Even if Supreme Court nominee Gorsuch were Oliver Wendell Holmes, due to the unconstitutional theft of Obama’s nomination to the Court, any Democrat who votes for Gorsuch should be primaried.
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hearing before the Judiciary Committee and would have demanded a hearing for Merrick Garland.
Fred Rich LaRiccia
we need to step up to the plate and LEAD with courage and vision !
Fred Rich LaRiccia
I urge everyone to write their representative in congress and ask WHY they are not defending the Constitution, as they were sworn to do, and impeach Trump for his clear and numerous violations of the foreign emoluments clause and the domestic emoluments clause.
If they are a Democrat and their response is that they do not have the votes, remind them that Republicans voted over 50 times to overturn the ACA, despite not having enough votes. We all mocked them for their futile efforts and denigrated it as showmanship.
Today, Trump is president and the Republicans are on their way to repealing the ACA.
Worth discussing.
Dem votes don’t matter. If it comes down to it, they will rewrite the rules to pass Gorsuch.
So any Senator who votes “Yes” is doing so for political reasons, maybe to inoculate themselves against GOP attacks.
I have a hard time understanding the mechanism for any such “inoculation”.
My sense is that the GOP passionately and personally opposes each and every Democrat and Democratic proposal, using any attack they think might succeed. Barack Obama wasted all of his first term and much of his second pursuing the delusion that the GOP would “compromise” or be even slightly affected by any Democratic argument (including appeals to basic and well-documented facts).
Mitch McConnell explicitly and accurately said that the primary goal of the GOP was to destroy Barack Obama. Nothing has changed since then.
I think that any Senator who votes “Yes” does so because:
1. They actually agree and don’t care about the political consequences or
2. They think they’ll gain more votes than they’ll lose in the next election by supporting the nomination.
To me, the concept of inoculating against GOP attacks is a naive delusion.
The GOP will attack each and every Democratic Senator however that Senator votes on this nomination.
Say you’re Joe Manchin, and your identity is “anti-Obama Democrat.” Your opponent says “Joe Manchin says he’s independent, but he votes with the Democrats 99% of the time.”
If Manchin can point to a high-profile “bipartisan” vote, like confirming Gorsuch, that charge is still made but it doesn’t quite stick. And Manchin can defend it to Democrats that object by saying that Gorsuch would have been confirmed anyway.
That helps, it sounds like my item 2.
I misunderstood what you meant by “inoculating against GOP attacks”. I thought you meant protecting against internecine (backroom) senate fights.
I must say that Joe Manchin is near the top of my list of senators who I wouldn’t mind seeing defeated. It seems as though he pretty consistently argues and votes against the things I think America needs. I get that he reflects WV voters. I’m reminded of the similar defense offered for Colleen Garry. I tend to be sympathetic to the argument that maybe the Democrats should just write off the WV seat and keep moving.
Anyway, I appreciate the explanation. We seem to agree on this.
As a matter of principle.
I think Manchin is (sort of) playing a game. He’d probably have an easier time as a Republican, but he runs as a Democrat and (usually) votes with us because … I don’t know why, but presumably something sincere.
What I would do as Benevolent Overlord is not challenge him but run a candidate in every race downticket from him in the hopes of base building, but if someone wants to challenge him, more power to them. Primaries are healthy, we have become weirdly superstitious about them in the last 15 years or so.
And they always lose anyway. I would argue truly purple state Democrats would be wise to fight since the base will come out and have their back. This seems to be what Sen. McClaskill, Sen. Casey and Sen. Brown are doing. Heitkamp and Manchin are likely DOA no matter what they do. I’d spend more
money fighting to dethrone Ted Cruz or Jeff Flake then defend votes that are only with us half the time anyway.