Compromising justice
Nicole Colson looks at Barack Obama's nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court--and why progressives are right to be worried about what she'd do as a justice.
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The fact that Kagan as we all knew from the beginning is "the safest and most non-controversial choice" is just another sign that this administration is absolutely not EVER going to fight for anything remotely progressive, as evidenced by healthcare reform where the public option was dropped almost before the Republicans had a chance to mobilize against it and single-payer was iced out of the debate from day one. When people in the administration tells health care activists to "get the poll numbers up and then we'll talk," you start to understand that they aren't looking to LEAD on policy--instead they're looking to make sure they don't do anything to jeopardize their hold on power come election time. As one might expect, this method of governance leads to shitty, "centrist" actions that do absolutely nothing to reverse the steady rightward shift, and Kagan is the latest example of this: The court has been shifting to the right for years, and instead of reversing that trend or at least putting the brakes on it, this President assists the ball in rolling in the same direction the conservatives have been pushing it for ages.
I don't understand why more Democrats and so-called progressives aren't pissed off about this. People are appointed to the SCOTUS FOR LIFE, and these appointments will be more indicative of Obama's legacy than almost anything else he does. Is it really that ~awe-inspiring~ that our President is a Dem that people can't speak up about this? I know many progressives who disagreed with Obama on the escalation of war in Af/Pak and all of his hawkish stances and conservative policies, but they still voted for him because they wanted a Democrat to make SCOTUS appointments and move the court away from the right. Yet we'll seeing a small but definite shift to the right in the SCOTUS with Obama. It's bullshit.
And THIS is why I get annoyed both at the apologists who try to belittle or marginalize criticism from the left and at the smartasses who go "lololol he never CLAIMED to be progressive (even though he totes fine with co-opting the language of progressive movements during the election season) so sux to your assmar~" The point is that this administration is so worried about backlash from the right that it's behaving ridiculously centrist in response, and if progressives don't make a big stink and show that they're just as capable of criticism and dissent and activism/mobilization against this administration, then this administration WILL NOT GIVE A SHIT ABOUT PROGRESSIVES EVER.
As Lawrence O'Donnell said, the Democrats don't care about the left because the left has nowhere to go. At this point it doesn't matter if Obama is a closet progressive hiding his leftist tendencies from the public or if he is truly a big bad triangulating centrist who couldn't give a shit about progressive values--he needs to hear dissent from progressives and he needs constant pulling from the left because at the moment he is being led in a different direction.
And lol forever at Obama criticizing reliance on courts and judicial activism. Anyone as smart as him is either lying to themselves or being willfully stupid if they can't understand the importance of the courts in righting injustices and providing a check on the tyranny of the majority to protect and preserve minority rights.
Finally, I don't buy for one second that a more progressive nominee can't pass a filibuster. Ginsburg got through on a 96-3 vote, and even if you want to argue that Congress is nastier and more divided these days, Snowe and/or Collins plus the Dem Senate Caucus would get this shit done. Appointing a true progressive to the SCOTUS would not be the insurmountable burden that apologists and ~pragmatists~ want people to think it is; it would just be HARDER and require more EFFORT and more LEADERSHIP and a bit of political capital. But we can't have that now, can we?
Hahaha long comment is long.
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