The Supreme Court is the most important issue!
No, it’s not, not even close
There is a lot of fevered comment these days about how the Supreme Court is the most important issue in the upcoming (not nearly soon enough, in my humble opinion) presidential election.
No, it isn’t. I’ve been a lawyer for forty years, and I am as unhappy about Citizens United, McCutcheon, Shelby County, Burwell, and all the rest, as anybody, but I still don’t think it’s the most important issue.
I detest single issue politics (and identity politics, too). If I did vote on that basis, though, there are a couple of issues that I would elevate far beyond the Supreme Court. Moreover, it would shock me if the Supreme Court was the issue that turned the election.
Much more important to most people than whether Chik-Fil-A has to supply birth control to its employees is whether their job is going to be shipped overseas because of some glossy new trade deal. This may be a failure of the imagination of the proletariat, but there it is.
The winner of the fall election is going to be a real, or a pretend, economic populist. Hillary Clinton, and the people who support her, are traitors to working people, and commentators from Thomas Frank on down, to um, me, understand that. “It’s the economy, stupid.” At least Bill Clinton pretended to believe that in 1992. But Hillary seems entirely tone deaf.
When Bill Clinton was elected, he went right to work locking up people — including masses of minorities — and kicking people off of welfare. I guess Hillary would at least come in without unrealistic expectations by the public. So there is that.
In addition to not preferring a candidate who seems entirely fine with levels of income inequality unseen since just before the Great Depression — or the French Revolution — I prefer one who isn’t so gung-ho to put missiles on Russia’s borders. When the Russians tried that here in the ’60s, we went ape. Some you may even remember the fun little drills of hiding under your desks at school. Good times!
I’d prefer a candidate who wasn’t such great pals with Henry Kissinger, Robert Kagan, and his wife, the cookie monster, Victoria Nuland.
I’d prefer a candidate who didn’t think that unrepentant thug Bibi Netanyahu’s real name was Moses.
I’d prefer a candidate who didn’t stand by when right wing thugs took over a Central American country and found no diplomatic courage to oppose it, and who finds the unaccompanied minors fleeing the subsequent violence in that country an unbearable load for this one.
Well, I could go on.
And on. But back to my original point.
I think that people who support Hillary Clinton because she is a good judge picker are letting themselves in for disappointment.
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