12 October 18
FOCUS: Charles Pierce | It's Time for Chuck Schumer to Go
Charles Pierce, Esquire
Pierce writes: "No matter what happens on Election Day, the Senate Democrats should have a new leader afterwards."
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Charles Pierce, Esquire
Pierce writes: "No matter what happens on Election Day, the Senate Democrats should have a new leader afterwards."
READ MORE
No matter what happens on Election Day, Chuck Schumer should be out as the Democratic leader in the Senate. On Thursday, he cut another ridiculous deal with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. In exchange for an adjournment until after the election, so his members up for re-election could go home and campaign, Schumer agreed to fast-track 15 more Trump appointees to the federal courts, further guaranteeing that the cancer of this administration* will metastasize over decades until a lot of us are dead, and until a lot of us won't be able to remember what the American government looked like before this president* was elected.
Schumer cut a similar deal last August, so everyone could go to the damn beach. Now, in the wake of a confirmation spectacle in which the nominee was by turns truculent and hopelessly dishonest, Schumer surrenders to the blackmail again?
No. Enough. For the love of god, go.
Among the new judges were Richard Sullivan (for the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals), David Porter (for the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals), and Ryan Nelson for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. All three have the Federalist Society stamp of approval, and a look at their records reveals why. Nelson has a long history as a corporate lawyer and as a political appointee in the Justice Department under C-Plus Augustus, in which capacity he argued against clean air laws and against environmental suits brought against mining companies. He also is notable for defending Frank VanderSloot, a litigious Idaho mining plutocrat.
As for Porter, he's been central to Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley's neutering of the "blue slip" tradition by which a senator could object—and therefore kill—a federal judicial nominee in the senator's home state. In 2016, Pennsylvania Republican Pat Toomey "blue-slipped" an Obama nominee named Rebecca Haywood. Subsequently, Haywood, an African-American, never got a hearing, let alone a vote. However, here we are two years later, and Pennsylvania's other senator, Democrat Bob Casey, Jr. "blue-slipped" Porter. Grassley simply ignored Casey.
For his part, Porter is the truest of true believers, as the Alliance For Justice makes clear.
He is affiliated with several ultraconservative groups, including the Federalist Society. He has a close relationship and is philosophically aligned with Leonard Leo, the president of the Federalist Society, as he made clear when he thanked Leo for his comments on a book review Porter wrote on Ourselves and Our Prosperity: Essays in Constitutional Originalism.
Disturbingly, Porter is a contributor to the Center for Vision & Values, a conservative think tank that has advocated against LGBTQ rights and argued that the minimum wage is unconstitutional. With former Senator Rick Santorum, he founded the Pennsylvania Judicial Network, an organization which opposed the nomination of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
So, in exchange for allowing Heidi Heitkamp, and Joe Manchin, and Jon Tester to go home and campaign, Schumer has stuck the rest of us with these people forever. And the hell of it is, as several former Senate aides have pointed out, Schumer could have had his cake and eaten it, too. Burgess Everett in Politico gives us the bare bones of what could have been done.
Under Senate rules, even if Democrats fought the nominees tooth and nail and forced the Senate to burn 30 hours of debate between each one, McConnell would have gotten them all confirmed by Nov. 1. Democrats could have conceivably left a skeleton crew of senators in Washington to force the GOP to take roll call votes on the judges over the next few weeks, although that tactic is not typically employed by the minority.
In short, Schumer could have let his endangered incumbents go home to campaign and still thrown sand in the gears by employing senators who are not up for re-election until 2020. This could have been done. Does anyone with the brains of a turnip not believe that, were the roles reversed, it would have been done? McConnell would have done this to Schumer, and without blinking an eye.
In addition, Schumer has shown absolutely no notion of how to read the room. Right now, for the first time in a long time, a huge number of people in Schumer's party are outraged on the subject of judges. (Usually, it's the Republican base that gets charged up over judges, and, I would add, look where it's got them.) This deal has to have killed at least some of the emotional momentum built up by the Kavanaugh confirmation battle. That none of the other Democratic senators—save, according to Burgess Everett, Senator Professor Warren—wanted to stay and fight is on all of them. But Schumer's leadership on this issue has been appalling.
I'm sure he's a swell guy and a good fundraiser, but Chuck Schumer is not a wartime consigliere. And he is not suited to these times; he's too close to Wall Street and deals like this make him look like the biggest sucker in two cordovans. At this point, I don't see a way for the Democrats to take the Senate. But, majority or minority, Chuck Schumer ought to be done as a leader of the Democratic Party in this moment. Gold watch, a hearty handshake, a warm ovation, and off the stage with him.
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