How on earth with the Supreme Court at stake can ANY Democrat think about

[Hawaii Hiker]

staying home on election day 2008 if the candiate of their choice is not the nominee?!....:banghead:

Whether you prefer HRC, Edwards, Obama, or one of the other candiates, etc. THEY ALL would make better appointments to the Supreme Court than A-N-Y Republican nominee...John Paul Stevens is 87, Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 74, one or both of them may retire in the during the next presidency (2008-2012)....For those Democrats planning on staying home if you don't like the nominee, as Robert the Bruce said in Braveheart, "I beg of you" please hold your nose & vote for whomever the Democratic candiate is...We all have our likes/dislikes with each candiate, but I feel very comfortable voting for ANY one of them based on the Supreme Court issue alone, & that is one mighty damn important issue..

It will take a long time to undo the GW nightmare, but we can still save the Supreme Court if a Democrat wins in 2008....



:rant:

[jobycom]

1. They wouldn't.

No DEMOCRAT (not to mention liberal or progressive) will. Some may say they will out of understandable frustration. But they won't.

[mike_c]

2. I'm green-- I WON'T EVER "stay at home," but I certainly won't...

...vote for a dem who doesn't represent liberal interests that matter to me. On the other hand, I would proudly vote for a dem who does!

[ashling]

3. And what interests are those?

what about someone who supports some, but not all? What if the support a few, out not most? Is keeping ultra conservatives who dissemble about their record one of thise issues? :shrug:


Just asking.

[mike_c]

12. here are some that come to mind right off the top of my head....

Ending the war against Iraq, permanently and completely.

Significantly reforming U.S. foreign policy.

Curtailing corporate personhood, or at least limiting corporate "rights."

Putting environmental protection BEFORE business interests.

Significantly cutting the DoD budget, say, to about one-third of it's current level.

Single payer health reform.

A living wage for all American workers-- not a minimum wage, but a living wage.

A significant national investment in energy conservation and research.

Honesty about the "war on terror."

Withdrawal from the WTO and NAFTA.

Abandonment of the prison at Guantanamo Bay and repudiation of U.S. tactics there and at secret prisons.


The list goes on. As for your questions "what about someone who supports some, but not all? What if the support a few, out not most?", that would depend on the alternatives. If there is another candidate that is a better match, then that's the candidate I'll likely support. I'll support a candidate that is good on a FEW issues if there aren't any alternatives, but if candidate X is good on 10 percent and candate Y on 90 percent, then that's a no brainer, IMO.

[ashling]

14. The op was directed at the presidential election.

So, we are basically talking about the Democratic nominee, whoever that might be, vs. the Republican nominee. For better or worse, its going to come down to one of those no matter who else runs, be it Libertarian, Socialist, Green, Purple, or Chartreuse.

Now, I don't expect you to agree with my premise, but that's the way it is. So, assuming, for the sake of discussion, that it is correct, heres the question again: would you vote for the Democratic candidate, even if it is not a candidate who shares all, most, or even a few of your views, or a Repulican, who definitely does not share any of your views and who would, if history serves, bring in enough loose cannon, conservative, right wing, neo-con, religious, right, looney, nutjobs to destroy what rights we have left in perpetuity, kill off all the salmon in our rivers, which, BTW, will ecome stangnant creeks, cut our forests, pollute our air, sell off our heritage, ad nauseum.

Just asking.

[mike_c]

15. no, I won't fall for that sort of anti-democratic rhetorical bullshit....

Given the choice you outlined, I would look for a candidate that represented my interests better than the democratic party candidate, presumably Green but who can say this early? I don't have any idea what the green party will do in 2008.

This is STILL America, it is STILL a democracy, and no amount of anti-democratic handwringing rhetoric is going to take away my right as a U.S. citizen to vote for the candidate that yanks my chain the hardest. No political party owns my vote-- they work for it, and if they don't earn my vote, I'm not giving it away.

[ashling]

18. Since you accept my premise

"Given the choice you outlined "

I assume that you understand that voting for another candidate is equivalent to not voting, which, in essence, gives up the effect of your vote to the Republicans.

Until the Green, Progressive, or any other group can get a significant number of elected officials at the federal level, a vote for them for president is a vote for the Republicans.

[mike_c]

19. not only is that a lie, it's a damned insulting lie....

I have NEVER IN MY LIFE voted for a republican at any level of government. Most of the time-- since I bagan voting in the early 1970's-- I have voted for democrats.

BUT when I vote for a green party candidate I'm voting FOR THAT CANDIDATE, not for a republican or anyone else. A vote for any candidate other than a republican is a vote AGAINST the republican.

What right do you have to disenfranchise Americans who vote for candidates you don't approve of? That is precisely what you are suggesting-- our votes are not votes against republicans unless we cast them for democrats? Our votes are stealth republican votes if we don't vote for democrats? Our votes are "equivalent to not voting?" That is disgustingly anti-democratic.

I believe this conversation is finished. Thank you.

[ashling]

24. And to think that I was pleased

with the plane this discussion was on: no name calling, no vituberation. And now you go and call me a damned insulting lier - and a disenfranchiser, to boot. Your origional response indicated that you would not vote before you voted for someone who didn't meet your high ideals (and I am not being sarcastic here, after all, they are mine too), thereby disenfranchising yourself.

What I am suggesting, is that our actions have consequences as our votes have consequences . . . even when they are unintended consequences. If A & B are the only candidates that stand a chance of winning, a vote for C is, for better or worse, effectively a lost vote. You may think that C is better than A & B, and that voting for A or B is "the lesser of 2 evils," but those are the stakes. The franchise refers only to the vote itself. I am refering to the effect of that vote.

That is not a lie. It is my interpretation from having watched, and studied politics and history. If you think that my interpretation is erroneous, then show me how. To say it is a damned lie is insulting not only to me but to the concept of free and open discussion.

[Nevernose]

25. Why weren't you on my high school debate team?

The thing that they don't teach you in high school debate, though, is that there's a difference between winning an argument and winning an argument on logical grounds. Contrary to the conventional wisdom and the rules, most arguments are won on emotion and not logic. You've got every debater's trick in the book, but you're still not giving any gut punches.

Pragmatism. "Real" world.

That's not to say that I don't agree with you, ultimately. But just because you're right doesn't mean you've won.

[ashling]

26. Thanks ... I think

I'm not trying to "win" I just want to get the other guy back in the conversation.

I am not above name calling and emotion in a LTTE or other rant. LOL It can be very cathartic. But on the whole, there is not any point to it in a discussion or even an argument. It can be very frustrating, at times, but I try to keep it on a semi-calm plane. The idea is to get your point across, not piss of the other party .... though sometimes it is a perk. LOL

And the reason that I was not on your high school debate team is that I am older than dirt . . . well, older than really aged compost.

[spanone]

4. at stake? try long gone. remember it's the roberts court.

[MrCoffee]

9. Stevens and Kennedy could very easily be replaced by the next President

locking in a solid vote in Kennedy's wishy-washy seat would be a major victory.

[EFerrari]

5. We already lost the court. n/t

[ecstatic]

6. Well, in all fairness, our votes might not count anyway

I will still vote but our system is seriously compromised.

[ThomWV]

7. Sometimes young men have heart attacks or strokes, so there is still hope

Alito, Scalia, Roberts, and that fucking idiot Thomas, may they all be struck by lightening.

But yes, I agree, no matter what a Democrat must find his way to the Presidency in 2008, but that does not dispense with the need for IMPEACHMENT NOW!

[me b zola]

8. That's some slogan the DLC has going there...

"We may have shit on every Democratic principle and every D activist, but remember that if you don't vote for us the SCOTUS will be filled with those that will take us back to the dark ages."


It's an effective slogan, most of us know that there is indeed more to lose than we already have. But many of us also know that it is just a matter of time before Dem nominations to the SC begin to resemble publican nominations more and more.

I'm mad as hell and I resent the hell out of these fucking tactics.

[brentspeak]

23. What "tactics" are those? Sticking up for the Democratic nominee?

That's quite some underhanded tactic, there.

:eyes:

[me b zola]

27. Extortion

It's like the mob moved into town.

[Individualist]

28. Hear, hear!

I'm also resent the hell out of DLCers browbeating tactics.

[MadHound]

10. Aah yes, the boogeyman of last resort: "Won't you pleeeeeease think about the Supreme Court!"

As Dems cave on everything from the war to first amendment issues, more and more people's eyes are opening wide on the left, and they're not liking what they see. They see a Democratic party as corrupt and corporate controlled as the 'Pugs, and they are repulsed now that the final veils are lifted.

As this horror is unmasked, more and more good people, people of conscience, liberals, progressives, Democrats all are coming face to face with a tough decision, vote one's conscience or to stick with the party. Lot of matters hinge upon these individual decisions, not the least of which is the fate of the Democratic party. More and more people are finding themselves unable to support a party that doesn't support them, and are searching elsewhere for their representation.

And this means that the Dems are in a fury to save the ship. The sad thing is, they don't have a record to stand on. They've sold out their base time and again, helping consign tens of thousands to
death, helping to shred our Constitution, helping further the takeover of corporate America.

So thus we see the desperate call go out, that old bugaboo that has held so many so enthralled for so long; Think of the Supreme Court.

But that cry is losing force. First of all, thanks to the Dems keeping their powder dry, the Court is already lost. Many are also coming to realize that there are much bigger issues, issues of life or death, that are at stake here. Hard to think of the effectiveness of the Court when the Democratic Congress is doing away with our rights via legislation. No need for the Court then.

So peddle your wares elsewhere, your cry has no power over me. If you want me to think of the Supreme Court, then the Dems need to start thinking about me and mine. End the war, rollback the abuses of our Constitution, take our government back from corporate America. Then, and only then will I think of the Supreme Court. Until then, your cry falls on deaf ears.

[Hawaii Hiker]

11. I agree Madhound about ending the war, & taking govt. back from corporate America, but

that doesn't change the significance of the SCOTUS....When issues of employment law, discrimination, abortion, First Amendment/censorship issues, separation of church & state, etc. etc. come before the high court, do you want an entire court made of Scalias', Thomas', & Ailitios' ruling on them?......Those 9 people have a PROFOUND effect on people's lives with the decisions they render....Yes, the Democrats should have filabustered Ailito, they didn't try & now look how conservative the court has become in just a year & a half....Demcorats, liberals, & progressives alike should be concerned about this, & that issue alone will have me voting a straight Democratic ticket next Nov..

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/06/29/roberts-alito/

And to address the one poster who said the court is lost....No it isn't, not yet anyway....But if a Stevens and/or Ginsburg replacement is made by a Republican, well, then we are fucked....

[MadHound]

21. So you are willing to allow the destruction and carnage to continue,

All in the vain hope of a slightly more liberal Supreme Court. That's a hell of an excuse to give a family who has watched members die and their life shattered in a Democratic enabled war. A hell of an excuse to give to Americans as we watch our freedoms, rights and way of life go down the toilet, helped along the way by the Democrats. A hell of an excuse to give to people as our economy slides down the hole on rails greased by the Democrats.

Will the Supreme Court, even packed with Dem nominees end this war? Will they overturn the Patriot Act and other civil rights atrocities? Will they turn our economy around? No, all of the is the purview of Congress, where the corporate controlled Dems and the corporate controlled 'Pugs are merrily selling us all down the river.

First and foremost priority is to stop the bleeding. Since the Dems won't do this(at least most of them), then it is incumbent upon the people of this nation to find those who will. After that, then we can worry about the Supreme Court.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

13. I'm a Democrat whose vote is available to the most progresseive, anti-war candidate, on the ballot.

If the Democratic, or any other party's, candidate wants my vote all they have to do is convince me that they are that candidate.

"I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to Heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all." - Thomas Jefferson

[Warren Stupidity]

16. The court is no longer at stake. Gang of 14 saw to that.

They own the court 5-4. Now of course it could get worse, but we have already crossed the rubicon on that issue.

[cali]

20. Baloney.

We are one seat away from losing the court and there is not one liberal constitutional scholar who doesn't see it that way.

Hmm. Why would I care more about the opinions of liberal constitutional scholars than Mr. Stupidity?

[Warren Stupidity]

22. The problem with categorical assertions is that they are trivial

to falsify.

"there is not one liberal constitutional scholar who doesn't see it that way"

Oh that was a tough one to crack. 1.3 seconds on google.


The Supreme Court Phalanx
By Ronald Dworkin
Anthony Kennedy
(click for larger image)
1.
The revolution that many commentators predicted when President Bush appointed two ultra-right-wing Supreme Court justices is proceeding with breathtaking impatience, and it is a revolution Jacobin in its disdain for tradition and precedent. Bush's choices, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, have joined the two previously most right-wing justices, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, in an unbreakable phalanx bent on remaking constitutional law by overruling, most often by stealth, the central constitutional doctrines that generations of past justices, conservative as well as liberal, had constructed.

...

They need a fifth vote to win the day in particular cases, and they most often persuade Justice Anthony Kennedy to join them. Kennedy has taken Sandra Day O'Connor's place as the swing vote on the Court. Twenty-four cases—a third of the Court's decisions—were decided by 5–4 votes last term, nineteen of them on a strict ideological division. Kennedy voted on the winning side in all twenty-four of them. He joined with the right-wing justices in thirteen of the ideological cases; he voted against them and with the four more liberal justices—John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Ginsburg, and Breyer— in the remaining six cases, including four death penalty appeals from Texas. He showed deplorable partisanship when he voted with the majority in the Court's intellectually disreputable 2000 decision to elect Bush president.<2> He wrote a poor and insensitive majority opinion this year in the Court's so-called partial-birth abortion case. (I discussed his opinion in these pages earlier this year.)<3>


http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20570

Ronald Dworkin
Ronald Dworkin is Frank Henry Sommer Professor of Law and Philosophy at NYU and Jeremy Bentham Professor of Law and Philosophy at University College London. His latest book, Is Democracy Possible Here?, was published last year. (September 2007)

http://www.nybooks.com/authors/90

You probably cling to the slim hope that Kennedy is not a rightwing shit. He is a rightwing shit, just not quite as far right as the four fascists.

Oh and about making fun of my last name: that is a real cheap shot. I did not choose my parents.

[tom_paine]

30. Oh Warren, I see some <rhymes with glass mole> is doing their usual sneer and smear

and bullshit to you. I sympathize.

I don't which one it is, and I don't want to. My Ignore List has been dormant for years...no new additions...until I had enough of these <rhymes with glass moles> and put three on in a short period of time.

So, I have no idea who you are speaking to above, and I have no desire to know.

However, I might suggest that you place such individuals on your Ignore List, since it has been demonstrably proven time and again that all they contribute to a dialogue is sneers, smears, and bullshit.

Just a word of friendly advice, Warren.

[BlooInBloo]

17. Because they have to show that they're SOOOOO progressive for DU-cred....

... So progressive, for example, that they'd rather have a republican win than Clinton. I myself confess to not being so progressive as that. You guys win.

[tom_paine]

29. Right now, I am disgusted with the Democratic Leadership, but it would be insane

to allow that to prevent me from casting my vote against Bushevism and Emperor ThomBush or Ghouliani.

I agree completely, in spite of my feelings of contempt and disgust towards the Democratic Leadership (which merely mirrors their own feelings towards me and millions like me, IMHO), it would be MADNESS, if on "election" day 2008, I was to walk into that thing which may or may not record my vote...it would be madness to squander that opportunity to stand against the Bush Evil and ThomBush or Ghouli (who are merely designated throne warmers while the usual cast of Bushie Shadow Government coninues it's rule through them).

No matter my feeling towards the Democratic Leadership right now, nothing could make me sit home or cast for other than the Democratic Candidate for President and other national offices (remember, no primaries this, Bushies or Americans, that is our choice).

You want to fix the Democratic Party and bring the Leadership back into a place where they go back to giving a shit about the Constitution and the Base, among other things?

FIRST STEP: GET THE GODDAMNED BUSHIE VAMPIRES OFF OUR NECKS!