{"id":27227,"date":"2023-07-06T12:18:06","date_gmt":"2023-07-06T19:18:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=27227"},"modified":"2023-07-06T12:54:39","modified_gmt":"2023-07-06T19:54:39","slug":"the-democratic-party-is-suffering-from-learned-helplessness-that-threatens-us-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2023\/07\/06\/the-democratic-party-is-suffering-from-learned-helplessness-that-threatens-us-all\/","title":{"rendered":"The Democratic Party is suffering from learned helplessness that threatens us all"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When we need serious change, it’s always an excuse that says ‘no we can’t.’<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By BRUCE MIRKEN<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

JULY 4, 2023 (48Hills.org)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last year, after a string of Supreme Court decisions eviscerating abortion rights, weakening the EPA\u2019s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and shredding separation of church and state, I wrote about the need for drastic reform<\/a>, including expansion of the Court to overcome the radical-right majority engineered by Senate Republicans and the Federalist Society. I argued that Democrats needed to get off their butts and act before things got worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, worse is here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Supreme Court is moving up backward to dark times in basic human rights. Wikimedia Image by SLOWKING<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following in the wake of new revelations of High Court corruption involving right-wing billionaires with deep ties to the Federalist Society and others seeking to erase much of the 20th<\/sup> century came more decisions aimed at erasing social progress. These latest rulings show that\u2014as Elena Kagan, joined by justices Sotomayor and Jackson, explained in a stunning dissent<\/a> in the student debt case\u2014\u201cIn every respect, the Court today exceeds its proper, limited role in our Nation\u2019s governance.\u201d There was no actual dispute to adjudicate, but the court acted anyway to advance an ideological agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a rogue court exceeding its legitimate powers to conduct a full-on assault on civil rights, and that constitutes a national emergency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I grump about this a lot on my social media accounts (mostly Mastodon<\/a>\u2014you\u2019re not really still on Twitter<\/a>, are you?) And from time to time, I throw in a gripe about how the Democrats could have reformed the court while they controlled both houses of Congress last year but refused to act. The responses to the latter are disturbing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Any comment about Democrats\u2019 failure to curb this corrupted Supreme Court gets met with a barrage of excuses from liberals justifying their party\u2019s ineffectuality. Instead of \u201cyes, we can,\u201d the instinctive response from a good portion of the folks who should be helping to defend democracy seems to be \u201cno, we can\u2019t.\u201d It\u2019s a sort of learned helplessness that at this moment really could get us all killed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s important to remember how genuinely radical the court\u2019s actions this year have been. The Supreme Court\u2019s website<\/a> explains, \u201cThe Court does not give advisory opinions; rather, its function is limited only to deciding specific cases.\u201d That is, there must be an actual conflict that needs to be adjudicated\u2014it can\u2019t go looking for controversies to weigh in on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Kagan\u2019s dissent explains, in the student debt case, the six states that sued to end President Biden\u2019s debt relief plan \u201coppose the Secretary\u2019s loan cancellation plan on varied policy and legal grounds. But as everyone agrees, those objections are just general grievances; they do not show the particularized injury needed to bring suit.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Missouri politicians tried to add a veneer of legitimacy by claiming Biden\u2019s policy harmed the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority\u2014but MOHELA did not participate in or support the politicians\u2019 suit. In Kagan\u2019s words, \u201cAnd that means the Court, by deciding this case, exercises authority it does not have. It violates the Constitution.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ruling that blew a hole in LGBTQ civil rights protections (and perhaps others), 303 Creative<\/em>, was similarly phony. As Ian Milhiser explained for Vox<\/a>, \u201cJustice Neil Gorsuch released a 26-page opinion<\/a> venting outrage about a legal dispute that does not exist, involving websites that do not exist.\u201d Agree or disagree with the decisions of prior courts, this is not normal Supreme Court behavior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Democrats had the power to prevent this, but didn\u2019t. And the responses that come up when you point this out are amazingly consistent, drenched in learned helplessness. And when you counter one excuse, another instantly pops up\u2014regularly enough that they\u2019re worth addressing one by one:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don\u2019t criticize Democrats. The Republicans did this! <\/strong>Of course they did, and no one claims otherwise. But failure to prevent harm matters, too. Imagine this: I look out my window and see that my neighbor\u2019s unattended barbecue is beginning to light his house on fire. I could take out my garden hose and put out the fire, phone him to let him know what\u2019s happening, and bang on his door if I don\u2019t have his number. Or I could go back to watching YouTube videos while his house burns to the ground. If I do that and his house is destroyed\u2014sure, it was his fault for not keeping an eye on his barbecue fire, but would you really call me blameless?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Democrats couldn\u2019t act because you need 60 votes in the Senate.<\/strong> No, you don\u2019t. The filibuster rule is not in the Constitution, nor was it handed to Moses by God on stone tablets. It can be changed with a simple majority\u2014which the Democrats had, with Vice President Kamala Harris as tiebreaker. And that leads us to the next excuse:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Democrats couldn\u2019t get 51 votes because of Manchin and Sinema. <\/strong>No doubt, these two nominal Democrats (as Sinema still was back then) represented an obstacle to both filibuster reform and meaningful Supreme Court reform. At this point, a small history lesson is in order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is anyone out there old enough to remember Lyndon Johnson, Senate majority leader during most of the Eisenhower administration and president from 1963 to 1969? LBJ never once let \u201cwe\u2019re two votes short\u201d stop him from getting things done that he thought were important. He\u2019d twist whatever arms or other appendages he needed to twist to get the votes. And he generally got them. It\u2019s no accident that LBJ biographer Robert Caro titled his volume covering Johnson\u2019s Senate years \u201cMaster of the Senate.\u201d<\/a> Has anyone, anywhere ever called Chuck Schumer \u201cMaster of the Senate?\u201d But even this brings up another excuse:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not the same \u2013 LBJ had a super-majority!<\/strong> Not quite. Most of the time he led the Senate, that body was as closely divided<\/a> as it\u2019s been the last few years. As president he did have large majorities, but those majorities only existed because of conservative, often overtly racist, southern Democrats like Harry Byrd<\/a> of Virginia. Virtually all of these senators, from what we now call \u201cred states,\u201d were every bit as right-wing as current Republicans, and they didn\u2019t like a lot of what Johnson wanted to do. Johnson didn\u2019t need all of their votes all of the time, but they got the votes he really needed, with whatever combination of favors and threats that required. (Understand that I\u2019m not trying to paint LBJ as a hero\u2014he got plenty of things disastrously wrong, like a certain Southeast Asian war\u2014but he knew how to wield power.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the apologists run out of specific excuses, they fall back on:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don\u2019t criticize Democrats, they\u2019re all we\u2019ve got!<\/strong> In a system designed to favor two major parties, it\u2019s true that at least for now we\u2019re stuck with the Democrats as the only viable alternative to right-wing authoritarianism. But for that alternative to save us, it has to be effective, and right now the record is decidedly mixed. Of course, I\u2019ll grit my teeth and vote for Joe Biden against Trump or DeSantis, but we must push him and congressional Democrats to do better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m not claiming that changing the filibuster rule and reforming the Supreme Court through court expansion and\/or term limits would have been easy. It would have been difficult as hell. And for now, with the Republicans running the House of Representatives, it\u2019s probably impossible in the short term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But when they had a chance, the Democratic Party leadership didn\u2019t even try. And even after last month\u2019s outrageous rulings on affirmative action (basically standing the 14th<\/sup> Amendment<\/a> on its head), student debt and LGBTQ civil rights, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer of New York couldn\u2019t bring himself to endorse court expansion or term limits for justices even as he was calling SCOTUS \u201cThis MAGA-captured Supreme Court.\u201d<\/a> And President Biden said that trying to expand the court would be a \u201cmistake,\u201d<\/a> arguing that such a move would \u201cpoliticize\u201d the high court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earth to Joe and Chuck: That train left the station years ago, arguably decades ago. The only question now is: What are you willing to do about it, and will we have any civil rights left when you do? \u201cNo, we can\u2019t\u201d won\u2019t save democracy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When we need serious change, it’s always an excuse that says ‘no we can’t.’ By BRUCE MIRKEN JULY 4, 2023 (48Hills.org) Last year, after a string of Supreme Court decisions eviscerating abortion rights, weakening the EPA\u2019s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and shredding separation of church and state, I… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[759,758],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27227"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27227"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27230,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27227\/revisions\/27230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}