their party had initially expected Judge Alito to live up to his reputation as “Scalito,” suggesting a conservative firebrand in the mold of Justice Antonin Scalia. Failing to adjust to his meekness, Democratic aides admit they searched too hard for scandal in Judge Alito’s past…. By the afternoon of the second day of Judge Alito’s testimony, senior Democratic aides were already conceding privately that their hopes of stopping him were essentially lost.  Instead of a fearsome “Scalito” whom Democrats had initially expected, Judge Alito appeared timid and bland in the face of the Democratic questions, the aides said. “Instead of some brash, confrontational figure in the mold of Robert Bork, we got a quiet, studious guy you almost felt sorry for,” Mr. Manley said.

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    Good Lord, did they even bother to talk to anyone who knew the guy before they formulated their “strategy”?  Or did they let the Armandos and others who insisted that the “Scalito” thing was a great talking point define their strategy for them? Honest to God.

  2. I could not agree more with you.  All the caucus is to blame for that, starting by those who were supposed to led:  Reid and Leahy.

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    However, the cloture vote is not the reason why Alito will be on the Supreme Court.  What did not happen before that is the reason? 
    As somebody who had been asking for the filibuster for weeks and who expected to see somebody from the JC lead it, I can only thanks those, including the whip, Durbin, who insisted in making the last move.  I only wished it had been preceded by an efficient action making the case, preferably by those who were supposed to make the case: the judiciary Committeee.

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    For the rest, I totally agree.

    • Reid and Leahy deserve a significant share of the blame for what didn’t happen with Roberts, and thus what happened with Alito.  As I said, I’ve liked a fair amount of what Reid has done – he’s accomplished a fair amount given that he’s only got 44-45 votes, and he was great when the whole nuclear option thing was heating up.  But he blew it on these nominations.

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