The normally-excellent Dahlia Lithwick, writing about sad liberal law students:
One of the most notable things about these events is the extent to which progressive students, faced with a Supreme Court vacancy, a Democratic president, and a Democratic Congress, are bordering on despair. […]
But the hardest question I keep getting from liberal law students—and the most painful to answer—is why so few of their heroes are in serious consideration.[….]
By calling even Obama’s moderate shortlisters unhinged, conservative judicial activists have knocked any genuine liberal out of play in advance of the game.
But it’s not the “conservative judicial activists” who put genuine liberals out of play. It’s Obama, and the Democrats in the Senate, who are simply, totally, inexcusably and bewilderingly spineless.
I don’t believe for a moment that liberal law students are in near-despair because partisan Republicans say partisan things. (And if that does send them into despair, then they have souls far too delicate for the law, and should definitely consider moving to some less harrowing career, such as dog-walking). They’re in near-despair because the Democratic party leadership, from Obama on down, is once again posed to surrender without a fight. It’s an absolute betrayal of the base by the party’s leadership, and it would make even the stiffest-lipped liberal law student despair.
Tom Goldstein, in an outdated article that is nonetheless touted by Lithwick as the best explanation for the Obama administration’s refusal to fight, writes:
Look at it this way. Which of these three options is going to get President Obama re-elected: (a) 500,000 new jobs; (b) expanding health care for 10 million additional Americans; or (c) Seventh Circuit Judge Diane Wood?
We can ignore (b), since the Affordable Care Act has now passed.
I could abide an argument that the Democrats shouldn’t expend political capital on getting a solid liberal on the Supreme Court, because they’ll be too busy fighting unemployment. Except they’re not fighting unemployment. The Democrats aren’t going to fight for a better judiciary, and they’re not going to fight for significant job-creation, either.
They’re not going to fight. Period.
And that’s why liberals everywhere — not limited to liberal law students — despair.
(And incidentally, Mr. Goldstein, a despairing base is no way to get re-elected.)
It’s not deference, it’s lack of political experience at this level. Obama is an amateur. His staff is amateur. Amateurs don’t know what’s important and what’s not, and so they don’t know where to fight. Without that gut knowledge, they have to game everything out. What looks like total wimpiness is actually analysis paralysis.
Of course, Congress has a lot more depth in the backfield than the Administration does. Those guys ARE horrible cowards. But you’ll be glad to know that very few of them will still be in their jobs a few months from now!
It’s not spinelessness, it’s that the democrats are not a liberal party. My perception is that they are a centrist party without a leftist party to anchor them.
In Canada, there are three main parties: Conservative (right wing), Liberal (centrist), and NDP (Socialist). Likewise for many nations in Europe: the names change, but you’ll always find parties in all three positions of the political spectrum.
Speaking from my experience in Canada, centrist parties have no ideology; they steal ideas that are popular or that seem sensible from the left and right, instead. Centrist parties owe their platform and identity to the parties on the left and right, who stake out ideological territory for themselves and leave the centrists in, well, the centre.
In a country with full-fledged left, right, and centre parties, the centrist party (or parties) tends to be the dominant one, because they are able to steal the good ideas from both of the other parties (and reject the bad ideas), eschew ideology, and appeal to a large plurality or majority of voters who don’t want their government to do anything new and different (like socialize an industry or privatize a utility) but just govern. By stealing ideas, centrist parties are always being pulled in both directions, which on the one hand keeps them in the centre, and on the other hand forces them to choose which ideas they will steal from where, with a well-developed sense of a)what’s going to work, and b)where the electorate is leaning this year.
In the US, this scheme falls apart because there’s no counterbalance to the extreme right – no leftist thinktanks, nobody to complain when the Democrats stray too far to the right, and nobody staking a claim out at the left end of things to keep the Democrats focused on being centrist. Result: the Democrats have members ranging from moderate right-wing to leftist (because there’s no leftist party for liberals to joint), they all too often look like the left wing of the Republican party (because there’s no other party for them to steal ideas from, no incentive for them to practice figuring out which ideas are good and which bad, and no counterpull to the Republican’s gravitational field).
What seems like spinlessness and vacillation is, I think, merely the fact that the Democrats are a centrist party in a nation that has no leftist party to anchor them.
I have a notion that leftwingers typically suffer from depression (every bad thing reminds them of every other bad thing), rightwingers tend to have some sort of rage disorder (they don’t suffer from it, they’re having fun), and libertarians tend to have Aspergers.
I don’t have the foggiest idea what’s to be done about any of this– my despair about dealing with a people problem probably reflects the fact that I’m a left-leaning libertarian.
Glaurung is correct – the Democrats are not a liberal party, so I don’t see why people are so astonished that they are not behaving in a liberal way. They are further left than the Republicans – which isn’t saying much – but the moderate left in the US seems to be the furthest left members of the Democrats, a group that is getting smaller all the time.
Britain and Australia have experienced similar rightward drift (though on a much smaller scale!) and as a result, Liberal Democrat (in the UK) and Green representation is climbing. I hope something similar happens in the US, but as long as the Democrats are mistakenly identified as liberals, I don’t like your chances.
Valid points raised. The sad thing is that the Dem leaders don’t care what their base thinks, while the Repub base is listening too much to the “tea party” wing of their base.
I’m reminded of a reply that someone gave to the annoying line “Obama is playing chess way above our heads.” Maybe it was Bartcop who asked in reply “What if he’s playing poker, and he’s just really BAD at it?”
They’ll cave and go with a right-of-center corporate flunky Supreme Court nominee, they’ll put off repealing DADT. They’ll prosecute the whistleblower that let people know about the NSA illegal wiretaps but they won’t prosecute any war criminals.
And in 2012 they’ll just say to their base “What other choice do you have? Palin/Bachmann? ” and they’ll screw the left once again.
I am inclined to campaign for Palin for the next two years and move to Europe when she wins. “So long America, have a nice day!”
I consider myself a moderate (leaning conservative on economic issues but liberal on social issues). However, when it comes to the Supreme Court, Im not sure that liberal vs conservative really makes a difference. I think the real difference is how far should government authority extend.
For instance there was a disastrous 2005 decision that said municipal governments had the right to confiscate private property in order to allow developers to build malls or new subdivisions or whatever else. However it was the liberal block that supported that and the conservative block that opposed it. Now I know it other cases (like the one about the guy given a life sentence for stealing a bunch of DVDs from Kmart under California’s three strikes law) where its the liberal block who shows the common sense.
Or on things like marijuana legalization, its the Dems like Barbara Boxer who oppose it while Republican congressman Dana Rohrabacher supports it. In fact many of the Democrats (Joe Biden and John Kerry) have been far worse than the Republicans when it comes to the War on Drugs.
Honestly, most politicians are self-serving and smooth talking. There are very few that whether you agree with them or not, actually stand up for what they believe and care about representing the people.
Perhaps someday (but not soon, alas), commenters, bloggers, credulous media types, and ever-hopeful lefties will realize that liberals are NOT the Democratic Party’s base. They may be the party’s patsies, the party’s ATM, the party’s “go-to folks,” but they are not the folks that Democratic politicians court for votes.
Now, the sooner that liberals realize they’re being taken for granted and abandon the Democratic Party, the sooner that things can (slowly) start to change in the US.