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Let’s not escalate to political warfare

SCOTT PIEPHO
Cases and Controversies

Published: July 13, 2018

I have changed my mind about the upcoming confirmation process for replacing Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. Also about the Red Hen restaurant.

When Justice Kennedy announced his retirement, I was inclined to join the small chorus urging Democrats to shut down the Senate if that’s what it took to block President Trump’s pick.

My reasoning was that Democrats needed not only to preserve some balance on a court that is already threatening decades of precedent, but to secure some just desserts for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s cynically unprecedented refusal to allow the Senate to consider President Barack Obama’s pick for the last open seat.

A week of reflection has led me to reconsider. The problem with my admittedly splenetic initial reaction is twofold. First, stonewalling the nomination by shutting down the Senate would represent another escalation in the ongoing destruction of institutional norms in the Senate.

Under ideas floated in some progressive circles, the Senate minority would be using Senate rules to tie up the institution for the sole purpose of thwarting the majority’s will. I doubt the public would understand that as being a one-time response to that majority’s abuse of power. Instead, it would be yet another new normal and would probably result in rules changes that would further weaken the institutional prerogatives of the minority.

But more importantly, I question whether Democrats should follow even the existing precedents when what the country needs is a strengthening of the habits of mind that secure our democracy. I believe that we face unprecedented threats to our institutional integrity, but I’m not currently persuaded that blowing up those institutions even more is a good idea.

Which brings me to the Case of the Red Hen. When news broke that Stephanie Wilkinson, owner of the farm-to-table restaurant in Lexington, Virginia asked White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave because of her affiliation with the current administration, I understood it to represent a new precedent. Even during the most trying (for political progressives), periods of the administrations of Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush, we did not see reports of members of the administration being heckled or shunned in public.

At first blush, I considered this new tack to represent a move in the right direction. I believe that the Trump Administration represents something more a conservative presidency whose policies I happen to disagree with. Instead, Trumpism comprises a set of ideas with an end goal of unfettered executive power and permanent minority rule.

Moreover, Trump himself represents a set of threats independent of those undemocratic ideals. I fear and dislike his unapologetic bigotry, his embrace of a recklessly impulsive foreign policy, his penchant for self-dealing, his impatience with learning even the rudiments of statecraft, and the ease and glee with which crafts and repeats patent falsehoods.

On first impression, I thought that people expressing outrage at members of the Trump apparatus was a welcome means of conveying that this administration is different in ways that endanger the American experiment.

Now I wish people would stop. I respectfully dissent from Rep. Maxine Waters’ call for ongoing public confrontation. Instead of being a response to the abnormal, this kind of political vigilantism threatens to become a new normal, and one that will lead us to bad places if carried forward past this administration.

It is difficult to make the case to stand down given the escalation in both antidemocratic rhetoric and human rights abuses from this administration. It’s never fun being the adults in the room, and that much worse when lives are being ruined.

To make matters more difficult, the president treats every controversy as a zero-sum winner-take-all contest. If Democrats hit the mattresses and his pick is confirmed, he will take a Twitter victory lap, but he’ll do the same if even if Democrats allow the confirmation to proceed as usual, he will frame it as having defeated them. He has repeatedly falsely accused Senate Democrats of holding up appointments that he has not made.

In such an environment, the temptation to declare open warfare is overwhelming. Trump’s strong supporters total about twenty-five percent of the electorate. Declaring war on the administration means declaring war on a quarter of our fellow citizens. That scale of political warfare is too likely to devolve into actual violence.

Both sabotaging a nominee through Senate rules and yelling at administration officials represent a kind of political life-hacking for those out of political power. In fact, a healthy system offers no substitute for winning elections. Those who oppose this administration need to participate in the upcoming midterm as never before.


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