Some claim that democrats decided to pointlessly filibuster to stop Neil Gorsuch from becoming a supreme court justice, knowing nothing would come of it, rather than just sit there and let their base think they did nothing.
There is an element of truth to this. All year, Senate Democrats have been hammered by their base even for voting to confirm Trump’s most uncontroversial Cabinet appointments. Fundamentally, it’s just difficult for a party saying it’s trying to #resist Trump to explain why it’s confirming Trump’s Supreme Court nominee.
Even McCaskill, one of the most vulnerable Democratic senators up for reelection next year, ended up announcing that she would in fact vote to filibuster Gorsuch, despite her sympathies with the “let Gorsuch through” argument. And her decision, announced shortly after her private musings on the issue leaked, is revealing.
http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/3/15108140/neil-gorsuch-nuclear-option-trump
The republicans responded to the democratic filibuster by using what's being called the "nuclear option."
That is, the republicans looked at the rules (same as they look at laws), decided they didn't like rules, made new rules to suit themselves, and then complied with the new rules they just made. They destroyed the filibuster. Now, instead of needing a 60 to 40 majority to confirm a supreme court justice, a simple majority (51) is all they need now. The republicans can confirm anybody they want to without any democrats voting for a nominee.
And to this I say, "So what?"
Gorsuch was going to get on Supreme Court anyway. The democrats knew the republicans would use the nuclear option to get Gorsuch on the supreme court -- which likely also has the effect of removing the necessity of finding middle of the road candidates FOREVER.
By the way, the republicans weren't playing in the middle of the road -where they would need democrats to vote for their candidate. Gorsuch was a big fan of the barely lamented Scalia.
And please remember that the republiKKKlansmen refused to even hold a hearing for President Obama's nominee, Merrick Garland, who was middle-ish of the road, and kept the supreme court from being fully staffed for a year. The republicans did this IN ADDITION to refusing to seat a bunch of President Obama's nominations for a bunch of lower courts. (And this decision of white republicans to block the first black president in an unprecedented way is the reason why the democrats broke the filibuster the first time)
headline from 2016
It’s Not Just Merrick Garland: Republicans Are Blocking So Many Nominees It’s Caused a Judicial Emergency
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/05/16/it-s-not-just-merrick-garland-republicans-are-blocking-so-many-nominees-it-s-caused-a-judicial-emergency.html
So being afraid of the nuclear option makes no sense in the short term.
The republicans planned to jam Scalia-fan-Gorsuch through EVEN THOUGH all eight supreme court justices --conservative and liberal, both-- voted against one of Gorsuch's heartless, empathy-less, decisions during Gorsuch's confirmation hearings (A company fired a black man for not staying with his truck in a snowstorm and dying in that storm in subzero temperatures. Gorsuch sided with the company)
To me, this proves conclusively (once again) that republicans care more about putting a win in no the right side of the scorecard and supporting the one-percenters than anything else, this country and the democracy be damned.
The republicans being what they are? It's not the worst idea in the world, to let the republicans have their way by going nuclear and changing the way the senate works forever. In the short term, Gorsuch and every nominee DJ the Chump nominates was going to be on the supreme court anyway. The republicans planned to NOT cooperate from the beginning.
- On a side note, the republicans are floating the idea that states will be able to nix pre-existing conditions in their next healthcare bill. But that's okay, because I saw a news broadcast that said the states chock full of white nationalists that voted for Trump will be hardest hit by the destruction of Obamacare. That is, if the republicans get their way on healthcare, some of these conservative voters will literally have killed themselves by letting Chump dial into ethnoracism buried in their souls like the racist nationalistic pied piper he's proved himself to be.
So why not let them think they won something they already had in the short term, while getting something valuable for the long game.
In the long term, changing the way the senate works forever can't really be that much worse than it was before -- not for black and brown folk.
It's white people and white people only that think the push and pull to get to "the middle ground" is a good thing...even when that "middle" is between a white ethnoracist party and whatever it is we have on the progressive/liberal side attempting to pull in the opposite direction.
Yeah, partisan bickering is bad. But partisan winning might be really, really good when the democrats are in power again. And I think that's going to happen sooner rather than later -- if we can stop Hillary and Bernie, both from leading on the left.
Let me say it again, we need a people of color led party on the left. Bernie Sanders recently proved YET AGAIN that his thinking on race is more like Trump's than any-white-one wants to admit.
Sanders dismisses white racism and white supremacy in white voters as nothing: Dismissing all but the n-word and bomb throwing as white racism is how you do NOT SEE white racism and white supremacy when it's obvious.
Follow the logic:
- When the KKK supports a candidate the white racism should be seen as obvious and active in that candidate.
- You can only vote for that candidate where the white racism is obvious and active, if white racism doesn't bother you that much to begin with.
- White racism doesn't bother you that much only when white racism intimately familiar
- White racism feels intimate and familiar when it is inside your soul, whether it's active and obvious or not (i.e. whether you've ever used the n-word or not, whether or not you ever burned a cross on a black person's lawn= non-active/non-obvious white supremacy based racism.)
A lot of white people DO NOT believe this, on the right or the left.
But having intimately familiar white racism in your soul-- the existence of which is denied-- is the only way you construct a new definition of "working class" the day after the election, then think it was "the working class" that voted for Trump instead of the white ethnoracists.
Trump obviously and actively called out to white supremacists damn near every time he opened his mouth on the campaign trail. Even Trump's banging on Muslim's is simply code for Middle Eastern which is synonymous with not-white in the white racist's handbook.
White folks voting for President Obama, didn't fool me. Don't let them fool you either. Seeing 57% of white folks vote for DJ the Chump should have told anybody who cares to watch the truth about the majority of white voters and the majority of white folks in the U.S. period.
We need a black and brown run party
Trump obviously and actively called out to white supremacists damn near every time he opened his mouth on the campaign trail. Even Trump's banging on Muslim's is simply code for Middle Eastern which is synonymous with not-white in the white racist's handbook.
To put a finer point on it, the white racist fringe that are hate-crime-ing and killing people from India, for example, are NOT making mistakes. They got Trump's message exactly right:
NOT-WHITE MUST GO
NOT-WHITE CANNOT COME IN
NOT-WHITE SHOULD NEVER LIVE IN PEACE
BUILD THAT WALL and LOVE THAT MUSLIM BAN
In a post nuclear option Senate-world, a simple majority vote for a supreme court justice means we don't have to put up with middle of the road candidates when the democrats are in power.
We could, for example, put justices on the supreme court that think its obvious that two more years of schooling above high school should be free-- if that's what it takes to get a job nowadays.
We could put supreme court justices in power that think its obvious that racial discrimination by CEOs that cause a financial loss above a certain dollar amount should go to jail.
If we put people of color in charge of the democratic party or create a new party 2/3rds black & brown and 1/3rd white, get Senate Seats, get seats in House, while only needing a simple majority to put a supreme court justice on the bench for life then our collective political lives will be much mo-partisan and much mo-betta.
We, the black and brown, shouldn't want middle of the road candidates on the Supreme Court.
For white folks who still can't figure this out? Black and brown folk wanting middle of the road candidates put forth for LIFE TIME APPOINTMENTS on the supreme court would be like white Germans (including German Jews) trying to find middle of the road candidates located somewhere directly between the liberals and Nazi's immediately after WWII.
F the Middle.
The progressives turn to rock the senate and the supreme court left may not come in 2020. But that time will come eventually.
F the Middle.
The progressives turn to rock the senate and the supreme court left may not come in 2020. But that time will come eventually.
I think that hypocrite Mitch McConnell and the republiKKKlansmen have shot themselves in the foot and shot poor whites in the face by using the nuclear option to break the Senate...among other things.
White racists and stupid and spiteful. They are voting to kill themselves and not just in Kentucky. And Black and brown folks are becoming a larger and larger percentage of the United States pie ---and that's without white folks voting for someone who is trying to destroy them.
It's all going to work out, eventually...so long as Chump doesn't manage to bring a war to U.S. soil. (And that just got a lot more iffy. )
Those coal by-products will leak into the water supply near those white, 90%-for-Trump, Kentucky folk's water after the EPA has been completely shackled or destroyed And regardless of how sick they get, some won't have health insurance to see a doctor because they have pre-existing conditions OR they'll have cheap insurance with spotty coverage. And when the white supremacist dragon they always wanted as leader finishes dismantling President Obama's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to boot, these Cheeto Satanettes will wind up paying for their hospital stays with a credit card that effectively charges 45% a year.
A lot of red states are going to be in the same boat with Kentucky, because they needed Obama protections more than anybody else.
White racists and stupid and spiteful. They are voting to kill themselves and not just in Kentucky. And Black and brown folks are becoming a larger and larger percentage of the United States pie ---and that's without white folks voting for someone who is trying to destroy them.
It's all going to work out, eventually...so long as Chump doesn't manage to bring a war to U.S. soil. (And that just got a lot more iffy. )
We just have to make sure:
1) black and brown folks actually freaking vote
2) black and brown folk never mistake a weather vane politician (Hillary) for a GRAND DRAGON politician (D J Chump) ever again.
3) to keep the light folk and patriarchy loving black and brown men from trying to jump ship and join the white men based on promises of honorary whiteness and the riches that (rarely) follow those promises.
Let me remind you again and again, class matters.
Trump and the republiKKKlansmen attract the low-lifes like Bannon and his ilk. The white one-percenters tell the dummies, like those in Kentucky that voted for Trump to the tune of 90%, "You'd be just as rich as me if it weren't for those darkies stealing ____ from you." But the conservatives really care about the white one-percent and the white-one-percent only
... same as always.
Don't be confused by Bernie Sanders and Michael Moore just because SOME of the same white folks that voted for President Obama later voted for Trump.
In 2007, the white folks were desperate to not go into a depression. Their houses were being foreclosed on.
- There aren't any racists in a foxhole; there aren't any racists in a home about to be foreclosed upon either.
So the white folks, even the racists, voted for whomever seemed like they had the best ideas to stop the downhill slide -- and they didn't care about skin color.
....until the economy started to recover. Then,
they they wouldn't give President Obama credit for saving their asses.
...same as always.
White folks up north did the same thing when they were losing the Civil War (Lincoln freed southern blacks ONLY and got 150,000 more troops with the emancipation proclamation)
White folks also didn't care about skin color when the Tuskegee Airmen kept their white bomber pilots and personnel from dying, kept them alive at a much higher rate than the white airmen.
- Cheeto Satanettes don't want to hear that truth
- Bernie Sanders doesn't want to hear that truth.
- Regardless of what Hillary hears or doesn't hear, she's got too much baggage to win...and that's before you count the baggage of being a woman in a patriarchal society.
We need a black and brown run party
in a world where
the nuclear option
has changed
how the senate runs forever.
Black and brown lives aren't really going to matter until we are a lot more in charge of our own destinies. And black and brown women might need to lead if voting patterns hold true to what they were in 2016.
Even if I'm wrong?
In the short term, for black and brown folk, not a damn thing changed. The republicans putting Gorsuch, a Scalia lover, up as a nominee instead of somebody middle of the road shows just how hard they're trying to bring back the white-bad old days.
In the short term, for black and brown folk, not a damn thing changed. The republicans putting Gorsuch, a Scalia lover, up as a nominee instead of somebody middle of the road shows just how hard they're trying to bring back the white-bad old days.
MAKE AMERICA WHITE AGAIN was the real motto. Hiring Steve Bannon showed us that clearly.
We have to defeat the overt white racists on the right and the covert white racism sufferers on the left (covert even from themselves. Bernie's gotta go. If he hasn't learned yet. He's not going to. Evah.)
We gotta beat them all.
We gotta vote them out of power. Gotta yell and scream and protest until a small percentage of white liberals stop calling Bernie "tone deaf" and start calling him " a disappointing person that is holding onto too large a percentage of paternalistic white supremacy." Then we should hope that this tiny percentage of woke white liberals grows just big enough to be useful in a black and brown led political party.
We have to defeat the overt white racists on the right and the covert white racism sufferers on the left (covert even from themselves. Bernie's gotta go. If he hasn't learned yet. He's not going to. Evah.)
We gotta beat them all.
We gotta vote them out of power. Gotta yell and scream and protest until a small percentage of white liberals stop calling Bernie "tone deaf" and start calling him " a disappointing person that is holding onto too large a percentage of paternalistic white supremacy." Then we should hope that this tiny percentage of woke white liberals grows just big enough to be useful in a black and brown led political party.
Welcome to the Thunderdome. Let the games begin
No comments:
Post a Comment