1. Ketanji
I’m very happy to see Judge — and now Justice-in-waiting — Ketanji Brown Jackson confirmed to the Supreme Court after a hideously disgusting confirmation hearing. (She will officially ascend when Justice Stephen Breyer retires sometime this summer, after the term ends in June.) I liked her personality and sensibility, admired her intellect, and felt warm fuzzies about what her accomplishment means for Black women in particular and the nation in general. But tons have been written about those aspects of her confirmation — you’re welcome to add your own comments here for posterity — and I want to touch upon her likely impact on the court.
It’s been said since Justice Barrett’s confirmation that the Supreme Court was now divided into three distinct three three-Justice factions, but it hasn’t felt that way to me. Justice Breyer really never had the ideological coherence with Justices Kagan and Sotomayor that might have been expected, and what there was faded after Justice Ginsburg’s death. But I think that the replacement of Breyer with Jackson is going to make this “three factions” notion feel much more appropriate. From right to left, I’ll call those factions TAG, BRK (pronounced “break”), and BSK (pronounced “bisque,” or “bisk” if you don’t know how to pronounce the soup) — and they’ve now become much more coherent.
The last few terms have shown that Justice Alito has indeed gone off to become as wild and extreme as Justice Thomas — oh, how things would be different if G.W. Bush had indeed been able to confirm his first pick — and that Justice Gorsuch, while reported considered extremely congenial, sometimes lets textualism drive him to strange and unhealthy places. It’s also seems clear that Justices Kavanaugh and Barrett are closer to Chief Justice Roberts than to the right-wing TAG trio. Barrett in particular might bond with Jackson — seriously, who would most women with a teaching background want to hang around with? — and Kavanaugh is no longer indistinguishable from Gorsuch.
Kavanaugh is rightly scorned not only for the likely sexual assaults in his youth — at least one of which could easily have killed his victim — but also for unnuanced denials of that attempted rape (of course he doesn’t remember if, as is likely, it he was almost blind drunk) and his poorly attempted belligerent raving about how much he loves beer. It has come out since then that that was a command performance for an audience of one, Donald Trump, who was prepared to yank his nomination if Kavanaugh did not fight the battle Trump’s way: blatant lying and loud disrespectful disruption.) But as he’s shown, it does not mean that he won’t vote with the liberal trio when Breyer was part of it and is probably more likely to do so now. (You can despise him for old sins and new, but he’s a hell of a lot better than Thomas and Alito.) So, for now if the leftward BSK trio can get the Chief Justice on their side, they get two swings at the pitch — Barrett and Kavanaugh — to create a majority. Roberts in particular — despite his many years of working against voting rights — seems to have become rattled at what has become of the right (it’s violent populism, at least) and perhaps also, if he watches the news, at the growing crazed fulminations of right-wing Senators.
I expect that the rightward lurch of the court has gone too far to preserve abortion rights — an opinion that that Roberts will author, with its details worked out carefully with Barrett and Kavanaugh, to prevent Thomas, Alito, or Gorsuch from writing it, and one that may not for last long — and possibly marriage equality (although Gorsuch is better than this.) But those who say that Jackson is no ideologically different than Breyer are willfully blind. Breyer is a moderate technocrat, sort of being to the left wing what Roberts has become to the right, and I expect that Jackson will show a little more skepticism about unvarnished economic analysis.
But where Jackson will make the biggest difference from Breyer is, please forgive me for this, sociological. She’s part of a generational change on the court. Look at where the 10 people who will have served as Justices this year stand — and I’ll use red, purple, and blue for their usual purposes in labeling them by faction:
- Breyer, born Aug. 15, 1938 — 83
- Thomas, born June 23, 1948 — 73
- Alito, born April 1, 1950 — 72
- Sotomayor, June 25, 1954 — 67
- Roberts, born Jan. 27, 1955 — 67
- Kagan, born April 28, 1960 — 61
- Kavanaugh, born Feb. 12, 1965 – 57
- Gorsuch, born Aug. 29, 1967 — 54
- Jackson, born Sept. 14, 1970 — 51
- Barrett, born Jan. 28, 1972 — 50
The replacement of Breyer with Jackson reduces the age of the court by 32 years. (And Vern and I are about to become older than the court’s median justice, and the mean of all justices (61.33 and some months), down from 64 prior to Breyer’s retirement.) But the Court is also a dynamic human institution: Sitting between Thomas and Alito as opposed to Thomas and Breyer may make Roberts feel a little nuts. This is a court that will likely be together a long while, and its four youngest members longer still, and I think that Thomas and Alito may become increasingly alienated from the rest of the court. Wishful thinking, perhaps, but the departure (hopefully by resignation) of those two will do the court a world of good. But then Jackson will be in an odd position: at some point, Roberts and Sotomayor and maybe even Kagan will be gone, and she’ll be left with the three Trump judges. What struck me about her is that she seemed well-equipped to handle such a role: I could imagine her and Justice Barrett getting along very well, for example, and the two youngest male justices are nothing temperamentally like the oldest two.
Having four women on the court is going to make a significant difference. I think and hope that we will be pleasantly surprised.
2. Marine
Even as smiles at the confirmation of Judge Jackson as a Supreme Court Justice remain on the face of most Americans, a reason to scowl may be occurring just days later. In France, where President Emmanuel Macron stands a decent chance of losing finishing second in a Top 2 primary to far-right authoritarian xenophobe Marine LePen, daughter of similarly minded Jean-Marie LePen election — and it’s not entirely inconceivable (though highly unlikely) that he could finish third behind Jean-Luc Mélenchon, of the Unsubmissive (or Rebellious) France Party, the largest part of the left.
Going into the election, in which voting begins on the morning of April 10 (soon after I publish this), the six parties on the left (including the Greens) are polling at 29% (17.5% going to Mélenchon ), 26.5% goes to the centrist Macron, and 44.5% is going to parties on the right, with LePen’s National Rally polling at 22.5%. Both LePen and Mélenchon are for withdrawal from NATO, but otherwise they are as different as Trump and Bernie Sanders — and perhaps more so. While LePen may be able to expect support from all right-wing parties, Mélenchon could not likely expect support of the two furthest left Communist Parties, comprising about 2%.
LePen’s election would mean that a nuclear-equipped member of the U.N Security Council would be led by a more-or-less pro-Putin leader. She’s softened the imagine of her party in recent years, including ejecting her controversial father from it, but lots of French voters consider it window-dress, and it has meanwhile opened up the door for the Steven Miller of France, and rabidly anti-immigration Jew named Eric Zemmour. Mélenchon would be less worrisome, as the French government was run from 2012-2017 by a leftist, François Hollande, who managed not to destroy the place. We’ll report on results here as they come in.
3. Lessons for Democrats
President Biden did not trim his sails in committing to this appointment, nor in choosing a candidate who wasn’t the choice of Rep. James Clyburn, nor in aiming fire at Republicans who baselessly tormented her. And the public loved it. Her ratings were high, Biden’s ratings improved. Judge/Justice Brown, aside from not telegraphing an intent to vote in a particular way on cases that may come before her, was refreshingly candid about how she analyses cases and how she explains them both the public and to parties at trials. The fact that onetime Public Defender Joe Biden put the first Public Defender onto the Supreme Court is a beautiful pattern. So, there’s a real appetite for keeping faith with the Left these days, much as some Democrats would like to squelch it.
On the other hand, the haplessness of President Macron against the second generation of screwball proto-fascists — recognizing that as a “Proto,” Marine LePen is indeed an improvement over her father’s “Neo” — shows how little the mushy center can hold in our political times. Macron, sort of a Gavin Newsom-like figure who has been compared to Canada’s Justin Trudeau (by people who want to attack Trudeau) offers nothing more inspiring that a slow slide into fascism. But he’ll very likely get more votes than anyone on the Left, and will thus put the centrists (here, the institutional Democrats into the position that they love more than anything in the world: when they inform the Left that they have to support the centrist candidate against the crazy right-winger — and that they in fact have to support them so clearly that the center really need make no concessions to the left, and will reap the power granted them by the Left if they win and blame the Left if they lose.
We’re not going to like fascist France, in the EU (unless we see a Frexit) and in NATO (for as long as that lasts), but it will primarily be the fault of those who refuse to inspire or respect the public. But Putin is going to like it just fine.
This is your Weekend Open Thread. Talk about that or whatever else you’d like, within reasonable of decency.
*Two big issues to be sure:
(1) Fantastic win…with KBJ getting the nod for the Supreme Court. Congratulations
to every little black girl and every American that still believes that “anything is
possible in the United States.
(2) Marine (The Trumpest of Paris) is pretty scary, but we are betting that the Mac Man
and a bottle of Dommie P…..will prevail, in spite of their immigrant agoraphobia…..
I’ve been remiss in not noting the results of last weekend’s French Presidential Top Two primary last weekend. The runoff comes next (as in, not this) weekend.
President Macron, centrist: 27.8% (9.78MM)
Marine LePen, far-right: 23,1% (8.13MM)
Jean-Luc Melenchon, left: 22,0% (7.71MM)
Eric Zemmour, far-right: 7.1% (2.49MM)
Valerie Pecresse, right: 4.8% (1.68MM)
Yannick Jadot, Green: 4.6% (1.63MM)
Jean Lassalle, center-right: 3.1% (1.1MM)
Fabien Roussel, communist: 2.3% (.8 MM)
Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, center-right: 2.1% (.73MM)
Ann Hidalgo, socialist: 1.7% (.62MM)
Philippe Poutou, far left: 0.8% (.27MM)
Nathalie Arthaud, communist: 0.6% (.20MM)
If you didn’t read my last section on “Lessons for Democrats” above, this would be a good time for it.
The current polls show Macron leading LePen 54% to 46%. I’d take LePen and the points — and I’d take the odds on an outright win.
Just going by these primary numbers, one might suppose that Macron starts out with 9.78MM from his own party, probably 1.63MM from the Greens (who are pro-EU), maybe 1.1 from LaSalle’s center-right party, maybe .73MM from Dupont’s center-right party, maybe .62MM from the Socialists — and nothing from the two communist and one might-as-well-be parties. So, without Melenchon, he’s got 13.86 million.
LePen is going to clean up with everyone beyond center-right. That’s 8.13MM from her own party, 2.49MM from Zemmour’s party, 1.68MM from Pecresse’s party That’s 12.3 MM. So Macron has 53% of the vote before adding Melonchon’s party.
Problem is: I don’t think that much I’ve said about Macron’s support is true, and I think that everything I’ve said about LePen’s support is true.
Zemmour has already endorsed her, and if Pecresse wants right-wing votes in some future runoff, she can’t diss LePen now. In fact, I think that some of the center-right voters in Lasalle’s and Dupont’s parties will support her rather than Macron, hoping that once she screws up royally, in five years voters will be willing to move a bit further away from the far right — right into their own territory. They have little to gain politically from a Macron victory — other than saner policy. So every center-right voter who supports LePen has a double effect on the total. So I’ll presume for now that everyone will still vote and move a third of these parties’ 1.83MM vote from Macron to LePen. Now it’s LePen with 12.91MM and Macron with 13.25. Now he leads with 50.65% of the vote.
But what about the far (beyond socialist) left? Aren’t they worried about LePen? Not as much, I suspect, as one might think. First, to the extent that they’re Leninist, they’re happy to see the country burn so that they can emerge from the ashes. Second, to the extent that they’re pro-Putin, they’d love to see her get her way and pull France out of NATO.
Know who else wants that to happen? Melenchon. Like many in the far left of the U.S., he wants no part of the war in Ukraine, or western imperialism, or cuddling up to the U.S. defense industry and CIA. So — again presuming that LePen will faceplant by 2027, he has reason to want to see her do the dirty work of extrication from NATO and then see himself as leading a broad left (including the socialists and even some of Macron’s “pragmatic” supporters) challenge to the far right.
But that’s just what Melenchon himself might want. Melenchon himself has told his followers “not to give a single vote” to LePen, which is the responsible thing (from the Broad Left perspective) for him to do, but if Macron doesn’t act to win over the Left, they won’t give many votes to Macron either.
Most of his voters are young, don’t want to be “kingmakers” between two unpalatable alternatives — and they just won’t show up. Some might vote for LePen over NATO and for Leninist reasons; but I don’t know how many will vote for Macron, who has been spitting in the eye of the left for too long and doesn’t have any credibility to tack left now. That work had to have been done far before.
Young voters may just decide to see how badly LePen — who has taken at least token steps away from the hard left, mostly sticking firm on anti-immigration and “France First” policies, in direct contravention of EU requirements — would govern, reasoning that they can kick her out in five years and elect someone a lot better than Macron. Meanwhile the Legislative elections, coming later this year, can hobble the worst of what LePen has to offer.
Now, take away some of those center-right votes from Macron and LePen has a shot. Sound familiar? France’s 2022 may look a lot like the U.S. in 2016 — except that they are fortunate enough not to have the Electoral College. As I said: I’d want odds on a bet for LePen winning, but they wouldn’t have to be that high. And while maybe Macron does win by 8 points, as the polls say, at this point I’d give odds that he won’t.
Would Macron really have lost that many votes by embracing the Left more in this election? In the U.S., the Democratic Establishment answer would be “yes.” So maybe France will be a good test of how well that works.
*Meanwhile on the Putin News Network to can hear the following: (1) The Russian Navy is Invincible! (2) The Russian Armored Division has lost two tanks because they broke down
while being repaired. (3) The Ukrainians are killing their own people and sprinkling them around for News coverage. (4) Russians are totally invincible to any Tariff’s or puny Western Sanctions. (5) Vlade is the closest thing to God that the world will ever know!
Of course their is more on Tweeter and Face Book …..but we don’t want to bother you
with that just now.
Vern asserted in a comment on another that our occasional commenter Eric Neshsnian, Esq., is right about Farrah, and wonders when we’re going to write about it. Here’s my reply:
If we start from the premise that Farrah is 100% bad, we could just link to the Agran publication. I’d rather not be that simplistic.
Some of the charges about Farrah are legitimate, others are specious. The OCPA escapade, which given the money to be made might someday trace back to her advisor Melahat, is a farce that will fall under its own weight. I do plan to write about that. The various political machinations of dismal Irvine politics — I don’t even know whether she is right or wrong, but I certainly wouldn’t trust the word of s monomaniac like Neshsnian about it.
But the Turkish ties are, for the most part, just that: ties She’s a Muslim with bonds of affinity to Turkey, a nation that has done some bad things and some heinous things — and also has in many respects a grand history. (In that sense, it’s far from unique among former and current world powers.) The rules of engagement for dealing with those who defend nations against charges based especially on old misbehavior, or on their denying that such behavior was as heinous as critics say, are far from clear. We are, after all, living in a country that has done worse to larger groups of people — and yet still has large numbers of people in power denying it. Should we write an article on anyone who has dinner with a Southern-style racist who disdains the (obvious) continuing effects of chattel slavery? It’s just not news.
But did she joke about eating Armenians, as Neshsnian has claimed? No — she jokes about eating some Turkish confections in front of Armenians, the underlying act of which is several orders of magnitude less grotesque. But Neshanian is not too finicky as to refrain from using any tool he has at his disposal to further his cause.
So, while I consider her being so close to representatives of the Turkish government fair grounds for criticism, and the reaction of the broader Armenian community around it newsworthy, I don’t feel any need to dive into it myself — especially not at the behest of someone so deeply anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish (an impressive combination these days) as our correspondent currently consigned to the trash.
Todd retweets Steve Mensinger celebrating Todd. Is he now TRYING to lose?
You think many people remember Mensinger? He was Righeimer’s chest-bumping sidekick in Costa Mesa. (He infamously bumped chests with a teacher’s union activist whose name escapes me, while arguing with him at a pro-city-worker protest.)
OK, well if they don’t remember him, then this tweet is all the more puzzling. I think that he probably has negative approval among people who remember him.
As I write this, the French are already voting in the runoff election. Polls show Macron leading by about 56% to 44%, up about 3% in the last week. The abstention rate looks to be about 28% — relatively high by French standards, though it would not hold the record — as young people especially say that the government isn’t doing much to help them.
Obviously, this is relevant to the U.S. 2022 and 2024 elections, but also to the fate of our Macronesque Governor Newsom. Were I betting, I would still take LePen against the 12-point spread, and would take maybe 4:1 odds on her winning. That’s not good enough.