Posted on 07/01/2018 12:22:06 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
It matters less, now, if President Donald J. Trump serves only one term. It matters less if he is impeached. It matters less if Robert Mueller indicts him for colluding with a foreign power. With the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy from the U.S. Supreme Court, Trump is a hairbreadth away from sealing his legacy as one of the most influential (if petty, crude, divisive, corrupt and antidemocratic) presidents in American history.
It is hard to overestimate the magnitude of this development. Trump has promised to appoint another hardcore conservative, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his minions will roll right over Senate Democrats to confirm him (or her). That jurist will likely be in his or her 40s or 50s and serve for decades.
That strongly suggests that for the rest of my life — and through a considerable part of my child’s adult life — the nation’s highest court will be a bastion of ultra-right doctrine, hostile to progressive causes of all sorts. That court will likely kill off reproductive rights, starve unions, look askance at affirmative action, eviscerate voting rights and abuse criminal defendants. It will coddle violent police officers, kowtow to corporations and re-write the First Amendment, bulldozing Thomas Jefferson’s famed “wall of separation between church and state.”
This is a huge victory for the forces of retrenchment. Conservatives are much better than liberals at playing the long game, and rich political players on the right have been plotting to remake the court in their own image for decades now. Even before Kennedy’s announcement (and with Kennedy’s assistance), the high court had shifted rightward. Just this summer, the court has weakened reproductive rights, upheld Trump’s hateful, anti-Muslim travel ban and hammered public sector unions. It aided and abetted homophobes with a ruling that sided with a baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple.
McConnell gambled on that shift — and won — when he stymied President Barack Obama’s appointment of Merrick Garland. Spitting on the U.S. Constitution, McConnell defied precedent, mocked tradition and trammeled bi-partisanship, insisting that no high court nominee should be confirmed in an election year. Senate Republicans later embraced Trump’s nomination of Neil Gorsuch, who has become a reliable ultraconservative vote. Of course, McConnell quickly reversed himself after Kennedy’s announcement, revealing that the Senate will vote on a nominee in the fall. Never mind that it’s an election year. Conservatives see their long-held goal of a far-right court just a step or two away, and hypocrisy is their handmaiden.
For much of my life, the Supreme Court served as a defense for oppressed minorities — a bulwark that pushed political and civic institutions to fully respect our rights as citizens. Through several decades, the highest court issued rulings that desegregated public schools, upheld voting rights, sanctioned desegregation of public accommodations and respected affirmative action. It broadened protections for criminal defendants. As feminism took center stage, the court upheld reproductive rights.
And even as the court turned rightward after the appointment of Justice Clarence Thomas, it still found occasion to grant succor to the oppressed. Kennedy’s libertarian streak helped to sustain that impulse. He upheld Roe v. Wade. He championed gay rights. He voted against the death penalty for juvenile offenders. But Trump’s list of potential nominees likely includes no Kennedys.
While the Trump-McConnell machine is taking all the credit for their victory, they had help from the left — from the #NeverHillary crowd. Progressive activists such as actress Susan Sarandon insisted that the Democratic nominee would be no better than Trump. Green Party nominee Jill Stein drained votes away from Clinton. Young progressive voters stayed away from the polls in the 2016 presidential election because they weren’t “energized” by Clinton’s campaign.
They helped put Trump in office, and they will reap what they have sown. So, unfortunately, will the rest of us.
Apparently she has a syndicated column. I didn't look at specific numbers.
I considered that possibility, but on going to the Chico website, I didn't find any indication that she was syndicated from the AJC. Usually, the "paper of record" is right out there with the writers name. Unfortunately the Chico rag won't show the whole article unless one registers, but acknowledgment of affiliation is usually NOT "behind the paywall".
Make Cynthia Tucker Weep again. You’d think Trump was putting David Duke on the SC.
Oh it’s my fault alright. I’m more than willing to take part of the blame for this.
MAGA
Thus proving that Progressivism is the antithesis of the United States Constitution.
“Is this the same commie Cynthia Tucker who used to editorialize in the Atlanta Urinal-Constipation???”
One and the same.
She left Atlanta to work for the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1980.
She left the Inquirer when they cited her lack of experience when they refused her the position of foreign correspondent in Africa.
She quit and freelanced in Africa for 6 months before she returned to Atlanta for a job at the AJC.
She was promoted to Editorial Page editor in 1990.
She moved to D.C. in 2009 as the AJC’s political columnist.
This ditz is a real piece of work.
That’s some mighty fine Whine!
Elections have consequences, you commie dumb@ss beyotch.
Yes this is the same Cynthia Tucker. Yet another haughty ghetto loud mouth, another perpetually angry black woman.
An Angry Affirmative Action hire if there ever was one.
Beastly human being.
It is so good to hear the lamentations of their women.
The ajc.com site has a page from 2011: "Cynthia Tucker to leave AJC for UGA." She left "to become a visiting professor at the University of Georgia’s journalism school." Apparently she's still teaching there and enlightening the minds of everyone (just listen to her and think the opposite).
Poor Cindy says this like it's a bad thing.
LOL, stop blaming Susan Sarandon and Jill Stein, and start blaming the person who is most responsible for Trump’s rise.....Barack Obama.
All you Baby Boomer and GenX Libs were waiting your whole lives for a “cool POTUS” from your own generation. A hip Lefty, who probably wrote his Masters dissertation on the evils of American Capitalism, with a Husker Du record playing in the background of his dorm room.
If not for Trump, we would have wound up with another GOPe type or Hillary. But Trump sensed that, after Obama, those of us who are old enough to remember a more decent and innocent America, had had just about enough of all this PC madness & divisiveness and DC corruption.
25 years ago, Ross Perot was the first outsider to run for POTUS to get the public’s attention. Now, after Obama, Trump understood that things have gotten so out of hand since Perot’s first run in 1992, that there would be an earthquake of support for his type of candidacy.
But it could have never happened without Obama getting a chance to serve out his two terms. He sealed the deal!
Actually George Wallace did pretty well and was something of an outsider.
Only Democrats voted for Wallace.
Then my whole extended family and everyone they knew were Democrats, and that just ain’t true. Wallace won states in the Electoral College, something independents don’t normally do.
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