Sept. 24 Open Thread: Democrats Thrust the Knife Deeper

Filed in National, Open Thread by on September 24, 2018

I don’t know if Democrats planned all this — my first instinct is they’re not smart enough — but even if Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed to what will become a farcical Keystone Kourt, they already have won more than they lost in this confirmation fight.

Not all Republicans are stupid (and no, not all stupid people are Republicans, it just seems that way sometimes). The smart ones know perfectly well that the party’s mishandling of Kavanaugh’s confirmation process is going to cost them bigly in November.

That’s the beauty of the trap the Democrats have sprung. Given these circumstances — a powerless woman accusing the GOP’s chosen man — there was no possibility a party of old white men would be able to hide their contempt for women. Kavanaugh himself could lie in his hearing about having no opinions about issues that everybody knows he holds opinions on, but every Republican in office would have to keep his yap shut for their misogyny to stay hidden. You’d need infinite universes to find one where that would happen. Their heads say “Shut up,” but they just…can’t…control…the rage.

I have no expectation that any of this will keep Kavanaugh off the Kourt, but confirmation won’t end the pampered little cretin’s nightmare. Once Democrats are in control of either house of Congress, they can open investigations into these allegations with an eye toward impeachment. More than 60 federal judges throughout history have been removed as a result of such investigations, usually for breaking the law.

Hillary Clinton has an essay in The Atlantic that I missed last week, in which she maintains that American democracy is in crisis and says the problem isn’t just Trump. Then, in typical technocratic fashion, she lays out “five fronts in the war on democracy,” as if anybody in modern America would read a list five items long. (Maybe she should write a listicle, “Top 10 GOP Attacks on Democracy.”) Her analysis is right as far as she goes, but she manages to condemn Republican billionaires without condemning the corporate money Democrats of her type have come to rely on.

While most Republicans have tied themselves tighly to Trump, one ambitious person is charting her own course toward the White House, effect on the world be damned: UN Ambassador Nimrata “Nikki” Haley. This article shines some light on her under-appreciated awfulness.

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  1. RE Vanella says:

    Rosenstein is cooked.

  2. stonewalldems says:

    Have you seen what everyone’s favorite moderate republican candidate has been up to?

    https://bluedelaware.com/2018/09/24/mike-ramone-doesnt-like-having-an-opponent/

  3. RE Vanella says:

    By the way, I reread the article this morning (ran in the print edition) about the alleged hostile work environment inside the Insurance Commission. No idea how I missed this fucking gem.

    “She said Navarro and [Chief of Staff Stuart] Snyder, both former police officers, then called her into a meeting and ‘interrogated’ her about authoring the letter, she said.

    ‘Stu and I are cops so you know that what we do is interview and solve cases,’ Navarro said to McKendell, according to her complaint.”

    https://www.delawareonline.com/story/news/local/2018/09/21/racism-sexism-alleged-state-insurance-employee-delaware/822509002/

    Nothing more Delaware Way than that.

  4. mouse says:

    Too many cops running things in this little corrupt backward state.

  5. Dana says:

    Alby wrote:

    I have no expectation that any of this will keep Kavanaugh off the Kourt, but confirmation won’t end the pampered little cretin’s nightmare. Once Democrats are in control of either house of Congress, they can open investigations into these allegations with an eye toward impeachment. More than 60 federal judges throughout history have been removed as a result of such investigations, usually for breaking the law.

    And, alas! they sometimes fail to attaint a removed judge, so that removed judge can run for Congress, and become Representative Alcee Hastings, a Democrat.

    Conviction in the Senate requires a 2/3 supermajority. If the Democratic candidate wins every Senate race this year, the Democrats would have only a 59-41 majority, meaning that they’d need eight Republican votes to remove an officeholder through impeachment.

    • Alby says:

      Almost all the judges against whom impeachment investigations were launched quit before it reached actual impeachment, a la Nixon. Check out the Wikipedia entry on this for details.

      The point of opposing Trump isn’t to say Democrats are great, or even good, or even acceptable. It’s to oppose Trump. You’re either on board or you’re not.

  6. RE Vanella says:

    Economists are starting to suspect that unions were a better deal than textbooks made them out to be..

    Unions did great things for the working class

    https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-06-13/unions-did-great-things-for-the-american-working-class

  7. RE Vanella says:

    In other news today, from Dave Wiegel Washington Post

    https://mobile.twitter.com/daveweigel/status/1044351378347491333

    Among the protesters arrested at today’s Kavanaugh direct action in Hart:
    @KerriHarrisDE

    This fight won’t end. Ever. So any motherfucker thinks it’s done… It ain’t.