Politics ain’t beanbag, for sure, but sometimes, when you consider the intellects of the playas involved, perhaps it ought to be. A case in point is Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s recent pseudo gangsta-style outburst directed at the Supreme Court, telling the Supremes in no uncertain terms to keep their goddamn hands off of goddamn Roe v. Wade. Big, bad Chuck, in his clumsy effort to impress the chicks with what a woke, and what a bad ass, dude he is, trampled all over the notion of judicial independence—one of Donald Trump’s grossest crimes. It’s almost as if Schumer wanted to prove that there was no difference between the two parties!
Yes, you have to be really stupid to trample over both the Constitution and your party’s electoral chances at the same time. Fortunately for Schumer, there were some smart liberals, like Harvard’s Lawrence Tribe, who had the smarts to speak up and tell Schumer what an asshole he was making of himself. Schumer, to his very belated credit, got the message, sort of, and sought to “clarify”/walk back/“revise and extend”/bla bla bla/bla bla bla/bla bla bla his remarks, going so far as to say “I should not have used the words I used.” The whole shebang was ably dissected in all its banality by Reason’s Jacob Sullum.
Both House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Chuck somehow feel compelled to come out with bad ass statements from time to time, somehow assuming that only the people they want to impress—generally a segment of the Democratic Party that feels it isn’t getting enough attention from the leadership—will get the message and accept some brief verbal fist pumps in lieu of what they really want—money, or power, or both. Nancy and Chuck look like idiots to everyone else and probably don’t mollify/sucker the people they want to mollify/sucker. But it’s, uh, depressing that Chuck will trample all over the Constitution without even noticing in his pathetic efforts to show that he “cares”.
Afterwords
Row v. Wade was, and is, an extremely poor decision. The “abortion wars” would still be furious if it hadn’t been made—not only within “border” states but at the federal level, as each side would surely struggle to “federalize” the issue at every opportunity. But the anti-abortion forces wouldn’t feel cheated, as they have the right to do.
It’s been my opinion that conservatives have always lacked the nerve to overturn Roe outright. Perhaps now that all the “Nancy Reagan Republicans” have left the party, that will change. In fact, CJ Roberts might vote to overturn, just to show Big Chuck what happens to guys who think they’re tough, though I suspect he may be reluctant to do it in an election year. I think Roberts went over the line on Obamacare, splitting the baby as he did. He should have given the president an outright win, which he deserved, and lived with the howls of the right wing. And now he’s stuck with the sort of political balancing act he was trying to avoid. And Chuck can only hope that his stupidity has only momentary ramifications.
