7 votes

Senator Ben Sasse (r) on #MeToo, judicial nominations, and bad faith political arguments

9 comments

  1. [6]
    nacho
    (edited )
    Link
    I mean, his whole point on whether or not this vote is about the treatment of women in the entire country, and is a proxy of that rings about as hollow as a painted Easter egg. Sasse was one of...

    I mean, his whole point on whether or not this vote is about the treatment of women in the entire country, and is a proxy of that rings about as hollow as a painted Easter egg.

    Sasse was one of the first dudes to weaponize the Supreme court nomination process when Obama was in the White House. Now he reaps what he sowed.


    Sasse has been wholly uninterested in an actual investigation into the three serious allegations raised regarding sexual assaults perpetrated by Kavanaugh.

    Jamming a supreme court pick through without even talking to the purported witnesses both exculpatory or no is, any way you want to ply it, or massage it politically, a gigantic "fuck you" to anyone who decides to step forward with stories regarding self-experienced sexual abuse.

    Gender doesn't enter the mix. Sexuality doesn't enter the mix.

    The senate will vote that sexual abuse isn't even serious enough to look into properly before confirming a supreme court judge to a lifetime position.

    Of course when this violence (outside of the broken american jail system) targets one gender overwhelmingly, they'll take that as an attack on them. As they should.


    I'm not saying it isn't horrible how Democrats have systematically poisoned the process too. They've blatantly disrespected the wishes of women who believe they've been sexually abused and used them as blunt political tools to try to steal a supreme court seat.

    It's tit for tat. Ben Sasse was the original tit on Garland. You don't get to have it both ways:

    U.S. Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska is not joining several of his Republican colleagues in meeting with U.S. Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland.

    Sasse is sticking with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who says Garland will not get a confirmation hearing or vote.

    “The president’s nominee to the Supreme Court is, obviously, dead on arrival,” Sasse told reporters after a speech in Lincoln. “There are two constitutional responsibilities when there’s a Supreme Court vacancy. The president has the right to nominate someone, and the Senate has the right and the responsibility to advise and provide consent, and I think, pretty obviously, this nominee is not going to be confirmed.”

    Sasse weponized the Supreme Court nomination process. He did this. Not even meeting the nominee. No vote. Only party.


    You can say as many sensible things as you like, but when realpolitik drives your actual voting record and actions as a politician, and it in no way even resembles what you say, it's no wonder congress goes to hell.

    This is what creates approval ratings lower than toothache and all those other poll results of silly things to compare the dislike of politicians with.


    This linked video is a soundbite-video minted at voters just like all the rest of it. Sasse is the filth he's trying to high-ground. As are practically all of the other 99 senators.

    How in the world can you get at walking that back, rekindling a collaborative spirit to try to better America? Not with more bleeding heart speeches from the Senate pulpit. when Sasse is talking about politicians for whom the ends justify the means, he's talking about himself.

    [This video's] content without any context is appealing. The message is good, but I'm not capable of divorcing speaker from message in this case. If we want to have a discussion about only the points made, surgically removed from its current political context, sure. All the senators are political operatives. They lack morals or conviction. It's party-on-party, tiny majority takes all.

    10 votes
    1. [5]
      BuckeyeSundae
      (edited )
      Link Parent
      Yep, I think it's totally fair to call Sasse out for saying nice things and then doing the opposite. He is himself part of the process and increased partisanship that he (often) decries. We get...

      Yep, I think it's totally fair to call Sasse out for saying nice things and then doing the opposite. He is himself part of the process and increased partisanship that he (often) decries. We get who we elected, and in Sasse, people elected someone who talks a nice game and plays just as much hardball as the rest of them. I don't think that undermines the logic of his points so much as acknowledges the hypocrisy in his saying so while doing nothing to support the words.

      As you said, correctly I think, this is not the first time Sasse has bemoaned the current state of politics while seeming to do nothing to walk it back. If he were actually interested in securing greater bipartisanship, he'd do more than criticize the people who engage in these tactics, and he wouldn't join in these tactics himself. But is he wrong on the words?

      Many liberals I know recoil from "eye-for-an-eye" style ethics. Many of us are still very pissed (myself included) about the way Merrick Garland was handled, but it's also fair to point out that no one was used to assassinate Garland's character as part of that obvious political play. What has been happening with Kavanaugh can be genuinely seen as an escalation of this "anything to win" style of politics. With so little good faith being shown to anyone on the "other" side, including in your response, it's hard to see any reason for people to see Democrats' actions (as well as the larger constellation of activists) in any other light but as an escalation in retaliation of prior wrongs.

      5 votes
      1. [4]
        nacho
        Link Parent
        I think you're bang on in the last paragraph. Liberals say they're against eye-for-an-eye politics. In the Kavanaugh-case, that's disappearing. It really is just my team and the other team for...

        I think you're bang on in the last paragraph. Liberals say they're against eye-for-an-eye politics. In the Kavanaugh-case, that's disappearing. It really is just my team and the other team for many.

        I'm completely sure Republicans view this as an escalation compared to Garland. Just like Democrats view Trump's use of executive power as an escalation compared to Obama. Objectively, if that's even possible in this political frenzy, I'm not really sure whether things are escalating in either place, or the teams have just swapped whose possession it is.

        For me, this isn't about Sasse or Republicans. It's about all our senators being shitheads and pretending they're not for the cameras. I struggle pointing at any senator who's respectable (no, this isn't a McCain comment) and not playing the party game.

        That's a huge shame.

        4 votes
        1. [3]
          BuckeyeSundae
          Link Parent
          I was going to add this in to my comment, but I think it seems to make more sense as a response here. To push back a little bit on the idea of Sasse's own personal culpability here, Ben Sasse has...

          I was going to add this in to my comment, but I think it seems to make more sense as a response here. To push back a little bit on the idea of Sasse's own personal culpability here, Ben Sasse has been a senator only since the 2014 election put him in the senate. He missed out on the important opportunities to involve himself in the debates on Sotomayor and Kagan, and his conduct with Garland (less than two years into his tenure in the senate) did him no favors.

          The debate on Sotomayor, for instance, was a hugely important escalation of partisan treatment of Supreme Court nominees all on its own. Around 30-something Republican senators opposing Sotomayor for "radical/racist jurisprudence" when citing a line that was actually just about acknowledging that women and minorities come at everything they do with their unique experiences in mind, experiences that are distinct from white men.

          Given Sasse's lack of seniority, it's not really all that surprising that he is unable to make large waves on these topics that he, to his credit, repeatedly brings up.

          I will say though, I have laughed long and darkly about nearly every comment that tries to color Trump as expanding executive power in some dramatic way. His rhetoric is distasteful and heinous, and many of his policies obviously counter-productive, but the actual use of executive authority may even be modestly lessened from the Obama years. But alas, tribalism is one hell of a drug.

          3 votes
          1. Adys
            Link Parent
            Well, Americans are definitely reaping what they sowed here. I remember repeating back in 2008-2014 "You trust the administration now, does that mean you trust the next one? What about the one...

            I will say though, I have laughed long and darkly about nearly every comment that tries to color Trump as expanding executive power in some dramatic way. His rhetoric is distasteful and heinous, and many of his policies obviously counter-productive, but the actual use of executive authority may even be modestly lessened from the Obama years. But alas, tribalism is one hell of a drug.

            Well, Americans are definitely reaping what they sowed here. I remember repeating back in 2008-2014 "You trust the administration now, does that mean you trust the next one? What about the one after that?*

            But I don't think it's specifically executive power that people are concerned about. More about the complete disregard for law, process, and even basic courtesy that the Trump administration has repeatedly shown.

            The current administration is the guy in your buggy video game who comes in and starts abusing every single flaw in the system. We always knew the flaws were there, but since they weren't getting fixed, we agreed not to abuse them.

            In my opinion, it's far more troubling to expand power by abusing and breaking the law and processes in place, than to expand power through judicial means. They're both troubling for different reasons of course, and the latter sets the framework for future administrations... but the former is direct descent into dictatorship.

            What @nacho wrote above really resonates with me. How do you walk all this shit back?

            5 votes
          2. nacho
            Link Parent
            Each senator has one vote. He is responsible for his vote. The first senator (from either party) that stops just talking about the shitty partisanship and puts their vote where their mouth is,...

            Given Sasse's lack of seniority, it's not really all that surprising that he is unable to make large waves on these topics that he, to his credit, repeatedly brings up.

            Each senator has one vote. He is responsible for his vote. The first senator (from either party) that stops just talking about the shitty partisanship and puts their vote where their mouth is, that senator is the one to start the ball rolling.

            When things are as tight as they are now with the current thin split in the senate, any single senator on either side of the isle has huge power to personally do something about the situation. That's what's so depressing; every senator has to be in on it for this gridlocked situation to stay as it is.


            Again, I'm in two minds about executive power. To what degree is Trump simply not hiring people into government positions a political move to build down government? Is it use of presidential power to further the Trumpian agenda in novel ways for a president who can't get his agenda through congress? How much is government-by-tweet "real" power even though there's no follow through? The political effects seem real.

            I don't know how to balance the situation. Is it more use of executive power or just different use of executive power? Less use of it than Obama? I don't know.

            2 votes
  2. [3]
    BuckeyeSundae
    Link
    I don't necessarily agree that Judge Kavanaugh is fit to be the next supreme court justice on two major grounds (he is far too conservative in judicial politics, to the extent that President...

    I don't necessarily agree that Judge Kavanaugh is fit to be the next supreme court justice on two major grounds (he is far too conservative in judicial politics, to the extent that President Trump's appointment of him has very questionable self-interest involved, and he openly leaned into exacerbating partisan tensions in an inappropriate way that he has since vaguely admitted and attempted to explain as a mistake in the broader emotional context of his mental state at the time). That said, I think Sasse's points are important to listen to openly and to treat seriously.

    4 votes
    1. 0F0_Simplex
      Link Parent
      Regarding the second point, one of the reasons I am not comfortable with Kavanaugh is the fact that he, in one of the worst places to let emotions get ahead of rational thought, did just that....

      Regarding the second point, one of the reasons I am not comfortable with Kavanaugh is the fact that he, in one of the worst places to let emotions get ahead of rational thought, did just that. However, I can't say that I know the thought process of Kavanaugh. He might very well have been greatly suppressing his emotions. I've never faced the kinds of allegations Kavanaugh is getting, so I don't know how I would react. Probably with an even worse demeanor. Then again, I'm not applying to become a Supreme Court justice.

      5 votes
    2. Damocles
      Link Parent
      Aside from all the allegations of impropriety with multiple women in his past, in the very least, Kavanaugh has knowingly lied about terms such as "boof" and "devil's triangle" and "ralph club"...

      Aside from all the allegations of impropriety with multiple women in his past, in the very least, Kavanaugh has knowingly lied about terms such as "boof" and "devil's triangle" and "ralph club" and more - which he himself wrote down in his own yearbook - in some weirdly misguided attempt to... I don't know... appear less like the womanizing, alcoholic, belligerent parody of a National Lampoon knock-off 80s teen comedy movie character straight out of something like Hot Dog : The Movie that Brett (or Bart, if you prefer) Kavanaugh seems more and more likely to have been - at least in his years of high school and college.

      I mean, I don't think it has bearing directly (though it does paint a vivid picture indirectly) with the Ford allegations, but it is a nightmare optics-wise. So, why would Kavanaugh lie about those terms when asked under oath by various Senators? Kavanaugh perjured himself. That alone is enough to not only disqualify him, but to disbar and imprison him.

      Defending Kavanaugh is a non-starter. There's plenty he's done outside of the worst of what he might have done that should otherwise damn his career and now result in felony charges - were we not a nation now run by hypocritical despotic oligarchs whose mouthpieces constantly pander to bigots, Dominionists, and fearful willfully ignorant single-issue voters.

      4 votes