If President Obama has his way, Elena Kagan will replace John Paul Stevens -- and the Supreme Court will move rightward. The nomination is very disturbing, especially because it's part of a pattern.
The White House is in the grip of conventional centrist wisdom. Grim results stretch from Afghanistan to the Gulf of Mexico to communities across the USA.
"It turns out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don't cause spills," President Obama said in support of offshore oil drilling, less than three weeks before the April 20 blowout in the Gulf. "They are technologically very advanced."
On numerous policy fronts, such conformity to a centrist baseline has smothered hopes for moving this country in a progressive direction. Now, the president has taken a step that jeopardizes civil liberties and other basic constitutional principles.
"During the course of her Senate confirmation hearings as Solicitor General, Kagan explicitly endorsed the Bush administration's bogus category of 'enemy combatant,' whose implementation has been a war crime in its own right," University of Illinois law professor Francis Boyle noted last month. "Now, in her current job as U.S. Solicitor General, Kagan is quarterbacking the continuation of the Bush administration's illegal and unconstitutional positions in U.S. federal court litigation around the country, including in the U.S. Supreme Court."
Boyle added: "Kagan has said 'I love the Federalist Society.' This is a right-wing group; almost all of the Bush administration lawyers responsible for its war and torture memos are members of the Federalist Society."
The departing Justice Stevens was a defender of civil liberties. Unless the Senate refuses to approve Kagan for the Supreme Court, the nation's top court is very likely to become more hostile to civil liberties and less inclined to put limits on presidential power.
Here is yet another clear indication that progressives must mobilize to challenge the White House on matters of principle. Otherwise, history will judge us harshly -- and it should.
For more than 15 months, evidence has mounted that President Obama routinely combines progressive rhetoric with contrary actions. As one bad decision after another has emanated from the Oval Office, some progressives have favored denial -- even though, if the name "Bush" or "McCain" had been attached to the same presidential policies, the same progressives would have been screaming bloody murder.
But enabling bad policies, with silent acquiescence or anemic dissent, encourages more of them. At this point, progressive groups and individuals who pretend that Obama's policies merely need a few tweaks, or just suffer from a few anomalous deficiencies, are whistling past a political graveyard.
At the same time, with less than six months to go before Election Day, there are very real prospects of a big Republican victory that could shift majority control of Congress. Progressives have a huge stake in averting a GOP takeover on Capitol Hill.
The corporate-military centrism of the Obama administration has demoralized and demobilized the Democratic Party's largely progressive base -- the same base that swept Nancy Pelosi into the House Speaker's office and then Barack Obama into the White House. National polls now show Democrats to be much less enthusiastic about voting in November than their Republican counterparts.
The conventional political wisdom (about as accurate as the claim that "oil rigs today generally don't cause spills") is that when a Democratic president moves rightward, his party gains strength against Republicans. But Democrats reaped the whirlwind of that pseudo-logic in 1994 -- after President Clinton shafted much of the Democratic base by pushing through the corporate NAFTA trade pact against the wishes of labor, environmental and human-rights constituencies. That's how Newt Gingrich and other right-wing zealots got to run Congress starting in January 1995.
For progressives, giving the Obama administration one benefit of the doubt after another has not prevented matters from getting worse.
At the moment, U.S. troop levels are nearing 100,000 in Afghanistan.
Massive quantities of oil are belching into the Gulf of Mexico.
The White House has signaled de facto acceptance of a high unemployment rate for several more years, while offering weak GOP-lite countermeasures like tax breaks for businesses.
Nuclear power subsidies are getting powerful support from both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, while meaningful action against global warming is nowhere in sight.
The Justice Department continues to backtrack on civil liberties.
And now, if the president's nomination of Elena Kagan is successful, the result will move the Supreme Court to the right.
Progressives should fight the Kagan nomination.
Diana Butler Bass: Elena Kagan and a Lament for American Protestantism
Elena Kagan will be a fine and fair justice. President Obama has made a thoughtful, considered choice. But, on this day, I am a little sad. Missing from the bench will be someone who empathizes with the Protestant worldview in a visceral way.
I'm certain that things are not going to get better until we hit absolute rock bottom, so that everyone gets on the same page demanding more from our so-called 'leaders'. In the meantime we have people who are jumping ship from the Democrats to the Republicans. The fact that millions don't remember what the Republicans just did is clear proof we haven't hit bottom yet.
On the other hand, the sooner the Republicans get back the power, the more spectacular (and hopefully eye-opening) the crash will be.
It's like pulling out a big splinter--let's get it over as soon as possible so we can start fixing our country.
He differs from Republicans only in that he believes that everything can be fixed with a little government regulation here and there to rein in the most extreme practices of our corporations. Other than that, Obama is willing to keep fighting the Bush wars, continue with the bloated defense budget, and cut back on entitlements and probably targeting Medicare and Social Security before his administration is through.
Environmental issues will get tough talk but short shrift from the man who thinks that more offshore drilling is just the ticket. Finally, by the end of the Obama term the Supreme Court and the country itself, will be much further to the right than it was when he became President.
Where else are the left going to go. Check.
And while I've been appalled by some Obama administration wavering and poor decisions, I do very much feel on the same page as him on most things.
We progressives have our work cut out pulling Obama towards the left in a right-wing political environment, but when he is put by leftists in the same sack as BushCo, I draw the line.
Sotomayor, Health Care Reform, Nuclear disarmement, in his first year and a half? This IS a change.
America, as he's inherited it, is a hugely toxic mess, absolutely, but I don't believe there is a more intelligent, honest, hard-working head of state anywhere in the world right now.
I'm not giving him a free pass.
We should just be proud of the fact there isn't one.
And do our work as citizens -which Norman Soloman is doing very well.
No progressive thinks or talks like that regarding Obama.
You're a neo-con teabagger troll (or a Larouche zombie).
and Colin Powell to the buffoonery of Michael Steele. Obama missed his chance. The GOP will continue to be the White Power Party. The Dems will be reduced to trying to convince the MIC
that their asskissing is just as moist as the GOP's. Depressing really.
I'm sure a percentage of the posters here actually believe what they're saying , but I also think there is a percentage here who just want to dirty-up Obama so Dems don't show up to vote.
It's the internet , right? I'm a tall , handsome , ripped holder of the Medal of Honor...you believe that , don't you?
Yeah, we should fight Obama and the Kagan nomination just as hard as we ever fought Bush and his nominees/policies. I don't think it will do much good though; the American empire is about to crash after its decades long fall, and we all have seats in the bow for the event. Sayounara Amerika. It was nice knowing you.
I mean, what did you want him to do about the BP oil spill? Walk out there and part the Gulf of Mexico?
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/05/07/93761/despite-spill-feds-still-giving.html
Exactly right.