What sort of "unprecedented response" would you suggest Obama should have made to McConnell's refusal to grant Merrick Garland a hearing? Granted, he could have shouted louder from his bully pulpit, but beyond that I'm at a bit of a loss to imagine what else he could have done.
This feels like a bit of Green Lanternism — the assumption that if Obama had only exerted more will, or found the right rhetorical pitch, institutional constraints would have melted away. But McConnell had the votes and was willing to torch norms. Short of manufacturing a constitutional crisis, it’s not clear what concrete mechanism was available to force hearings.
McConnell didn't "have the votes." He knew that if he allowed a nomination to proceed in the normal fashion, especially of Garland, through the normal channels, then at least some Republicans would vote for him. He was solely using his procedural power as majority leader. Maybe you're not in a position to comment so confidently if you don't recall the details of how it went down.
An obvious gambit would have been to give the Senate a deadline after which Obama would consider their silence approval. But "short of manufacturing a constitutional crisis" feels kind of like begging the question to me -- you're presupposing a response was impossible. The invocation of Green Lanternism is offensively braindead. Please don't comment here again if this is the level of discourse you are going to engage in.
By most accounts, the Biden administration was extremely hospitable to the left side of the coalition, and the Inflation Reduction Act incorporated substantial policy demands from the left-liberal side of the coalition. I don't think it undermines your overall point—it's a small crack in a substantial barricade, and it was more ambitious on the spending side than on challenging the distribution of wealth and property.
The previous three-most-disastrous Supreme Court line-ups mostly support your Eigentum Über Alles theory:
* The court that definitively ended New Deal initiatives.
* The court that definitively ended Reconstruction and started the reign of Jim Crow. This decision was more clearly motivated by white supremacy than by "property" per se, but Big Money supported it if only to eliminate the high cost of military occupation.
* And its elder brother, the Dred Scott court which simultaneously disenfranchised free Black Americans and permitted residents of slave-owning states to enforce their local "property" laws inside free states. (So much for "state rights"!)
What sort of "unprecedented response" would you suggest Obama should have made to McConnell's refusal to grant Merrick Garland a hearing? Granted, he could have shouted louder from his bully pulpit, but beyond that I'm at a bit of a loss to imagine what else he could have done.
This feels like a bit of Green Lanternism — the assumption that if Obama had only exerted more will, or found the right rhetorical pitch, institutional constraints would have melted away. But McConnell had the votes and was willing to torch norms. Short of manufacturing a constitutional crisis, it’s not clear what concrete mechanism was available to force hearings.
McConnell didn't "have the votes." He knew that if he allowed a nomination to proceed in the normal fashion, especially of Garland, through the normal channels, then at least some Republicans would vote for him. He was solely using his procedural power as majority leader. Maybe you're not in a position to comment so confidently if you don't recall the details of how it went down.
An obvious gambit would have been to give the Senate a deadline after which Obama would consider their silence approval. But "short of manufacturing a constitutional crisis" feels kind of like begging the question to me -- you're presupposing a response was impossible. The invocation of Green Lanternism is offensively braindead. Please don't comment here again if this is the level of discourse you are going to engage in.
Spot on.
By most accounts, the Biden administration was extremely hospitable to the left side of the coalition, and the Inflation Reduction Act incorporated substantial policy demands from the left-liberal side of the coalition. I don't think it undermines your overall point—it's a small crack in a substantial barricade, and it was more ambitious on the spending side than on challenging the distribution of wealth and property.
And business interests lined up squarely against him and Harris even after repudiating Trump in the wake of January 6.
The previous three-most-disastrous Supreme Court line-ups mostly support your Eigentum Über Alles theory:
* The court that definitively ended New Deal initiatives.
* The court that definitively ended Reconstruction and started the reign of Jim Crow. This decision was more clearly motivated by white supremacy than by "property" per se, but Big Money supported it if only to eliminate the high cost of military occupation.
* And its elder brother, the Dred Scott court which simultaneously disenfranchised free Black Americans and permitted residents of slave-owning states to enforce their local "property" laws inside free states. (So much for "state rights"!)
I forgot to credit Waite's Jim Crow court with its "Corporations Are People Too" decision!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County_v._Southern_Pacific_Railroad_Co.
You can still find Matt’s post if you click through the hyperlink in the second paragraph of this article, but only within the Substack app. This might be because I have it saved though. https://matthewellis.substack.com/p/on-marxism-and-religion-a-project?r=1tazc&utm_medium=ios
For me, that link just shows a blank page. Alas!