Why I Feel Bad Roundup

Are you watching "I Feel Bad"? I'm excited for it -- not the least because it features British-Indian-Israeli-Jewish actor Brian George. The conceit of the show is Sarayu Blue's character going through all the things in her daily life that make her feel bad (like "I'm turning into my mother"). So in honor of that, here are some of things in my life making me feel bad!

* * *

If the Ben Wittes who wrote that bracing Atlantic article explaining why, even though he knows and respects Brett Kavanaugh, he couldn't vote to confirm him was possessed by a demon, he'd have written this Eli Steinberg article on why, despite (in the very barest possible sense) "believing" Ford he still thinks the only way to "return to normal" and "get[] politics out of the pursuit of justice" is to vote to confirm.

Iran's Supreme Leader uses clips of Aly Raisman, among others, to argue that if women dressed more modestly (namely, wore a hijab) they wouldn't be sexually assaulted. That sound you hear is Raisman preparing to break another world record, this time for longest and loudest continuous cussing out of a single human being.

The Canary Mission -- the "pro-Israel" blacklisting site of (mostly young) people who are too-associated with BDS or Palestinian solidarity politics (read my extended thoughts on them here) has very closely guarded its funding sources. But the Forward found one of the donors -- and it's the San Francisco Jewish Federation. (Why I feel slightly better: the Federation concluded that it's funding guidelines were violated and promised not to allow such donations in the future)

More Canary! Here's a Zionist professor noting that he appears on the Canary blacklist despite opposing BDS, simply because he's also opposed certain proposed legal anti-BDS countermeasures (I wonder if I'm on there too?).

An American student of Palestinian ancestry was blocked from entering Israel to study at Hebrew University. Shades of the Michigan letter of recommendation case, except obviously 98% of people are scrambling to invert their position 180 degrees. Oh, and the Israeli ministry that excluded the student (who obtained a visa from the American Israeli consulate in Miami)? It apparently relied on reporting from ... you guessed it: Canary!

Jonathan Cohn reports on one of those annoying political realities that makes academics' and wonks' heads hurt: Bernie Sanders' "Stop BEZOS" bill was both utterly idiotic as policy, and yet likely responsible (in substantial part, at least) for Amazon's announced $15 minimum wage. It's not just "bad policy = good politics". It's that "promoting bad policies is good politics that sometimes can grease the path to good policies"! For anyone who cares both about good political and policy outcomes and really doesn't want to be a hack, that's a recipe for a big ol' frown-y face.

Keeping the Important Questions in Mind

The recent allegations against Brett Kavanaugh, and the argument regarding whether what a "17 year old, presumably very drunk kid" might have done (e.g., sexually assault a fellow student) should have a bearing on his Supreme Court nomination, raise many questions that are important to think about. But some of these questions are more important than others.

Here's an example of an important question:

(1) Should a person who committed a sexual assault as a teenager, and who faced the appropriate legal consequences and has otherwise accepted responsibility for their act, be completely barred from all social and economic opportunities and permanently stripped of their basic participatory rights as citizens (e.g., to vote) for the rest of their life?

Here's an example of a much less important question:

(2) Should a person who committed a sexual assault as a teenager, who has faced no tangible consequences whatsoever at any point in their life and who never acknowledged responsibility, not be given a seat on the single highest judicial body in the country?

And here's an example of a question so utterly unimportant that it's baffling it'd even be asked:

(3) Should we spend any time puzzling through question #2 if we haven't, as a society and in our structure of criminal law and economic practice, unequivocally answered "no" to question #1?

Answer key: (1) No (2) Yes (3) No

How Roe Might Die In Life

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) has said that Judge Kavanaugh told her he agrees with John Roberts on Roe v. Wade: It's "settled law".

Is this another episode of "how gullible is Susan Collins"? Almost certainly yes. But it also offers an opportunity to at least a plausible avenue whereby Roe could not formally be overturned but could functionally be killed off.

Justice Kennedy provides a model. He was part of the trio of Republican-appointed justices who "saved" Roe v. Wade in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Also in that case, he and a court majority upheld virtually all of Pennsylvania's substantive restrictions on abortion rights (striking down only the spousal notification requirement). And after Casey, Justice Kennedy continued to vote to permit pretty much any abortion restriction that presented itself to the Supreme Court even as he never came out and said "Roe v. Wade is overturned."

It's easy to imagine a similar trend basically eroding Roe into dust. Casey and Roe each offer rhetoric for the Court to latch onto. Roe explicitly acknowledged that the value of protecting fetal life was an important governmental interest. Casey, for its part, allows abortion to be banned at any point prior to "viability", and advances in medical technology have steadily pushed that date back. Just as Casey announced a new gloss on Roe while still reaffirming its "core holding", it's not hard to imagine a Kavanaugh-centered court suggesting that Roe is intact so long as some women in some states (generally, liberal states where abortion rights are democratically-entrenched) can access it, and that there is no conflict with Roe or Casey's "core holdings" when women can still access the morning-after-pill.

Basically, what'd we'd get in this world is a studied avoidance of actually overturning Roe while still permitting various state-level restrictions which make abortion functionally impossible to obtain. The net result is a world that's observationally equivalent to Roe being overturned, but Roberts and Kavanaugh get to pat themselves on the back as respectful of precedent.

And the thing is -- this sort of move is a John Roberts special. Yes, the Roberts court isn't afraid to explicitly overturn precedents when it has to (e.g., Janus or Citizens United). But what it really loves to do is "distinguish" precedents it dislikes in ways that virtually obliterate the old holding. Gonzalez v. Carhart, upholding a federal "partial-birth abortion" ban while somehow not overturning Stenberg v. Carhart (which struck down a virtually identical state ban), is maybe the keynote example of this move.

I still think the most likely result of a Kavanaugh confirmation is Roe gets (formally) overturned. But the Roberts Court has ample tools at its disposal if it wants to bury Roe without actually killing it. The idea that conservative jurists actually need to utter the words "Roe v. Wade overruled" to effectuate their abortion agenda is almost certainly a myth.

UPDATE: Okay, so it turns out Leah Litman did this, but better.

Things People Blame the Jews For, Volume XLVII: Schumer Not Stopping the Kavanaugh Nomination

A few times now -- not anywhere official, just on Facebook posts or blog comments -- I've seen some variation on the following argument: Chuck Schumer is going to "let" Brett Kavanaugh be confirmed because Israel and/or Netanyahu. Right after Justice Kennedy announced his retirement, John Cole made an intimation in this direction:

Dear @SenSchumer Now is not the time for your middling centrism and civility bullshit. You better fight like McConnell did or we will replace you. You're not the only New Yorker owned by Wall Street and AIPAC. You are very replaceable, so you better grow some balls.

— Dirty Computer (@Johngcole) June 27, 2018

At first blush, it's not just a false connection to make, it's a profoundly weird one. What exactly does AIPAC or Israel have to do with the Supreme Court? It's the branch of government that -- by far -- is least relevant to their policy agenda. Whatever Schumer does or doesn't regarding the confirmation fight -- and right now, all signs are he's gearing up to make it a real fight -- will almost assuredly have nothing to do with Israel or pro-Israel lobbying one way or the other.

There's actually a few different conspiracy theories intersecting to make this one, not all of which are specifically antisemitic or even about Jews. There is:

• The belief that congressional Democrats have some super-secret trick they could use to stop Kavanaugh, and the only reason they don't use it is because they don't really want to block the nomination;
• The belief that Schumer doesn't actually possess substantive (hawkish) policy views about Israel, but rather votes the way he does simply in blind deference to whatever Netanyahu wants;
• The belief that Israel is so concerned about who will fill Justice Kennedy's seat that they will make sure Kavanaugh gets confirmed.

You need to believe all three subparts for the machine to run. If you don't believe the first, then you're left with the straightforward and boring truth that if Kavanaugh gets confirmed it's almost certainly because he's a Republican nominee needing to get the approval of a Republican Senate, and Democrats don't have some magic bullet to turn 49 into 51.

You need to believe the second because otherwise there's no reason to think that Schumer would care what Bibi thinks about the U.S. Supreme Court. If Schumer votes hawkishly on Israel because that's what he believes (and it so happens to mesh with Bibi's own views), then there's no reason to think that harmony would translate over to the American judicial context. What they really want to argue is that Schumer is bought and paid for by Israel and just ceases to exercise independent judgment once Bibi opens his mouth on any topic.

And you need to believe the third because otherwise there's no account for why Israel would intercede in this issue. I understand why Israel would try to lobby people on the Iran Deal -- that's a big issue for them. But the Supreme Court? That's not their bailiwick. And you'd have to think they care so much that they'd be willing to risk serious blowback for marginal gain, since Kavanaugh is very likely to be confirmed even if they do nothing.

The first of these is actually the largest driver here. There is a non-trivial portion of the progressive base that has more or less full-throatedly endorsed Green Lantern-ism -- the idea that whenever progressive political outcomes don't manifest, it's because liberal politicians didn't will it hard enough. This is itself a weird position when you think about it -- its leftists basically saying that American political structures are so lopsidedly slanted in favor of progressive priorities that we should naturally see progressive results even in circumstances where the liberal party is in the minority. But it's an outcropping of the same "the primary was rigged" sentiment whereby everything is being sabotaged from within, we'd be winning already were it not for the powers-that-be standing in our way, and the greatest enemies are always inside the house.

On it's own, this sort of sentiment doesn't require any particular connection to Jews or Israel. And one does see other terms or entities fill the role of the interfering "power" that stands and obstructs the natural progressive march of political history ("neoliberals", "the establishment", "big money donors" ... there are a few actually).

Nonetheless, understanding this sentiment does illustrate how the "Zionist conspiracy" iteration is not accidental and is a form of antisemitism. It is antisemitism -- specifically, the antisemitism that naturally associates Jews and Jewish entities with extraordinary power and world-spanning conspiracies that stand outside the normal fabric of political space and time -- that makes Israel "work" as a vector for this sort of conspiracy theorizing.

The conspiracy theory is trapped between the rock of feeling like it's going to lose (the Kavanaugh nomination) and the hard place of fervently believing that -- were things proceeding as they "should" (and they mean that descriptively, not normatively) -- they'd be destined to win. What they need, then, is some body that can break their own political equivalents of the laws of physics -- and, precisely because it can latch onto a network of deeply-ingrained antisemitic tropes, the Zionist cabal feels "plausible" as the sort of entity that could pull that off. And, as a bonus, it offers hope -- if the Zionists are what is standing between the conspiracy theorist and total victory, then all one needs to do is smash Zionism and voila! Utopia. It's so much easier than the messy, complicated, sometimes-friend-sometimes-foe reality that characterizes actual political progress -- which is why antisemitism is called the "socialism of fools".

So let's state what should be obvious: If Kavanaugh is confirmed, as remains much more likely than not, it will be for the straightforward reason that he is a Republican nominee and there are 51 Republican Senators in a 100 person chamber. That's it. If a few Democrats defect, that will be because sometimes red-state Democrats facing tough reelection fights cast votes like this. That's it. I'm not saying any of that is good or wise or justified, just that it's the most obvious explanation, and not one that seems so superficially implausible that it cries out for an alternative "it's a Zionist conspiracy" explanation.