Month: May 2010

Primaries Matter

It’s a big day for Democratic Senate primaries, with Arkansas and Pennsylvania going to the polls to challenge the tenure of Blanche Lincoln and Arlen Specter. While I don’t know what the outcome will be of these elections (I’d guess Lincoln gets a plurality but there is still a runoff and Specter barely loses), it’s clear that both primaries have forced the sitting senators to behave more like Democrats. Specter has evolved from a major roadblock in the Democratic agenda to a top cheerleader for things like healthcare reform and even labor reform. And Blanche Lincoln has recently put forward language in a derivatives bill that is far stronger than anything emerging from Chris Dodd or Barney Frank, two of the more liberal Democrats on the Hill. Neither of these senators would have been behaving like Democrats if they didn’t have to face a Democratic primary challenger and Democratic base voters today.

As Jane Hamsher points out, what is happening in the Democratic Party is normal and healthy. It is not a product of extremists in the base, but rather that Specter and Lincoln have been morally pliable and often times available to vote for whichever business interest group makes the strongest play for them. That’s not principled nor centrist – it’s insiderism that ignores the needs of voters. As a result, voters are prepared to punish them.

Unfortunately, Blanche Lincoln’s insiderism has another noticeable symptom: cynicism.  While I mentioned above that Lincoln has introduced incredibly strong derivatives reform which has won well-earned praise from progressives for its effort for real, meaningful change, she is now prepared to pull back the language after today. To repeat: she offered a bill that Democrats in Arkansas and nationwide loved, days before a primary for her life, and is now saying she may drop the language as soon as the primary is over. This is quite possible the most cynical move I have ever seen in American politics (and I lived in Alaska when McCain picked Palin as his running mate).

Obviously I hope Lincoln is defeated by Bill Halter today. But more importantly, I hope that Senate Democrats do not allow Lincoln to withdraw her worthy and beneficial language as soon as its political usefulness has past its expiration date. Complicity by Senate Democrats to help Lincoln survive a primary is no less cynical and no less disgraceful. It’s clear that Lincoln is a blight on the Democratic caucus, hopefully soon to be excised, but it’s hard to imagine either her or this once proud body ever stopping to such cynical lows as they may be poised to do around Lincoln’s derivatives language.

Obama Derangement Syndrome

Paul Krugman’s right – it’s not that the Republican Party is more extreme now than in the past sixteen years, it’s that the national press is paying attention to how extreme the GOP has become. I’d take it a step further, though. The Republican Party now has a larger microphone for extremism, as the press is paying attention to it. Everything that was happening in marginal, Paulite circles is now happening in prime-time broadcasts on TV. It’s not just that the press and the country are paying attention to what the Republican extremes are saying, the extremes are saying it louder.

As far as the lack of sense to how the Republican extremists are reacting to the Obama administration (Krugman writes: “The right’s answer, of course, is that it’s about outrage over President Obama’s “socialist” policies — like his health care plan, which is, um, more or less identical to the plan Mitt Romney enacted in Massachusetts”), I think it’s hard to avoid a basic, underlying reality of the right being stricken by Obama Derangement Syndrome. In the absence of rational policy critiques or empirical evidence of Obama actually changing the country (let alone the Constitution), racism certainly arises as a contributing factor to the hatred and fear this president engenders. But racism is not a catch-all explanation (though at minimum a major factor). Throw in the fact that he is a Democrat, that he has a funny name, and is actually running the show now and you start to get a composite explanation for the hatred driving the Teabaggers. While I don’t want to diminish the role racism plays in the rise of the extremist Republican voice, there is also a common thread of Obama Derangement Syndrome.

The important thing to recognize is that Obama Derangement Syndrome does not explain Republican extremism. It speaks more to the volume we hear now. The Republican Party has long been home to extremism and regressivism. We just get to see more of it now.

Slow

It feels like this has been a slow week at Hold Fast. While there’s a lot in the news – the BP oil spill, the financial reform bill in the Senate, upcoming primaries in Pennsylvania and Arkansas – there isn’t a whole lot that grabbed me this week to write on. Not sure why that is, but hopefully I’ll be writing more soon…

Fixed Terms for SCOTUS

Jack Balkin and Matt Yglesias are both talking about the merits of having a fixed term for a Supreme Court justice. Balkin suggests 18 years, Yglesias 9-12 years. I can see this making sense, as it would remove some of the political pressure of justices to, you know, wait until a like-minded President is in office to step aside. It’s a fairly arbitrary way of running a court system and having regular changes would ensure that there isn’t as much of a pressure to outlast any electoral deadlines, only serve your single term on the bench. And as Yglesias points out, it also would allow for the most qualified person, not the most qualified person under 50, to be considered. So much emphasis is now placed on finding a judge who can serve three or even four decades on the bench. It’s that way because of the requirements of the system as it stands now, but it doesn’t really make things any better.

I don’t expect there to be any changes to how the Supreme Court works, but it certainly is interesting to think about better systems than the life-time appointments we currently have.

Three Yards and A Cloud of Dust

Cenky Uygur has a must-read diary up on Daily Kos in which he lays out a very detailed critique of how the Kagan pick is a sign of the failures of the Obama presidency from a progressive perspective. Uygur makes a case that Obama simply isn’t doing enough to counteract the massive strides Bush and Cheney made to make America a more regressive country. He does so using a football analogy, similar to one I’ve been using for the last five  years:

Cheney and Bush moved the ball 80 yards down-field, whether that was on executive power, warrantless wiretapping, pre-emptive wars or just about any other issue you can think of. And Obama’s bold and brilliant response is to move the ball 10 yards in the opposite direction. Not good enough. Not remotely good enough.

The key here is that while the Republicans have made huge strides to unwind a century of government policy, the actions we are seeing from Obama are only small nibbles in the right direction. If this plays out at pace for the duration of the Obama administration, however long that is, then the Republicans will be poised to complete the job with another reactionary president who isn’t afraid to govern from his beliefs. And the consequences of that are terrifying.

Elena Kagan

I’m not a lawyer nor a legal scholar, but I can’t say that I’m excited about Elena Kagan’s pick to replace John Paul Stevens on the US Supreme Court. My biggest concern is that she is being given a lifetime seat – which for someone who is only fifty, could mean thirty years on the bench or more – but there is no clear indication that she is going to be a liberal justice. The composition of the Court is important, as the Bush administration moved the Court far to the right with the appointments of Roberts and Alito. The Obama administration should have attempted to fortify the left flank of the Court and there is not only no indication that Kagan will do that, but that the Obama administration even considers shoring up the liberal side of the Court a goal they seek to achieve with their nominee.

Glenn Greenwald, who has made very persuasive arguments against Kagan’s pick over the last number of months, writes about the failure of Obama to advance a liberal composition on the Court:

The Right appoints people like John Roberts and Sam Alito, with long and clear records of what they believe because they’re eager to publicly defend their judicial philosophy and have the Court reflect their values. Beltway Democrats do the opposite: the last thing they want is to defend what progressives have always claimed is their worldview, either because they fear the debate or because they don’t really believe those things, so the path that enables them to avoid confrontation of ideas is always the most attractive, even if it risks moving the Court to the Right.

Why would the American public possibly embrace a set of beliefs when even its leading advocates are unwilling to publicly defend them and instead seek to avoid that debate at every turn?

As Glenn suggests, this is symptomatic with the larger Beltway Democrat modus operandi of not fighting for things they claim to believe in. Beyond the specific merits of Kagan versus other candidates on the short list, it is incredibly discouraging that the President does not want to have a large national debate about the importance of liberal interpretations of the Constitution and US law.

I expect many Democrats will be strongly behind Kagan because she is the President’s pick. It is a cynical play by Obama, made on the safe bet of Democratic tribalism. Of course, the alternative between tribal positions on the left and those of the right is the establishment of pessimism and ultimately sitting out the fights picked by Beltway Democrats to achieve weak positions or support ciphers in positions of prominence.

Free Tenzin Delek Rinpoche

The International Tibet Support Network has released an incredibly powerful video in support of the release of Tenzin Delek Rinpoche, a Tibetan monk who is sitting in jail for a crime he did not commit. He had previously been sentenced to death, but international outcry and pressure forced the Chinese government to commute it to life in prison. Remarkably, the video contains a short audio clip of TDR from within prison. In it, he says:

“I am not guilty, please appeal for justice for me….call all people together and do everything possible to help me overturn the verdict”.

ITSN notes what is happening within Tibet in support of Tenzin Delek:

In a recent remarkable act of support and bravery, 40,000 Tibetans in Tenzin Delek’s community signed petitions – many signatures being in the form of thumbprints – demanding justice for their leader.

Tenzin Delek was one of the most influential religious leaders in Lithang, Kham – which is in eastern Tibet. He was renowned as a reformer and advocate for the Tibetan people. He helped build schools, hospitals, orphanages, and monasteries and promoted the preservation of Tibetan cultural, as well as advocated against exploitative mining practices that rape the Tibetan plateau. Naturally, the Chinese government viewed his peaceful activism in support of the well-being of the Tibetan people as a threat to their national security and framed this peaceful monk as a violent terrorist.

On 3 April 2002, following a bomb blast in Chengdu, provincial capital of Sichuan province Lobsang Dhondup – who was a distant relative of Tenzin Delek Rinpoche was arrested. Four days later, Tenzin Delek Rinpoche was detained (along with four close associates) following a midnight raid on Jamyang Choekhorling monastery in Nyagchukha. Both men were convicted on 29 November 2002, after a 3-day closed trial, during Lobsang Dhondup was portrayed as the bomber and Tenzin Delek Rinpoche as the conspirator. The main evidence presented against Tenzin Delek Rinpoche was a confession from Lobsang Dhondup, who later retracted the statement claiming he had been tortured. The only other supposed evidence was the presence of political leaflets at the scene of the bombing which the authorities claimed where produced by Tenzin Delek Rinpoche and distributed by Lobsang Dhondup. However no specific evidence was provided actually linking either of them to the leaflets. Tenzin Delek Rinpoche has denied ever producing such leaflets. Throughout the proceedings the two accused had no access to independent legal counsel. During the trial, Tenzin Delek Rinpoche is reported to have claimed he was tortured and shouted out his support for the Dalai Lama. On 2 December 2002 both men were sentenced to death, with Tenzin Delek Rinpoche receiving a two-year reprieve.

As I mentioned above, the international outcry following Tenzin Delek’s railroading lead to the suspension and later commutation of his sentence. Sadly, Lobsand Dhondup was executed at the same time as TDR received his suspended sentence.

Other than the Panchen Lama, Tenzin Delek Rinpoche remains one of the highest profile Tibetan prisoners of conscience in China. Take action to call for his release here.

Oy

The United Nations could be a great force for human rights in the world. But I find it hard to believe it will reach any meaningful goal if it continues to avoid actually appointing people who have miserable records on human rights to the UN’s high commission on human rights. Ban Ki-Moon has appointed Croatian justice minister Ivan Simonovic to the top human rights post at the UN headquarters in New York (the position is the UN Assistant Secretary-General for human rights, who will liaise with the UN High Commissioner for Human rights, Navi Pillay, in Geneva). Simonovic has served in the Croatian government for over fifteen years, including during the Balkan wars where the Croatians conducted ethnic cleansing of Serbs. Simonovic has been criticized for not adequately pursuing accountability and justice, both at home and at The Hague, for Croatian war crimes.

There were many qualified candidates for this job, but one can’t help but wonder the extent to which Ban made the hire to avoid pissing off known human rights violators like the Chinese government.