Inside Obama's poke, was another "pig in the poke" because little is publicly known about Garland's politics other than that he tends to defer to executive power. By not revealing precisely what he thinks about money in politcs, Garland could retain the Scalia seat for plutocracy, even in a progressive election year. For this reason it is Senator Sanders' obligation to find out exactly what Garland intends to do about the precedent of Buckley v Valeo which first created the bizarre idea that money is speech. From all indications Garland is the type of judge who will meekly follow this plutocratic precedent, not rip it out of the law books as is required of this swing justice.
New Realism
With a potential turnabout of the Roberts Court's line of five-to-four vote "money is speech" political corruption decisions at stake, this appointment could easily determine the prospects for achieving any part of Sanders' agenda. Without the revolution against plutocracy that Sanders recognizes as necessary to accomplish his goals, a plutocratic Congress will not endorse the progressive legislative agenda for which he is campaigning. This revolution must therefore be won on the Court first, or there will be no victory over the legalized corrupt politics that dictate congressional action on all matters of concern to plutocrats. Though filling Scalia's vacant seat with a progressive justice is thus key to any realistic chance of achieving the promises Sanders is making to the Millennial generation, and others, his campaign so far seems oblivious to that essential fact. The bland endorsement of Garland that Sanders issued does little to cure that impression, although it is not necessarily fatal to effective strategy.
The campaign's failure on this issue of realism feeds the complaint that it is "over stating what [Sanders] can deliver." In the two states on March 15 where the ratio of voters who thought Sanders' "policies are realistic" reached around 2/3, Sanders did better against the 3/4 who consistently think that Clinton's policies are realistic. In the three states where fewer voters thought Sanders plans are realistic, he lost by significant margins. This is one of the important factors hobbling Sanders' electoral support. Clearly demonstrating that he has a clue about the essential importance of this Supreme Court seat to accomplishing his policy goals could only help Sanders with voters who are skeptical whether he knows what he is talking about when he recites his talking points.
If his campaign were paying attention it would be advising Sanders to prioritize the exercise of his constitutional right, and perhaps his constitutional obligation according to Obama's Kabuki view, to provide formal "advice" to Obama about this appointment. That advice should have been for Obama to nominate a progressive, not a plutocrat, for Scalia's vacant swing seat. If the campaign were on top of the issue, it would have at least insisted on placing some condition on Sanders' endorsement, such as that Sanders looks forward to interviewing Judge Garland to learn his views on the Court's money in politics decisions.
Since Sanders has yet to demonstrate that he does know what he is talking about with respect to the Supreme Court's role in creating the plutocracy, this presents a serious issue for the campaign to solve. Sanders' apparent endorsement of Garland only aggravates the problem and increases the pressure on the campaign to deliver its solution before more primaries are lost.
Unfortunately, Obama has chosen in Merrick Garland a judge who joined Chief Judge Sentelle's opinion in the single worst money is politics case that was not decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. Speechnow.org v. FEC, (2010) is the case which unleashed the scourge of SuperPACs. Unless Garland expressly recants this decision and makes an equally express statement in opposition to the concept that money is speech, Garland cannot pass the necessary litmus test of a justice who from day one on the Court will be looking for any opportunity to rule that money is not speech, and that a democracy has an absolute inherent power to defend itself from overthrow by corruption.
Instead, Garland has already ruled that "the government has no anti-corruption interest in limiting contributions to an independent expenditure group," i.e., SuperPACS, which contributions are directly invested in massive electioneering, virtually running some campaigns, such as for Bush.
Obama can call Garland moderate and Republicans can call him liberal (apparently Garland followed the pre-Scalia 2d Amendment), but on the most important question of 2016 he is neither. He is a centrist only in the plutocratic sense, that he occupies the point where both parties meet to serve plutocracy. He has facilitated the use of vast sums of money in politics from the Billionaire Class. He therefore is a plutocratic judge who has helped enable the corruption of American democracy rather than defend it against political corruption in every way possible. He cannot pass the litmus test for filling the Scalia vacancy, a seat that has traditionally been occupied by radical s like Scalia. Obama has not asked Garland to pass a progressive litmus test, nor a liberal identity politics test, but only a Republican acceptability test. Obama understands that the overt party of plutocracy can only accept a plutocrat in this swing seat, and he intends to give them one.
Sanders could easily have seen this appointment coming, but took no action. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest, on March 9, had officially acknowledged the withdrawal of Attorney General Loretta Lynch from consideration for the Scalia seat This announcement confirmed that her name had been high on, if not at the top of, Obama's short list for the nomination. Lynch, had been widely touted as Obama's most likely choice. She provides an example of the kind of nominee Obama would offer to attract Republican support, a Wall Street lawyer turned prosecutor. But Lynch also had a veneer or two of identity politics to decorate the underlying plutocratic values. Appointing another Jewish justice to a Court that already has three can no longer raise the diversity issues that it once did in the days of the great Justice Louis Brandeis or Benjamin Cardozo.
Like others on Obama's short list of candidates for the Supreme Court, Obama' s revolving door Attorney General Loretta Lynch, a former corporate lawyer and prosecutor, is "marinated in the [plutocratic] worldview." According to The Hill, "[a] lmost every candidate that is being mentioned in press reports has ties to Republicans, from relationships with GOP lawmakers to experience clerking for a Republican-appointed judge to past support from the party on a confirmation vote; at least two have all three."
Obama announced his "intention to nominate somebody ... who should be a consensus candidate." That is Obama's euphemism for a "plutocrat," since the only time that Obama has reached consensus with Republicans has been when they have joined together in giving away the store to plutocrats, typically over Sanders' objection, after a long Kabuki performance just like the Nomination Kabuki currently underway. This appointment is the key to the front door of the store, since without the Court's legalizing of political corruption, plutocrats would have to resort to breaking and entering as they did prior to 1976. Obama intends to turn that key over safely to plutocrats and their choice for his successor without interruption by Sanders.
The White Male Identity Option
Plutocrats often disguise themselves as "liberals" behind identity politics in order to divide liberals from anti-plutocracy progressives. Obama's Identity Plutocrat nominee would have been much like Obama himself who deploys his identity effectively to stand "between [plutocratic bankers] and the pitchforks." Lynch fit that same profile. But it would have been difficult for Obama to find another similar black woman who does. Obama was confident that, due to his extensive propaganda operations, he did not even have to play liberal identity politics with this nomination for the benefit of his base of professional activists. What makes Obama the more effective evil is that he is able to offer up the white male identity of the Republican base after his "pig in the poke" theatrics sufficiently neutralized liberals and progressives. Many may "grouse" about not having identity politics as a cover for promoting a plutocrat. But most will carry out their paid duties to convince Democrats that plutocracy is progressive. We are well past 1984. Others were "deeply disappoint[ed] that President Obama failed to use this opportunity to add the voice of another progressive woman of color to the Supreme Court" or more specifically "that we have to continue to wait for the first African American woman to be named."
There is no one in public life with a clearer moral vision about the state of democracy than Union Theological Seminary philosopher Dr. Cornel West. On this issue of identity politics he observes: "It is easy to use one's gender identity, as Clinton has, or racial identity, as the Congressional Black Caucus [PAC] recently did in endorsing her, to hide one's allegiance to the multi-cultural and multi-gendered Establishment." Identity politics promoted by the likes of a recycled Gloria Steinem is the base of the gender side of Clinton's campaign. According to West, such politics also benefit the "neoliberal black political and chattering class still on the decaying Clinton bandwagon (and gravy train!)" to which Clinton owes all of her decisive primary victories.
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