Centerfield

"1. If you want to run for President in 2008, vote to oppose him, says Elenor Clift. Play to the activists."

I'm going to have to disagree with Eleanor Clift on this one. While I do recognize that she has years of experience on her side, it's also important to note that she's also frequently wrong. I, on the other hand, am correct 97.6% of the time.

All kidding aside, I think it's a terrible idea. Let's look at one of the things Bush had going for him when running for office in 2000. He ran as "a uniter, not a divider." Bill Clinton was rather hated by several conservatives. At that time, people wanted someone who could get things done and we bought into that ridiculous saying. Now we'll be having 8 years of Bush. I don't see democrats coming together and actually approving of Bush, let alone give him credit for the good decisions he has made.

Personally, I feel the best chance someone has of running in 2008 is to run as someone who has a history of not letting their party get in the way with progress.

Posted by: CleverWes at September 18, 2005 11:58 AM

I feel the best chance someone has of running in 2008 is to run as someone who has a history of not letting their party get in the way with progress.

The Democrats are starting to develop the same sort of pathology that the GOP has had for the last few years. A candidate who can win with broad support in a general election will have an almost impossible task to win in a primary. Ironically enough, this is why Hillary is their best shot in '08: the base will forgive her for almost anything, including sensible and moderate policy positions. But then the question becomes, can she get the country on board? If the GOP runs a hardliner - a Sam Brownback, perhaps - I think she might.

I think what Rick meant - or at least, this is how I took his comment - was that any democrat (other than hillary) who wants to get through the primary in '08 has to vote no. Of course, this then hamstrings them in the general, for the reasons you point out. This applies most of all to Feingold, Schumer and Biden, all of whom have Presidential aspirations, and all of whom have spent the hearings playing to the base.

It's a tough call for the dems for an even bigger reason than Rick suggests. The problem is that John Roberts is the bare minimum that the GOP would accept from Bush; he is in every sense a very moderate, centrist nomination. But the democrats haven't recognized it as such, in part because their base - the NARALs, the People for the Soviet Way and so on - saw this as an opportunity to get the base angry, to get the base motivated, and most of all, to get the base to open their wallets. They have successfully turned the rhetoric up to eleven on a dial that only goes to eleven, even if they've had to resort to some astonishingly inaccurate statements to do so. So here's the problem: what happens if Bush now really DOES nominate a Scalia/Thomas type? They can't say anything about that nominee that they haven't already said about Roberts. They've become the boy who cried wolf: their rhetoric on Roberts has set a ceiling, and the next nominee can either be painted as less extreme than Roberts, or painted as about the same, but they cannot be painted as any more so. Right now, Bush could nominate Robert Bork, and there is no plausible way that Democrats could distinguish him from Roberts: yes, he is superbly qualified, but he would overturn Roe, he would overturn Brown, he would roll back our civil liberties...I think America will here that and say "you know, you said that about Roberts, but you voted to confirm him".

Posted by: Simon at September 18, 2005 04:58 PM

It will certainly be interesting what happens with this. Fight one and not the other or fight both?

Posted by: Daniel at September 18, 2005 06:33 PM

Voting to confirm Roberts may hurt a democrat running for the party nom a little bit, but not much. And I don't think that the way any democrat votes on Roberts' confirmation will have any bearing whatsoever on the general election. None. I just can't imagine someone not voting for, say, HC just because she voted either for or against Roberts.

Frankly, this is a wonks-only issue. Roberts will get confirmed fairly easily, and 2 years from now no one will care who voted for confirmation except the partisans who can already be relied upon to vote their party.

I think if HC is smart she votes for Roberts, and if called on it during the primaries, she defends her vote by saying she liked Roberts well enough to face the political reality of being the minority party, and was unwilling to risk Bush nominating someone far worse. YMMV but IMO If any democrat can win in 2008, it's going to be a DLC democrat that insists on facing political reality, and tells the most ideological partisans to get off the cross...

Posted by: bk at September 19, 2005 08:22 AM

I doubt it's going to make much difference in the general election one way or the other whether the candidate voted for or against Roberts. On the other hand, the Democratic left is expecting its true believers to vote against. So, I think Clift is right--it makes more sense to vote against him because it helps with the base and isn't likely to affect the general election that much.

The criticism of Roberts seems pretty perfunctory; NOW has to oppose any Republican nominee on principele but I doubt even they think there is much chance of defeating him. But if you vote against him and you are relatively moderate, it's one less reason for the left-base to oppose you.

Posted by: Marc at September 19, 2005 09:27 AM

I just can't imagine someone not voting for, say, HC just because she voted either for or against Roberts.

As I mentioned above, I think Hillary is a special case. The democratic base will (and has) forgive(n) Hillary for practically anything. It is her surname that has allowed her to move to a much more centrist stance (and, in some cases, center-right) on issues like defense, abortion, violence in entertainment and various other things that have earned Senator Joe the disdain and contempt of the base, and yet from which Senator Hillary continues to remain largely immune.

Plus, it doesn't hurt that she gets more photogenic each year, IMVHO. ;)

Frankly, this is a wonks-only issue. Roberts will get confirmed fairly easily, and 2 years from now no one will care who voted for confirmation except the partisans who can already be relied upon to vote their party.

That very much depends, though, doesn't it? Suppose I'm wrong about Roberts, and he does vote in Ayotte that states can have parental notification laws? Suppose he votes in, uh, I forget it's name, the Virginia case, to overturn Carhart, that states can ban partial-birth abortion? If he does, I think that a vote for Roberts will be remembered, and it won't make a dime's worth of difference protesting that Teddy Kennedy voted for Nino. It all depends on how Roberts actually votes. I will be delighted to be proved wrong, but I think they're pretty safe. Posted by: Simon at September 19, 2005 10:01 AM

Since all U. S. Senators are always thinking about running for President, that would suggest a straight party-line vote.

Posted by: Dave Schuler at September 19, 2005 10:47 AM

Suppose you're a democrat running for President, and you think that you're going to need more centrists than Gore or Kerry got in order to win come gen'l election time.

Given that Roberts generally looks like a decent and reasonable man and an extremely knowledgeable legal scholar, which vote is more likely to get you more centrists, a yay or a nay? I think it's a yay.

As I think Simon's pointing out, Roberts has a year or 2 to make a ruling that screws things up for a yay vote. This means that if you are HC or another democrat looking to appear centrist, you better be pretty sure that the guy actually is going to be a better juror than NARAL thinks.

So if the @ss-covering instincts win out (when don't they?), then a pretty much party line vote is pretty likely. A handful of especially conservative GOP senators may cross, and a few moderate democrats may cross.

Posted by: bk at September 19, 2005 11:12 AM

I think Simon is right, the Left has a terrible track record with fire discipline and this time it's likely to really burn them.

Thier rhetoric is trying to paint Roberts as extreme but in reality he's probably the LEAST extreme candidate that's likely to pass muster from the right. Now if they really want to take this to the matts, thier going to loose because the GOP have enough votes to confirm Roberts without any Dem support....and if they try to go the fillbuster route thier going to loose the compromise that was created to preserve the fillibuster.... because NONE of the GOP Senators who allowed such a compromise to happen will view Roberts as extreme enough to warrant invoking it in good faith.

All the Left is doing is dulling the impact of thier rhetoric for the next Justice Bush appoints (who likely will be the more Conservative one).
Like Simon says, they can't raise any louder hue then they already have about Roberts and at that point thier going to start sounding like a broken record...... furthermore, they're just going to confuse the public if they try the fillibuster against the 2nd guy becuase the Public won't understand how they let Roberts pass and the next Justice not when they said the exact same things about both.

Frankly, if they had an once of brain between them, they would lower the rhetoric level on Roberts a good 4 decimals.... let him pass "with reservations" (thus showing how "reasonable" they could be) and save the ammo for the next round (The one that might actualy effect the balance of the Court)

Posted by: cengel at September 19, 2005 01:56 PM

Now if they really want to take this to the mats, they're going to lose because the GOP has enough votes to confirm Roberts without any Dem support....and if they try to go the filibuster route they're going to lose the compromise that was created to preserve the fillibuster.... because NONE of the GOP Senators who allowed such a compromise to happen will view Roberts as extreme enough to warrant invoking it in good faith.

Well, they can't actually go the filibuster route without almost total part line support, right? The gang of 14 can prevent a filibuster simply by judging that it's not an extraordianry circumstance worthy of it, and then voting for cloture (that's what it's called, right?

So unless the dem moderates in the Gang support a filibuster, there can't be one in the first place, right? I haven't heard any rumblings that suggest that this agreement is in danger. Seems like the Gang will let the more partisan democrats know that they should cancel any plans for a drag-out over this one. And then Roberts will be confirmed by a vote that is fairly along party lines. But my guess is that a fair number of democrats approve him, especially among Gang members.

Posted by: bk at September 19, 2005 03:19 PM

Yup Bk, I'd be flabergasted if a fillibuster happaned over Roberts.

Like I said the lack of fire discipline I see on the Left corresponds with thier special interest organs. They need the volume (an ad $) those organs can generate if there is a real public battle over the next nominee (which I'm willing to bet will be the important battle).

With their organs denouncing Roberts as resoundingly as they are if the Dem's don't go to the matts over him (which they really can't), then they are going to be in the unenviable position of having to explain to the public WHY they are willing to go to the matts over the next guy and not Roberts. All the GOP has to do next time to disarm them is point to the rhetoric coming out of thier special interest organs and say "Look this is the exact same thing you said about Roberts, yet you didn't feel the need to fillibuster him, whats different?"

At which point the Democrats have to either answer with the truth.... that thier special interest organs are a bunch of hyperbolic hacks that would try to paint any GOP nominee as the devil incranate..... but that this guy really is much worse then Roberts which doesn't exactly help present the united front neccesary for a good PR battle....

OR

They have to pull some sort of "Well Roberts was a horror show but he was only one justice so we let it slide, this time the GOP is trying to nominate a SECOND justice... and that's too much". That also has elements of the truth but it makes them look like spineless whimps that rolled over the first time because they lacked the courage of thier convictions and chose politics over what was best for the country.

Thier only other option would be "Yeah, we had misgivings about Roberts but we were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and look how badly we got screwed for trusting the Pres. [point to controversial rulings by Roberts).". The problem with that approach is that I'm betting Roberts won't have been sitting on the Bench long enough to have made that many major rulings before the next battle heats up.

The smart play, if the Dems could have excercized any control over thier special interest organs, would have been to have them tone down the rhetoric to something like "Roberts is worrying but not a disaster, better then many choices that could have been made". That would allow the Dems to let Roberts pass and then goto the matts over the next nominee without having egg all over thier face.

Posted by: cengel at September 19, 2005 03:53 PM

Ironically, it was W who gave Dems a way out, by nominating Roberts for Renquist's seat as Chief Justice. (Bet Anthony Kennedy is kicking himself for his vote in Bush v. Gore now.) If they vote for Roberts, and he turns out conservative, they can always say "Well, it was an even trade; a conservative nominee in a conservative seat." If he turns out to be another Souter, then they can congraulate themselves for a job well done.

However, it does raise the stakes much higher for the next battle; the Dem base will hope for another moderate for the moderate O'Connor's seat, while the Rep base will, of course, want another conservative. Right now, W has lost most of the moderates, he never had the Dems, and if he loses his own base, he's lamer than a legless duck.

Pass the popcorn...

Posted by: Blue Jean at September 22, 2005 01:55 AM