Monday, February 01, 2016

"I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!"


I don't agree with everything Southern Beale says here, but the tweets she quotes undergird my reluctance to get on board with Bernie.

To keep it to one point, the idea that Sanders will appoint a Supreme Court Justice who WILL overturn Citizens United.  As SB notes, Sanders does understand that's not how the Supreme Court works, right?  It can't reach out and find a case that allows it to overrule any prior case, and one Justice does not replace the votes of the other 8.

But even more practically than that, the history of the Court is riddled with Justices who shocked and appalled the Presidents who appointed them.  I'd say this was a recent phenomenon, the Court being part of national politics, but then I remember the reaction to Dred Scott (it wasn't good) and FDR's "court-packing" problem.  He actually ran against the Court in '36, because ti wasn't giving him what he wanted.  Presidents have frequently been frustrated with the Court, and frequently found they couldn't do very much about it.  And probably more than one President has wished he could appoint a Justice who would do only what he wanted done.

But that's kind of like saying "My kid would never do that!", only to find out that's just what your kid just did.  You don't really get to appoint a Justice who contacts you for direction on how to vote on every case that comes before the Court.  (And frankly, the most reliable vote on the Court is Clarence Thomas.  Do we really need another Justice like that?)

And then there's the zeal of Millenials who can't be bothered to vote in off year elections or to pay attention to down ballot races.  As SB asks:  have we all been asleep for the past 8 years?  Because it's as if the only problem with Obama is that he wasn't sincere enough.  Which is exactly the dark force driving the candidacies of Trump and Cruz.

Do we really think it works when that dark energy is on "our" side?

I'll be charitable and say that maybe somebody is writing those tweets for Sanders the way I'm pretty sure somebody is writing tweets for Donald Trump.  But the question put to Trump is just as fairly put to Sanders:  is this Presidential behavior?  Are these sensible positions?

Because in both cases, those tweets are just nuts.  The pharmaceutical companies will know their greed is at an end?  The billionaires will know their days are numbered?  Right; that, or we'll deport all the Mexicans and build a YOOOGE wall, with a magnificent door in it.

Okey-dokey.

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