The Carpentariat

Ruth Bader Ginsburg saved me and my daughter

Until I read an op-ed this morning by former Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's law clerks Abbe Gluck and Gillian Metzger, I was unaware of just how much the Supreme Court jurist had helped me, a white male, personally — quite aside from the mistaken contemporary reporting about her judicial efforts centered on women's and minority rights alone. Write Gluck and Metzger:

"She often used male instead of female plaintiffs to show sex discrimination prevents everyone from realizing their full potential. Why shouldn’t a man, for example, receive the same Social Security benefits a woman would receive, so he could stay home to care for his child after his spouse died? She successfully brought that question to the court in the 1975 case Weinberger v. Weisenfeld."

The case is cited as 420 US 636, which I offer to law students. Oyez.org describes itself as a "multimedia judicial archive of the [US] Supreme Court," and it writes:

"Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. delivered the opinion for the 8-0 majority. The Supreme Court held that the purpose of the social security [note the lower case] benefits for the surviving spouse and children is to enable the surviving spouse to properly care for the children, regardless of the gender of the parent. Gender-based discrimination regarding these benefits is therefore both illogical and counter-productive."

When my wife, at an age decades younger than Justice Ginsburg, died of the same disease, I found myself a low-income, single parent of a 12-year-old daughter. Initially I was clueless as to the availability of the federal government's Social Security assistance. That department quickly notified me, however, that the aid existed for my motherless daughter until she reached the age of 18, and for me, as her father, until she turned 16.

I shall put this as emphatically as I can.

In my heartbreak at the loss of my wife and my daughter's mother, I was also terrified — not only because I had never been a single parent, clueless about raising a soon-teenage girl, but financially. There was life insurance, yes, but also the pounding, day-to-day cost of the two of us getting by for the next several years.

Had it not been for Ruth Bader Ginsburg's immense influence on the Court in the gender-neutrality case of Weinberger v. Weisenfeld, I don't know what Ellie and I would have done.

The justice, decency and humanity of her and the Court's 1975 decision is as simple as that — not to mention the much vaster and worthier opinions on behalf of the oppressed, disadvantaged and historically overlooked.

Thank you, Ms. Ginsburg. Peace be with you, forever and ever.

Murkowski is a no

From a Politico email:

BREAKING NEWS: Murkowski opposes moving forward with Supreme Court nomination

Just one to go.

(A big question, however: For all three possible Nos — three if Democrat Mark Kelly wins in Arizona, which he will; four if not, in the lame duck session — what about just after the election? Neither Murkowski nor Collins have yet specified.)

The vital center, trashed beyond precedence

.@GOP We were put in this position of power and importance to make decisions for the people who so proudly elected us, the most important of which has long been considered to be the selection of United States Supreme Court Justices. We have this obligation, without delay!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 19, 2020

​​​​​Trump's tweet was followed by near universal agreement by his fellow amnesiacs in the comments, such as this posted madness which outdid even Trump in ALL CAPS and exclamation-point virtuosity:

All rather classic Twitter reactions from the very top to the bottomless bottom. Still, they're no crazier than the actions by most Republican senators, those praetorian guards of virtuous American constitutionalism whose principled convictions on presidents' final-year Supreme Court appointments have radically — not conservatively — gyrated.

The most artful senatorial proponent of human indecency and intellectual gymnastics is, of course, the immeasurably shameless Mitch McConnell, who said in a statement: "We pledged to work with President Trump and support his agenda, particularly his outstanding appointments to the federal judiciary. Once again, we will keep our promise. President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate" — unlike President Obama's constitutionally mandated nomination.

Profoundly explicit in McConnell's "once again" phrase is that he and his party, as always, are loyal not to American democracy, as he vowed in 2016, but to Trump himself — who, appropriately enough, finds the GOP base "disgusting." When a pol has no respect for his own, such as Donald or Mitch, then that pol has no incentive to deliver the plainspoken truth to them, since that in itself is a sign of respect.

Following McConnell on the timeline scale of simian retro-evolution is Sen. Lindsey Graham. In both 2016 and 2018 he swore allegiance to deferring a S.C. appointment in a president's last year, adding, "I want you to use my words against me [in 2020, if an opening occurs,] and you’d be absolutely right." Now, not even a glimmer of shame in supporting Trump's nominee. So far, joining Graham in his customary Republican hypocrisy are North Carolina's Thom Till, Arizona's Martha McSally, Iowa's Joni Ernst, and Georgia's Kelly Loeffler. I may have missed some (I'm penning this Sunday post late Saturday night), nonetheless more to come, for sure.

In my past writings I have rarely up-played political hypocrisy, whether Democratic or Republican; it's too much of a foundation of loyal-opposition politics. Yet even as a majority party, Republican hypocrisy has degenerated into extremist disloyalty toward the U.S. Constitution, a stable republic and virtually every political norm. Today's GOP has no center that can hold.

Rep. Doug Collins and the Trumpian politics of today and tomorrow

You likely recall Georgia's Rep. Doug Collins, the ranking Republican troll on the Judiciary Committee during Trump's impeachment hearings. He gesticulated rather emotionally and cracked bad jokes and tried his best, along with the committee's minority überführer, Jim Jordan, to make the indictment and (quite
improbable) conviction of our lawlessly feckless president seem like nothing but a Democratic scam. A distraction. A circus.

Because that's what the redneck rabble wanted. Oh, he also had one other motivation. This year he's running for the U.S. Senate against the "elitist" Republican incumbent, stock-wizard Kelly Loeffler. 

So how does this carnival barker of a US representative show that he has Georgia's populist, Christian evangelical credentials to move up (down or sideways, these days) to the Senate? Well here's a tweeted example from last night — the mournful night of sublime Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death:

"RIP to the more than 30 million innocent babies that have been murdered during the decades that Ruth Bader Ginsburg defended pro-abortion laws. With @realDonaldTrump nominating a replacement that values human life, generations of unborn children have a chance to live."

Collins' meretricious pandering, unChristian malice and literal Ruthlessness will, more and more, become the Trumpian tactics of Southern demagogues. The more they find themselves cornered by immovable demographics, the louder and more offensive their politics will become —as their party becomes smaller and smaller. 

Ruth Bader Ginsburg. So close.

My greatest fear in these waning days of this lawless president and his corrupt congressional allies has come to pass. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, "a tireless and resolute champion of justice," wrote Chief Justice John Roberts, is dead at age 87. And as we all expected:

Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, led the effort to block Judge Garland’s nomination. But he has said he will press to fill
any vacancy that might arise in the last year of Mr. Trump’s first term.

Mr. McConnell and his allies say the two situations are different. Where one party controls the Senate and the other the presidency, as in 2016, they say, vacancies should not be filled in a presidential election year. Where the same party controls both the Senate and presidency, they argue, confirmations may proceed.

Democrats say this is hairsplitting hypocrisy that damages the legitimacy of the court. But they may have little practical power to stop a third Trump nominee after changes in Senate rules on filibusters on nominations. All it takes now is a majority vote to confirm judicial nominees.

I had just written the piece below and was about to post it when I read of Justice Ginsburg's death. And now you know why I concluded that post by writing the "filibuster's [wholesale] demise seems inevitable," and "in a way, it's a shame." This is one of those ways.

***

On the other hand, even Brit Hume and Tucker Carlson are doubting (as of Friday night) the feasibility of McConnell's hypocrisy. Republican senators in tight races might rebel against such a flagrant display of partisan tawdriness. So there's some hope. 

Farewell, filibuster

Siena College's polling, rated "A+," has tracked seven battleground states over the past two weeks, finding that Trump not only trails in each, but "in no state did he amass more than 44 percent of the vote," reports the NY Times, which commissioned the poll. Yesterday the Gray Lady looked at three of those states — Maine, Arizona and North Carolina — where Joe Biden led by 17 and nine points, respectively, while statistically tying Trump in N.C.

The Times article centered on only those three since they are the states in which Democrats are favored to pick up Senate seats. Because of Susan Collins' cringeworthy, long-suffered vote to acquit this glaringly criminal president, in addition to her vote to install the emotionally unstable Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, Democratic candidate Sara Gideon leads in Maine by five points. What will we do absent the painstaking moral conscience of the Senate?

In Arizona, Democratic challenger Mark Kelly leads the breathtakingly feckless Martha McSally, 50 percent to 42 percent. And in North Carolina, Cal Cunningham leads by five points (42 percent to 37 percent) against incumbent Thom Tillis. They'll need to pick up four seats for control — with Vice President Kamala Harris breaking tied votes — since Alabama's Doug Jones is a dead senator walking. However former governor John Hickenlooper is in a strong position to defeat Colorado's Sen. Cory Gardner.

All of which is to say, mirabile dictu, that the future Democratic president just might be politically equipped to get some things done, despite obstructionist Republicans in the Senate. This assumes, of course, that the Democratic Senate first kills the filibuster rule.

Biden, a lover of senatorial institutionalism, has nevertheless "signaled," reported Politico in July, that he could be amenable to supporting the filibuster's overdue assassination. "It's going to depend on how obstreperous they become," he said about the unmistakable certainty. And Chuck Schumer — whose 2021 Senate title is not yet as certain — agrees.

The filibuster's demise seems inevitable. In some ways, it's a shame; the filibuster has, from time to time, properly protected the minority party from "the tyranny of the majority" and assisted in the once-perceived role of the US Senate. James Madison saw the institution as a "necessary fence" against the "fickleness and passion" of The People's House; George Washington famously envisioned the upper chamber as a legislative cooling saucer. But the filibuster has outlived its usefulness, thanks to those obstructionist, obstreperous Republicans who so cavalierly have abused it.

A "firehose of lying." (Guess who?)

From CNN's magnificent Daniel Dale (former Trump fact-checker with the Toronto Star), a wee bit of presidential correction.

Another tour de force from @ddale8 fact-checking a torrent of lies pic.twitter.com/xDxKI32ef8

— Josh Campbell (@joshscampbell) September 16, 2020

It's time to "out" these mealymouthed jerks

Tom Nichols​​​​​ has some fun with his erstwhile partisan compatriots — and I have an objection:

"Would-be Madisonians among the Republicans warn that no party should have untrammeled access to the levers of power—and especially not the Democrats. Yes, they say, we understand that Trump must go, but if Joe Biden is allowed to run the executive branch without a Republican Senate, America will become a one-party state that sooner or later will fall under the boot of the dreaded Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. This faux constitutionalism is naked hypocrisy: I do not recall, during my days in the GOP, anyone on the right ever pleading that Americans should leave at least a few Democrats in office so that we Republicans would not go crazy and start force-feeding Ayn Rand or Friedrich Hayek to impressionable schoolchildren."

Nichols is, of course, correct about his memory and Republicans' "faux constitutionalism." I too cannot recall Republicans lamenting their unchecked majorities under George W. Bush for six years, or two or effectively four years under Trump, who, at any rate, and with the GOP's unqualified approval, has become a government unto himself.

But just who are these Republicans who "understand that Trump must go"? Nichols does not say. He quite obviously maintains ties to certain incumbent GOP pols who "grant" to him that "Trump is a sociopath and an idiot," as he puts it. Yet he leaves us clueless — mostly — as to who they are. And that, among the NeverTrumpers, must stop.

I also recall rather fierce debates a few years ago on Andrew Sullivan's Dish about the propriety of "outing" gays against their will. Some argued that gay men should decide for themselves when to "come out," and the opposing team counterargued that gay men should say they're gay and if the gays don't then they would. This was an ethical debate in which Team #1 was decidedly in the right, it always seemed to me.

However on the topic of Republicans outing Trump, I must flip the script. It's true that a significant number of congressional GOP pols know this president, their party's leader, to be a dangerous, sociopathic idiot. But to side with Trump for just a moment, such public knowledge is always attributed in journalistic accounts to "anonymous sources" — which is bullshit.

If some Republican senator from Toothless Redneck USA is compelled to let friend Tom Nichols know, redundantly, that Trump is a dangerous, sociopathic idiot, then that "public servant" drawing a paycheck from taxpayers should be on the record that he or she is enabling and cooperating with a dangerous, sociopathic idiot.

For the good of the nation — which supersedes any mere partisan friendship — Mr. Nichols should not bat an eye at violating the senator's confidence. As it is, he's violating our confidence in NeverTrumpers.

Once honorable "fellow travelers"

How delightful that Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the eloquent bogeyman of all morons Trump, has resurrected the Cold War phrase, fellow traveler.

When I first read the good colonel's admonitory truth that "Trump should be considered to be a useful idiot and a fellow traveler" I felt as though I was being transported back to those happy, carefree days — compared to now — of runaway McCarthyism. Tail-gunner Joe couldn't slam down more than two stiff shots of aged bourbon before excitedly exclaiming that some poor innocent bastard was a traitorous "fellow traveler."

But were Sen. McCarthy's accusatory words actually of Cold War origin? You know the historical drill; I wouldn't ask if it were so.

Fellow traveler was coined by the Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotsky in 1925. The phrase was, at that time, in no way deprecatory; Trotsky's genius merely noted that Russian intellectuals sympathetic to the 1917 revolution who nevertheless had abstained from being outspoken proponents of communism should be free to continue writing as independent thinkers; they would act as a sort of literary bridge between old Russia and the coming proletariat regime. Such thinkers were just traveling along, so to speak, with their fellow, new-day Russians.

Under not the proletariat but Stalin's regime, the designation of fellow traveler, by the end of the 1920s, would get you shot. Under Stalin's successor, Vladimir Putin, it could make you president of the United States.

When will Jesus bring the last cheeseburger?

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman may possess a diffident demeanor, but in recalling his time with Trump in the White House, there's one thing he is not: shy. Speaking with the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg about the president's extortionist phone call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, Vindman calls Trump's behavior "criminal," "corrupt," "repulsive" and "un-American."

"I thought I could potentially communicate with him," says the involuntarily retired Army officer, "maybe speak to his better angels, explain to him that his ideas about Russia were harmful to the United States." (Mused Goldberg later: "You wanted to appeal to Donald Trump’s better angels?") "I didn’t know precisely what Trump’s boundaries would be," continued Vindman, "but I did think we would be operating within boundaries."

And that was Vindman's mistake.

William Taylor, who succeeded the brutally mistreated Marie Yovanovitch as ambassador to Ukraine, explains Vindman's bespectacled innocence: "One thing Alex Vindman is not is cynical. I’m absolutely convinced he’s a patriot, to the point where he’s a bit Boy Scoutish."

Col. Vindman is less unsuspecting these days, now that Trump and allies have given him advanced seminars in radical cynicism. But I believe he has drawn the wrong conclusion as to why this president insists on being Putin's bitch. "Trump should be considered to be a useful idiot and a fellow traveler, which makes him an unwitting agent of Putin," Vindman tells Goldberg. "They may or may not have dirt on him, but they don’t have to use it. They have more effective and less risky ways to employ him. He has aspirations to be the kind of leader that Putin is, and so he admires him. He likes authoritarian strongmen who act with impunity, without checks and balances. So he’ll try to please Putin."

To me that seems a dubious inference; Trump admires Putin and wishes to emulate him, and so he bows before his autocratic mentor? And Trump is anything but "unwitting" in his dealings with Vlad — he anticipates the Russian tzar's wants and needs and scurries to fulfill them.

Neither do I agree with former director of national intelligence Dan Coats' assessment of Trump's national betrayal. In Rage, Bob Woodward writes that Coats "continue[s] to harbor the secret belief, one that had grown rather than lessened, although unsupported by intelligence proof, that Putin had something on Trump." Peter Strzok, the roaming, texting, bad-boy former FBI counterespionage chief, sees it Coats' way: "[Trump] is unable to put the interests of our nation first, that he acts from hidden motives, because there is leverage over him, held specifically by the Russians but potentially others as well."

Perhaps these gentlemen have taken one too many super-spook courses, wherein the bloody simple is deliberately complicated so as to validate the worthiness of super-spookdom. Again, Trump has authoritarian urges and so hopes to please Putin, or KGB Vlad and the Russkies have something on Donald? Pshaw, I say. Forget psychology and unsubtle blackmail and head straight for Occam.

Trump never expected to find himself in the White House — for once he underestimated the tipping-point buffoonery of the American electorate — but when he did find himself there he set out to secure his post-presidency business interests. That's as far as his mind can stretch. The Donald has all the human complexity of flatlining Babbittry: the buck, the dollar, get the next dollar, mankind's highest achievement. He wants Trump Towers in Moscow and Vladivostok and maybe some rigged-game casinos, too. (The house's vast built-in advantage isn't enough for the serially bankrupting Trump.)

This is all there is to the president's genuflecting before the favor-dispensing, actual strongman Putin.

In my dream of dreams, once he falls under indictment and faces a barrage of civil suits next year in a state and federal blowout, Trump flees to Moscow, rooms with Ed Snowden, and begs Vlad for "political" asylum — whence he broadcasts a one-hour, primetime propaganda show, Howard Bealelike, Mon.-Fri., on Russian TV. And then one day, while on the air, that last McRusskie cheeseburger, well ...

State of the Nation

CALIFORNIA

THE TRUMP WHITE HOUSE

Bernie, being difficult, as always

If you want to know just how hard nominee Bernie would have bounced on his own November rubble, then take a gander at this piece, published Saturday in the Washington Post. The Vermont senator's admonitions about Joe Biden's presidential campaign strategy read like a playbook for how to get one's ass kicked in a general election.

"Sanders has come to worry about the Biden campaign’s prospects," writes reporter Sean Sullivan, and is "urging Biden’s team to intensify its focus on pocketbook issues and appeals to liberal voters." The socialistically titanic presidential candidate who collided with Biden's moderate iceberg in the primaries "has told associates that Biden is at serious risk of coming up short in the November election if he continues his vaguer, more centrist approach."

That approach, which has carried progressive-conservatives such as FDR, John Kennedy and Barack Obama to the White House, while the George McGoverns of Democratic politics have sunk in the freezing seas of leftism, has been as politically axiomatic as the necessary acts of kissing babies and eating fried hotdogs in Iowa.

Nevertheless, Sanders "has identified several specific changes he’d like to see" in Biden's campaign; e.g., stumping more often "with figures popular among young liberals, such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez," who would send most Midwestern housewives and virtually every Southern male fleeing not gently into the night.

Why does Bernie think Joe, according even to Rasmussen Reports, for Pete's sake, is leading Trump in Michigan by 8 points? Or that Arizona is competitive? Or that Wisconsin has swung swiftly toward the Democratic nominee? Still, says the senator's former presidential campaign manager, Faiz Shakir, "there are areas the [Biden] campaign can continue to improve upon." The smugness is appalling.

As WaPo's Sullivan notes: "It is rare for such a prominent party figure to repeatedly voice private criticisms of the party’s nominee and acknowledge them publicly, especially in the campaign’s final stretch…. [And] until now, there had been few outward signs of discord between Biden and Sanders. Shortly after the senator ended his campaign in April, he promptly endorsed Biden, offering an unequivocal stamp of approval."

I have distrusted Bernie Sanders for six years. I remain distrustful. He's an asp in the grass, and once President-elect Biden is sworn in, he'll become even more venomous.

Fall financial assistance

Thursday is the final day of the fall fundraiser. So many thanks to the readers who have contributed. I'll continue, for six months, to cover the election and post-election periods out of respect for, and an ethical duty toward, those who have pitched in to financially help. And now I need a couple days off. 

(With one little exception. I couldn't resist noting Political Wire's summary of a Hill report: "ABC’s 90-minute town hall with President Trump drew fewer viewers than NBC’s 'America’s Got Talent.'" Just not in the White House.)

"Florida, Florida, Florida," as Tim Russert reminded us in 2000

I just wanted to reassure you that Biden has this election in the bag, since it, like the 2000 contest, could well come down to Florida's Electoral College votes. Why is it a sure thing for Biden? I hear you ask. Because Florida is a sane, rational, levelheaded state, just like Joe Biden, as Keith Olbermann observed not that long ago.

Comments

You may now comment by entering only your name; I have eliminated the need to enter an email address.

I never understood the purpose of requiring the latter. If I harvested email addresses, it might be useful, but I don't. Furthermore, any commenter was free to enter email gibberish, such as [email protected], and more than one commenter enjoyed the freedom to do just that. So even for harvesting purposes, it had its drawbacks.

Anyway, only a name — any name — is now required. I hope you appreciate the change. (I beg you, no questions as to where the reply function went. I've already exceeded my level of technical competence.)