Today was a classic, perfect July day. Sunny, high 80’s, 5-10 mph breeze, wonderful. We had the younger grandchildren over to swim in the pool along with their mothers. Camera Girl and I presided over the jubilant aquatic marauders and after the swimming and lunch I played a spirited game of billiards with the older of the two boys. And maybe saying it was billiards is stretching the definition. A purist would have noted a number of scratches that weren’t penalized. But to me every game of pool is a chance to bond with the younger generation and discuss semi-elastic Newtonian physics in an enjoyable venue.
But after the kids left for home, I managed to read some of the news. There was an article by a Leftist in a leftist magazine that I thought captured the delusional aspect of the progressive viewpoint.
Apparently, the Supreme Court recognizing that the Constitution doesn’t bless abortion and leaving it to the voters of each state to decide if they’ll sanction it, is madness. So, actual democracy is beyond the pale. Alito wanting to allowing the voters and their representatives to decide on abortion is equivalent to Robespierre unleashing Madame Guillotine on the unsuspecting populace.
I’ve selected some of my favorite quotes from this masterpiece:
“Similarly, when asked on a conference call with reporters this week what Biden could be doing differently to respond to the ruling, Sarah Lipton-Lubet, the executive director of the Take Back the Court Action Fund, a group advocating for expanding the Supreme Court, told me he should “stop treating the Supreme Court like it’s some untouchable panel of demigods. This Court is brazenly political, and we have to stop pretending otherwise.” That sentiment among Democrats escalated further today, when the Court capped its term by hobbling the federal government’s ability to regulate the carbon emissions that cause climate change.”
“As concerned as many Democrats are about Biden’s advanced age and his diminished approval ratings, the persistent chatter among them about whether he should run again in 2024 centers as much on the fear that he’s a man out of time. Many activists express a similar frustration with the party’s politburo of aging congressional leaders. “It’s not necessarily only an age thing, but I do think the younger crop of leaders have cut their teeth during times when they never really believed our institutions were legitimate,” Adam Jentleson, a former Democratic Senate leadership aide and a co-founder of Battle Born Collective, a liberal advocacy group, told me. “They don’t have this nostalgia for a [prior] set of norms and principles, because they never experienced them.””
“They feel the system is fundamentally corrupted; they are experiencing a crisis of legitimacy in our institutions,” he said—and they want the party to “craft a message around that. The failure to do that explains where we are right now.” Indeed, polling released this week by a coalition of liberal groups led by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee found strong agreement among Democrats, and even many swing voters, for the argument that the Supreme Court is “broken” and “facing a legitimacy crisis.”
So, you see, if the government is doing what they want, then the progressives have the highest respect for institutions. But if our system disagrees with their priorities then burn it down!
There was also a bunch of screeching interlaced with their call to action. I really liked these so I’ll share a few:
“Compounding those anxieties, Undem said, is “almost despair” among left-leaning voters that Democratic leaders seemingly have no plan for how to respond to this multipronged offensive. Jentleson likewise said that Biden has created an “enormous disconnect” and “feeling of powerlessness” among Democrats by failing to make a broader case against structural problems such as the Senate’s small-state bias or the skewing of the Supreme Court bench that the GOP may exploit for sustained minority rule.”
“Biden’s Democratic critics express more fear of demoralizing their own voters. For them, last week’s Supreme Court decision put an exclamation point on the feeling that Republicans are driving the national agenda even though Democrats nominally hold unified control of the White House, the House, and the Senate.”
So, there we have it. The progs want to nuke the filibuster and pack the Supreme Court. Isn’t that special! They forgot what happened when they nuked the lower court filibuster. It blew up in their faces. Now what happens when the Republicans remember their words and decide to nuke the filibuster altogether and really go to town when we control the trifecta in 2024. Well, bring it on, bring it on, bring it on.