Don't Participate in a Sham Process

[dajoki]

Don’t Participate in a Sham Process
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/dont-participate-in-a-sham-process

President Trump has now, unsurprisingly, chosen to nominate the far right Amy Coney Barrett to succeed Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court. The only sensible approach is for Senate Democrats neither to meet with Barrett nor participate in the confirmation process at all. Even to do so in a critical posture is to add legitimacy to a process that is illegitimate.

As bad as she may be as a judge or for the future of equal justice in the United States she can never be as bad as the corruption of the process itself. It is that corruption – the court-packing scheme Republicans pushed into overdrive starting in early 2016 – that justifies, indeed requires Democrats to add seats to the Court in 2021. Distracting from that reality with a gauzy-lensed look at Barrett’s personal story and judicial merits is madness. Pure madness.

Here too politics lines up neatly with principle. This will be a high profile spectacle that will dominate the final weeks of the election and be 100% under the control of the GOP and the White House. It is literally stage managed by the GOP and all the initiative is in their hands. One might as well agree to shut down one’s own campaign for the last month of the election.

snip//

Republicans have already told us that Barrett herself is irrelevant to this process. Almost every Senate Republican agree to vote to confirm her before they knew who Trump would nominate. They could not have made this more clear. She is irrelevant. Is she hard right? Of course. Just like the other possible choices.

You can’t insist a process is illegitimate while granting it legitimacy, while arguing within the questions the process raises. In this context, participation amounts to begging. Begging is weak. Democrats need to make clear that the only answer to Republican court-packing which will toss millions off health care, cripple voting rights, further limit reproductive rights and more important than anything be a decades-long veto over all progressive legislation is to elect Democrats and repair the damage in 2021.

Don’t participate. It’s madness.

[Laelth]

1. This is a good argument. I am torn. n/t

-Laelth

[enough]

3. I'm torn too. The process could bring out elements of her career that might

defeat her. Hard to know.

[The Magistrate]

2. Mr. Marshall Has a Point, Sir

[Statistical]

4. I agree. Also there is the element that Trump is racing towards a massive loss on Nov 3rd.

Any news cycles not spent on Trump being terrible, the economy, and COVID help Trump. Trump wants this to be a big and long spectacle. It will drown out any message Biden is trying to make.

There is nothing we can do to stop it but there is a lot we can do to ensure Biden wins and the Senate flips blue.

[BlueMTexpat]

5. Unfortunately, if Dems do not participate

at all, GOPers will vote to confirm within five minutes. That is simply too defeatist for me.

IMO, Dems should do anything and everything they can to drag out the process and put more information out about the negatives of this appointee - or in fact any appointee - by an impeached official who has been responsible for the deaths of more than 200,000 of the citizens he was charged to protect. This may in fact scare some GOPers into sanity.

We need to keep pounding these facts home. Repetition, repetition, repetition.

We must ensure that every one of the enablers understands the consequences. We can do this by continuing to contribute to and work for the election not only of Biden-Harris, but for ALL Dems running for Senate seats currently held by GOPers, and by voting for an even stronger Dem majority in the House of Representatives.

This is the ONLY way that the enablers will ever feel the pain. They have no consciences. All they are interested in is keeping their cushy seats, keeping the power and benefits that go with those offices and never, ever, having to live and worry on a daily basis the way most Americans have to. We have to keep pointing out exactly what hypocrites they are to everyone we know and keep repeating how these spineless toadies do NOT deserve re-election.