Do "The Court appointments" justify ALL other betrayals?

[Ken Burch]

For years, every time we've been in a situation in which a Democratic president has become too right-wing too tolerate, any discussion of a primary challenge or even any call for that president to STOP being intolerably conservative has been met, when all OTHER arguments failed, with the argument "But think of the Supreme Court".

Well, ok...there's the Supreme Court...

But how much can we have to be expected to endure in the name of getting to fill Court vacancies?

Is the sacrifice of everything else WORTH that?

Does that justify letting all our principles be discarded?

How much should we really be expected to put up with the extremely unlikely chance that Obama will get to fill any OTHER "Court vancancies"?

In the last Democratic administration, that line was used to justify looking the other way when poor women with kids were persecuted for the crime of daring to use welfare to feed those kids when everyone knew they had NO alternative, and to justify accepting the barbarity of actually INCREASING the number of executions in this country(at a time when violent crime rates were plummeting and when we all already knew that there was no justification for the expansion of the death penalty).

What will it be this time?

Is the Court worth our party's soul?

[aquart]

1. Depends on the court appointments.

Seriously, a good judge can trash every one of these betrayals.

BUT THE NEXT TIME SOMEONE GIVES YOU AN INANE CHANT INSTEAD OF SPECIFICS, USE YOUR FUCKING BRAINS.

[Ken Burch]

16. Nothing as bad as the tax surrender could be undone by the Court.

And the Court will uphold DADT, which means gays will be excluded from the military forever and probably also means ssm won't happen, since the Court can't be capable of upholding that.

I'm just asking if "think of The Court" trumps EVERYTHING else. Does it have to mean accepting being played by the administration we elected?

[Bandit]

2. Is the court more to the Left since Obama got his appointments?

It just keeps moving further Right....So why are we all cheering?

[emulatorloo]

8. So Obama's appointments are the same as Scalia, Roberts, and Alito?

[Bandit]

24. With so many here it is all or nothing

No they are not as far right as Scalia nor or they as far left as Stevens. They are further Right than what we had and there is no indication that any new picks will be any different..We are not going to get any Left leaning Justices any time soon...The country will keep moving further and further to the Right..Yipee we got "Change"

[MineralMan]

3. Well, someone's going to have to veto all the crap that

comes out of the new House. A little support of President Obama might make that easier for him to do. The courts are only one of the thing we need a Democratic President to handle, you know.

The path we seem to be taking right now leads directly to a Republican President in 2012. That won't be optimal.

Several threads on DU have asked who might be successful in challenging President Obama in the primaries. The only answer is the same list of people who've been trying and failing to run for President in the past.

I'm thinking we're going to have a tough fight in 2012 against Mitt Romney. I discount Palin and the rest. Mitt Romney stands a strong chance of being the GOP candidate. Frankly, I like President Obama a lot better than Mitt Romney. But, if the support's not there for Obama's second term, we're going to lose to a Republican like Romney.

That's the danger of all this name-calling of the President and all the fault-finding. I'm not liking our chances in 2012 right now.

[Ken Burch]

12. He's not going to veto anything if he's ok with the tax surrender.

There aren't any other issues after that that matter...especially since we know he really doesn't give a rip if Social Security gets gutted.

Defensive battles aren't worth fighting. And the politics of damage control is beneath our dignity.

[MineralMan]

20. And your workable alternative is what exactly?

Let's hear it. It's easy to criticize, but harder to propose a solution.

[Ken Burch]

22. Rebuild the party by mobilizing the base.

Tell labor, the poor, LGBT's and people getting screwed by Big Pharma that they WON'T be treated in a second term as they were treated this time.

Blast the "Do-Nothing Republican Congress" like Truman did.

Make Campaign Finance reform and the abolition of the Electoral COllege a major part of the Democratic program.

For a start.

We don't have to play on the Right's terms.

THEY didn't play on our terms from 2008 to 2010.

[MilesColtrane]

28. Re: Romney as the GOP nominee

Don't discount Rick Perry.

He'll run and he'll do well.

He's the kind of evil, glib, photogenic, D.C. "outsider" that both the GOP mainstream and the Tea Baggers could get behind.

[stray cat]

4. every four years you get to choose between the lesser of two evils

[emulatorloo]

5. That's true, and a good citizen doesn't just opt out.

[Ken Burch]

10. Lesser evils races are worthless.

Why can't we ever actually get a chance to vote for GOOD?

Why accept that all we can ever do is limit the damage?

In the end, that's just another form of surrender.

Only offensive battles are really worth fighting. Defensive ones are just pointless and depressing, and never allow us to turn the tide.

[emulatorloo]

15. Because my perfect candidate does not exist.

Voting is not about making a statement, it is about choosing the candidate that is more likely than the other one to get something positive done.

[Ken Burch]

18. Voting is about trying to put your principles into action.

Lesser-evil election winners almost never turn out to be worthwhile AFTER they get elected.

Clinton wasn't. Carter wasn't.

JFK was only of value because the Civil Rights movement MADE him, finally, start to work for justice. Without that, we'd have forgotten he ever was president by now.

No future lesser-evil president is going to be capable of being made to do the right thing...especially since they all have to promise the rich to ignore those who are trying to make the country better.

Stop checking your dreams at the door. This is NOT a permanently right-of-center country, and we don't have to settle for crumbs. We can elect trustworthy candidates if we are willing to work for them.

[MilesColtrane]

29. "JFK was only of value because..."

Let's not forget that not-blowing-up-the-entire-world thing, shall we?

How do think a then President Nixon would have reacted when the Soviets started building a missile base in Cuba?

[Ken Burch]

6. We don't HAVE to settle for that.

And just placidly accepting that, as you appear to do, is basically a form of surrender.

Defensive battles are never worth fighting. The only worthwhile objective is actually to work for gains.

Stop settling for working within the limits the rulers allow to us. We could give ourselves more possibilities if we just tried.

[dionysus]

7. wow, you're on a roll.

[DevonRex]

9. I brought the Grey Poupon

but I seriously won't eat Spam. :rofl:

[dionysus]

13. and i have the caviar and crackers...

gold dusted crackers to boot ;)

[DevonRex]

19. Mmmmmm...

Gold dusted crackers. Better than sea salt any day. :hi:

[emulatorloo]

11. Can you turn down the Apocalyptic Rhetoric?

If not explain to us how Obama's nominations are no different than Scalia, Roberts, and Alito.

[Ken Burch]

14. I didn't say they weren't different.

I was asking if those nominations are worth accepting all the other betrayals. Do they outweigh everything else we're supposed to stand for?

Are they worth making ourselves defend a president who has now proven that he's more against us than with us?

[Windy]

17. First your uneducated rage over the children's food program bill

that was signed today and alleging that Obama cut food stamps... forgetting the he increased the allowance for food stamps from approx 27b to 67b....

now this...

take a pill!!!!

[Ken Burch]

21. I wasn't talking about anything involving food for children.

(and the "Tax Cuts Forever For The Rich" bill had nothing to do with that). You've got me mixed up with somebody else.

(on edit)

I think I understand what you were reacting to. My comments were about the punitive welfare bill Clinton signed.

[emulatorloo]

23. As far as I am concerned "All the Other Betrayals" is apocalyptic rhetoric as well

Nor do I accept your premise that Obama has "proven" that "he's more against us than with us."

This is an conclusion reached based on your analysis of the available data. It may be a conclusion that is amplified on DU, but for better or worse we need to remember that DU is as much of an echo chamber as any other partisan website out there.

I've looked at the same data set and have perhaps have added variables that you haven't or won't consider

That includes lots of stuff, but a few things are

- historical events: (Bushco destruction of the Economy).

- Media's willingness to promote points of view that are opposite to yours and mine as the only valid ones.

- The fact that the US government was not built for drastic change but for incremental ones (checks and balances).

- The effective strategy of the Republicans these last two years and the ineffective strategies of the Democrats.

- the recent election

There are a lot of things I'm unhappy about, and I have a lot of monday morning quarterback feelings about what Obama did and didn't do.

However, I recognize that Obama is not the only player.

On this recent fiasco, If the Senate had passed middle class only tax cuts last Saturday, that is what he would be signing.

[Codeine]

30. It's Apocalypticunderground nowadays.

Embrace the new bitter paradigm.

[MilesColtrane]

25. That depends on the quality of his future appointments, if any.

If you take a longer view of history, it is worth it.

Example: Four Reagan appointees and one G.H.W. Bush appointee sentenced the country to eight years of Bush, Jr. and the subsequent terrorist attacks, wars, and financial collapse.

The latest "contribution" of Republican appointed Supreme Court judges has been to wipe away twenty years of restrictions on corporate money in national elections.

[Individualist]

26. No

[TexasObserver]

27. As I've said, it's worth it to hold the presidency if only for the judicial appointments.

I never thought that's all we'd get, however.