One of the subjects I keep coming back to here is the baffling inability of Democratic leaders to adapt to (indeed even to recognize) the new rules of the game. Whether it is coming up with a winning electoral strategy, stopping the nominations of Karen Hughes, Alberto Gonzales, and Condoleezza Rice or managing an effective opposition to the President’s Supreme Court nominees, Democrats have simply refused to update their tactics to reflect the reality of Republican control and the resulting depreciation of rules and comity.
On Friday, I happened across a C-SPAN replay of a panel discussion on the recent Supreme Court nominations. Among the speakers were journalists, leaders of independent judicial advocacy groups, a representative from the White House who served as a liaison between the administration and the Senate, and the Senior Nominations Counsel to Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Patrick Leahy, a woman named Helaine Greenfeld. Many of the panelists on both sides of the aisle were informative and obviously had detailed understanding and valuable perspective on the battles recently fought. Greenfeld however is indicative of why we keep losing:
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(audio of quoted text)
Jeffery Toobin (CNN): Talk about how you saw the Alito hearings shaping up in the Judiciary Committee.
Greenfeld: Before they began or as they are happening?
Toobin: Well, before, and just sort of your plan.
Greenfeld: Well, from my perspective, we’re not so much working on a plan for the hearing as we are trying to figure out who the nominee is. And because we’re in a situation where getting material and documents about his career at the Justice Department was really impossible, and some things were coming from the archives, Presidential libraries, trickling in, that was an ongoing process from the minute we got the nomination right up until the hearing began. In fact, I think it was the day before the hearing that we got some final information about the Vanguard recusal issue…that showed us that Judge Alito had never put Vanguard on his recusal list as he promised the Senate that he would, um, until 2003.
So it’s an ongoing process of preparation. I don’t think you can always write a script. You can talk about what you may ask about, you can help prepare your Senator, but the Senators really are…they’re on their own, and they’re doing the best they can. I think when you go back and look at the Alito hearing, and in preparation I’ve been reading the transcript again, what strikes me is that the perception of how the Democrats did is really at odds with the reality when you look at the questions.
The Senators, the Democratic Senators on the Judiciary Committee asked serious questions about serious issues. My boss asked a half an hour almost exclusively about executive authority which is an incredibly important issue to him, especially given to the moment of the nomination. This was a nominee who was interviewed by the Vice President, by Karl Rove I think even by Scooter Libby at a time when they knew about the warrantless wiretapping but no one else did. Remember, he was interviewed for this position I think more than a year before it occurred. When the White House knew that they would benefit from someone on the Supreme Court who would protect the President’s accretion of authority. We didn’t exactly know that’s where it was going.
So my boss asked a half an hour about executive authority, you can take a look at Senator Kennedy asking about serious issues. Each one of them, I went down the list, I wrote it down, and I don’t think you can criticize them. I think it’s interesting that the Republicans didn’t ask serious questions of this nominee, certainly not nearly as serious as compared with the Democrats’ questions to Justices Ginsburg and Breyer. They [Democrats] asked real questions. They asked questions about substance. They asked questions about issues and cases. You look at the questions that were asked by the Republican Senators of Judge Roberts and Judge Alito, some of them are laughable. One Senator asked Judge Alito, and I think Judge Roberts too, to take him through the process of how a case goes through the Supreme Court. So you sit in a conference and nobody is in there with you and you read the briefs, tell me about it, it was silly.
I posted the audio in addition to the text in order to convey the combination of incredulity and borderline haughtiness with which Greenfeld spoke. She seems proud that Democrats stood on substance and in complete disbelief that Republicans would stoop to asking meaningless questions of their handpicked nominees. It’s yet another example of a Democrat claiming a moral victory in the face of a crushing defeat, this time in the form of two 30-year Supreme Court appointments. But while Greenfeld’s tone is deeply troubling, it is her substantive take on the dynamics of the nomination process that should have all Democrats questioning their leaders.
A) We’re not so much working on a plan for the hearing as we are trying to figure out who the nominee is.
This is a senior Democratic Senate aide speaking, albeit one who has apparently been sleeping soundly for the entire Bush administration. The Religious Right has been banging on the table and puffing themselves up for handing two elections and Congressional control to Bush and the Republicans. The big money-big business interests have been tripping over themselves to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into campaigns and think tanks to guarantee their desired outcome. Who did Greenfeld and her bosses expect Bush to nominate, Michael Moore and Cindy Sheehan? Beyond the simple fact that both Roberts and Alito were on every credible short list, the truth is, not having a name to go along with the nominee should have been of no consequence to Senate Dems. The individual sitting in front of the cameras in the Judiciary Committee hearing room has been and will continue to be nothing more than an exemplar of right wing dogma. In Greenfeld’s wildest imagination, can she conceive of facing an adversary who favors individual rights over the rights of corporations? One who supports a woman’s right to choose? One who places preserving the environment over wanton pollution? There’s a simple way that the Democrats could have figured out the nominee: the find & replace function in Microsoft Word. Unless they are still using typewriters, which unfortunately seems completely plausible.
While the Dems were busy spinning the wheel of misfortune in a vain attempt to divine the nominee, Greenfeld admits (an odd choice of words on my part because she doesn’t see this as a negative) that she and her team weren’t working on a plan. No snappy soundbites, no working the media, no communications campaign aimed at defining the nominee to the public.
B) I don’t think you can always write a script. You can talk about what you may ask about, you can help prepare your Senator, but the Senators really are…they’re on their own, and they’re doing the best they can.
One reason for the lack of planning might be this gem. It’s common knowledge that Senators have egos and don’t like taking orders from anyone. So why is it that Republican egos find ways to work as a team while simultaneously stroking themselves? Is it out of the question for Leahy, Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden , Herb Kohl, Dianne Feinstein, Russ Feingold, Chuck Schumer, and Dick Durbin to spend some time coordinating the questions they plan to ask to avoid duplication and extract maximum value out of their precious “preening for the cameras” time?
C) I think when you go back and look at the Alito hearing, and in preparation I’ve been reading the transcript again, what strikes me is that the perception of how the Democrats did is really at odds with the reality when you look at the questions.
Spoken like someone with a less-than-clear perception of reality. How “Democrats did” on Alito was lose the committee vote, lose a disorganized filibuster vote badly, lose the final confirmation vote, all the while not using the process to paint the administration as packing the court with ideologues hostile to the best interests of most Americans. But hey, let’s pass out gold stars to the Democrats for staying awake and not spilling their lunches on their shirts. Again: Winners don’t need to mention how they played. They won. In this game, you either win the vote, win the public opinion, or you’re a loser.
D) The Senators, the Democratic Senators on the Judiciary Committee asked serious questions about serious issues. I think it’s interesting that the Republicans didn’t ask serious questions of this nominee, certainly not nearly as serious as compared with the Democrats’ questions to Justices Ginsburg and Breyer.
And? Was anyone expecting the Democrats to ask Roberts or Alito about their little league batting average? Of course they asked serious questions. But what good is that when they insist on letting the subject of their questioning off the hook with non-answers and provable lies and then fail to score points in the media by highlighting all the questions that went unanswered? Likewise, who was betting on ferocious interrogations by Hatch, Cornyn, Brownback, Coburn and Kyl, the very Republican leaders sent to Washington to enforce the demands of the base?
It’s hard to say which is more frustrating, that Greenfeld thinks that the game is won or lost on the strength of the questions or that she expects Republicans to uphold some quaint tradition from the days before Bush. Or maybe those two factors have to take a back seat based on this article written during the Roberts confirmation battle:
Here, vacation talk is about how the family is going to the beach without you. “It definitely doesn’t feel like August,” says Helaine Greenfeld.
[...]
Greenfeld, who normally works four days a week, promised her husband and two kids she’d make it to the beach for part of the time.
Obviously Senate Democrats have no concept of how to win battles in the present-day environment. And thus it doesn’t really matter if their Senior Nominations Counsel is more concerned with reading Jackie Collins novels on the sands of Wildwood, New Jersey than trying to keep people like Roberts and Alito off the Supreme Court.