Elizabeth Warren on fighting and losing, Brett Kavanaugh edition

Elizabeth Warren on her Facebook page today (10/06/2018) said, "Don’t forget this: Even the fights we lose matter. History will remember that we didn’t go quietly. We resisted, persisted, and fought to be heard."

She's referring to the fight against putting a lying misogynist on the Surpeme Court.

But she put her finger on what may be the single biggest reason that the Democrats reached the state that yielded the disastrous results of 2016 up and down the ticket.

The Democrats haven't been willing enough to fight and lose on partticular programs and issues. The Republicans, on the other hand, staged countless sure-to-lose votes on abolishing the ACA ("Obamacare"). Today they have gone a long way toward wrecking it. And have certainly reduced access to health insurance for millions of Americans.

They used those losing votes to gin up their base voters. But they also served to establish a narrative which not only pleased their base. It also accustomed the press to regarding that position as a "mainstream" position, even though the program itself was very popüular. But they managed to make the name "Obamacare" unpopular.

That's one important example of this process. But only one. The Republicans were willing to take highly partisan positions and fight for them, even when it was unrealistic and impractical to think they would win on it immediately. While the Democrats have spent decades using Republican framing to argue for Democratic positions. And even on two of his most important successes as President, the economic stimulus of early 2009 and the ACA, Obama started the negotiations with the Republicans with a pre-comprised version aimed at getting Republican support - and negotiated the program down from there in the Republican direction.

What's important, of course, is not that the Democrats fight and lose. The point is that they should fight for key programs and principles.

The Washington Post featured an article yesterday that could reasonably be described as gushing over Trump's supposed political brilliance in getting the Kavanaugh nomination approved (although it hadn't gotten a final Senate vote yet). It's an example of how the Establishment press normalizes Republican radicalism, including Trump's. (Philip Rucker et al, ‘Willing to go to the mat’: How Trump and Republicans carried Kavanaugh to the cusp of confirmation 10/05/2018)

But it does give an example of the intensity gap between Democratic and Republican elected officials in fights like this:

Tuesday evening in Southhaven, Miss., Trump laid into Ford with the ruthlessness of an attack dog and the pacing of a stand-up comedian. The crowd roared with laughter and applause. Aides privately crowed as footage of the performance was played and replayed many times over, shifting the national discussion from scrutiny of Kavanaugh’s honesty and drinking habits to doubts about Ford’s memory. And in Washington, Republican senators — though they condemned Trump’s mockery of Ford — felt emboldened to aggressively demand Kavanaugh’s confirmation, which became a near-certainty Friday and looks to become official with a vote Saturday.

“As long as he was willing to go to the mat for him, it fortified probably people up here, too,” said Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the chamber’s third-ranking Republican leader.

Can anyone claim with a straight face that Barack Obama was "willing to go to the mat" fighting for Merrick Garland's Supreme Court nomination? Because Obama - and most Congressional Democrats - were unwilling to operate on the notion that, "Even the fights we lose matter."

Ron Elving gave this account of What Happened With Merrick Garland In 2016 And Why It Matters Now NPR 06/29/2018:

Democrats were outraged, of course, but were short of tools with which to respond. As the minority party — following a disastrous midterm in 2014 — they could not force a committee or a floor vote. They gave speeches, and they urged voters to turn out in protest in the November elections.

Scores of scholars — law professors, historians and political scientists — urged the Senate to at least have a process for Garland as a duly appointed nominee with impeccable qualifications. But some lawyers and academics pointed out that the Constitution empowered the Senate to "advise and consent" but did not require it do so. (Some adding that they thought the Senate still ought to do so.)

So they shrugged their shoulders, and said, hey, what can we do, the Republicans control the Senate. And used the nomination as one more item in their list of issues that they say they support but are notably reluctant to fight for.

Elving rightly notes that there is "ample evidence that the Supreme Court motivates conservatives more than it does progressives."

That's also true on about every other issue that matters to the Democratic base. But, hey, Nancy Pelosi is committed to PayGo!

Elving recalls that blocking the Garland nomination was sucessful for the Republicans in two important ways: "it prevented the seating of a Democratic president's choice" and "the vacancy became a powerful motivator for conservative voters in the fall."

"Again and again in the fall, candidate Donald Trump treated the Supreme Court as a touchstone, sometimes simply shouting the two words to his rally crowds. And indeed, polling has shown the court vacancy did mean a great deal to Trump voters, especially those religious conservatives who had personal misgivings about him," he writes.

The elected officials and party establishment of one the two major American parties are just more serious about achieving their programmatic goals. That party is not the real existing Democratic Party.