{"id":728007,"date":"2022-07-02T12:13:19","date_gmt":"2022-07-02T12:13:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2022\/07\/john-roberts-supreme-court-judicial-coup-epa-abortion\/"},"modified":"2022-07-02T12:15:31","modified_gmt":"2022-07-02T12:15:31","slug":"the-democrats-are-enabling-the-rights-supreme-court-takeover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2022\/07\/02\/the-democrats-are-enabling-the-rights-supreme-court-takeover\/","title":{"rendered":"The Democrats Are Enabling the Right\u2019s Supreme Court Takeover"},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n\n\n\n

Chief Justice John Roberts is spearheading the Right\u2019s judicial coup \u2014 and Democrats\u2019 worship of norms and institutions is allowing it to continue.<\/h3>\n\n\n
\n \n
\n President Joe Biden greets Chief Justice John Roberts before the State of the Union address, March 1, 2022. (Saul Loeb \/ AFP \/ Bloomberg via Getty Images)\n <\/figcaption> \n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n \n

As the director of the horror show that was the Supreme Court\u2019s 2022 term, Chief Justice John Roberts on Thursday opted to script his movie with the same plot twist as\u00a0Don\u2019t Look Up<\/em><\/a>. In an environmental ruling literally issued on\u00a0Asteroid Day<\/a>, Roberts channeled President Janie Orlean and aborted the government\u2019s nascent effort to halt the climate crisis imperiling the planet \u2014 a decision making it more likely that the human story will mimic the film\u2019s ending.<\/p>\n

Amid desperate\u00a0screams<\/a>\u00a0from scientists about the impending climate catastrophe, Roberts limited the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate carbon emissions. He declared that \u201ccapping carbon dioxide emissions at a level that will force a nationwide transition away from the use of coal to generate electricity may be a sensible \u2018solution to the crisis of the day,\u2019 but it is not plausible that Congress gave EPA the authority to adopt on its own such a regulatory scheme\u201d to halt the disaster.<\/p>\n

As\u00a0our reporting has shown<\/a>, today\u2019s cataclysmic ruling (though slightly\u00a0narrower<\/a>\u00a0than it could have been) is part of a larger judicial coup\u00a0fueled by dark money<\/a>\u00a0that has bought both sides of the justice system \u2014 the petitioners and the arbiters.<\/p>\n

This coup \u2014 which has received far less attention than the January 6 plot \u2014 features a cadre of unelected judges appointed by popular-vote losers now commandeering control of the government. It has resulted in the evisceration of protections for\u00a0voters<\/a>,\u00a0women<\/a>,\u00a0workers<\/a>,\u00a0consumers<\/a>,\u00a0retirees<\/a>, and now every living thing on the entire planet.<\/p>\n

All of that was engineered by the coup\u2019s puppet master, Roberts, a former US Chamber of Commerce lawyer and\u00a0Bush 2000 election thief<\/a>\u00a0who enjoys\u00a0incessant<\/a>\u00a0corporate media billing as a thoughtful moderate \u2014 even as his\u00a0rulings legalizing corruption<\/a>\u00a0made this rampage possible, and even as he now threatens to considerably\u00a0expand the carnage<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And yet Roberts,\u00a0Leonard Leo<\/a>, and the other real-life\u00a0House of Cards<\/em>\u00a0operatives of the American right are not the only reason this happened.<\/p>\n

They were enabled by a Democratic Party and its own cast of\u00a0West Wing\u00a0<\/em>characters, who in the name of bipartisanship, comity, and manners started surrendering right when the putsch began. At precisely the moment Roberts began his crusade, these Democrats constructed an entire religion of\u00a0normalism<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 the worship of norms, institutions, and etiquette above every other principle or inalienable right.<\/p>\n

There is little chance this nightmare will end unless we first understand how this religion took hold.<\/p>\n\n \n\n \n \n \n

\u201cWithin the Mainstream\u201d<\/h2>\n \n

Some could argue that Democrats\u2019 normalism began in 1991, when Joe Biden failed to block Clarence Thomas\u2019s court nomination and the Democratic-controlled Senate\u00a0confirmed<\/a>\u00a0him to replace civil rights hero Thurgood Marshall on the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

But that moment was the prelude. Democrats\u2019 church of normalism really rose in the mid-2000s, when, during the culmination of Aaron Sorkin\u2019s television homage to bipartisanship, fully half of the Senate Democratic Caucus\u00a0voted<\/a>\u00a0with Republicans to install Roberts as chief justice.<\/p>\n

Having finished up a string of disillusioning jobs in Washington, I was\u00a0quoted<\/a>\u00a0back then in\u00a0the New York Times<\/em>\u00a0for being particularly demoralized by Democrats\u2019 refusal to seriously challenge the nomination of Roberts, the Rasputin with the sunny smile who was cheerily billed as\u00a0\u201cthe go-to lawyer for the business community.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

But my anger was anomalous among Democratic Capitol Hill staff, liberal think tanks, advocacy groups, and political committees. Instead, the prevailing sentiment was that of a young senator named Barack Obama, who \u2014 in a preview of his White House \u2014 lashed out at those begging Democrats to do whatever they could to stop Roberts.<\/p>\n

In a\u00a0much-touted blog post<\/a>\u00a0that now reads both like a\u00a0Jed Bartlet\u00a0<\/em>monologue<\/a>\u00a0and a terrible omen of what was to come, Obama first scoffed at the idea of Democrats wielding power in an aggressive way:<\/p>\n

According to the storyline that drives many advocacy groups and Democratic activists \u2014 a storyline often reflected in comments on this blog \u2014 we are up against a sharply partisan, radically conservative, take-no-prisoners Republican party. They have beaten us twice by energizing their base with red meat rhetoric and single-minded devotion and discipline to their agenda.<\/p>\n

In order to beat them, it is necessary for Democrats to get some backbone, give as good as they get, break no compromise, drive out Democrats who are interested in \u201cappeasing\u201d the right wing, and enforce a more clearly progressive agenda. The country, finally knowing what we stand for and seeing a sharp contrast, will rally to our side and thereby usher in a new progressive era.<\/p>\n

I think this perspective misreads the American people<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He then went on to apply the argument to court nomination fights, telling progressives to shut up and accept capitulation:<\/p>\n

A majority of folks, including a number of Democrats and Independents, don’t think that John Roberts is an ideologue bent on overturning every vestige of civil rights and civil liberties protections in our possession. Instead, they have good reason to believe he is a conservative judge who is (like it or not) within the mainstream of American jurisprudence<\/strong>, a judge appointed by a conservative president who could have done much worse (and probably, I fear, may do worse with the next nominee). . . .<\/p>\n

Short of mounting an all-out filibuster \u2014 a quixotic fight I would not have supported; a fight I believe Democrats would have lost both in the Senate and in the court of public opinion; a fight that would have been difficult for Democratic senators defending seats in states like North Dakota and Nebraska that are essential for Democrats to hold if we hope to recapture the majority; and a fight that would have effectively signaled an unwillingness on the part of Democrats to confirm any Bush nominee, an unwillingness which I believe would have set a dangerous precedent for future administrations \u2014\u00a0blocking Roberts was not a realistic option<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Obama did cast a\u00a0ceremonial vote<\/a>\u00a0against Roberts when the confirmation was already a foregone conclusion. However, he not only helped shift the\u00a0Overton window<\/a>\u00a0to the hard right by casting Roberts as \u201cmainstream,\u201d he also had made a much bigger statement about his objectives and that of his party. He was the high priest of normalism.<\/p>\n

Appeasement, compromise, preservation of norms, and surrender to the Right in the name of being \u201crealistic\u201d was the new priority \u2014 leading to a president who campaigned on hope and change but then\u00a0reneged<\/a>\u00a0on his promise to codify\u00a0Roe v. Wade<\/em>, said he\u00a0\u201cregrets<\/a>\u201d\u00a0trying to block Justice Sam Alito\u2019s Supreme Court nomination,\u00a0praised<\/a>\u00a0the billionaire Koch brothers pushing our politics to the far right,\u00a0tried<\/a>\u00a0to help Republicans cut Social Security, and\u00a0demanded<\/a>\u00a0credit for boosting the fossil fuel industry.<\/p>\n

It also led to an administration that bailed out health insurers and banks while millions were immiserated,\u00a0<\/em>and a White House that berated the Left as\u00a0\u201cfucking retarded<\/a>\u201d\u00a0\u2014 so demoralizing Democratic voters that a reality TV star demagogue soon took over and gave Roberts the three other right-wing zealots he\u2019s now using to repeal the twentieth century.<\/p>\n\n \n \n \n

\u201cA Man of Honor\u201d<\/h2>\n \n

After four years of Donald Trump\u2019s tenure, which culminated with the installation of Supreme Court justice Amy Coney Barrett, you might have expected Democrats to discard the appeasement strategy, especially because party leaders have been so eager to get on cable television to cite the January 6 riot as proof that the end of democracy is nigh.<\/p>\n

Instead, though, the opposite has happened. With swamp things like\u00a0Rahm Emanuel<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Politico<\/em><\/a>\u00a0hilariously promising the rise of \u201cBiden Republicans,\u201d Biden has spent the first two years of his presidency trying to appease the GOP and delivering on the only\u00a0promise<\/a>\u00a0he seems intent on keeping: that\u00a0\u201cnothing would fundamentally change<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Biden has not only abandoned his promised legislative agenda and declined to implement promised executive actions; he has continued to\u00a0tout<\/a>\u00a0his \u201cfriend\u201d Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) as a\u00a0\u201cman of honor<\/a>\u201d while McConnell returns the favor by\u00a0bragging<\/a>\u00a0about blocking Obama Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, who might have helped prevent Roberts\u2019s judicial coup laying waste to America.<\/p>\n