The Progressive Case for a Non-Progressive Candidate
This Monday, Mother Jones’ Kevin Drum posted an odd piece entitled “The Progressive Case for Hillary Clinton is Pretty Overwhelming.” Presented as a barely-readable laundry list of 84 (!) examples of Clinton’s supposed progressive bona fides, the piece read as if Drum asked “why hilary clinton good ??” on Yahoo! Answers and posted the unedited replies.
Buried in the article are a few legitimate progressive accomplishments. Clinton, for instance, does deserve credit for pushing for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program and supporting card check legislation. But most of the post is littered with vaguely pro-Clinton quotations from prominent statesmen, examples of Clinton’s support for compromise (rightly or wrongly), debunking of right-wing conspiracy theories (although personally I LIKE that Hillary murdered Vince Foster), and broad generalizations such as “she supports LGBT rights,” which aren’t likely to engender support in your typical crypto-communist millennial. In the end, the article was more about Drum venting his pre-election frustration than actually convincing young progressives that Clinton is a comrade-in-arms.
Drum’s argument was unfortunately emblematic of the shouting match going on right now among writers, Twitter personalities, and leading public intellithoughtfluencers - most of whom live in non-swing states, making their presidential votes entirely performative - on who is going to be responsible for destroying America when Trump wins (obviously, it’s anyone but Trump and his supporters). As expected, the post was thoroughly mocked on Twitter.
But despite all this, and despite the fact that many of the criticisms of Clinton from the Left are correct, you should still vote for her if you live in a state where voting for president could actually matter. And I’m not just saying this for the same warmed over lesser-of-two-evils argument that has been used a million times and will be used a million more before election day. The reason is simple: court appointments.
The ability to appoint federal judges is one of a president’s most important powers. Appointing a judge is comparatively much easier for a president than indirectly shepherding legislation through Congress (notwithstanding Merrick Garland’s ongoing entombment in the Capitol crypts), requiring only the consent of the Senate rather than passage by both houses of Congress. Furthermore, a judge with a lifetime appointment allows a president’s influence over policy to continue long after he or she leaves office.
And unelected federal judges, shielded from the perceived need to triangulate and appeal to CrossFit Dads Who Just Want to Keep Their Kids Safe, tend to adopt far more progressive positions than the centrist Democrats who appoint them. Take, for example, the Supreme Court appointments of a past centrist Democrat who was also coincidentally named Clinton. Bill and Hillary Clinton aren’t one in the same, but they share many of the same political instincts: foreign policy hawkishness, carefully calculated social liberalism on select issues, and a constant need to outflank Republicans by adopting conservative positions as their own (similar to my own schoolyard strategy of running head first into a brick wall before the bullies could find me).
Consider Bill Clinton’s position on criminal justice. His deeply cynical and calculating view of this issue became apparent during the 1992 presidential campaign, when then-Governor Clinton returned to Arkansas to oversee the execution of death row inmate Ricky Ray Rector. Rector’s prior attempt to take his own life had left him so severely brain damaged - his IQ was in the intellectually disabled range - that he famously told prison guards that he didn’t eat the pie at his last meal because he was “saving it for later.”
In office, Bill Clinton continued to beat Republicans at their own game on crime. He pushed the infamous 1994 Crime Bill that expanded the federal death penalty, eliminated education funding for inmates, and provided billions in funding for new prisons. He was also the prime mover behind the less-discussed but arguably more destructive Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 which, as Liliana Segura described in a piece at The Intercept, significantly curtailed habeas corpus, which is the right of prisoners to challenge their convictions in federal court.
Yet Bill Clinton’s two Supreme Court appointees, Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, could hardly be any more different from Clinton himself on criminal justice issues. In 2002, both Breyer and Ginsburg voted with a majority of the court to ban the execution of intellectually disabled persons, a decision that, had it existed in 1992, likely would have cast the constitutionality of Rector’s execution into doubt. Ginsburg and Breyer have also routinely sided with defendants on the scope of habeas corpus rights. This position not only puts them at odds with Bill Clinton on the scope of that right in a criminal context, but also provides a serious rebuke to the ever-expanding power of the executive branch in the so-called War on Terror. The pair have challenged tough-on-crime political orthodoxy in a variety of other areas as well, ranging from the right of a defendant to present evidence of his life history in a death penalty case to the ability of an inmate to sue the government for abuse suffered at a private prison.
All this isn’t to say Breyer and Ginsburg have been perfect. Contrary to the Rappin’ Granny deification that Ginsburg in particular has received, Democratic-appointed justices and judges don’t always do the right thing. But as a general matter, they have shaped law and policy in a progressive manner that is far more in line with the likes of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren than Bill and Hillary Clinton. Had a Republican appointed these justices instead, the outcome of a vast number of cases, on issues ranging from abortion to voting rights, would have been different.
Donald Trump, by contrast, has given no indication that his appointments would deviate significantly from relatively recent arch-conservative justices like Alito, Thomas, and Roberts. In May, he released a list of potential Supreme Court picks that will probably go a long way toward eventually winning over conservative intellectual luminaries such as The Baseball Crank and the guy who advocated murdering protesters in Charlotte. More recent reports have stated that Trump is considering weirdo billionaire Peter Thiel for a seat on the Court, a man who answers the question, “What if a Republican were also the villain in a YA vampire novel?”
The current status of the Supreme Court should make the question of appointments one of the primary issues for progressives in this election. The future of the Court is currently at a crossroads. After semi-professional decathlete and famed nutritionist Antonin Scalia’s tragic pillow-murdering at the hands of Obama’s death squad, it is very likely that at least one Supreme Court seat will be vacant when the next president takes office. In addition, Justices Breyer and Ginsburg are 78 and 83, respectively, and beloved swing voter Anthony Kennedy is 80. Unless Peter Thiel brings his Lazarus Serum to market soon, there is a reasonable chance that any of these justices will leave a vacancy in the next four years. It wouldn’t be surprising to see the next president appoint three justices in a single term, to say nothing of the vast number of appellate and district court appointments. The next president could easily mean the difference between a six justice progressive majority and a six or seven conservative justice dominance.
For these reasons, the choice in November is clear. Despite my serious distrust of Hillary Clinton on questions of foreign policy and her allegiance to Wall Street, she presents a stark contrast from Trump on the future of the judiciary. So, vote for her. Unless you live in New York or something. Then it doesn’t matter.
Written by @kept_simple
Buried in the article are a few legitimate progressive accomplishments. Clinton, for instance, does deserve credit for pushing for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program and supporting card check legislation. But most of the post is littered with vaguely pro-Clinton quotations from prominent statesmen, examples of Clinton’s support for compromise (rightly or wrongly), debunking of right-wing conspiracy theories (although personally I LIKE that Hillary murdered Vince Foster), and broad generalizations such as “she supports LGBT rights,” which aren’t likely to engender support in your typical crypto-communist millennial. In the end, the article was more about Drum venting his pre-election frustration than actually convincing young progressives that Clinton is a comrade-in-arms.
Drum’s argument was unfortunately emblematic of the shouting match going on right now among writers, Twitter personalities, and leading public intellithoughtfluencers - most of whom live in non-swing states, making their presidential votes entirely performative - on who is going to be responsible for destroying America when Trump wins (obviously, it’s anyone but Trump and his supporters). As expected, the post was thoroughly mocked on Twitter.
But despite all this, and despite the fact that many of the criticisms of Clinton from the Left are correct, you should still vote for her if you live in a state where voting for president could actually matter. And I’m not just saying this for the same warmed over lesser-of-two-evils argument that has been used a million times and will be used a million more before election day. The reason is simple: court appointments.
The ability to appoint federal judges is one of a president’s most important powers. Appointing a judge is comparatively much easier for a president than indirectly shepherding legislation through Congress (notwithstanding Merrick Garland’s ongoing entombment in the Capitol crypts), requiring only the consent of the Senate rather than passage by both houses of Congress. Furthermore, a judge with a lifetime appointment allows a president’s influence over policy to continue long after he or she leaves office.
And unelected federal judges, shielded from the perceived need to triangulate and appeal to CrossFit Dads Who Just Want to Keep Their Kids Safe, tend to adopt far more progressive positions than the centrist Democrats who appoint them. Take, for example, the Supreme Court appointments of a past centrist Democrat who was also coincidentally named Clinton. Bill and Hillary Clinton aren’t one in the same, but they share many of the same political instincts: foreign policy hawkishness, carefully calculated social liberalism on select issues, and a constant need to outflank Republicans by adopting conservative positions as their own (similar to my own schoolyard strategy of running head first into a brick wall before the bullies could find me).
Consider Bill Clinton’s position on criminal justice. His deeply cynical and calculating view of this issue became apparent during the 1992 presidential campaign, when then-Governor Clinton returned to Arkansas to oversee the execution of death row inmate Ricky Ray Rector. Rector’s prior attempt to take his own life had left him so severely brain damaged - his IQ was in the intellectually disabled range - that he famously told prison guards that he didn’t eat the pie at his last meal because he was “saving it for later.”
In office, Bill Clinton continued to beat Republicans at their own game on crime. He pushed the infamous 1994 Crime Bill that expanded the federal death penalty, eliminated education funding for inmates, and provided billions in funding for new prisons. He was also the prime mover behind the less-discussed but arguably more destructive Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 which, as Liliana Segura described in a piece at The Intercept, significantly curtailed habeas corpus, which is the right of prisoners to challenge their convictions in federal court.
Yet Bill Clinton’s two Supreme Court appointees, Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, could hardly be any more different from Clinton himself on criminal justice issues. In 2002, both Breyer and Ginsburg voted with a majority of the court to ban the execution of intellectually disabled persons, a decision that, had it existed in 1992, likely would have cast the constitutionality of Rector’s execution into doubt. Ginsburg and Breyer have also routinely sided with defendants on the scope of habeas corpus rights. This position not only puts them at odds with Bill Clinton on the scope of that right in a criminal context, but also provides a serious rebuke to the ever-expanding power of the executive branch in the so-called War on Terror. The pair have challenged tough-on-crime political orthodoxy in a variety of other areas as well, ranging from the right of a defendant to present evidence of his life history in a death penalty case to the ability of an inmate to sue the government for abuse suffered at a private prison.
All this isn’t to say Breyer and Ginsburg have been perfect. Contrary to the Rappin’ Granny deification that Ginsburg in particular has received, Democratic-appointed justices and judges don’t always do the right thing. But as a general matter, they have shaped law and policy in a progressive manner that is far more in line with the likes of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren than Bill and Hillary Clinton. Had a Republican appointed these justices instead, the outcome of a vast number of cases, on issues ranging from abortion to voting rights, would have been different.
Donald Trump, by contrast, has given no indication that his appointments would deviate significantly from relatively recent arch-conservative justices like Alito, Thomas, and Roberts. In May, he released a list of potential Supreme Court picks that will probably go a long way toward eventually winning over conservative intellectual luminaries such as The Baseball Crank and the guy who advocated murdering protesters in Charlotte. More recent reports have stated that Trump is considering weirdo billionaire Peter Thiel for a seat on the Court, a man who answers the question, “What if a Republican were also the villain in a YA vampire novel?”
The current status of the Supreme Court should make the question of appointments one of the primary issues for progressives in this election. The future of the Court is currently at a crossroads. After semi-professional decathlete and famed nutritionist Antonin Scalia’s tragic pillow-murdering at the hands of Obama’s death squad, it is very likely that at least one Supreme Court seat will be vacant when the next president takes office. In addition, Justices Breyer and Ginsburg are 78 and 83, respectively, and beloved swing voter Anthony Kennedy is 80. Unless Peter Thiel brings his Lazarus Serum to market soon, there is a reasonable chance that any of these justices will leave a vacancy in the next four years. It wouldn’t be surprising to see the next president appoint three justices in a single term, to say nothing of the vast number of appellate and district court appointments. The next president could easily mean the difference between a six justice progressive majority and a six or seven conservative justice dominance.
For these reasons, the choice in November is clear. Despite my serious distrust of Hillary Clinton on questions of foreign policy and her allegiance to Wall Street, she presents a stark contrast from Trump on the future of the judiciary. So, vote for her. Unless you live in New York or something. Then it doesn’t matter.
Written by @kept_simple