An open letter to all you complacent, feckless liberals who didn’t bother to show up for the 2014 midterms and didn’t bother to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016 because you thought she was meh or whatever:
Curse Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell all you want, rant to your heart’s content about their raw exercise of brute power, but the looming nightmare of a 6-3 right-wing Supreme Court is ultimately your fault. You did this.
For decades, Republicans and conservative activists have prioritized the takeover of the federal courts, emblazoning that issue in every single election. You have never done that. Nor, inexplicably, have your Democratic leaders.
Mere weeks ago, Trump’s GOP highlighted the courts – most notably the Supreme Court – over and over at the Republican convention. But your Democratic leaders barely mentioned the courts at your convention – and the few liberal activists who prioritize the courts were rightly outraged; in the words of Brian Fallon, executive director of Demand Justice, “We have two liberal justices over 80 years old, which means this election will be make or break for the future of the Supreme Court. But you wouldn’t have known it from the (Democratic) speeches.”
There would be no Amy Coney Barrett if you complacent liberals, and everyone else in the so-called Obama coalition, had been paying attention during the last 10 years and had devoted even a minimal effort to connect the dots.
Why did I choose that time frame? Because after Barack Obama was elected in 2008, too many of you basked in victory and sat on your ass, figuring that the game was over. You stayed home en masse during the 2010 midterm elections and allowed the tea-party nuts to invade Capitol Hill. Worse yet, you skipped the 2014 midterms, apparently oblivious to the fact that the Senate and Supreme Court were closely divided and thus the stakes were actually sky high.
Care to hear what happened? Thanks to your laziness, midterm turnout was the lowest in 72 years…and the Republicans took the Senate by picking up nine seats. Nine seats. It was the first time since 1918 that Democrats lost the Senate during a Democratic president’s second term. Thanks to the 2014 midterms, Mitch McConnell became Majority Leader and was unleashed to practice his dark magic. Thanks a lot, liberals and lazy grassroots Democrats. If not for your apathetic behavior in 2014, McConnell would not have had the clout to block Merrick Garland’s nomination in 2016.
Yeah, let’s talk about 2016. Garland’s limbo – built on the absurd argument that Obama, twice elected with voting majorities, had no right to pick a nominee in his final year – should have been a massive rallying cry for those of you who favor the blue side. But no.
It was blatantly obvious that the Republicans were playing the long game with the high court. Religious conservatives subsumed their qualms about Donald Trump’s serial lying and moral failings because he promised them a post-Scalia conservative bench. John Boehner, the ex-House speaker, said during the campaign that Trump “disgusted” him – nevertheless, “The only thing that really matters over the next four years or eight years is who is going to appoint the next Supreme Court nominees…The biggest impact any president can have on American society is who’s on the court.”
Republicans instinctively understand power. They blared their court message with a bullhorn, in plain sight.
But too many of you on the left were deaf. Your reaction went something like this:
“Bernie got screwed, so the hell with Hillary.”
“There’s something I don’t like Hillary. I don’t know, I just don’t like her.”
“She says she’s for a $15 federal minimum wage, but I don’t believe her.”
“She’s a warmonger.”
“Those emails.”
“At least I can vote my conscience with Jill Stein.”
(Stein junkie Susan Sarandon: “It’s clear a third party is necessary and viable at this time. Fear of Donald Trump is not enough for me to support Clinton, with her record of corruption.”)
And so on. After the dust settled, we got word from the national exit polls that 21 percent of all voters cited the Supreme Court as the “most important” factor in their decision – and that, among those folks, Trump clobbered Clinton by 15 points (56 to 41). Indeed, “26 percent of Trump voters told pollsters that Supreme Court nominees were the most important factor in their voting, compared with only 18 percent of Hillary Clinton voters who said the same.”
And here we are today. Elections have consequences.
So go ahead, feckless liberals, and fume at what Trump and McConnell are doing now. Go ahead and lament how powerless the Democrats are to stop what’s happening. Just be aware of your own complicity, and let us hope that some day, finally, you’ll wake up and play the long game with the same ruthless foresight that fuels the craven opposition.