It’s their party and they’ll do what they want to, Part Now

It’s their party and they’ll do what they want to

By: JEFF POOR | February 24, 2016

Whether they win the nomination or not, the campaigns of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have stunned the political world by bucking the Republican and Democratic party establishments and scoring electoral success as outsiders.

Should they continue their successes and both score wins in each of their parties’ caucuses and primaries, it is entirely possible for the Republican and Democratic parties to deny them the nominations.

It is something that is not without precedent.

In 1986, then-Alabama Lt. Gov. Bill Baxley ran against then-Alabama Attorney General Charlie Graddick for the Democratic Party’s nod for governor.

At that time in statewide elections Alabama was still a one-party Democratic state, but there was a clear conservative-liberal ideological division within the party, which was on display in the 1986 election.

The left plank of the Democratic Party at the time supported Baxley and the right supported Graddick.

The voter turnout that year proved Alabama was even more of a one-party state than it is now. In the 1986 election cycle, the Democratic Party primary had a turnout of more than 800,000 voters while the Republican Party primary drew 40,000.

Unknown Cullman County Probate Judge Guy Hunt cruised to the GOP nomination while Graddick and Baxley fought it out.

Graddick won the Democratic primary, but the party ultimately granted Baxley the nomination because the Democratic establishment at the time saw Graddick as unworthy of the party’s nod. Their argument was that Graddick won as a result of Republican crossover voters in the Democratic Party. Graddick even took the battle to federal court, but lost.

While Graddick lost the fight, its aftermath was arguably worse for Alabama Democrats.

Later that year, Alabama elected Guy Hunt in the general election, the state’s first Republican governor in a century. Many blamed the outcome of that election on the shenanigans the Democratic Party played in the nomination.

Fast-forward 30 years.

As of last week’s Nevada caucus, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) has received 151,584 votes when combining the Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada outcomes, while Hillary Clinton has received 95,252 of those votes. However, the delegate count as of now is firmly on Clinton’s side by a margin of 502-70. The bulk of Clinton’s lead is composed of super delegates, which are unelected delegates free to support either candidate, by a margin of 451 for Clinton to 19 for Sanders.

On the GOP side of the presidential election it’s also possible the party could tip the scales against Trump.

The idea of an outsider like Trump winning the Republican nod is repulsive to a lot of the party’s long-time establishment. They loathe the thought of a “short-fingered vulgarian” from Queens carrying their party’s banner.

That conflict sets itself up for an ugly fight heading to the GOP’s convention in Cleveland, Ohio, later this year, even if Trump continues his winning streak throughout the primary process.

So, it’s not out of the realm of possibility for both parties to nominate a candidate who did not win the popular vote nationally in primaries. And if it happens, there’s probably not much anyone can do about it.

While the parties would be acting at their own peril, there’s a legitimate argument to be made against Trump and Sanders.

Although Bernie Sanders caucuses with the Democrats in the U.S. Senate, he has always run as an independent candidate, going back to his days as mayor of Burlington, Vermont, including running in some elections against a Democratic candidate.

There’s an argument to be made that Sanders was never willing to be a Democrat until this presidential election, so why give him the party’s most important nomination?

The same goes for Trump.

One of the big knocks on Trump is he has supported Democrats for many years. Up until 2011, Trump had contributed evenly between Democrats and Republicans. But from 2012 forward, he has given overwhelmingly to Republican candidates.

But the fact that he donated to both the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and to the senatorial campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Harry Reid is a disqualifier in the minds of much of country’s Republican hierarchy.

If either scenario happens, where the Republicans or Democrats buck their respective party’s popular vote, there probably isn’t much anyone can do about it.

It’s sure to be litigated in the courts, but the Republican and Democratic parties are not necessarily beholden to the voters in picking their presidential nominee. There is not a constitutional right for a candidate to receive a political party’s nod.

It isn’t out of the realm of possibility for the parties to say, “Screw the vote, we’re going to do what we want. We don’t want a repeat of George McGovern or Barry Goldwater, so we’re going to do what we think is in our best interests. Trump and Sanders have never done anything for our parties’ apparatuses, so why should we reward them with our party’s nomination?”

If it happens, it does have the potential to backfire on the two parties. It sets up a situation where one of the candidates would benefit from the backlash of the opposing party.

But what if both parties opt to go against the will of the voters and both select candidates that did not win the popular votes of the parties? It’s entirely possible if one does it, the other will see it as cover to do the same and voters in both primaries will be disenfranchised.

If that happens, be prepared for a voter revolt and the rise of multiple political parties beyond just the Democratic and Republican parties we have today.

News & Politics

Antonin Scalia: Forefather of Modern Republican Nihilism

Antonin Scalia wasn't just a giant of conservative jurisprudence. He was an architect of right-wing legal extremism.

 

By Heather Digby Parton / Salon

 

February 15, 2016

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, pictured last year, denied Wednesday falling out with the top US court's chief justice over his shock decision to back President Barack Obama's health reform law

It’s ironic, to say the least, that the passing of Justice Antonin Scalia, a man known for the legal doctrine of “originalism,” would immediately lead the majority leader of the Senate to declare that no nominee to replace him would be confirmed until a new president is inaugurated in a year’s time. The founders would very likely scratch their heads in wonder at Mitch McConnell’s odd statement that “the American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice, therefore this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.” They would likely point out that the American people did have a voice in that decision in 2012, when they voted for Barack Obama for a four year term. There’s nothing in the Constitution that says after three years the president is no longer authorized to nominate Supreme Court Justices.

Be that as it may, the reality is the Republican Senate is not going to confirm anyone President Obama sends up, and I don’t think anyone would imagine otherwise. What’s startling about McConnell’s statement is the fact that he said it so openly. It’s another example of the reckless disregard of political norms, traditions and the rule of law by the modern GOP. In the old days, they would have at least paid lip service to the idea that a president is obligated to nominate Supreme Court justices and the Senate is obligated to fulfill its advise-and-consent role. Sure, they would delay the nomination, but to just announce upfront that they have no intention of following the usual procedure is a new thing. They don’t even pretend to care about preserving the integrity of the institution.

Last night in the GOP debate, all the candidates backed up McConnell. It would seem they too believe that even the pretense of normal constitutional processes is no longer necessary. This will be good to keep in mind as they bray incessantly about President Obama’s use of executive orders as if they were acts of treason. (By the way, his use of Executive Orders is right in line with all modern presidents, including Republicans.)

But then, if there’s one Supreme Court justice who exemplifies this propensity of modern American conservatives to bend the system for partisan ends when needed, it was Justice Antonin Scalia. His legacy as a hardcore legal conservative is second to none, but it will always be over-shadowed by one decision: Bush v. Gore. The Republicans had already begun the process of destroying the integrity of Congress with its partisan witch hunts and the impeachment circus of the 1990s; but if there’s one Supreme Court ruling that paved the way for the total abandonment of any pretense of dignified non-partisan adherence to traditions for the sake of preserving the integrity of our institutions in the eyes of the public, it is that one.

Indeed, Justice Scalia may have written the single most fatuous line in Supreme Court history with his brief concurrence in that case:

“The counting of votes that are of questionable legality does in my view threaten irreparable harm [George W. Bush] and to the country, by casting a cloud upon what he claims to be the legitimacy of his election.”

 Scalia was a very smart man, and he had to know that this would be one of the main decisions for which he was remembered. His willingness to risk his reputation by writing that ridiculous rationale for a nakedly partisan outcome served as an example to conservatives everywhere: Win by any means necessary.
He did not like being reminded of it. When college audiences would ask him about the decision he would usually bellow, “Get over it,” which was the standard line the media employed in the wake of the decision in 2000. But in recent years he led the way with another modern Republican tactic, simply denying reality. In 2008 he appeared on “60 Minutes”:

“People say that that decision was not based on judicial philosophy but on politics,” Stahl asks.
“I say nonsense,” Scalia says.
Was it political?
“Gee, I really don’t wanna get into – I mean this is – get over it. It’s so old by now. The principal issue in the case, whether the scheme that the Florida Supreme Court had put together violated the federal Constitution, that wasn’t even close. The vote was seven to two.”

In 2012, he said the same thing at Wesleyan University:

At the end of the speech, Scalia took questions from the audience. One person asked about the Bush-Gore case, where the Supreme Court had to determine the winner of the election.

“Get over it,” Scalia said of the controversy surrounding it, to laughter from the audience.“

Scalia reminded the audience it was Gore who took the election to court, and the election was going to be decided in a court anyway—either the Florida Supreme Court or the U.S. Supreme Court.
It was a long time ago, people forget…It was a 7-2 decision. It wasn’t even close,” he said.

The problem is that he was not telling the truth. As Ian Millhiser at Think Progress explained:

Bush v. Gore was not a 7-2 decision — and indeed, Scalia could tell this is true by counting all four of the dissenting opinions in that case. Although it is true that the four dissenters divided on how the Florida recount should proceed — two believed there should be a statewide recount of all Florida voters while two others believed a narrower recount would be acceptable — not one of the Court’s four moderates agreed with Scalia that the winner of the 2000 presidential election should effectively be chosen by five most conservative members of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Justice Scalia had a long illustrious judicial career. He was a giant among the modern conservative legal theorists on the right.  But he was also one of the fathers of the modern conservative movement’s “you can believe me or you can believe your lying eyes” school of politics. If the 2016 Republican presidential primary is any example, his political legacy is secure.

Heather Digby Parton, also known as "Digby," is a contributing writer to Salon. She was the winner of the 2014 Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism.

ELECTION 2016

It Is Paul Krugman Who Lives in a Fantasy World, Not Bernie Supporters

Krugman wants people to be rational and pragmatic like he is. They aren't—and sometimes that is a good thing.

By Michael Bader, DMH / AlterNet

February 7, 2016

Photo Credit: Prolineserver / Wikimedia Commons

Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman can’t stand that people are irrational; that working-class conservatives are duped into voting against their own economic interests. In a recent New York Times editorial called "How Change Happens," Krugman complained that liberal Bernie Sanders supporters are hopelessly waiting for the “better angels” in people to rise up and radically change our corrupt institutions. Real change, he argues, requires rational pragmatism and compromise.

As a psychotherapist who writes about politics, I have a different issue: I can’t believe Krugman is bewildered by the fact that the quality and quantity of our political engagement is strongly shaped by powerful unconscious needs and fears that are relatively immune to rational argument. Forgetting for a moment that, as others have pointed out, he misrepresents Sanders’ view of change. Krugman’s own view reflects a wishful fantasy that fundamental social change results from incremental victories that reflect rational compromises between competing interests. But the fundamental issue facing progressives today is not one negotiated by policy wonks; it is how we can build healthy institutions that become a base for a radical social movement. The issue is how do we engage the passions of millions of Americans who view such a movement as connecting to their unrequited desires and unarticulated fears? 

To do so, we have to at least start with an accurate view of human motivation; that is, our picture of what people really need and fear, and therefore, how the institutions we build and the ideology we promote speak to these feelings at the deepest possible level. For example, people in our society are often isolated and lonely. People need a feeling of connectedness as much as they need economic justice. How does our “message” offer people a sense of community? (Sanders’ enthusiastic calls for a “political revolution” seek to do just that, while Clinton hangs her appeal on flat and technocratic notions of “competence.”) The right has certainly understood people’s frustrated needs for connectedness, although their offer of “community” is based in large part of demonizing some other (immigrants, gays, welfare recipients, etc.). 

Or consider the notion Krugman gently mocks that too many progressives are trying to conjure up the better angels of America’s nature. In fact, people do have a deep emotional longing for meaning and purpose. We want our better angels to be awakened and we want to see the same in others. All one has to do to see this need awakened is to note how communities react with altruistic and high-minded generosity in the wake of natural or man-made disasters.

Politicians act when they are forced to or bribed to act. The compromises that so often result are due to the net effect of this play of forces. The job of progressives is to strengthen our side, increase our power, by engaging and inspiring people out of their passivity, not just by offering up reasonable policy alternatives but by inspiring them to be bigger and better than they typically see themselves.  That’s what Obama did in 2008, and it’s what Sanders is doing now.

Sanders’ appeal isn’t reducible to what Krugman calls “transformational rhetoric,” but is, instead, an antidote to the cynicism so prevalent today, a malignant despair that doesn’t arise from the stupidity of conservatives or the naïve idealism of progressives.  Cynicism is the belief that the way things are is the way they’re supposed to be. It can’t be combatted simply by appeals to reason, but rather, by speaking to the hearts of our constituents, stimulating (not belittling) their belief in better angels and resonating with their needs for love, recognition, agency, community, and meaning. These apparently softer needs are every bit as powerful as rational economic self-interest or left-brain logic. 

Paul Krugman is the leading public intellectual in America today. He stands head and shoulders above the dishonest and small-minded wonks and politicians on the right. When he crosses swords with them, we are the better for it. But if he wants to talk about how change occurs and about political compromise, he needs to understand that Roosevelt was pushed to the left by labor, LBJ by the civil rights movement, Nixon by the anti-war movement, and the Supreme Court by the LGBT movement for same-sex marriage. Radical social change can’t be understood as the result of technical policy compromises between rational actors, but rather as the result of social movements that acquire power by engaging the whole person—including the more intimate regions of the heart and soul, as well as the parts in which reason resides.

Contrary to Krugman’s assertion, we will need those "better angels of our nature” in order to win the power needed to be pragmatic from a position of strength. Otherwise, pragmatism for its own sake leaves us disengaged and makes politics seem irrelevant, rather than a place where our deepest needs can be expressed and fulfilled.

Michael Bader is a psychologist and psychoanalyst in San Francisco. He is the author of "More Than Bread and Butter: A Psychologist Speaks to Progressives About What People Really Need in Order to Win and Change the World" (Blurb, 2015).