Some consider the Nation’s Capital as “Fantasyland on the Potomac”. Other outsiders are “Fed Up” with the Federal City. It's better to consider D.C. as “the District of Calamity” (sic).
Two term Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) reluctantly announced his re-election effort for the 2018 election cycle. His candidacy is the strongest of the nine Democrat incumbents who are defending in states which voted for President Donald Trump. But Machin's blunt talk to fellow Democrats reveals a rift in the Democrat party. Manchin will likely have a challenger from the left, coming from the "Feel the Bern" wing of the party.
Even Democrats in the leadership are at risk from flanks from the left. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who was the face of the "Schumer Shutdown" supposedly to advance the DACA Deal, had protests staged around his residence by leftists who thought the Democrats wimped out for only having a three day government shutdown. These are indications that the far left is asserting its authority over the Democrat Party and it is not just centrists like Senator Manchin who will be scorned if they do not dance their progressive tarantella.
Schumer's critique might be more credible if the Democrats did not slow roll nearly everything from the 45th President in the Senate. It is understandable that Democrats vote in lock-step for them on legislation, but demanding full debate on each and every Presidential appointee is the politics of obstruction. Moreover, prior to the Inauguration, Schumer expressed willingness to work with the Trump Administration only if he abandoned all of his Republican colleagues, which Mr. Trump has not yet been willing to do. But Chuck Schumer's tears may make a tasty mocktail in the West Wing and makes for compelling copy during friendly questioning with Chuck Todd on Meet the Press.
Senator Markey's promise to overturn the nuclear option is a marked departure from the partisan gamesmanship strategy that Democrat Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has been using against the Trump Administration. It should be noted, however, that Senator Markey's (D-MA) anti- Nuclear Option promise is a chimera. The vow of overturning the nuclear option precedent anticipates the same conditions that former Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) when the Reid Rule blew up Senate precedent by changing the rules mid session and making the upper chamber a majority rules body. Considering the leftward swing of the Democrat Party and number of vulnerable Democrat Senators in the 2018 election cycle, Markey's promise rings as true as the Obamacare: "If you like your doctor than you can keep him'.
Senator Schumer's contemptuous snap seemed well positioned for President Trump's meeting with President Xi at Mar-a-Lago.
However, after the Tomahawk missile attack in Syria in response to the gassing of civilians, the Senate Democrat Minority Leaders Charles Atlas insult seems pretty weak.
The Resistance plan for Democrats in the District of Calamity seems to be the Soros inspired discredit your opponents to dictate the political agenda.
While talk about the impeachment of President Trump has temporarily waned among most elected officials, there is a full court press to besmirch Trump advisers and allies in Washington by implicating them as untrustworthy due to the supposed Russian interference with the 2012 General Election of Mr. Trump. Currently, this is culminating on a call for and independent counsel to investigate the charges which intelligence chiefs have already dismissed.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) took the lead in casting doubt about House Intelligence Select Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA 22), who went to the White House to brief the Administration there was incidental surveillance of the Trump family and Trump transition staff and American names had been improperly unmasked and leaked. Schumer was upset that Intelligence Chairman Nunes did not go to his Democrat Intelligence Minority Leader Adam Schiff (D-CA 28th) first, thus the accusation that Nunes is in the pocket of President Trump and must step aside.
Even though Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has reiterated his intent to invoke a filibuster on the cloture vote for President Trump's Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch, not all of his colleagues are on board. Veteran Senator Patrick Leahy, who offered vigorous invigilation during Gorsuch's Senate Judiciary Committee appearance, indicated that he is not inclined to filibuster the nominee.
Now that they are relegated to minority political status in the District of Calamity, the progressive wing of the Democrat party feel free to impose purity tests and try to effectively take over the party.
One of the litmus tests for a Senate Democrat to show their loyalty towards liberalism is to oppose President Trump's choice for the Supreme Court, Judge Neil Gorsuch.
Senate Democrats may stew over a "stolen" SCOTUS pick, because the Senate Majority in the 114th Congress refused to hold hearings and scuttled former President Obama's lame duck Supreme Court pick Merrick Garland. This Senate Advice and Consent through inaction followed a 70 year precedent of not confirming SCOTUS picks in the last year of an Administration so as to let voters decide.
However some Democrats are so obstreperous that they will not meet with Judge Gorsuch, like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY). Those who consented to meet Judge Gorsuch have been charmed by him and his impeccable legal credentials.
Liberal advocacy groups like Credo Action felt emboldened by Schumer's antipathy approach thus they warned wavering Senate Democrats that if they so much even consented to a Cloture vote for Judge Gorsuch that they will face primary opposition in the 2018 cycle.
So Democrats opposed Republicans effectively filibustering Garland through a no vote yet they want to do the same thing to Judge Gorsuch. As Chris Plante is wont to say, if it wasn't for double standards, liberals would not have any at all. Ironically, filibustering will be futile thanks to the legacy of former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) who invoked the nuclear option in 2013. Now all the current Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) needs to do is expand the rule change in medias res to include Supreme Court nominations.
From an objective standpoint, Democrats threatening to primary vulnerable Senate Democrats to just allow a vote for a Supreme Court Associate Justice seems counter-intuitive. The Scalia replacement would not drastically change the balance of the court, so why come out with guns blazing against your own for a goal which is note a game changer.
Although Democrats only need to garner three net seats to regain control of the Senate, they face a tough election cycle in 2018 with 23 of 33 seats up. Incumbents have a much easier time fund raising and winning general elections, so why take out your own (even if they stray from the party line on some issues)? Furthermore, ten of the Senate races are Democrats in states that voted strongly for President Trump. Threatening to primary Democrat incumbents pushes them further to the left, which was not were the vox populi seems to be in those states.
If opposition from the left seems too strident, some incumbents like Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Senator Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) might conclude that the grass is greener on the other side of the aisle. Even if they do not politically defect, they may be emboldened to vote their conscience to keep their integrity or burnish their independence from a progressive purge to keep their seat.
It would seem prudent for progressives to not play hardball on this Supreme Court nomination but fight like hell if a senior liberal Associate Justice (like 83 year old Ruth Ginsburg or 78 year old Stephen Breyer) or majority maker 80 year old Anthony Kennedy decided to retire. But it seems that progressives do not want to leave any powder in reserve for such a contingency.
Even though objections to the Scalia replacement were packaged as being objections to Garland's no vote or automatically opposing President Trump's pick, it seems that progressives are concerned that reversing Roe v. Wade and throwing the adjudication of abortion back to the states is at stake.
Isn't it amazing how the "spontaneous" made for TV crowd had pre-printed signs with Trump's Supreme Court pick Neil Gorsuch pre-printed on it. Much like the astroturf, anticipating Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) would demonize the newly named nominee.
“Judge Gorsuch has repeatedly sided with corporations over working people, demonstrated a hostility toward women’s rights, and most troubling, hewed to an ideological approach to jurisprudence that makes me skeptical that he can be a strong, independent Justice on the Court."
As sagacious of a strategist Committee for Justice President Curt Levey may be, it seems that Democrats in the District of Calamity have taken a different tact.
Under normal circumstances, a newly elected President has little opposition to his first Supreme Court nominee, especially early in his first term. But these are not ordinary times. Democrats are wont to hyperventilate about anything that the Trump Administration does, and seem happy to escalate any altercation to the extreme. Democrats have sought to slow walk Trump Administration confirmation hearings, going so far as to not show up at Senate Committee Hearing votes.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has been chary to confirm that Republicans will invoke what was once called "the nuclear option", but he has been steadfast in assuring the public that Trump Administration will be confirmed. The same is true regarding President Trump's pick for the Supreme Court.
The dangera that Democrats have in protesting so vehemently to everything in the early Trump Administration and calling supporters out to the ramparts is three fold.
First, they risk over-exhausting their partisans. You can only cry "the sky is falling" only so often before it loses its desired effect.
Secondly, Democrats are not picking their battles wisely. It is not only the incoherence of opposing everything, but in going to the mat for losing causes. Because of the Reid Rule, President Trump will get his Cabinet appointments and most likely the first Supreme Court pick. By fighting so hard on the nominations, it may serve to demoralize their partisans.
Thirdly, the hyperventilating opposition may play well for the progressive base of the Democrat Party but it may serve to alienate white, working class Democrats who voted for Trump in 2016 on positions and personnel with which they agree.
Historically, Democrats do not turn out in mid-term elections. In the 2018 election cycle, Democrats have 23 seats up in the Senate, including in states which voted for Trump. Such strident opposition, epitomized by an obstructionist approach to Trump's first Supreme Court pick (even before he is announced) may solidify a one time "what have you got to lose" vote to a realigning "my party has left me" metanoia, thereby making Blue Dogs and DC Democrats politically endangered species.
A legacy of former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) was the effective elimination of the confirmation filibuster.
Under the Constitution, it is the Senate's duty to confirm Executive and Judicial Branch appointments. Senate rules allowed for confirmations with mere majorities, but needed to obtain 60 votes to cut off debate (Cloture) and preclude a filibuster. The Cloture vote was intended to prevent endless obstructionism while still giving the minority some say in the proceedings of the Upper Chamber of Congress.
Needing to get enough votes for cloture was an incentive for Republicans to select more moderate appointees which required Senate consent. But such Senate niceties stopped political steamrolling by Majorities who wished to exercise their unadulterated will.
When the Obama Administration sought to pack the Court of Appeals for DC (aka the DC Circuit), which is the court of authority for regulatory bodies, it ran into trouble when its candidates might not have received the requisite support for a Cloture Vote. So then Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, exercised "The Nuclear Option". Exercising the Nuclear Option had been hotly debated in the preceding decade, but then Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) opted not to circumvent tradition.
Through Parliamentary legerdemain, Reid established a precedent in which he said that all judicial nominees, save Justices of the Supreme Court, would be considered on majority votes and did not have to pass the Cloture Vote threshold.
The Reid Rule was great when one's party is in control of the Senate and the White House. But in 2017, President Donald Trump will occupy the White House and Republicans have a two seat majority in the Senate. Incoming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer thinks that he can stymie the Trump Administration through the advice and consent clause as well as any Supreme Court nominations which do not represent progressive Democrat values. However, Schumer may well rue the Reid rule legacy from Dirty Harry Reid.
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Salem Radio host Hugh Hewitt had an informative colloquy on the Reid Rule.
Republicans may not moderate their choices for positions which need to be confirmed by the Senate. Despite Harry Reid's contention that the "Reid Rule" excludes Supreme Court nominees, it is contented that avoiding Cloture for a Supreme Court nomination would simply be a second application of the Reid Rule precedent.
In the waning days of the Obama Administration, international affairs are sullying the lame duck President's legacy. In a United Nations Security Council vote held before Christmas, the United States failed to block a resolution condemning Israel for settlements in disputed territories. This was a shift in American policy, which had previously threatened to veto such condemnations of our democratic ally in the Middle East. It is widely speculated that American diplomats orchestrated the UN Security Council Vote vote, which the US subsequently abstained to not have diplomatic fingerprints on the rebuke of the Jewish State. After Christmas, President Obama's Secretary of State doubled down on critics of America's ally in Israel with a 73 minute repetitive harangue of a speech which chided Israel about settlements 42 times and occupation 14 times, while the haughty foreign minister only mentioned Iran and Hezbollah one time, and Hamas (which is part of the Palestinian governing leadership) four times. Perhaps Kerry thinks that America's foreign policy will now pass "the global test".
Reaction to the Obama Administration's outgoing admonitions of Israel have been swift and bipartisan. The Washington Times characterized incoming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) as tearing into John Kerry's Israeli speech as it emboldened extremists. House Foreign Affairs Ranking Member Rep. Elliot Engel (D-NY 16th) vowed to work with Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Congress withholding UN funds until the anti- Israel vote is reversed Senator Cruz had some bitter analysis over the Obama Administration's anti-Israel tact. Even President Elect Donald Trump entered the fray, opining on social media that things would change come January 20th.
Recently, a progressive interlocutor opined that President Obama has been Israel's best friend ever. I thought that was a dubious assertion. But Secretary of State Kerry's penchant for acting like a Diplomatch (sic) really impeaches that opinion. Even after all of the tumult after the 2016 election, it is surprising that what is bringing Democrats and Republicans together is the foreign policy pyrotechnics of the outgoing Obama Administration.
