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Oh, It's Already Been Broughten

Mom and I discussed it a bit over dinner last night, but I'm still a little surprised to see how serious some conservatives are: given a choice, the right seems determined to pick the painful path of opposing Sonia Sotomayor in as loud and ugly a manner as they can muster. No need to even bring matches... they'll set themselves on fire, thank you very much.

Bring it on? Oh no... it's already been broughten.

Peggy Noonan, for my money, lays out the case that needs to be made: that Republicans can't win by  pulling out flmethrowers, throwing around words like "racist" or (a recent fave) calling La Raza a "new KKK". Did Judge Sotomayor say something terrible by suggesing different people with different life experiences might bring different insights, maybe even better ones to particular cases?  No, she said something obvious, even necessary about how we enshrine a notion of "objectivity" that isn't real (one that, in another context, conservatives themselves see - when we dispute whether "liberal media bias" is "objectivity" of another sort).

I said going into this that I thought we were about to get a summer of more heat than light on the Supreme Court debate... but I didn't imagine we'd get all of summer in one week. Conservatives managed to race through the gamut of discussion so quickly - that's our new internet culture for ya - that there was barely a moment to even contemplate "let's try and be civil" before "oh, never mind, let's just run in guns blazing" took over. By all means... carp about how to pronounce her name. Sling all sorts of ugly charges while piously complaining about past treatment of Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas. You could raise the discourse... or you could not even try.

In our discussion last night, I said, honestly, that I'm not sure Sonia Sotomayor is the best pick... but that won't matter now, since we're not about to get hearings or a public discussion that might illuminate issues that actually matter - her judicial reasoning, her thinking on key issues (and I don't mean abortion or even guns), her approach to the law. As Noonan says, Republicans do themselves a disservice these days by doing so little to rein in their worst impulses (even as she, weakly, tries to blame Democrats and the Bork confirmation as the moment it all went so wrong). Republicans need a general public that can see the way they whink about legal issues; a Supreme Court confirmation would be a great moment to educate people and discuss ideas. Instead we get the latter day equivalent of "Goody Proctor Is A Witch!"

The failure to manage any coherent, thoughful response on the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor (as obvious as it was when Obama announced her, it's just ten times clearer now that her confirmation is all but a done deal), probably just restates the obvious: that the Republicans are in serious collapse, rebuilding will take years and involve some significant change. It's the kind of thing I remember from the Reagan years, when stopping Bork - who should, really have not even been nominated - took so much energy, and left such scars, that it was clear something was wrong within the Democratic party.  It took years, and not a small amount of painful rethinking, to rebuild our way to Bill Clinon in the nineties, and our reestablished dominance in Congress today. I'd love to say I find myself enjoying the Republican collapse... but I just keep thinking, "oh no... not another teen movie."

Bush, Whacked

One post seems to lead to another in the oddest ways, these days... while checking out Andrew Sullivan's thoughts on the latest gay issues, I tripped over an odd new marketing attempt: selling shavers to guys who want to landscape... er, manscape... er, well, you get the picture.

And if you don't get the picture... let Phillips and Gillette draw one for you:

Honestly... I have nothing to add... or subtract. Well, yes, I do shave... but I just went out and bought one of those Venus-lady things.  Works great. Life is much easier (maybe even a little cheaper), when you don't get hung up on gendered expectations (although, to be honest... my Venus is reassuringly blue).

Wait For It... Wait For It...

I wanted to follow up on a point from yesterday, one I've been meaning to make for a while: I think it's become clear that gays and lesbians can't expect much from the Obama Aministration. Not without a fight.

It's one of those Catch-22 situations of gay politics: do you want a Republican who will set things back... or would you prefer a Democrat who sets things back... and tells you it's your fault?

By this time in Bill Clinton's Presidency, of course, gay people were reeling from Don't Ask, Don't Tell, the end result of an overly optimistic decision by the new Administration to take on the Pentagon early on. And although there were positive developments, along the way in the Clinton years we also got DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act, which still looms over state-by-state progress on gay marriage.

And yet... we give the Log Cabin Republicans a hard time for what they're up against.

Friday Evening Floralude

 

jinb

"There Isn't A Rational Basis..."

I haven't said much about the California Supreme Court decision about Proposition 8 - I tended to think that we'd get this outcome, which is lousy, but seems the way to read the law and the Constitution of California (at best, I always thought if they ruled the 18,000 marriages as legal, they'd then say the two different classes of gay people - married and not - was an inherent constitutional conflict, even if Prop 8 was legit... but that's a long stretch).

In any case, here we are... and what has me thunderstruck is what's happened since, as two powerhouse lawyers have taken up the case at the federal level, David Boies... and Ted Olsen. Yes, Bush's Solicitor General, and his Bush v. Gore lawyer Ted Olson, also the conservative wing's darling. Watch this clip from Hardball (via Towleroad) and let your jaw drop too:

I don't know - no one seems to - what's animating Olsen's decision (Mary Cheney?), but his rejection of conservative views (it's likely Olsen will be arguing against... Ken Starr!) is so thorough... well, it kind of gives me hope for humanity. May we find others as clear eyed and sane.

You Get What They Pay For

I haven't written a lot of healthcare related posts lately, mainly because I think we're in a holding pattern until someone, whether it's Congress or the President, actually steps forward with more than the "outlines" of healthcare reform, but an actual reform proposal with specifics. It's not far off - of all the committees, Max Baucus and his Finance Committee in the Senate have been the most transparent in their process - but we're still not down to any of the hard choices that need to be made, or how anyone plans to pay for, what appears to be, a very expensive set of ideas.

In the meantime, there's been little substantive discussion of the healthcare crisis in public, or in the media... a mistaken approach, I think, on the part of reformers, because the public still really doesn't fully appreciate the scope of our healthcare problems. Karen Tumulty's recent piece in Time illustrates some of the problems, and a piece today that Susie mentions in Philly also does... but both also show how much more needs to be done.

This week's New Yorker, too, features a piece by Atul Gawande, which goes a long way towards expanding understanding of just how broad and deep our healthcare issues go; unfortunately, like other recent pieces, by narrowly focusing on a specific aspect of our crisis (in Gawande's case, looking at excessive charges and care in McAllen, Texas from the viewpoint of doctors and hospital executives), larger pieces of the puzzle, which also need fixing, are missed. And with Washington focused mainly on expanding insurance coverage, I think the mismatch between our problems and our idea of "solutions" has never been quite so clear.

Abriendo Puertas

As if to underline the story of Republican disarray, President Obama moved today to nominate Sonia Sotomayor as the next Supreme Court Justice. Sotomayor would be the third woman and the first American of Puerto Rican descent to serve on the Court, if confirmed.

Of course, "if confirmed" is all about niceties, just now. It seems hard to imagine her not being confirmed (though the Obama team and "successful vetting" still seem like a work in progress), and most of all, it feels all but impossible for Republicans to muster the public support needed to paint Sotomyor as so hopelessly ideologically unsuited as to negate her confirmation. Which is why, so far, the objections to her are a lot of noise, and little more.

Many conservatives pointed to her role in the pending Supreme Court case (Ricci v. DeStefano) over an exam for firefighter promotions in New Haven, which resulted in no promotions after no black candidates passed the test. The case - which has been summarily dismissed at each level so far - still seems less than meets the eye; even if promotions were warranted, the absence of promoting anyone is not, by itself, evidence of discrimination against white people. Even so, a decision that sent the case to trial (it's hard to see how even the current conservatives on the Court could insist on a verdict for the promotions when no evidence has been presented in a court), would hardly disqualify Sotomayor.

Much of the political calculation is so obvious it hardly needs restating: attacking Sotomayor will look like an attack on Hispanics generally which Republicans can't afford, and probably can't win. After 8 years (and two confirmations at least in the Bush years, for Roberts and Alito) arguing that ideology alone shouldn't derail a nominee, Republicans have few arguments to offer against Sotomayor's qualifications, or even temperament.

Moreover, the most probably dubious issues - that Sotomayor included, we will gave a Supreme Court made up entirely of former members of the Court of Appeals; or that she will be the fifth sixth Catholic in recent picks - are not ones that either right or left can raise and use to much avail, though both indicate a sort of ideological narrowing that's probably not good. I'm not wild about Sotomayor - even just among women on the left I think a number of women seem like more interesting legal thinkers - but for what she will bring (the "life experience" argument that probably does matter, a lot), surely, we could do worse.

Sotomayor's selection and confirmation process probably guarantees a summer of a lot of political heat, and probably not much substantive advancement of ideas; and liberals who get sucked into familiar right/left arguments on abortion and such will bear some responsibility, too (I think it goes almost without saying that we're not about to get uplifting discourse from the right). The debates will be especially pointless, given that, barring an especially surprising "scandal", Sotomayor's trajectory to a seat on the Supreme Court seems pretty much assured. As liberals, we should probably just be glad for that... and the opening of a new door.

Just To Get To The Starting Line

Personally, I think the 2010 election cycle is still very far away... but already it seems clear that Republicans are having a rough time getting their act together.

Much of the early attention has focused on the developing battle for the Republican line in the Florida Senate race between Marco Rubio, a state senator, and Charlie Crist. I've already said I think the dynamic around Crist is more than meets the eye, but Crist and Rubio are hardly the only examples. As I was getting ready for bed last night, I heard another salvo in the increasingly ugly race between Steve Lonegan and Chris Christie for the right to run against Jon Corzine in New Jersey.

All over the place, Republicans can't seem to get their act together - big name candidates can't seem to assert their dominance, upstarts abound. What all the dissension points to is how much disarray has affected the party, and how unlikely they are, anytime soon, to get it together.

Us

In some ways, it's the newest terrorist hijacking: discussions of what to do about "terrorists" and terrorism took over much of this week's news, especially on Thursday, when Barack Obama and Dick Cheney offered speeches on the topic within minutes of each other. The effect was magnified, here in New York, with news of the arrest of the "terror cell" that planned to bomb Jewish centers in Riverdale (something uncomfortably close to home, in many ways, for me).

The interesting way for me to experience the two speeches was via Twitter, as both the conservatives and liberals I follow offered their takes on the two. I was struck, once again, by the ever present divide of right and left, especially the way conservatives respond to Cheney, embracing his tough talk without doubts or questions.

If something has changed, I think, since the election, it's that we don't get speeches like Cheney gave in a void; the palpable frustration of many lefties - me included - for much of the first half of this decade was the absence of an opposing, questioning voice to raise another point of view. It's easy to say that, now at least, we get both sides of a debate and we can have a healthy exchange.

Unfortunately, I don't think that's really true. Casting the discussion of the "War on Terrorism" as it stands now as a debate over this-or-that, either/or notions isn't really what's happening. I'd argue there isn't an "Us vs. Them" when it comes to dealing with terrorism and terrorists... there's only Us. And collectively, we're trying to work this stuff out in a muddle.

Sneaks in a Tree (Floralude with Footwear)

jinb