Elie Mystal, justice correspondent for The Nation, is frustrated with Democrats and their tactics:
I literally do not know how the Democrats got through an entire section on immigration [Wednesday] night without mentioning the Muslim ban, or the 5-4 Supreme Court decision to uphold it. I do not know how they talked about the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, highlighted people who have been denied access to the program, and yet did not mention that the court’s decision to allow the program to continue hangs by a thread or that the Trump administration has indicated that it will violate court orders anyway. The omissions are insulting, not just to the Muslims who have been banned or the Dreamers who have been terrorized, but also to the thousands of lawyers and good people who fight the administration and descend on airports and border crossings to defend what rights immigrants still have left.
Without having watched much of the DNC, I suppose it’s frivolous of me to respond, but quite honestly, I don’t think presenting the problems of not “controlling” the federal judiciary really fit in with the Democrat’s approach to this election. I believe the Democrats have the same mind as do I: this isn’t an election to defeat the Republicans, say 51-49%.
That won’t do.
The Republican Party, or the corrupt zombie that’s zig-zagging across the landscape wearing its old clothing, needs to be so badly crushed that it can no longer be taken seriously in its current form.
And citing judicial concerns can easily lead into complexities not suited to a virtual national conference. Worse yet, it implies a rough equality of moral standing which does not exist. By excluding judicial issues, and by reference the entire immoral “single issue” citizen, they avoid inculcating that poison into the intellectual blood stream of the viewers, who might have had a very strong negative reaction to it.
The pivot of the Democrats isn’t “how bad is the judiciary going to become if we lose.” That’s negative. They need to shine a light on how good things will be if the Democrats are put in charge, in place of the immoral and corrupt Republicans.
This is a new situation, and I think the Democrats have taken proper advantage of it.
Republicans have legions of single-issue voters who cast their ballots purely because of the Supreme Court, because that’s what those voters have been told to do. They have been told for a generation that the way to get the things they want—whether those things are homophobia, sexism, white-minority rule in a soon-to-be majority-minority country, or the simple joys of shooting black people who run past your house—is to gain absolute control of the courts. To the extent that Democrats have fewer voters who are willing to hold their noses and vote because of the courts, it is because Democrats never put in the work of explaining how their policy goals require liberal judges to uphold them.
And those Republican single issue voters are the precise voters to blame for the current shithole we find ourselves in, for reasons I refuse to repeat yet again. I, for one, cannot countenance Mystal’s implicit call for the Democrats to develop single issue voters as well. Shall we be overwhelmed for grossly corrupt and incompetent legislators from both parties?
With the infusion of young energy into the Democratic Party, now is exactly the time when the work should be done to explain how control of all three branches is necessary to achieve progressive aims. When I talk to young people, a lot of times the only cases they’ve heard of are Roe v. Wade and Citizens United. Too many people don’t know that D.C. v. Heller created, for the first time, a personal right to gun ownership for self-defense and must be overturned to have any meaningful weapons ban. Too many people don’t know that the conservatives’ attempt to rewrite “Chevron Deference” is their way to attack any environmental regulation ever passed again. Too many people don’t know that “codifying Roe v. Wade” is useless when the name of the game is reimagining Planned Parenthood v. Casey to make abortions functionally unobtainable even if the right to have one still technically exists.
Sure. But the DNC was not the place for it. These sorts of things need education through the media and through dedicated class time. How you do this, I don’t know, but then I’m just a slacker, out of date software engineer.
First rule of engineering: Please, oh please, don’t make things worse by fixing the problem.
