Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

No one could have predicted…

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Infrastructure week. at last.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Everybody saw this coming.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

You are here: Home / Politics / Activist Judges! / The Cynical Response to Brian Beutler

The Cynical Response to Brian Beutler

by | 117 Comments

This post is in: 

Brian Beutler has a piece up on why liberals should stop freaking out about the upcoming ACA in front of SCOTUS.

scalia-gesture

I have no idea how they will rule, IANAL, but I think the appropriate way to view the current court is not through legal understanding or precedent, but simply as another wing of the GOP that does what it wants when it wants and doesn’t care about hypocrisy, immorality, or the impact of the public.

Reader Interactions

117Comments

  2. 2.

    Linda Featheringill

    I agree. Several members of the Supremes serve neither God nor man and are instead an arm of the Republican Party.

    This isn’t necessarily because they truly believe in the Republican principles [whatever those are] but because they serve to increase oppression in any way that they can.

  6. 6.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I remain shocked that, as far as I could see, the Supreme Court was not an issue that came up in any of the competitive Senate races.

    @Baud: I’m feeling a little beat up, I’ve been avoiding political TV all together, just glancing at headlines on the web, and the only thing that really matters is the final result, but…
    This is the third cycle where the R’s were “supposed” to take the Senate, they finally did, there were no real upsets (except maybe MA gov), six months ago Terri Lynn Land was a “rising star” in MI. It’s more than a little annoying to see the Very Serious Persons echoing the notion of a GOP “mandate”, based on narrow wins with (IIRC) record low turnouts of 37%, but that’s the same as it ever was. If the Dems had held the Senate with 50 + Biden, Mark Halperin would still be calling it a mandate for “entitlement reform”. The last time I felt like this was after the ’04 election. We survived that, we’ll survive this.

  7. 7.

    BGinCHI

    It’s down to just Roberts though, I think, right? The other three nut jobs plus stupid fucking Kennedy. I’m guessing they have photos of him in compromising positions.

    Plenty of speculation that they will give them a poison chalice: take away subsidies so that insurers et al will force the GOP to pass a law giving them back (or clarifying the language). That would be super fun to watch.

    If the GOP ends up splitting itself over ACA there will never be enough popcorn.

  9. 9.

    Downpuppy

    No need to be shy any more about not being technically competent to judge the judges. after Bush v Gore & Shelby County, the only principle is good old DWTFTW.

  11. 11.

    Elizabelle

    I want Jesus to call “Justice” Scalia home. Real soon. I think the man is an observant but BAD Catholic.

    Scalia’s son was a priest at my mom’s parish in Northern VA for some time. Appealing young man; gave a rousing sermon once against birth control, to a pin drop quiet congregation.

    But Father Scalia will not be getting his father into Heaven, should it exist. Justice Scalia is one of the smallest men to ever, ever serve on the Supreme Court.

  14. 14.

    Tree With Water

    The power to nominate supreme court candidates will loom larger as a factor in the 2016 election than in any previous election of my lifetime. Perhaps to a degree unprecedented in our history. Lord knows it should, anyway. If the GOP isn’t stopped, we might as rename the country the Confederate States of America.

  17. 17.

    JPL

    @Elizabelle: That is awful and you must atone for your sins. I just want him to hunt with Cheney and enjoy the nature.

    @Baud: I actually thought the argument had to do with broccoli.

  18. 18.

    Schlemazel

    @Baud: 2009?!?!?!

    We stopped fighting in Florida in 1999 when it might have actually made a difference.

    Many stopped in ’92 when the Clinton health initiative might have been possible. If you are a Democrat you just have to accept that the party leaders and many of the elected members are gutless shits incapable of fighting even when we are right because it might upset the big money donors that feed the DLC

  25. 25.

    patrick II

    Number 6 of Beutler’s reasons –because it immoral and would kill people — is, sadly, a naive appraisal of the Supreme’s morality. The optional aca medicaid decision already is leaving millions uninsured and will lead to thosands of deaths this year. It does not seem to bother them at sll.

  27. 27.

    Botsplainer

    When Niño dies, I promise to take a giant, steaming shit on his grave and send the photo to his family.

    Most will undoubtedly cheer. I’m sure they hate him too.

  30. 30.

    Schlemazel

    @Baud:
    WE did but the DNC did not. Many Dems voted with Boy Blunder on many issues despite them bringing really bad ideas. This lends credence to the “both sides are the same” meme.

    The DLC was only too happy to take advantage of the anti-nutball anger but not to actually DO anything about undoing the damage. These assholes abandoned Clinton when he needed them, they ran crying and shaking from Obama. We did not but we do not run todays DNC.

  31. 31.

    Quaker in a Basement

    Yeah, but this might not just affect poors. It might also affect big insurance companies and that’s fkin’ serious.

  32. 32.

    JPL

    For years the right wing news and radio preached against political correctness. What we lost was common decency and the whackos came out of the closet. That door will never be shut again.

  35. 35.

    Alison

    OT and sorry for the real stupid tech question.

    Can I get a printer that I can plug into my laptop with a USB cable only when I need to print something? We bought a new printer with wireless, but for some reason, even though it shows as on the network on my mom’s desktop, and it’s shared and all that, my laptop can’t find it. Our tech guy was here for over and hour yesterday trying to figure it out. Eventually I just told him to forget it and figured I could buy my own printer to keep in my room, and plug it into my laptop when I need it. That’s a thing that can be done, yeah?

    (And please, don’t try to walk me through the ways to fix the wireless one, unless you are 1) an actual tech-support person and not just someone who uses computers, and 2) you live near me and will come over and do it yourself. Thank you drive through)

  36. 36.

    Schlemazel

    @Baud:
    yeah, I have been going to precinct caucuses for 50 years and state conventions nearly as long. I have been involved in DFL politics since I was 4 years old and I have exactly zero affect on the state party let alone the national one. There was a time I know ‘we the people’ made a difference but I have not felt that way for 25 years.

    Nothing that I see on the national level makes me believe members can change the party as it is currently composed. The game is rigged but its the only game in town, I keep laying hoping we can eventually wrest control back from the money people.

  37. 37.

    GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)

    @Baud:

    Losers…and drunks. Since I went to treatment I have completely stopped worrying about things that are not in my control.

    It is very liberating.

    Edited for spelling

  39. 39.

    Fluke bucket

    The comment section of that article just brutalize the author. There seems to be agreement that the subsidies are illegal and that state means state and federal means federal and on and on it goes. Discouraging to say the least.

  40. 40.

    Elizabelle

    OT: I am liking this free HBO concert. The Black Keys rocked.

    That’s a goal. To see them perform live. (And to pay less than$300 for a ticket, le sigh.)

  42. 42.

    JPL

    @Schlemazel: You sound like me although I’m older. My first venture was to keep playgrounds open. I might have been 10 when I knocked on the front door of the mayor. I didn’t even know at the time that keeping playgrounds open meant that you were a bleeding heart liberal or something. I just wanted to keep the playgrounds open.

  45. 45.

    Cacti

    @patrick II:

    Number 6 of Beutler’s reasons –because it immoral and would kill people — is, sadly, a naive appraisal of the Supreme’s morality.

    Yeah, I’m not going to pretend that I think any of the Republican 5 give two shits about anyone outside of their social circle dying. Dirty plebes probably deserved it.

    Roberts, however, is a fundamentally vain man who cares about his place in history. He doesn’t want to see his name attached to a Plessy, Lochner, or Korematsu type decision. That’s why I’m not sure how he’ll rule.

  48. 48.

    JPL

    @Cacti: Kennedy cares about business so there’s that. I still think Roberts says it’s an easy fix for Congress therefore I nullify it.

    also, too.. not a lawyer and haven’t slept in a Holiday Inn for decades…

  49. 49.

    Morzer

    I can see Beutler’s argument for 2), but the rest of his piece sounds like wishful thinking taken to a mushy extreme. It’s absolutely clear that the GOP Injustices on the SCOTUS don’t care about consistency, the Constitution or their future reputations. They are the corrupt, racist bagmen of the Party Of The New Jim Crow. Hoping that any of the factors Beutler so diligently assembles will matter is to ignore their appalling record over the last few years. For far too long, Democrats have piously thought that their virtue and good intentions were so obvious that they could ignore the fight at the local level and just assume that honest, competent judges would be appointed and that the good sense of the American people would prevail. Well, now we know just what pious thoughts and good intentions without strategy or relentless vigilance are worth – and where our failure as a party has brought this country.

  50. 50.

    Morzer

    @Baud:

    We are a bottom-up party. If our people fight, the DNC will follow.

    Sadly, we aren’t a bottom-up party when it comes to messaging and money. The DNC would piss itself and run screaming from anything as vulgar as populism, straight into the clammy, corpse-embrace of Lieberman, Bayh and Baucus, the Three Stooges of the Apocrapalypse.

  53. 53.

    Tree With Water

    @Cacti: I don’t believe Roberts possesses the integrity to give his place in history a seconds thought. If he did, he wouldn’t have been nominated by GW.

  54. 54.

    srv

    If liberals had not stopped Bork, Obama would have gotten to replace him.

    Sometimes you have to think long term.

  55. 55.

    Schlemazel

    @JPL:
    My dad worked in a factory from age 15 (his father died & left 10 kids). He became a union man because he saw what the union did for him & people like him. A fellow union member ran for Congress & my dad became involved in the campaign & from that in DFL politics. I was 6 when I first drop literature door-to-door. Dad spent many hours at every level of his union (Oil, atomic and Chemical Workers) and many more in State politics. It was a way of life in my family though I am the only one that caught the bug.

  56. 56.

    Schlemazel

    @Morzer:
    BINGO!

    But I am now old & spent and tired of fighting against the party that should be my ally against the pure evil that the GOP has become.

  57. 57.

    Baud

    @Morzer:

    I’m tired of hearing about the DNC. We won’t succeed because we keep harping on all the reasons we won’t succeed. The DNC is irrelevant.

  59. 59.

    Alison

    @tybee: I assumed so but I never want to trust my own limited knowledge :P

    @Major Major Major Major: Haha, thanks for the offer, but I’ll buy one :) (And the free ones usually suck, the reason we got a new one to begin with was because the free printer my mom got with her desktop was the slowest piece of shit I’ve ever encountered. Like, I could hand-write a page faster.)

  60. 60.

    Morzer

    @Baud:

    Dangerous assumption. If we simply ignore things we don’t want to think about, the DNC will continue its reign of error, folly and cowardice. You want to remake the party, start by realizing which institutions you need to take over, frighten into obedience, or simply destroy and replace with something better.

  62. 62.

    HR Progressive

    Roberts already pissed in right wing cheerios by not saying the ACA was unconstitutional wholesale.

    Because of his shillingness for big business, I can see him being the deciding vote to say “Well, there might be a way to say the subsidies aren’t kosher, but that’s pretty much what Congress meant, so, the plaintiffs might technically be right, but sweet federal dollars for even sweeter mandated health insurance profits”.

    People tried to counter me with “But he’s safe, it doesn’t matter what the RWNJ’s want”

    Maybe so, but these people are so delusional that I would not be surprised to see Ted Cruz band a posse together to comb obscure statutes to try and find a way to remove Heretic John Roberts from SCOTUS, should he shit in their cereal this time around.

    We’ll see, obviously.

  63. 63.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @Morzer: You’re of course correct, but it doesn’t sound nearly as belittling to the Chief Asshole. Hence my preference to pretend to count on his vanity.

  65. 65.

    catclub

    @BGinCHI:

    Plenty of speculation that they will give them a poison chalice: take away subsidies so that insurers et al will force the GOP to pass a law giving them back (or clarifying the language). That would be super fun to watch.

    I do not see this at all.
    1) I think Roberts will uphold the law based on the sovereign dignitude of all the insurance companies that would lose money if the federally run state exchanges get no subsidies. The lagniappe will be revoking the 80% of premiums requirement.

    2). If there are 5 to strike down, the dissent from ‘notorious’ Ruth Bader Ginsburg will be EPIC.

  66. 66.

    Morzer

    @Baud:

    As a group, what stops us from working towards that goal? We always seem to agree that this is the remedy for the situation, but somehow we stop at the level of cyber-protest/activism/Atrian cynicism. Hell, if the teabaggers can do it, surely we are smart enough to do an even better job.

  67. 67.

    catclub

    @HR Progressive: You beat me to the general idea.

    Also, if Roberts tossed the mandate, but did not toss the whole law, that is a death blow to insurance companies. And he was not about to do that to them.

  68. 68.

    wmd

    The corruption of SCOTUS just adds to the cynicism. Government doesn’t work; Checks and balances among the three branches are irretrievably broken.

    I personally don’t buy it, but a lot of people have no trust in our institutions.

  69. 69.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @catclub:

    The lagniappe will be revoking the 80% of premiums requirement.

    This is the question that the petition for cert. raised: “Whether the Internal Revenue Service may permissibly promulgate regulations to extend tax-credit subsidies to coverage purchased through exchanges established by the federal government under section 1321 of the ACA.” They won’t address the 80% medical loss ratio.

  70. 70.

    Baud

    @Morzer:

    Thank you. That’s what I’m trying to say. I don’t know what we can do to as a group. I wish I did. But we do need to change somehow, IMHO.

  71. 71.

    Poopyman

    @Baud: The DNC is not irrelevant as long as they keep sucking in perfectly good dollars and pissing them away. Fortunately, these here intertubes can help water down their effect via organizations like MoveOn and ActBlue and whatever the Next Big One is going to be. But they’re still a drain on resources, AFAICT.

  72. 72.

    Poopyman

    @Alison: For what it’s worth, I’ve got an HP 6500A Plus connected to this machine via USB. I think most printers still have a physical interface.

  73. 73.

    Morzer

    @wmd:

    I think a lot of is because all institutions are flawed and so they rely on good faith and honest negotiation to operate even moderately effectively. Since the days of Gingrich, our higher political institutions have been unable to work because good faith and honest negotiation have been systematically annihilated on the GOP side – and Gingrich did that very deliberately as a means of ensuring that government would not work, knowing that the party that stood for honest, competent government would inevitably get the blame. Given that the GOP hasn’t been interested in governing in the national interest for something like 4 decades now, that meant the Democrats were screwed and the American people would have to take their chances once predatory capitalists were unleashed.

  74. 74.

    Alex

    John, I realize this is your refrain because it strikes an emotional chord. But it’s simply not borne out by the evidence. Keep on fucking that chicken, though.

  75. 75.

    Halcyon

    I disagreed with you the first time they heard an ACA case, and said it would be an easy decision completely in favor of the law because surely these guys wouldn’t overturn decades of important, major precedent just to screw with Obama, and the legal question at hand was laughably simple.

    Fool me once…

  76. 76.

    Morzer

    @Baud:

    I think it has to start with taking over Democratic groups at the local level and controlling the primary process, the way the baggers did it. We should make sure that our candidates are going to be supported locally – and that “Democrats” in positions of authority who decide to “sit this one out” or even play footsie with Republicans pay the price in the immediate future. I am not demanding purity purges, just discipline, hard work and loyalty to the party by those who represent it. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.

  77. 77.

    MomSense

    @Alison:

    No advice from me. I almost threw the wireless printer out the window but then I thought it might be more satisfying to reenact the fax scene from Office Space.

  79. 79.

    Baud

    @Morzer:

    That makes sense to me. That’s largely what I try to do, in my voting anyway. I think it’s hard because Dems disagree a lot about what it takes to go off the reservation.

  80. 80.

    Elizabelle

    @Major Major Major Major: I do wonder what got him out of that house so fast, carrying a wallet. There’s something to that story.

    I hope and hope your friend can be found in good health. Know that’s unlikely, as time goes by, but it does happen on occasion.

  81. 81.

    Keith G

    @Elizabelle: In four days, my ex and I (he is my best friend) are going to see Jake Bugg open for the Black Keys at Toyota Center (Houston) – yes we will stick around for the headliner. Since I am a regular, I got to pay $75 ea as a pre sale deal. They are general admission, so we will be standing in front of the stage for the duration. Those same tickets are now $300 ea on Stubhub. The seats were cheaper.

    I go into work the next morning at 5. Ouch.

    Can’t wait.

  82. 82.

    Hal

    @Fluke bucket:

    The comment section of that article just brutalize the author. There seems to be agreement that the subsidies are illegal and that state means state and federal means federal and on and on it goes. Discouraging to say the least.

    There are probably 20 or less commenters all making the same HAR!HAR! LIBTARDS! arguments you that always pop up in these types of arguments. Just like that troll from a few days ago who felt it necessary to comment multiple times just saying the same things. These people are sociopaths with an internet connection.

    No one is evening making an actual legal argument regarding the case, just saying Obama is the suck and so is the ACA. I wouldn’t pay them any mind.

  84. 84.

    Keith G

    @Cacti:

    Roberts, however, is a fundamentally vain man who cares about his place in history. He doesn’t want to see his name attached to a Plessy, Lochner, or Korematsu type decision. That’s why I’m not sure how he’ll rule.

    I have heard a few opine that errors such as the one the being litigated are nestled away in many statutes and that if the plaintiffs win, there could well be an ungodly mess of litigation (to the point of institutional paralysis). The idea being that Roberts would (in his role as guardian of the institution) be resistant to having his name attached to the cause of all that.

    Sounds logical, but logic is often ignored, if not outright destroyed.

  85. 85.

    Elizabelle

    @Keith G: Have fun! Looks worth being sleepy at work.

    The Black Keys come to Richmond in December; St. Vincent (the singer with white hair) opens.

  86. 86.

    Kropadope

    I don’t think Kennedy’s vote deeming the ACA unconstitutional would have any bearing on this. This is a question about language and intent. The Congress’s intent seems pretty clear to me. Also, the federal government is a state (aka a government). This whole thing seems pretty foolish.

  87. 87.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Keith G: The fact that legislation is full of things like that is why there are rules on statutory interpretation. Using those properly, this case would never have been filed.

  88. 88.

    pluege

    but [the SCOTUS 5 are] simply as another wing of the GOP that does what it wants when it wants and doesn’t care about hypocrisy, immorality, or the impact of the public.

    all true, but you left out a very big thing the SCOTUS cretin 5 do not care about: The Constitution

  89. 89.

    pluege

    @Kropadope:

    The Congress’s intent seems pretty clear to me.

    ahhhh, but that was intent by a Democratic-majority Congress, an illegitimate condition at best in the view of the republican hacks on SCOTUS.

  90. 90.

    Morzer

    @pluege:

    If the Democrats passed a resolution praising mom’s apple pie, the GOP would scream that this was unconstitutional and peach pie was what the Founders intended.

  91. 91.

    Hal

    At the end of the day, support for Halbig means that the President, Congress and anyone involved in the drafting of this law inserted into it the equivalent of a false tooth with a cyanide pill inside. There is simply no way a thinking person could come to the conclusion that the intent of this law was state exchanges or nothing. It would negate the purpose of even establishing the law in the first place.

    People who make this argument are at least being disingenuous, and more likely, simply lying to make an argument that supports their point of view. They don’t like the ACA, ergo, get rid of it by any means necessary, even if you have to BS so hard your eyes turn brown.

  93. 93.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: disagree, Coakley was always a terrible candidate for MA Gov and I’m only surprised it was so close. The Florida election was IMO more of a disaster. It’s shocking to realize that not only was Rick Scott horribly unpopular, not only did a huge number of GOP voters split their tickets (look at Adam Putnam’s numbers versus Rick Scott’s), not only did Crist himself say all the right stuff and kick ass at the debates, yet the election was a disaster, Dems stayed home, Scott decisively won, Dems lost some downticket races they shouldn’t have, and now a lot of Dems in Florida are blaming outside money as if the Dem side didn’t have tons of their own cash airdropped in. The Democratic Party of Florida is a useless cancer that exists to drain the resources of loyal Democrats as well as labor to keep a few highly connected pols in office and screw the rest. My only hope now is that Gwen Graham becomes more prominent in the state party given her outstanding performance this cycle. Unfortunately I see no signs that the usual gang of idiots is going anywhere.

    It’s not that the GOP is winning in Florida, it’s that the Dems are losing. Maybe even throwing some of these games. This election was truly disastrous for labor and while the leadership is well aware that the parties exist to use and abuse them and at least in principle are trying to change direction with regards to their relationships with political parties I fear the rank and file are just going to blame their leaders for every loss they take over the next decade.

  94. 94.

    Cckids

    @Cacti: I keep hearing that, about Roberts, that he doesn’t want a Plessy in his name. WTF do people consider Citizens United to be? That is going down in history as a huge anti-precedent POS from a bought & sold for court.

  96. 96.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Cckids: Actually, there is a line of precedent and legal reasoning that supports the majority opinion in Citizens United. I don’t agree with it, but the decision wasn’t pulled out of thin air.

  97. 97.

    BBA

    The court will rule, non-precedentially, that this particular statute is unambiguous and cannot be construed in the manner that the government has construed it, ergo Chevron doesn’t apply, and as a matter of dignified equalitude the subsidies must be denied to the state exchanges as well. This decision only applies to statutes passed by Democrats during the 111th congress because reasons.

    The dissent will be a large ASCII middle finger rendered in Century Schoolbook.

  99. 99.

    Kay

    Bernie Sanders is running for President.

    That would be great.

    I don’t know how they’re going to handle him at all. Imagine Mark Halperin’s lip-curling sneer.

    They can’t really just dismiss him, political media. They pretended Bachmann was competitive for 6 months, and that restaurant lobbyist, and Donald Trump.

  100. 100.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Baud: Not bottom up this year. A LOT of people were fighting for immigration reform action this year, they had the presidents’ ear, but Senate Dems and the party apparatchiks convinced him to stay his hand. He may have better political instincts than they do but he also is going to do right ‘by the party’ so that’s what he did. Reid, I think, sadly, has to take some blame here, too. He didn’t take stuff to votes just to ‘protect’ seats, well they’ve been protected right out of seats because the proletariat–not the loyal base–decided that nobody was running for them this year and stayed home.

    Who is our base? The ones who crawl over glass to vote. Their base is bigger than our base. We win elections when we turn out the proles. But the proles aren’t QUITE as stupid as we’ve been told. They can tell when Senators work for big money sacks and they aren’t going to put themselves out for that. They are being dumb about statewide elections but guess what, the state dem parties fucking suck, either they have some power and use it to enrich themselves, enraging certain groups of voters who will vote in a party split, or they’re out of power and have no clue how to win a campaign. Despite Obama showing them how it’s done twice they refuse to learn. Dems had millions of in-state and out-of-state money in Florida and spent all their energy trying to raise more, blew their wad on stupid web and tv ad campaigns and mail spam and email fundraising spamola and failed to connect with voters.

    Nobody from the local Dem party called me and asked me to canvass and call Dem voters.

    Only calls I got were from Dem pols I’d already given contributions to. And I heard plenty from my labor orgs. Labor turned out at a higher rate. Where was Dem GOTV? Didn’t see much evidence of that. Dem party didn’t show up.

  101. 101.

    azlib

    Roberts will not let the insurance companies down. They are now dependent on the exchanges and the new younger customers.

  102. 102.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Baud: Well, there’s obviously an interaction here between the elected officials and the party men and if we don’t get people from lower on the income scale or people who understand how to FIGHT, ie community fucking organizers, elected then we will keep getting these upper middle class bloodless money-raisers into primaries only to lose big on election day.

    AFL knows this. That is why they are training rank and file union members and union retirees to run for local office and state office.

    The bloodless “nice” coddled set believes the grifters when they tell them how to message and to play nice with this or that donor etc and so on. And then they lose. Again.

    More Stacy Campbells. More Nina Turners. More Al Frankens (I saw that 30 second spot. He gets what the DSCC, DCCC, DNC did not.).

    I’m not arguing that Dems should act like GWB or any of that garbage. But it’s kick ass or go home. Voters know when you’ve silenced yourself, even if they can’t see which donor is pulling the strings. I’m disgusted by 2014.

  103. 103.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Poopyman: What good is ActBlue if you fund a candidate who is still beholden to DCCC and their stupid demands?

    Dem Party Florida blew races in 2012. Watched it happen. They are parasites.

    Kos is trying to start local Dem meetups of like-minded sorts. Maybe this will lead to some concrete organizing.

    I do not know what is going on with Alachua County but it is nothing good and I don’t know what the answer is. But the Dem Party here is broken and the state party can’t and won’t do anything to fix it. And frankly the forces that broke it aren’t going away any time soon. The ones who need to change don’t want to and don’t see why they should have to.

  104. 104.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Baud: I think only one rather small group in terms of votes thinks the answer is to sell out to corporate interests and cease to fight for the interests of the 99% or basically do anything on any topic (environment, whatever) that annoys finance or big oil or big business.

    Unfortunately that group is the donors and with labor beat the fuck up and Black America effectively siloed in terms of influence even within the party, the donors are just running away with everything.

    And they don’t really lose so much when they lose elections, so no incentive to change anything. Much like Kochs and Adelson who can afford to blow money on pointless shit all day long.

  106. 106.

    The Tragically Flip

    Hard to believe that the supremes don’t coordinate strategy with other gop mucky mucks. Gop wins senate back, supremes oblige by stepping in to rule on a case where no appeals court disparity exists. This is to give the congressional gop leverage with Obama, something that will need fixing in order to avoid an insurance death spiral.

    View scotus as just another bunch of politicians. Conservatives have politicized the court completely for decades. Their judicial philosphies are just for unimportant cases or to provide a semblance of cover for the most nakedly partisan decisions.

  107. 107.

    The Tragically Flip

    @efgoldman: The shelby ruling is worse on merits of the arguments, but just willfully expanding the scope of CU beyond what even the plaintiff was complaining about was some impeachment worthy legislating from the bench. A very worrisome jurisdictional precedent.

  108. 108.

    askew

    @Kay:

    Of course they can dismiss him. How much media coverage did Kucinich get? Because he’s going to do about as well as Kucinich. He’s old, weird and isn’t even a Democrat. Yes, he is good on most issues, but he isn’t going to seriously compete for the presidency. And this is coming from someone who wore an orange hat and canvassed in Iowa multiple weekends for Dean.

  109. 109.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @askew: I really like Dennis. I worked with him in Ohio against tort reform legislation, but he isn’t Sanders. For one thing, Sanders can never be portrayed as an elf.

  110. 110.

    J R in WV

    I think many “Democrats” are in reality republicans willing to pretend to be Dems in order to sabotage the Dems in any way they can.

    Throw an election?

    Sure!

    Put a phrase in a law that will enable the R Supremes to throw out the intent of the law? Sure, what fun!

    The advice people running for office are getting is intended to make them look ridiculous – then they loose. Grimes and her vote (or not) for President Obama.

    Maybe she could have told Kentuckians the truth” Their health insurance “Kynect” or whatever their cute non-Obamacare name is, that insurance IS Obamacare, and Yertle aims to kill it off, and kill off lots of Kentuckians in the process, which means nothing to him as he is a soulless piece of excrement.

    If you tell people the truth, however painful that may be, and you do it over and over, maybe they will believe that your opponent is not telling the truth.

    I contributed a lot of time and money to candidates. In 2012 most of the candidates I backed won. No one I contributed to this election won. NO ONE! out of 7 or 8 candidates.

    Kay Hagen in NC
    Alison Grimes in KY
    Wendy Davis (Texas so no surprise, didn’t expect to win)
    Mary Blount in WI Gov race
    Michelle Nunn in GA
    Natalie Tennant in WV
    Ron Barber in AZ

    These were not bad candidates, but they emailed me 3 and 4 times a day asking for more money. Not to work on their campaign, not to phone bank, or canvass, or drive people to vote, Just Pay For More Ads on TV that people hate!

    How stupid is that?

  111. 111.

    Applejinx

    Yeah. I drove out to work in field offices for Obama. I wondered if there were any this time around: I’m in no position to make them out of nothing.

    They only asked me for money, and I don’t have any. They got my vote, and it seems like it didn’t matter much (I’m in Vermont. For Obama I was working in the New Hampshire field offices…)

    I’m going increasingly Russell Brand: the loyal opposition is either broken or the same guys in essence. It’s a trick, and it’s not supposed to be a trick. Much wrongness.

    I’m not going to stop voting for lesser of two evils, but it’s bugging me that I’m perpetuating this system and validating it. I don’t think it deserves to be validated, and I don’t think it’s headed in a good direction. At some point it may lose me just because it’s too insulting to continue to be conned.

    It’s kind of like self-deluding Republicans trying to believe that they are rescuing the country and that the environment/climate isn’t really collapsing. At some point they’ll bail too as it will become too obvious they’re being conned.

    If we’re all being conned together, then what? Tumbrels?

  112. 112.

    brantl

    And they really don’t give a rat’s ass about the meaning of the law, either, as long as their sophistry can twist it the way they want to. “Corporations are people, too!” (Citizens United)

  113. 113.

    dubo

    If you haven’t noticed, the right hates Obamacare. Even if you don’t read a ton of significance into the Court’s decision to grant the challengers cert, it’s easy to imagine five justices reasoning themselves into buying the challengers’ story here, or of just doing great violence to the law as willful activism.

    But that’s really the only reason for the left to worry.

    “Your foot is stuck in the railroad tie and the train is only 20 feet away from you coming at full speed. But that’s really the only reason to worry”

  114. 114.

    danimal

    The right hates Obamacare in about the same way that it hates abortion. IOW, the rubes are motivated to vote on the issue while the Powers-That-Be quietly kill any legislation that goes too far, too fast.

    They want an “issue” for the next generation, so they are railing against the health care system in the same way that abortion has been a way to rail against the sexual revolution. In case you haven’t noticed, the GOP coalition is getting pretty old, pretty fast. What better way to build a movement than bitching about doctors and insurance companies? Plenty of horror stories, to be sure.

    They still don’t have an answer for the eternal question of what does the dog do when it catches the car (Repeal and Replace with what???). Better to keep chasing. Obamacare is here to stay.

  115. 115.

    kindness

    I just read through far to many of the comments over at that New Republic link.

    Those are some mighty ugly rightwingnutz. Those are the very same people who just got elected to a majority in Congress.

    We are all in deep shit for the next two years. If the Roberts court guts the ACA I fear for a civil society. I mean, if even the courts function as a right wing republican political organ, there will then be no legal remedies to our politics, just illegal ones.

    What the right has forgotten is that all the social stuff that has been brought in (Social Security, MediCare, MediCaid, AFDC, Foodstamps) wasn’t because we as a nation are exceptionally generous. It was brought in because our leaders were (previously) practicing enlightened self interest. Giving food and medicine to the poor kept the poor from revolting. It was in the riches self interest to keep a lid on the lower classes and this was the cheapest way to do so.

    History is not the right’s forte.

  116. 116.

    BosDave

    @Cacti: Citens United is in that pantheon. Roberts may not think so, but history will not be so kind. But I do agree, a ruling for the plaintiffs here would be a lot more absurd.

Comments are closed.