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In Comparing PUMA Reactions to Sarah Palin and Sonia Sotomayor, the Expected Hypocrisy Emerges

For some time now, the PUMAs – those female Hillary supporters who let their bitterness, hate, and (yes!) racism trump reason during last year’s presidential election – have been free to simultaneously pursue their twin goals of (1) boosting women politicians, without regard to their qualifications, and (2) trashing Barack Obama. Hitherto, these goals have never been in conflict, and in fact they’ve dovetailed nicely. Hence the PUMAs’ bizarre defense of Sarah Palin as the new Hillary, apparently blind to her contempt for Secretary Clinton, and everything she stands for.

All of that changed with President Obama’s nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. With their stated goal of backing any woman no-matter-what finally at cross purposes with their blind hatred of the President, it was an open question which impulse would carry the day.

Well, not really.

Unsurprisingly, the PUMAs have thrown their own gender, and their essentialist logic, straight under the bus, leaping to attack the Judge for her unclear record on abortion rights. As we’ve reported, this shouldn’t be a concern: both Obama and Sotomayor have used almost every legal code word in the book to indicate their twin support for the right to choose. But more importantly, it’s hilariously hypocritical. Sarah Palin, PUMA darling, is on the record opposing abortion in almost all cases:

I am pro-life. With the exception of a doctor’s determination that the mother’s life would end if the pregnancy continued. I believe that no matter what mistakes we make as a society, we cannot condone ending another life.

During the general election, this didn’t worry them in the slightest. Are we to expect that Judge Sotomayor’s relative silence on the issue is somehow more damning than an open and obvious hostility to the Roe right? No: the only thing they care about in Sotomayor’s nomination is that it comes to them with President Obama’s signature. And the only thing they ever cared about with Governor Palin is that she wasn’t Obama.

If we ever doubted it, it’s clear now: PUMAs are just ignorant, single-issue (“NOBAMA!”) partisan hacks. Good riddance. It’s going to be a pleasure when our steadingly increasing traffic finally eclipses their plummeting share.

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Notae benia: Towards the end of her post, Riverdaugher notes, “I haven’t read everything and I don’t claim to understand all of it anyway.” On this, and this alone, we should take her at her word. In her “article,” she pushes more than the usual legal falsehoods. Below, a short list:

• There is no case titled Webster v. Casey; Riverdaugher conflates Webster v. Reproductive Health Svcs. & the landmark casey, Casey v. Planned Parenthood. Contrary to her narrative, Webster was joined by both Kennedy and O’Connor, and in relevant part limited only state funding for non-therapeutic abortion.
• Her reference to Kennedy having to be convinced by O’Connor to save Roe probably refers to his legendary, secret switch from the anti- to pro-choice position in Casey v. Planned Parenthood, which circumscribed certain elements of the choice right while simultaneously crafting novel justifications for upholding it’s remnant. Kennedy’s distaste for late-term abortion is no secret. However, he has twice flatly refused to overrule Roe, even if his opinions have gutted parts of it. As the author of the Casey compromise, there’s no reason to think he’d ever vote to destroy the right to choose in either the first or second trimester.
• Accordingly, her assertion that Roe is doomed (“Oh, right, they already have 5 votes to overturn Roe.”), is flatly wrong. Ditto the implication that, since Roe is a jurisprudential lame duck, pro-choice women don’t need a Democratic president. Let’s be clear on this point: if this seat was McCain’s to fill, as Riverdaughter and her ilk so desperately wanted, Roe would be presumptively dead. Her nemesis’ election is the only reason the right to choose will survive until 2012.

I’d add a line calling on Riverdaughter to correct her blatant falsehoods, or at least display a shred of journalistic integrity, somehow. But what’s the point?

What’s in a Name: Why “the Confluence” is NOT a Liberal Blog

What’s in a name? For the judges of the 2008 Weblog Awards, who saw fit to designate “The Confluence” as one of 2008′s “best liberal blogs,” apparently not much. Confluence is part and parcel of that pernicious mind-virus known as PUMA-ism, a pseudo-political ideology group of angry people and hangers-on whose only goal, since June 21, 2008, has been to slander Barack Obama at any price – even to the point of backing John McCain, embracing theo-conservative Sarah Palin as a feminist based on nothing but her genitalia, and attempting to stage a last-minute palace revolt at the DNC. What really takes the cake, though, is that all of these deliberate attempts to “divide and conquer” the Democratic Party occurred against the express wishes of Hillary Clinton – the PUMAs’ putative inspiration and beneficiary – but, curiously, fit neatly in with Republican symbology throughout the election. No, dear friends – Confluence is not a liberal blog, because PUMA-ism is not liberal. I’ll explain.

Liberalism is a philosophy premised on the idea that, absent some objective indicator to the contrary, more inclusion and greater liberty is always best. At its core, liberalism requires appeal to reason – stripped bare of emotion, bias, or empty appeals to tradition – as the foundation of public policy. Liberalism’s converse, then, is not conservatism but dogmatism. If certain political positions are “liberal,” they are only so because a rational, liberal approach to politics tends to generate these positions.

Because liberalism relies upon reason, it follows that a “liberal” will recognize that politics is antecedent to policy. The dogmatic, bleeding-heart, no-compromise left-winger is no liberal if she does not pursue her goals rationally. To refuse to acknowledge that policy requires politics, and politics requires compromise, is irrational – and therefore illiberal. In short, liberalism imports the flexibility to implement its agenda – in parts, if necessary.

The point is this: if liberalism is a philosophy built on a rational approach to policymaking, it must also require a similarly rational approach to politics. Confluence fails this test. By pursuing an intellectually vacuous approach to politics, and embracing instead dogmatic inflexibility and hero-worship, Confluence has long-since abandoned any thought process that could remotely be described as “liberal.” Devoting one’s entire internet career to duping women into casting protest ballots against their political interest is not rational, and it is not liberal.

It may be that in the paragraphs above I described progressivism, or pragmatism, or pragmatic liberalism, or something else entirely. Maybe – as Riverdaughter, their founder, argues – liberalism requires nothing more than the embrace of enumerated policy goals, like equal rights for gay men and women, and reproductive justice. But even by this embarrassingly shallow rubric, Confluence falls far short. If liberalism is to mean anything at all, it must mean the active pursuit of these policy goals, in words or deeds. But Confluence has spilled comparatively little ink on actual substantive liberal issues. The lion’s share of their content, instead, is best equated to a series of playground taunts against Barack Obama and his supporters. And Confluence’s entire existence amounts to only one deed: the active opposition of the first viable liberal candidate in eight years, and the short-sighted embrace, instead, of a candidate and a party that has systematically opposed minority interests for the past decade. That Confluence’s claimed eventual goal was the election of the perfect, idyllic liberal candidate is no defense: the blog’s all-encompassing, baseless hatred of Barack Obama long-since squeezed that goal out of the picture.

A liberal is known not by her words, but by her deeds. By subordinating reason to an obsession with a single candidate, and letting the goal of a freer America disappear under a tide of borderline racist, exclusively anti Obama rhetoric, the Confluence and indeed all PUMAs ceased being liberals and became narrow anti-Obama partisans long ago. To conclude otherwise would be to reduce the word “liberal” to a pleading requirement.

On January 5th, VOTE AGAINST “The Confluence”
Don’t let the PUMAs split the vote! May we suggest “Crooks & Liars”?

TexasDarlin Gives Up the Ghost

Don’t cry for her, America: “TexasDarlin” is just one more of the *ahem* “millions” of PUMA bloggers who spent the entire election dragging Obama’s name through the mud not for his substantive policies, but based on scurrilous rumors of his non-native birth while simultaneously accusing him of (1) being a Muslim and (2) having a controversial Christian preacher. While the “not a citizen” beat goes on elsewhere, it’s now with a note of despair. Good riddance to another internet pollutant.

PUMAs Totally Lose It

I know, I know; maybe that happened a while ago. But, I have to say this – posting tons of crazy pictures is not election coverage. It’s a barely concealed slide into despair. And that actually makes me sad. PUMAs, I won’t miss your irrational hate for Senator President-Elect Obama, but I have an offer for you: can we now talk about our common purpose, our shared goals, and make them happen? Let’s put some women in cabinet, protect some reproductive rights, and advance some feminism. Yes we can!

PUMA Chow: McCain’s Deceitful Mailer to Hillary Women in Pennsylvania

In a new mailer being distributed in Pennsylvania, John McCain tries to cast himself as heir to the Hillary legacy. The mailer (images below the line) features Sarah Palin prominently (a bold move, considering her plummeting numbers), and offers her as proof that McCain “share[s] Hillary Clinton’s goal of promoting women to more important roles in government.”

What?

A word to Senator McCain: promoting talentless, vapid, anti-feminist women like Sarah Palin just because they’re women is still sexism. It’s just a different kind of sexism. By suggesting that a promise to put more women in government somehow discharges his responsibility to Hillary voters, McCain reduces the importance of Hillary Clinton’s historic candidacy to her gender, and urges Clinton Democratic women to look past her accomplishments, her solidly pro-women record, and her character, to settle on her anatomy as the characteristic that defines her.

This is wrong. As Hillary herself asked – “were you in this campaign just for me?” Clinton Democrats should be “in it” for Hillary’s ideas, her political legacy. It’s true: America does need more women in government. Qualified, strong women. It needs more Hillary Clintons. More Ruth Bader Ginsburgs, more Sandra Day O’Connors, and (to reach across the aisle) more Kay Bailey Hutchinsons. Not more Phyllis Schlaflys. Not more Ann Coulters. And certainly not more Sarah Palins.

By the way, does anyone recall what Senator McCain thought of Hillary Clinton, before he needed her votes?

McCain’s contempt for Hillary can’t have vanished overnight. And we know his contempt for women’s issues certainly hasn’t. On every relevant issue, McCain is hostile to women’s interests. And before you say it, this isn’t just about abortion (though, contrary to the right’s attempt at comforting words, Roe is in danger, McCain thinks the “health of the mother” exception is a bad joke, and he will pull the trigger). Uniformly, McCain has stood against women’s interests in equal pay (which he mocked as “a trial lawyer’s dream”), birth control, pre-natal health care, health care in general, and the list goes on.

Thank God the PUMAs are dead. They’d be eating this junk up. Is McCain fooling anyone else?

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Fox News: In the Tank for the Far, Lunatic Right

We’ve written here, and abroad, extensively about the fake controversy surrounding Barack Obama’s birth certificate. Aside from the small matter that litigation on Obama’s “ineligibility” is a nonjusticiable issue for the FEC, not private voters, Obama has produced his birth certificate. CAN WE GO HOME NOW? Apparently, no: running out of positive stories about conservative triumphs, Fox News will follow 9/11 Truther cum shady lawyer Philip J. Berg to the steps of the Supreme Court as he begs for certiorari. I say, let SCOTUS take review, dismiss the suit in one day, disbar the Berg the next, and be done with it. This is shameful.

Lazy Sunday: Joe Biden Shrugs Off a Partisan Reporter, and Correcting Some Serious Legal Misunderstandings

First, everyone should see this video: though the right may spin this as “Angry Joe Biden on the attack,” what the interview below demonstrates is an ability to deal with scurrilous issues gracefully and with all the respect they deserve. Florida conservatives fed their interviewer biased questions that assumed the truth of McCain’s talking points, in a vain attempt to make Biden either “break down or the stand” or charge at her cape. It didn’t work. The story here is less about Biden’s reaction – controlled – and more about the press’ irresponsibility and biased questioning (compare against the treatment John McCain got). Good night, and good luck to this Florida anchor. She may not regret her combative & partisan rhetoric, but America should regret such journalistic backwash.

Perhaps the real story should be, also, that if Biden grew frustrated with the reporter, at least he was able to answer her questions cogently. Unlike someone else I know.

On a less important matter, after the crushing defeat of their meritless lawsuit against Barack Obama, PUMAs at “TexasDarlin” and “PUMA PAC” have refocused their “legal” strategies moving forwards, in an effort to kick Obama off the ballot. Their choices for new strategies are… telling. TexasDarlin has chosen to whine (real mature, guys), while PUMA PAC opted to (contemplate) filing a class action lawsuit. The former is laughable enough, but the latter surely a joke.

Last things first. The problem in Berg v. Obama wasn’t that there weren’t enough parties; it was that there weren’t enough qualified parties. Class actions are procedural devices to resolve a mass of similar grievances at once, not a cure for other procedural defects. To use a video game metaphor, class actions will make your attack hit harder, but they won’t affect your chance to hit. Darragh Murphy’s class action strategy has the same failing as Berg’s single-person suit; adding more people just makes it fail harder.

Onto TexasDarlin (rather, “Judah Benjamin,” her legal “expert”) whining about the outcome. Benjamin’s complaint is that the application of the standing doctrine as a jurisdictional bar to hearing Berg’s (see my previous posts) unfairly insulates Obama’s candidacy from any form of judicial review. Certainly, if this were true, it would be troubling. But, it’s not. The order merely holds that a private citizen lacks standing to sue: federal officials entrusted with supervision of elections, like the FEC, or perhaps the Department of Justice, would have standing to bring a complaint on behalf of the United States. The application of standing doctrine here doesn’t insulate a constitutional violation from review: it just vests the right to seek a remedy in the federal government, not the taxpayer. This is not controversial. Private citizens are not privateers, deputized by the government to ferret out constitutional violations that barely affect them.  No matter how much Benjamin may wish it was, Philip J. Berg’s job is not to regulate election law.

Perhaps Benjamin’s legal errors could be forgiven. The preceding paragraph, and the legal deficiencies of his argument, are matters of advanced federal procedure (serious business!). But Benjamin’s factual ignorance is unforgivable. From a key section of his post:

I will not comment on the Judge’s, apparently, heavy Censure of Berg. I’ve said I don’t understand the FRCP [Federal Rules of Civil Procedure] and I don’t. I won’t comment on what [the judge] has to say in detail because I have yet to read all 34 pages of his Judgment, or indeed to see a copy of it. . . .

I think that it should not matter if Berg did not have sufficient evidence, it should have been the case that the suspicion was enough.

That a commentator should read a judicial ruling before criticizing it seems to me to be an objective and reasonable hurdle that should be cleared before educated discussion can occur. Benjamin can’t – or won’t – even clear this low bar. Embarassing. And that a complaint raises “suspicion” doesn’t cure its procedural defects. Ugh.

Philip J. Berg’s Lawsuit: Dismissed

While this won’t be news for those of you who read Yes to Democracy (I post there too, you know!), it bears repeating here: the lawsuit filed by 9/11 Truther Philip J. Berg, attempting to get Barack Obama kicked off the ballot because he’s “not a citizen,” was dismissed with prejudice last night. ((“With prejudice” means you can’t re-file.))

As I predicted, the suit was tossed on standing grounds, meaning that Berg and his supporters were not properly situated to allege a discrete, particularized, and differentiated injury by Obama’s presence on the ballot. The operative language:

[T]he grievance remains too generalized to establish the existence of an injury in fact. To reiterate: a candidate’s ineligibility under the Natural Born Citizen Clause does not result in an injury in fact to voters.

To people who actually know the law – I’m looking at you, Mr. Berg – this is no surprise. What Scalia mocks as “psychic injury” (i.e., a constitutional transgression, the only harm of which is that it’s unconstitutional) is rarely sufficient to establish a “case or controversy” between a taxpayer and the state, with the limited exception of Establishment Clause violations. ((Hein v. Freedom from Religion Foundation, 551 U.S. ___ (2007).)) So, unless Berg claimed some violation of his personal rights, rather than the rights of taxpayers at large, this outcome was unavoidable.

TexasDarlin is wrong to claim that this is a purely “procedural” ruling. Standing may sound procedural, but standing doctrine – because it implicates separation of powers concerns, and limits what matters are justiciable before the federal bench – bears directly on the merits of lawsuits. If your suit is dismissed on standing grounds, it’s not because you didn’t cross your T’s and dot your I’s: it’s because you’re asking the judiciary to do something they’re not constitutionally allowed to do.

TD’s lament (“Welcome to justice, American style”) says more about her understanding of the American legal system than it does about… well, the American legal system. She hasn’t lost her right to a constitutional election; the Court just foreclosed private lawsuits as the remedy, and the federal government has the power (limited in some cases, but not here) to select which remedy it gives to its citizens. Here, her remedy is to the Federal Election Commission; problem is, they don’t care, and rightly so.

So, with their electoral prospects dimming, and their legal last stand exhausted, what’s next for the Republicans/closet-Republicans? To listen to Berg, an appeal to the Third Circuit and then the Supreme Court: good luck with that, buddy. This Supreme Court has repeatedly limited taxpayer standing, especially where it implicates separation of powers concerns. Higher courts will be even more hostile to Berg’s “claim.” Berg’s supporters have other plans, including a protest to Congress, before it ratifies any Obama victory in the Electoral College. Memo to anti-Obama maniacs: call someone who cares. I assure you the Democratically controlled Congress won’t.

UPDATE: now they’re appealing to the Supreme Court… I can only assume because they think they’re too good for the Third Circuit. Talk about frivolous lawsuits…

PUMAs Are Dead

Salon, reviewing the media’s greatest mistakes of 2008: “Guess what? For all the PUMA nonsense that filled the airwaves over the summer… Obama is beating McCain by a 91-to-5-percent margin among self-identified Democrats.” Nate Silver concurs: the PUMAs never mattered, but they made a good story for CNN & Fox, so they were happy to pretend they mattered. Meanwhile, “Hillary’s” PUMAs have shed their disguises and come out as McCain-iacs.

Join or Die: PUMAs Misrepresent the State of the Law

After last night’s debate, in which both McCain and Obama gave rather full answers to the complex question of abortion, PUMA apologists are out in full force, defending against the claim that John McCain will overrule Roe v. Wade. They argue that because (1) the Court has already had the chance to overrule Roe and it didn’t, and (2) McCain said he wouldn’t require a “litmus test” for his judicial nominees, Roe is safe. Both contentions are dangerously false, and a sure sign that the PUMAs have drunk deeply of McCain’s kool-aid.

First, the Court has not yet had the votes to overrule Roe; thus, they can’t be said to have pulled back from the abyss. While Kennedy is openly hostile to the abortion right and will limit it at every turn, see, e.g., Gonzales v. Carhart, 127 S.Ct. 1610 (2007), he has never supported overruling it. The danger lurking in the background, though, is that a four-justice group in Gonzales – Alito, Roberts, Scalia, Thomas – all support the death of Roe. Any conservative justice added to replace the two likely retirees (Stevens & Souter, both liberal) could put a five-vote anti-choice majority on the Court, and at the first opportunity, likely to be sooner rather than later (thanks South Dakota!), Roe would be gone.

Of course, that depends on whether McCain wants to put anti-choice Justices on the Court. PUMAs are willing to take McCain at his word, and believe that “no litmus test on abortion” means “no anti-choice Justice.” “My friends,” there’s a big leap between those two points.

Most obviously, the “no litmus test” is an absolute, bald-faced lie. George W. Bush put the same empty words to the American people, and look where it got us: Roe is beaten, bloodied, and nearly ineffective in any state willing to strain it, thanks to Justice Kennedy’s “all-but-overrule” philosophy, whose disregard for the health of the mother John McCain shares. But more on that later. PUMAs, you don’t have believe me: Justice Ginsburg, who reaches the same conclusion, is certainly a better source on both feminism and the law. Or, if you want less law and more explanation, Jeff Toobin’s good in a pinch. “No litmus test” is a lie, empirically disproven by the Republican example.

The reason that “no litmus test” is a lie is because it’s actually Republican code-talk. The full phrase, more often said to the Republican base than to the American people at large, is “no litmus test, except for strict construction of the Constitution, and no activist judges.” McCain/Palin’s frequent ramblings about “activist judges” and “strict construction” is an invocation of a manner of constitutional interpretation inimical to Roe and, perhaps more importantly, contrary to a whole host of other vitally important constitutional rules. By saying-without-saying that they intend to overrule Roe, the Republicans are trying to play a trick on American voters and, apparently, PUMAs aren’t in on the punchline. “Strict construction” is a proxy for “no more Roe.” Don’t believe the lies.

What this all comes down to is a matter of trust. If you believe that, for whatever reason, this time the Republicans really aren’t lying about “no litmus test,” and if you’re willing to ignore all countervailing indicators about that phrase’s secret, subtler meaning, pull the lever for McCain. But if you’re tired of being tricked by a party that relies on it to ensnare gullible pro-choice voters, please, take a moment to think it over, and read up on McCain’s legal philosophy. I don’t want to have to say “I told you so.” And your daughters can’t afford to find out when it suddenly matters most:

If you support choice in any form, or women’s rights to equal pay, McCain will betray you. PUMAs, you can’t afford to let your anger over Hillary’s defeat trump the future of women’s rights in America.