My Near-Out-of-Body Experience While Watching the Debate Last Night: Hearing Clinton’s Answer To the Supreme Court Nominees Question
OMG.
It came so late in the debate—the third-last question, the second-last on policy agenda, less than 10 minutes before the end.
Asked what she would be looking for in selecting her Supreme Court nominees, she began not with a culture-wars answer or by referencing the need for diversity among the justices as concerned with race and gender identity, but instead by saying she would look for diversity in professional background.
O. M. G.
Then she mentioned Court review of state and federal laws concerning voting rights and ease of access to exercise the right to vote.
She then pointed out the need for new justices who would be willing to reconsider Citizens United if there is to be actual chance to the stranglehold that billionaires and mega-corporations and specific industries—the financial services, fossil fuels, pharmaceuticals, healthcare insurance—have on government at every single level that matters to those industries, via their funding (so much of it secretly) of candidates and the political parties.
And then there was this: In a single, brief but eloquent, clause, she told the voters who were watching that the current Republican appointees to the Supreme Court, and most of those appointed by Republican presidents in the last three decades—and those who Donald Trump has made clear he would appoint—are, quite literally, simply proxies for Big Business. Against individuals and against small businesses.
Only then did she note the obvious: that Roe v. Wade and LGBT-rights Supreme Court opinions that brand-new Justice Scalias would reverse.
In other words, her purpose was to educate the public about the whole panoply of things that Supreme Court appointments will do, rather than just reminding them of what they already knew.
It took my breath away. She was channeling me.* She really could appoint Jeffrey L Fisher* as her first or second Supreme Court nominee.
I also really loved her answer to the question after that one—the one about energy and environmental policy. I loved the substance and I loved her soft-spoken and heartfelt manner as she answered it.
I was disappointed about a few things: One was that in her response on healthcare insurance she didn’t mention the Public Option—although maybe that was because she recognized, as I did, that Trump did her a yuge favor by saying that she wanted a single-payer (a.k.a, Medicare-for-All-type) insurance system, something she did not dispute. And she wonderfully pointed out that Trump wanted to return the healthcare-insurance system to one in which the insurance companies have carte blanche control over it.
I also was disappointed that she didn’t point out that Trump’s campaign is funded very substantially by an oil magnate and two finance-industry billionaires—the Mercers and the Ricketts.
And I was surprised and disappointed that she didn’t make clear that Trump’s proposed fiscal policies would add—what?—$10 trillion to the national debt in the space of about 10 minutes, or something.
But as the debate ended I sat back and realized that I am now a genuinely enthusiastic Hillary Clinton supporter. I will happily, not grudgingly, vote for her, in the actual belief that she will be what I’d been hoping for so fervently: a true progressive in the White House.
I don’t think she’s the candidate—or the person—she was throughout the campaign until late last month. I really don’t.
____
*Links added, 10/10 at 2:02 p.m.
I hope that the 16 Republican senators that are now supporting Hillary will help her with the choice. My personal preference is a 40 year old marathon runner. ACLU experience would be helpful.
I was pleasantly surprised by her mention of real life experience outside the traditional clerking – big corporate firm career track. We need people who came up through a public school system and preferably not from the Ivy League, the East Coast or Stanford. We need other perspectives.
One of the most disappointing early things Obama did was continue the notion in his court and cabinet appointments that only Harvard or Yale graduates have the smarts to run the government and decide big things. Merrick Garland, should she stand by him first or the Republicans in desperation approve him as the lesser evil, at least has midwestern roots and went to a public high school. I would give big points to someone from the law school at, as prime examples, Michigan, Cal, UCLA, Wisconsin, Texas or Washington (a few points if from Northwestern, which, though private, is in the midwest and produced John Paul Stevens). (No points for University of Chicago, unless a clear break from the Law and Economics slant has been demonstrated.)
Clinton wasn’t really referring to potential nominees’ college and law school pedigree, though. She was doing something much more important: she was dog-whistling to certain members of her base who care a lot about criminal-law issues and certain types of civil rights cases that she plans to appoint someone to the Supreme Court who has extensive experience in defending non-white-collar criminal defendants in state and federal court.
That’s REALLY important, much more so than whether someone went to law school somewhere other than Harvard or Yale–although there’s a strong correlation, since there are precious few Harvard and Yale Law alums who’ve ever represented a non-white-collar criminal defendant. Tim Kaine, btw, is one of the few.
Jeffrey Fisher, btw, is a U-Michigan Law grad. Go Blue!
Yea, Congress can so! ban the publishing of books within 3 months of an election!
Also it was good to hear Hillary plans to rid us of the scourge of the Conservative Legal Movement and overturn Evenwel v. Abbott , oh wait…never mind.
Funny you should mention Evenwel, of all cases, since surely you know exactly how that case would have turned out had Scalia not died before the opinion was issued. Hint: Not the way it did turn out.
I really cannot figure out why you people are so upset about the Citizen’s United decision. Here is THE LAW:
TITLE 52. VOTING AND ELECTIONS
Chapter 301—Federal Election Campaigns
Subchapter 1—Disclosure of Federal Campaign Funds
§ 30101 Definitions
When used in this Act:
(11) The term “person” includes an individual, partnership,
committee, association, corporation, labor organization, or any other
organization or group of persons, but such term does not include the
Federal Government or any authority of the Federal Government.
http://www.fec.gov/law/feca/feca.pdf
So how were they supposed to rule?
You do know that a “legal person” cannot vote, don’t you?
Yet somehow, that “legal person” can influence votes with unidentified cash spending on elections.
Money is not speech. Not anywhere but in the Supreme Court.
C’mon, EMichael. I was standing right next to a Fortune 100 corporation when I voted in the Dem primary last March. It was in the voting booth next to mine, and had requested a Repub ballot.
What’s your point, EMichael?
You do know that a “legal person” cannot vote, don’t you?
Yet somehow, that “legal person” can influence votes with unidentified cash spending on elections.
Money is not speech. Not anywhere but in the Supreme Court.
I have long thought that the Federal Reserve Board had too many economists.
Given this I can easily agree that the Supreme Court has too many lawyers.
Well, the Court had five too many until last winter. Now it only has four too many. Nah, make that four and a half too many; I’m not much of a Stephen Breyer fan.
But that too-many-economists-on-the-Federal-Reserve-Board thing is intriguing. Yikes. Maybe I should apply.
Yes, EMichael. You said that already. Saying it again will not make your words any more relevant to what the law says. So I ask again, “What’s your point?”
Yes, I could go for a philosopher, historian and someone with an advanced degree in literature. All 3 types would be good.
How about a scientist or an engineer?
Beverly,
My guess it would have been 9-0 instead of 8-0.
So much for your Conservative Legal Movement boogeyman.
Mike:
Of course Scalia dies and it never existed. BS!
Warren,
The far left wants to control the press, that’s the point.
Yea Mike:
The same press the Right already controls . . .