Tag: Congress

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Rise of the Justice Democrats

woman in white t shirt holding brown wooden board
Photo by Lina Kivaka on Pexels.com

Now that the 2020 election season is in the rearview mirror, the fragile truce between various factions within the Democratic Party appears to have reached its end. In fact, the dust had hardly even settled (you would be free to argue the dust is still swirling as of this writing, but that is a debate for another time) before progressive Representative/ Full-time Twitter Warrior Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was warning Democratic leadership to stack the Biden-Harris administration with progressive-minded activists or risk big losses in 2022 and beyond.

Justic Democrats pushing to block fiscal moderates from positions in Biden Administration.

There is a profound rift emerging in the Democratic Party that closely mirrors the rise of the Tea Party faction of the GOP. The ideological engine of the party has been seized by progressive-minded ideological purists under the Justice Democrat banner, yet the party leadership clearly favors a more moderate approach. This places the party in a catch-22 in which the DNC is forced to straddle the line between two disparate ideologies in national races. It’s hard to believe that Ilhan Omar and Joe Manchin exists within the same party, yet this is the position Democrats find themselves in.

There is no more Donald Trump to hold together these strange bedfellows. The cracks are there, Nancy Pelosi has already announced this is likely her last rodeo as Speaker of the House, likely a tacit acknowledgement of the rising power of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and The Squad. The Squad is actively testing the limits of their influence right now with several members actively circulating a petition to block undesirables from key positions in the nascent Biden Administration, namely the selection to head the Office of Management and Budget, Bruce Reed.

It is hard to imagine that Bruce Reed is the second coming of Ron Paul, as the progressive corners of Twitter seem to assert, but the nuances of Mr. Reed’s fiscal philosophy are almost irrelevant. The Ideology Inquisition is in motion.

So what happens next? It all depends on how the Georgia Senate run-off races play out. Should the GOP win out and maintain control of the Senate then the House Democrats are free to pass and endless stream of progressive moon-shots, knowing full well they have McConnell to play off as the bad guy. The real fireworks would be Democratic control of the Senate. Schumer and Pelosi would then be in the unenviable position of passing actual legislation, which of course runs the risk of having said legislation actually pass into law. This leads to a difficult tightrope to walk, Democratic leadership would be forced to craft a bill that manages to appease the Justice Democrat wing while also not forcing Democrats in moderate seats into politically untenable votes.

Long story short, losing the Senate puts off outright intra-party war by 2 years at most. Just as the Tea Party forced the GOP into a spiral of increasingly extreme conservative positions, the Justice Democrats are already moving to aggressively challenge Democrat incumbents in primary challenges. It is a race to the left, with America left stranded in the middle.

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What Now?

To no one’s surprise, Amy Coney Barrett has been elevated by a 52-48 vote to be the nation’s 9th Supreme Court Justice, replacing the iconic Ruth Bader Ginsberg and entrenching what appears to be a firm 6-3 balance in favor of the court’s conservative wing.

While the court’s ideological split is often discussed as mirroring the political concepts of “conservatism” and “liberalism” that currently dominate our current national discourse, in reality the divide is one of jurisprudence and judicial philosophy. It is not uncommon for “conservative” Justices to rule on a given case in a way that favors a politically liberal outcome ( such as newly appointed Neil Gorsuch ruling in Bostock vs. Clayton County that the 1964 Civil Rights Act protections against discrimination rooted in “sex” also extend to LGBTQ Americans) or for “liberal” members of the court to similarly reach decisions that run contrary to their perceived ideologies. This has not stopped the usual suspects from running to their battle stations (although, to be honest, they really never left) to fire off Twitter salvos decrying pre-ordained legal rulings.

Of course, Mr. Blumenthal is in the thick of things and slinging emotional bombs in all directions.

Now it is clearly not a surprise that Democratic lawmakers are up in arms and decrying the impending death of American society. In their narrative Amy Coney Barrett and the Supreme Court are gearing up, as we speak, to turn America into A Handmaid’s Tale by the end of the next court term.

This is not to say that the country does not stand on the precipice of monumental change, some likely to be brought forth by the new dynamics on the court. It does. But the reason we are on edge is not simply because Donald Trump got lucky or the fact that Mitch McConnell would sell his soul for this very result (he would). It is again a direct result of what has not happened over the last several decades. It is a direct result of the slow atrophy of the Legislative branch, which is quickly becoming the gallbladder of our American democracy.

The Supreme Court is one, of three, coequal branches. It does not lord over our society, crafting America as it sees fit. Does the court wield monumental influence? Yes. Yet the influence of the court can be tempered by a robust Congress. The members of both chambers do themselves, their offices, and America a disservice with everyday spent fundraising in lieu of legislating. Everyday spent turning the gears of the partisan spin machine in lieu of meaningful debate, is a day spent allowing America slip farther from being a functioning democratic Republic by choice and closer to a Kritarchy by necessity.

The Legislative branch needs to make a deliberate effort to turn away from the temptations of partisanship and work to legislate in a comprehensive, bi-partisan manner to keep “Kritarchy” a form of government that requires a Google search, not the reality in America.

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Posturing, Pandering, and The Supremes

The SCOTUS confirmation hearing exposes just how broken our political institutions have become.

For one week in October Amy Comey Barret took center stage in the ongoing Kabuki theater that grips the nation. We heard gloom, we heard doom. We heard plaudits and praise. And we heard it all in alternating 20 minute soapbox speeches.

The hearings to consider the elevation of Judge Barrett to the Supreme Court are over and gone, receding into the rear view mirror and out of the social consciousness. Yet we have learned absolutely nothing of substance in regards to Judge Barrett’s judicial philosophy. We learned nothing about her suitability to assume a position to the court. We did learn, however, how many different ways one human being can decline to speculate on the same succession of hypothetical legal scenarios.

We have reached a point in this nation in which our descent into hyper-partisanship has rendered the political process almost impossible. Although it would be wonderful to have a series of hearings in which Senators could ask probing legal questions and receive a candid answer from a nominee, the political environment makes this impossible. Any utterance is subject to extreme vetting. Any opinion rendered would be quickly subjected to the Right/Left spin cycle and plastered across the social media landscape. These were not hearings, they were depositions.

Any vacancy to the highest court in the land has now become an existential battle. The Supreme Court was not envisioned as an omnipotent council of elders set in place to rule on and sway policy in the United States. Yet, due to the slow and steady abdication of responsibility by the Legislative branch, this is exactly the position we find ourselves in. The legislative process no longer exists for the most contentious policy questions facing the nation. Gun control, healthcare, immigration. All of these issues have become partisan weapons, issues to stir the base and drive fundraising for the next election cycle. There can be no compromise because there is no reasoned debate. Neither side can be seen to even acknowledge the feasibility of a rival policy proposal so we are left with an endless cycle of political brinksmanship where policy poison pills are tacked on the budgets, or defense authorization acts.

Now, while the legislative process has ground to a halt, the problems facing America do not simply disappear. They linger. So now, in lieu of a robust and collaborative legislative process, the most feasible way to address policy questions is to force a tailored lawsuit through the Judicial system to the Supreme Court. Chief Justice John Roberts, to his credit, has bent himself into legal knots to avoid the court being used as a blunt instrument to circumvent the proper legislative process but this balancing act becomes more and more perilous with each successive vacancy.

In theory, any given ruling by the Supreme Court is not the final verdict on any given policy. The court rules on legality. In a properly functioning legislative body a Supreme Court ruling would be seen as a impetus to craft a law that would pass judicial challenge. Compromise would be made, legal issues resolved. The hearings show just how far we are from that utopian reality.