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The Senate Should Censure Senator Schumer for Threatening Two Supreme Court Justices

The Senate Should Censure Senator Schumer for Threatening Two Supreme Court Justices

By John R Guardiano on March 7, 2020

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) has introduced a resolution calling on the Senate to censure Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) for threatening two Supreme Court Justices, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.

The resolution has 14 Republican cosponsors, but won’t ever pass the Senate, even though the Republicans have a majority there.

The reason: too many Republican senators, such as Lindsey Graham (South Carolina), are opposed to the move because they fear it would ignite a tit for tat by Democrats, who then would demand that the Senate censure President Trump.

Graham’s concern is legitimate and understandable, but he’s wrong. Whatever the merits of the case for censuring Trump because of his misconduct vis-à-vis Ukraine, the stark reality is that what Sen. Schumer did is clearly and obviously wrong and deserves to be censured.

This isn’t a matter of partisan politics, or at least is should not be a matter of partisan politics. Instead, this is matter of institutional integrity and ensuring that standards of conduct and behavior are maintained and enforced.

For any institution, but Congress especially, this matters. Public trust and confidence can only be maintained if institutions police themselves and discipline their own.

Institutional Integrity. In fact, one big reason the public holds Congress in low regard is that, as Yuval Levin explains in an interview with National Public Radio (NPR), it doesn’t see Congress maintaining or promoting an institutional ethic that shapes its members in a reliable and responsible way.

Levin has written a new and important book, A Time to Build: From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus, How Recommitting to Our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream. And while his aforementioned comment to NPR wasn’t directed at Congress or Schumer in particular, it nonetheless applies here.

How can the public trust Congress if the institution doesn’t stand for anything more than the will of the majority? And how can public confidence be maintained if standards of propriety, decency and respect are routinely flouted to secure rank partisan gain?

As Levin succinctly puts its: “We trust an institution when we think that it forms the people within it to be trustworthy.”

Rule of Law. Moreover, as National Review’s Andrew McCarthy points out, censure is necessary to bolster the rule of law.

Schumer, after all, issued his threats on the steps of the Supreme Court while playing to a mob trying that was trying to shape or influence a Court decision that should be immune or indifferent to political considerations.

What should guide the Court’s decision, exclusively, as McCarthy observes, is the rule of law and applying the law dispassionately, without fear, favor or prejudice, to the particular case at hand. Yet, Schumer used political intimidation tactics and threats explicitly to undermine the Court and the rule of law.

“That should rate censure,” McCarthy argues. “Case closed.” He’s right.

Censure, as the Senate explains on its website, is

less severe than expulsion [and] sometimes referred to as [a] condemnation or denouncement. [It] does not remove a senator from office.

It is a formal statement of disapproval, however, that can have a powerful psychological effect on a member and his/her relationships in the Senate.

In 1834, the Senate censured President Andrew Jackson – the first and only time the Senate censured a president. Since 1789 the Senate has censured nine of its members.

Censure. It is long past time for the Senate to censure its tenth member, Charles E. Schumer—not as a form of partisan warfare or political retribution, but rather as a statement of institutional honor and integrity.

No American, and certainly no member of the United States Senate, the world’s greatest deliberative body, should ever threaten a sitting justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Surely, all of us, Democrats and Republicans alike, can agree that this is unacceptable and beyond the pale.

Let the Senate, then, demonstrate to all Americans and to the world that it expects and demands better. It expects and demands of itself and its members professional conduct, respect for the Constitutionally prescribed powers and authority of the Supreme Court and the judiciary, and civil discourse, dialogue and debate.

As it concerns Sen. Schumer, the way to demonstrate this commitment is through the power of the censure, which should rarely be used, but also not disused. Indeed, there are times when the censure is needed and necessary, and now is one of those times.

Feature photo credit: News Metropolis.

Schumer’s Attack on the Supreme Court Is the Democrats’ Latest Attempt to Intimidate and Politicize the Judiciary

Schumer’s Attack on the Supreme Court Is the Democrats’ Latest Attempt to Intimidate and Politicize the Judiciary

By John R Guardiano on March 6, 2020

Most independent observers, left and right, have rightly lambasted Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) for literally threatening two Supreme Court justices if they do not rule in favor of abortion rights in a case now pending before the Court.

What no one seems to have noticed, though, is that Schumer’s threat is part and parcel of the Democratic Party’s dangerous and decades-long politicization of the judiciary, and its ongoing attempt to subvert the courts to serve blatantly political ends.

Most of the Democratic presidential candidates, for instance, supported a court-packing scheme to ensure that the Supreme Court rules in a “progressive” way which ensures politically correct or desirable results.

Pete Buttigieg, for example, proposed expanding the number of justices on the court from nine to 15 through a selection process ostensibly designed to depoliticize the Court, but which, in reality, is itself highly politicized.

Joe Biden, who will be the Democratic presidential nominee, says he’s opposed to a Court-packing scheme. Yet, he nonetheless pledges to subject his Court appointments to a political litmus test in which would-be justices must affirm their commitment to Roe-v.-Wade, abortion rights, and other left-wing, “progressive” political goals.

Politicization. This is, sadly, unsurprising. The attempt to politicize the courts, and the Supreme Court in particular, has reached a fever pitch on the left, with well-funded left-wing groups making this a high priority.

The left’s attack on the independence and integrity of the judiciary is also dangerous. This “is something we recognize as a banana-republic tactic when we see it in other countries,” writes National Review’s Dan McLaughlin. “Court-packing,” he notes,

is a Rubicon we should dread to cross. It last appeared on the national agenda in 1937, the high-water mark of one-party federal government at home and ideological authoritarianism around the globe.

Even then, it was roundly rejected by the American body politic. In one swoop, it would irreparably destroy the American tradition of judicial independence of the political branches.

In short order, this would end the American experiment of the rule of law and a government of separated and limited powers.

But Democrats and the left care little for what they clearly consider to be Constitutional niceties. What matters to them are results.

And, if they cannot achieve their desired political ends through the legislative branch of government, as the Constitution prescribes, then they will seek redress in the judiciary and the courts.

This has been happening for decades, as Democrats and the left have short-circuited the democratic process to achieve political results in the courts that they never could have achieved—or would have achieved more slowly and incrementally—in Congress and the state legislatures.

However, the left’s grip on the judiciary, and the Supreme Court in particular, is threatened now with the appointments of a new generation of originalist justices and judges who have a more modest and limited view of the judiciary’s role in American political life.

Indeed, as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts, famously put it in his 2005 Congressional confirmation hearing:

Judges are like umpires. Umpires don’t make the rules; they apply them. The role of an umpire and a judge is critical. They make sure everybody plays by the rules. But it is a limited role.

Democrats and the left, though, don’t view the Court’s role as limited; they view it as supreme, at least if it is pursuing a left-wing political agenda. Consequently, they are positively apoplectic that they are losing their grip on the judiciary.

That’s why they went to war over the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, deploying mob intimidation tactics that we more often see in a banana-republic, not a mature and modern democracy.

Justice Kavanaugh, of course, and his colleague Justice Gorsuch, are the Court’s newest members; they were appointed by President Trump; and they have yet to fully rule on a host of matters, including but not limited to, abortion.

Sen. Schumer is not a stupid man. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, and he boasts of achieving a perfect score on his SATs. He knew exactly what he was doing: He was laying down a marker for these new justices, and letting them know that they had better rule in politically correct fashion—or else.

Schumer has since apologized, but the damage to the rule of law and the integrity of our political and legal institutions already has been done. Democrats and the left have put the justices, and the judiciary more generally, on notice:

If you do not hew to the “progressive” political agenda, “you will pay the price,” as Schumer put it. “You won’t know what hit you,” and you will reap “the whirlwind.” This is frightening talk, made all the more dangerous because of the mob intimidation tactics sanctioned and encouraged by Democrats and the left.

And what makes these remarks all the more frightening is the spate of mass shootings in recent years by deranged individuals with political axes to grind.

It was only three years ago, after all, that a nut with a manifest hatred for Republicans almost wiped out the entire House Republican leadership and some two dozen GOP congressmen.

Unsurprising. Unfortunately, we should not be surprised by Schumer’s dangerous attempt to cow and intimidate the Supreme Court’s newest justices.

Democrats and the left have long made it their life’s political work to capture the judiciary and to use the courts for blatantly political purposes. And, to a disconcerting extent, they have been successful.

But with Trump’s appointment of Gorsuch and Kavanaugh to the Court, that project is now threatened, and Democrats and the left are lashing out. Indeed, Schumer’s condemnable outburst wasn’t their first such attack and, sadly, it won’t be their last.

Feature photo credit: News Thud.

Super Tuesday and the Democratic Primary Map Show That It’s Over: Joe Biden Will Be the Nominee

Super Tuesday and the Democratic Primary Map Show That It’s Over: Joe Biden Will Be the Nominee

By John R Guardiano on March 5, 2020

We reported Tuesday morning, before Super Tuesday, that the Democratic presidential primary was “clearly a two-man race, even though Elizabeth Warren and Michael Bloomberg [were] still formally running.”

Well, today, after Super Tuesday, we can say with certainty that it is no longer a two-man race: because, for all practical intents and purposes, the race is over. Joe Biden will be the Democratic presidential nominee.

Why? Because Biden won big, prevailing in 10 of the 14 Super Tuesday states. And, in the four states that Biden lost, he nonetheless gained delegates by surpassing the requisite 15 percent threshold.

Consequently, in a result no one anticipated, Biden actually has more delegates now than Sanders: 566 to 501, according to Axios.

Future Primaries. Moreover, between now and March 17, there will be primaries in 10 states, where, for the most part, Biden has the clear advantage. These include delegate-rich Florida (248 delegates), Illinois (148 delegates), and Ohio (153 delegates), all of which vote March 17.

Biden has the advantage in these states because the demographics are clearly in his favor.

Indeed, the voters in Florida, Illinois, and Ohio tend to be older and more traditional Democrats, who strongly favor Biden. These states also have significant numbers of black voters, who, likewise, strongly favor Biden.

Thus NPR’s Juana Summers reports:

In Alabama and Virginia, Biden had the support of about 7 in 10 black voters. In Tennessee and North Carolina, Biden had the support of more than half of black voters.

Biden also outperformed Sanders with black voters in Texas, where they make up about one-fifth of the Democratic primary electorate. Exit polls show Biden had the support of roughly 60 percent of black voters in the state; Sanders had 17 percent.

Indy100’s Sirena Bergman, likewise, reports:

Exit polls show that more than half of voters aged under 45 voted for Sanders, compared to only 17 per cent of them backing Biden. By contrast, those over 45 were drastically more more than twice as likely to vote for Biden than Sanders.

Sanders’ last stand almost certainly will be in Michigan, which votes March 10. Sanders won the state in 2016 by just 1.5 percent over Hillary Clinton, but trails Biden in the latest poll by 6.5 percent. That poll was completed before Super Tuesday; yet, it still shows Biden surging.

As The Atlantic’s Ron Brownstein explains:

If Biden wins next week in Michigan, one of Sanders’s most significant victories four years ago, the rationale for the senator’s candidacy could quickly become murky.

Sanders won’t win Michigan, but even if he does, so what? Where does he go from there? Nowhere; that’s where. As The Bulwark’s Jonathan Last observes:

Over the next two weeks, Biden will win overwhelming victories in Florida and Mississippi. He is likely to win in Ohio, Arizona, Illinois, and Missouri. A week after that, he will win a large victory in Georgia.

As things stand now, no one else has a path to a majority of the delegates, and Biden’s principal rival is a socialist who does not identify as a Democrat, is heading into difficult demographic terrain, and—most importantly—is fading, rather than surging.

Meanwhile, Biden remains the vice president to the most recent Democratic president, a two-termer who remains immensely popular both with the public at large and the Democratic base.

Last is right: Biden, to his credit, has been resilient. He won this race when too many clueless pundits wrote him off. On the other hand, we have to note—as we have noted before—that this was Sanders’ race to lose and lose it he did. How?

By making absolutely no attempt to appeal to anyone beyond his base of young, hardcore secular progressives. As the Washington Examiner’s Tim Carney observes, this was a real problem for Sanders in South Carolina and other Southern states with large numbers of black voters, who tend to be more temperamentally conservative and religious.

If Sanders were a better politician, with more range and reach, he might have been able to pivot and find common ground with these more traditional people of faith. But the truth is that Sanders is a dour, dull and predictable socialist apparatchik who seldom smiles and rarely shows any wit, humor or humanity.

And so he lost.

Sanders Limited Appeal. That’s why we can say confidently that this primary race is over. Sanders cannot be someone or something that he is not. We’ve seen him now in two presidential campaigns, 2016 and 2020. Democratic primary voters have taken their measure of the man, and they’ve found him wanting.

“Sanders reached 33 percent or more of the vote in just five of the 14 states that voted, including his home state; beyond Vermont, he did not exceed 36 percent, his share in Colorado,” Brownstein notes.

Of course, there is a lot more to say and observe about Super Tuesday and what it means for the future of American politics. We’ll record those observations and explore those issues in future posts.

But certainly, the most significant development thus far is that Super Tuesday determined at last whom the Democrats will nominate as their standard-bearer against Trump, and that standard-bearer is 77-year-old Joe Biden.

Feature photo credit: CBS News via the BBC.

Trump’s Ignorance of the Taliban Undermines America’s Negotiating Posture in Afghanistan

Trump’s Ignorance of the Taliban Undermines America’s Negotiating Posture in Afghanistan

By John R Guardiano on March 4, 2020

As we’ve explained, pursuing a diplomatic solution in Afghanistan after nearly 19 years of fighting makes sense, but only if we are clear-eyed and sober-minded about who the Taliban are and what they are about.

And only if we maintain a firm and steadfast commitment to the legitimately elected government of Afghanistan and are willing to walk away from negotiations if the Taliban renege on their agreements and act in bad faith.

Unfortunately, as we reported Monday, President Trump appears to have little to no understanding of the Taliban, and the only thing he seems firm and steadfast about are bugging out of Afghanistan and withdrawing U.S. troops there.

Weakness. Trump’s palpable and pathetic rhetorical weakness vis-à-vis the Taliban undermines America’s diplomatic leverage and make it immeasurably more difficult to secure an enduring and sustainable agreement which protects U.S. security interests and the Americans homeland.

This is especially true give that the Taliban do not view negotiations in the same way as we do. For the United States and other democracies, negotiations are a means to reconcile differences and arrive at a mutually beneficial accord or modus vivendi.

Not so for the Taliban. As Gen. Jack Keane (Ret.), told the Heritage Foundation Jan. 28, 2020:

The Taliban leadership position is very clear. Their top priority is to get the United States to sign an agreement to withdraw completely. They are willing to make just about any statement to get that, any promise to get that.

They’ll do a ceasefire to get that. They’ll promise negotiations with the Afghans to get that. And why do they want that?

In their words, it’s a massive boost to the movement. It amounts to a U.S. admission of defeat, and it guarantees the legitimacy of their Islamic Emirate, which is what they call Afghanistan.

They believe the agreement will help tip the military and diplomatic balance in favor of the Taliban, and help them to eventually overthrow the Afghan government. [That is] something they have never, ever given up [on].

The [Taliban] leaders are explicit. The agreement with the United States is a means of taking control of the Afghan government, not reaching a political settlement…

They don’t want a political settlement. They don’t want to share power. They don’t want to participate in a democracy.

Why is that? They’re very practical. [Some] 85% of the country reject the Taliban [and have rejected them] for 19 years. This in the most unpopular insurgency in modern times.

“The Taliban,” writes Bloomberg’s Eli Lake, “has always considered itself Afghanistan’s legitimate government in exile. This is why it sends its minions to attack polling places during elections, as it did last year.”

In short, the Taliban are not a legitimate political faction that simply wants a place at the decision-making table. To the contrary: they are hardcore fanatics, who have never wavered in their goal of reconquering all of Afghanistan and establishing a so-called Islamic Emirate there.

Yet, Trump acts like the Taliban are just another negotiating partner; and that negotiating a peace deal with them is no different, really, than negotiating a real estate deal with a mob boss or union official in Atlantic City. You split the differences and everyone walks away happy and content.

Negotiations. But that’s not how the Taliban think. They think that negotiations are a way for them to impose their will on a weak American president who wants out of Afghanistan, and to overthrow what they see as an illegitimate government in Kabul that has no right to rule.

It would help America’s negotiating posture if Trump showed some indication that he understands this. Instead, he repeats discredited Taliban propaganda that they are “tired of fighting.”

No, Mr. President, the Taliban are not tired of fighting. The Taliban fight—and negotiate—to win. And their continued fighting is the real obstacle to peace in Afghanistan.

Feature photo credit: France 24.

‘Super Tuesday’ Will Set the Battle Lines for the Likely Democratic Convention Showdown Between Sanders and Biden

‘Super Tuesday’ Will Set the Battle Lines for the Likely Democratic Convention Showdown Between Sanders and Biden

By John R Guardiano on March 3, 2020

Wins and losses matter tonight, but the numbers and demographic data behind those wins and losses matter even more.

Joe Biden’s smashing victory in South Carolina Saturday (Feb. 29) has given him newfound momentum and a shot at winning the Democratic presidential nomination.

Nonetheless, Biden lags behind frontrunner Bernie Sanders in what is now clearly a two-man race, even though Elizabeth Warren and Michael Bloomberg are still formally running.

A big problem for Biden is the extraordinarily compressed primary calendar. Less than three days separate the South Carolina Primary from Super Tuesday (today, Mar. 3), in which voters in 14 states will go to the polls and choose roughly one-third of the Democratic Convention delegates.

This means that Biden has had virtually no time to capitalize on his South Carolina win—and no time since then to persuade Democratic primary voters that he is the man to lead them in their effort to eject Donald Trump from the White House.

Early Voting. Moreover, because of early voting, in some states, many Democratic primary voters already have cast their ballot and thus are not amenable to persuasion regardless of the results in South Carolina.

Sanders, meanwhile, has raised a boatload of money, mostly online through small-sized contributions, and has developed formidable grassroots political organizations in many states.

Financially and organizationally, Biden simply cannot compete with the Sanders juggernaut.

Biden does, though, have momentum and the full force of the Democratic Party establishment behind him. The establishment fears Bernie because it thinks he’s a general election loser who will be a drag on the party’s Senate and House candidates.

Biden also is helped by the fact that Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar dropped out of the race yesterday and endorsed him (Biden). Political analysts believe that centrist and moderate Democrats who would have voted for Buttigieg or Klobuchar are likely now to vote for Biden.

In addition, Biden benefits from the continued presence in the race of Elizabeth Warren, who takes votes away from Sanders. Sanders, meanwhile, benefits from the continued presence of Michael Bloomberg, who takes votes away from Biden.

So, where does that leave us, and what should we look for this evening when the results start rolling in?

First, even if, as expected, Biden mostly loses to Sanders tonight, can he keep these primary contests sufficiently close such that he gains a significant share of the Super Tuesday delegates?

The Democrats, remember, award their delegates proportionately in accordance with a candidate’s share of the vote, provided that candidate wins at least 15 percent.

Proportional delegate awards are especially important in California and Texas—big, delegate-rich states where a 15 percent showing at the local or district level can translate into delegates.

Thus more important than who wins individual states today is how they win and with what percent of the vote, both statewide and in specific local districts.

This matters: because even if, at the end of the primary season, Sanders ends up winning a plurality of the delegates, he could still lose the nomination to Biden at the party’s convention.

The reason: Democratic Party rules require that a candidate win a majority of the delegates, not a plurality.

Consequently, a deadlocked convention could decide, on a second ballot, to nominate Biden even if he won fewer delegates during the primaries than Sanders.

The delegate count thus matters in a big way now because large numbers of delegates (one-third on Super Tuesday) are being awarded.

Sanders needs to win an outright majority of the delegates, so that he can stop the party establishment from denying him the nomination.

Biden, conversely, needs to keep these primary contests close and prevent Sanders from winning a majority of the delegates, so that he (Biden) can win the nomination at the convention.

Second, can Bernie win a respectable share of the black vote, especially in the South?

This matters because African Americans are a core Democratic Party constituency whose support helps to confer legitimacy on a Democratic presidential candidate. And legitimacy becomes very important in the event that neither Sanders nor Biden win a majority of the delegates and the convention, therefore, must decide whom to nominate.

If, for example, Biden wins the black vote overwhelmingly on Super Tuesday as he did in South Carolina, then it becomes appreciably harder for Sanders to lay claim to the nomination even if he (Sanders) has a plurality of the delegates.

That is because Biden and his supporters will charge, with some accuracy and some justification, that Bernie has trouble winning black support; and that is a huge electoral handicap for any Democrats running against Trump.

Conversely, if Bernie can win a respectable share of the black vote, then he can say, with some accuracy and some justification, that he has broad-based electoral appeal and should be the nominee since he has won a plurality of the delegates.

In short, Super Tuesday won’t determine whom the Democrats nominate to take on Trump. However, Super Tuesday will set the battle lines for the likely showdown between Joe and Bernie at the party’s convention in Milwaukee, July 13-16.

Wins and losses matter tonight, but the numbers and demographic data behind those wins and losses matter even more. Stay tuned.

Feature photo credit: New York Times: results of the Democratic Party’s 2020 South Carolina Primary.