Progressives Urge Biden to Abandon GOP Outreach, Move Swiftly on Bold Package

"A Republican minority shouldn't be allowed to hold the nation's economic recovery and public health hostage."

by Jake Johnson

Photo: Tom Lohdan / Flickr // People for the American Way

\With Covid-19 killing thousands of people each day in the U.S. and the economy still mired in deep recession, progressives are calling on President Joe Biden and the Democrat-controlled Congress to abandon futile outreach to the GOP and push ahead with a robust relief package after a pair of so-called "moderate" Republican senators voiced skepticism Wednesday about passing another major spending bill.

Sens. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), members of a bipartisan group of lawmakers calling itself the Common Sense Coalition, indicated shortly after Biden's inauguration Wednesday that they would have difficulty supporting relief legislation on the scale of the $1.9 trillion plan the president unveiled last week—a proposal progressives criticized as inadequate.

"Who cares what Romney thinks. Ultimately the effectiveness of the Biden admin will be determined by how often they ignore what Republicans have to say and jam stuff through reconciliation." —James Medlock, policy analyst

Romney characterized Biden's opening offer as "not well-timed" given that Congress "passed a $900 billion-plus package" last month. Some economists argue that between $3 trillion and $4.5 trillion in spending will be necessary in the short-term to bring the U.S. out of recession and pave the way for a speedy recovery.

"Let's give that some time to be able to influence the economy," Romney said of the December relief measure

Murkowski echoed Romney's concern, complaining that "the ink is just barely dry on the $900 billion." Biden's relief proposal—which includes $1,400 direct payments, a boost to unemployment benefits, and other key measures—would require "a fair amount of debate and consideration," said the Alaska Republican.

Given that Biden would likely need the backing of both Romney and Murkowski -- as well as other Republicans -- to achieve his hope of passing a relief bill with bipartisan support, progressives said the two senators' comments further bolster the case for ignoring the austerity-obsessed GOP and using unified Democratic control of government to swiftly pass an ambitious package.

"Who cares what Romney thinks," tweeted policy analyst James Medlock. "Ultimately the effectiveness of the Biden admin[istration] will be determined by how often they ignore what Republicans have to say and jam stuff through reconciliation."

Medlock was referring to the expedited, filibuster-proof process that allows passage of certain kinds of legislation with a simple majority rather than the usual 60 votes -- a threshold that would require the support of at least 10 Republican senators.

Biden has not explicitly endorsed passing coronavirus relief through reconciliation if Republicans obstruct his agenda. But White House press secretary Jen Psaki said during the new administration's first press briefing Wednesday that while the president's "clear preference is to move forward with a bipartisan bill," Biden is "not going to take tools off the table for how the House and Senate can get this done."

With the reconciliation process a possibility, another -- and, according to some progressives, much better-option is to quickly eliminate the legislative filibuster, a move that would allow passage of legislation without any Republican support.

Democrats control the Senate by the narrowest possible margin, meaning they would need the backing of the entire caucus plus a tie-breaking vote by Vice President Kamala Harris to pass legislation in the absence of the filibuster, which Democrats can kill with a simple majority vote.

"A Republican minority shouldn't be allowed to hold the nation's economic recovery and public health hostage," progressive organizer Ilya Sheyman said, urging Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to use one of the two tools at his disposal to pass a major relief bill.

Amid growing GOP hostility to additional coronavirus relief spending, Biden's economic advisers are expected to meet with the Common Sense Coalition in the coming days, continuing outreach to Republicans and conservative Democrats -- such as Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) -- that began before the inauguration.

"We can do 1,000 straight days of this song and dance or we can just zoom ahead and enjoy a glorious, filibuster-free existence," tweeted Ryan Kearney of the LGBTQ Victory Fund. "Your choice!"

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the new chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said Wednesday that while he has "no problem with reaching out to Republicans" and "would prefer to do it that way," he has no intention of wasting precious time trying to bring intransigent GOP lawmakers onboard.

"If we hear very early on that Republicans do not want to act in a way that meets the needs of working people in this country or the middle class, sorry, we're gonna do it alone," the Vermont senator said in an appearance on ABC.

As progressive Democrats and advocacy groups demand quick action, the timeline for movement of a coronavirus relief package remains unclear. Punchbowl News reported Wednesday morning that "Democrats do not expect to be able to send Biden a Covid relief bill until early March," when emergency unemployment benefits are set to expire for millions of Americans.

Progressives made clear that waiting until March to pass a relief bill would be unacceptable, given the enormity of the public health and economic emergencies that are ravaging the country.

"We urge the President to continue to act swiftly and boldly to address the multiple crises our nation faces," Rahna Epting, executive director of advocacy group MoveOn, said in a statement late Wednesday. "People's lives depend on it. We cannot allow Washington gridlock or Republican obstruction to stand in the way of the urgent needs of the nation."

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, issued a similar call to action, demanding that the Biden administration and Democratic Congress work toward "the swift passage of a comprehensive and bold relief package that meets the scale of this crisis."

"We have no time to waste," said Jayapal.

[Jake Johnson is a staff writer for Common Dreams. Follow him on Twitter: @johnsonjakep]

Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.

After November

Win or lose the presidency in 2020 election, the Democrats are failing as a political party. They're headed for the same encyclopedia entry as the Whigs.

Getting rid of Trump is essential, but it is only a first step. After Nov, we have to come to grips with the reality that the Democratic Party's allegiance to corporate power is unshakable. New forms of political action are necessary. New organizations have to be created to represent working people and the middle class. As much as possible, Sanders' "revolution" must be formalized. There are models for what might happen next: from the militant labor action of the sort that created the vibrant middle class, the civil rights movement and the Mobilization Against the War to the Occupy Movement, the Women's March and the children's fight for gun control

Whether Joe Biden wins or Donald Trump does, we can't return to the neoliberal governance that made Trump possible in the first place. Trump may be gone but the need for universal health care, the housing catastrophe, decaying infrastructure, failing welfare state, endless war and climate change will still be with us. On their own, corporate Democrats cannot be counted on to do anything about any of it. It's up to us.

Beltway Kabuki

"There is only one choice in this election. The consolidation of oligarchic power under Donald Trump or the consolidation of oligarchic power under Joe Biden. The oligarchs, with Trump or Biden, will win again. We will lose. The oligarchs made it abundantly clear, should Bernie Sanders miraculously become the Democratic Party nominee, they would join forces with the Republicans to crush him. Trump would, if Sanders was the nominee, instantly be shorn by the Democratic Party elites of his demons and his propensity for tyranny. Sanders would be red-baited -- as he was viciously Friday in The New York Times’ “As Bernie Sanders Pushed for Closer Ties, Soviet Union Spotted Opportunity” -- and turned into a figure of derision and ridicule. The oligarchs preach the sermon of the least-worst to us when they attempt to ram a Hillary Clinton or a Biden down our throats but ignore it for themselves. They prefer Biden over Trump, but they can live with either.

"Only one thing matters to the oligarchs. It is not democracy. It is not truth. It is not the consent of the governed. It is not income inequality. It is not the surveillance state. It is not endless war. It is not jobs. It is not the climate. It is the primacy of corporate power -- which has extinguished our democracy and left most of the working class in misery -- and the continued increase and consolidation of their wealth. It is impossible working within the system to shatter the hegemony of oligarchic power or institute meaningful reform. Change, real change, will only come by sustained acts of civil disobedience and mass mobilization, as with the yellow vests movement in France and the British-based Extinction Rebellion. The longer we are fooled by the electoral burlesque, the more disempowered we will become."

The rest of the story:
The One-Choice Election by Chris Hedges (TruthDig)

Should impeachment be a bipartisan effort?

Jimmy Dore, the former comic turned political commentator, now so smitten with the sound of his own voice he's become Rachel Maddow for Radicals, here interviews Rep. Tulsi Gabbard on her decision not to take a position on the articles of impeachment. Even at the cost of enduring Dore, Rep. Gabbard's argument is important, especially as the impeachment effort stalls.



Must reads:
✓ Pundits are pitting “fast” vs. “slow” and “Ukraine only” vs. “everything.” But smart and thorough is the way to go: Democrats Must Reject False Choices as They Pursue Impeachment by Joan Walsh (The Nation
✓ Tulsi Gabbard Releases Statement on Impeachment of President Trump
✓ The congresswoman, a Hawaii Democrat, called impeachment “a partisan process, fueled by tribal animosities” and said she favored censure instead: Tulsi Gabbard Votes ‘Present’ on Impeachment Articles: by Michael Levenson (New York Times)
✓ The way to defeat a rightwing political coalition is through leftwing politics, not political theater: Impeachment is the wrong way to beat Trump by Bhaskar Sunkara (The Guardian)
✓ Socialists should see impeachment as an opportunity to attack a movement that poses a long-run threat to the Left’s very existence: The Left Case for Impeachment by Max B. Sawicky (Jacobin)
✓ Getting rid of Trump would be great, but Congress isn’t going to do it — we actually have to vote him out. And impeachment, a therapeutic ritual for MSNBC hosts and an act of score-settling by the national security state, isn’t helping: What’s the Point of Impeachment? by Doug Henwood (Jacobin)

Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and the millions of voters that agree with them are freaking out the billionaires.

The illustration is by Victor Juhasz.

Beauty is in the eye of the officeholder

The folks at UglyJerry made a font out of congressional districts, many of them twisted into alphabetical shapes by gerrymandering.

They want you to urge your congressperson to do something about it.

quote unquote: G. K. Chesterton

"The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up." -- G. K. Chesterton (the first sentence of "The Napoleon of Notting Hill")

Can America Survive the Rule of a “Stupified Plutocracy”?

Lewis Lapham, who as editor of Harper's magazine made it essential reading, is without doubt our greatest living satirist, sardonic, erudite, righteous in the tradition of Twain, Mencken, Vidal and Hitchens. As the Times put it, "Lapham's portraits of his country are astute and his dry wit as sharp as a knife."

The occasion for this interview is the 30th anniversary reissue of his book of essays, Money and Class in America (with a new introduction by Thomas Frank), as essential a deconstruction of American political culture today as it was the moment it was first published in the decade that sent us spiraling down our current path.

Incidentally, Lapham Quarterly, the project of his "retirement," is out with a Special Issue: A History of Fake News.

Herding cats: Why being governor or mayor is good preparation for a president

Herding cats: An idiom denoting a futile attempt to control or organize a class of entities which are inherently uncontrollable, such as legislators or city councilors.

I hope the Democrats will look beyond Congress -- especially beyond the handful of self-anointed U.S. Senators banging around the Beltway like so many ego-filled hot air balloons -- at some of the mayors and governors who have expressed an interest in running or might be persuaded to get in the race. Governors and mayors deal with real issues with constrained resources. Mayors are typically very good at retail politics. They have experience handling legislative bodies. And neither is tainted by

association with the Beltway.

Many of the parishes mayors manage are not small-scale operations. For example, only seven states in the nation are bigger than L.A. County (Los Angeles, by far its largest city, is bigger than 23 of the states). The populations of 38 states are smaller than NYC's. Chicago, Houston: these places are huge. Being chief executive in any of theses hamlets is going to give you more relevant experience than you'd get as, say, governor of Arkansas.

Even in smaller cities, mayors are dealing with issues like poverty, housing, immigration, schools, medical services, police and fire protection, infrastructure, utilities, transportation, even massive problems like global warming and international trade, while senators spend most of their time raising campaign dollars and whining that the other side won't let them get anything done.

Several mayors are considering runs, most seriously Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu (a small city with big problems) and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Also being talked up are New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, a progressive favorite, and Boston Mayor and former labor leader Marty Walsh.

Only 7 states are bigger than L.A.

Parenthetically, Sens. Booker and Sanders are former mayors.

Governors, too, who deal with political problems at the granular level, need a closer look, although in the wake of the calamitous Obama years, the ranks of experienced Democratic governors are thin. California ex-Gov. Jerry Brown is probably too old (although nowhere has he said he'd turn it down). CA Gov. Gavin Newsom, IL Gov. JB Pritzker, WI Gov. Tony Evers, MI Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and CO Gov. Jared Polis are all too new, and NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo has taken himself out of the 2020 competition. But MT Gov. Steve Bullock and former MA Gov. Deval Patrick are exploring runs; MD ex-Gov. Martin O'Malley will want another shot; WA Gov. Jay Inslee gets high marks from all sectors of the party, especially on climate change; and the party ought to take at least cursory looks at other governors like LA's John Bel Edwards, NC's Roy Cooper and RI's Gina Raimundo, as well as ex-govs like VA's Terry McAuliffe and CO's progressive John Hickenlooper.

Reading list:
✓ Why Democrats should take mayors seriously as presidential candidates: From City Hall to the White House by Alex Shephard (The New Republic)
✓ The bloom has come off the gubernatorial rose in presidential politics and that might be good news for Democrats: Maybe a Democratic mayor should be president by Jamal Simmons (The Hill)
✓ Democrats might need a straight white man from the middle of the country, like Steve Bullock, to win the 2020 election. But do they want one?: Could This Unknown Montana Governor Be Our Next President? by Anne Helen Petersen (BuzzFeed)
✓ As mayor, he has helped usher in Los Angeles's renaissance, most recently by bringing George Lucas's Museum of Narrative Art to the city. Can he work the same magic in a possible 2020 challenge to Trump?: Eric Garcetti Is the Anti-Trump, Pro–Star Wars Man We Need by Chanan Tigay (GQ)
✓ Democratic insiders can’t stand the progressive New York mayor and want him to pipe down, despite his record of real accomplishment back home. What gives?: What’s Bill de Blasio’s Problem? by Edward-Isaac Dovere (Politico)
✓ Can an Obama acolyte be elected after Trump?: Deval Patrick’s Presidential Prospects by Jeffrey Toobin (The New Yorker)
✓ Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper is gearing up for an unconventional 2020 presidential run: ‘He’s going to do it … He’s got a theory’ by David Siders (Politico)

Extra credit:
✓ Top party donors and operatives are eager to see the Texas congressman jump into the presidential race: Beto O’Rourke blows up the 2020 Democratic primary by David Siders (Politico)

Vote like your Medicare and Social Security depend on it

In recent years, almost two dozen states have implemented laws that impose new restrictions on voting. Here's what to do if you're turned away at the polls by Christina Maxouris and AJ Willingham (CNN)

Political news from wherever

Exciting news for the Red Tide State today. Maine's governor and chief right wing crank Paul LePage “said Monday that he plans to move to Florida for tax reasons and teach at a university there regardless of who Mainers elect to succeed him.”

Just sayin'

Election of 1800.

Thomas Jefferson: John Adams has a “hideous hermaphroditic character.” 

John Adams: Thomas Jefferson is “the son of a half breed Indian squaw.”

If you hear the word "reform," reach for your gun.

Term limits are on the ballot in Santa Monica and, I suspect, in other places where voters are frustrated. To put it as positively as possible, term limits are intended to bring new ideas and put a brake on entrenched interests. But there is no evidence that either of these outcomes occur.

In 2004, the Public Policy Institute of California published a research paper about the state legislative term limits that California voters enacted in 1990. The analysis found that rather than representing a new breed of "citizen legislator," "new members after term limits behave a great deal like their precursors.”

Term limits are a terrible idea. Here are some reasons why:

1. Term limits are anti-democratic. A fundamental principle in our system of government is that citizens get to choose their representatives. Term limits curtail that fundamental right. Voters should be able to vote for whomever they want to represent them.

2. Like it or not, politics is a profession. We ask our representatives to find solutions to pressing problems, often problems with no simple answers. Political representation is a learned skill; as with any profession, experience matters. The public is not well served by inexperienced people making policy choices with widespread, lasting consequences. In effect, term limits deny voters expert representation. Government is complicated. Just when representatives begin to learn their job, they are termed out.

3. Representative government is dependent on compromise. Term limits severely hamper the opportunity for understanding and trust to develop between council members. Strangers in a new environment can't know whose judgement to accept and which colleagues know what they're doing. Also,decreasing the number of seasoned elected officials results in greater deference to bureaucrats, especially in cases like Santa Monica's where elected officials have no independent staff of their own.

4. Term limits discourage the development policy expertise: members who know their time on the city council (or any office) is limited will be disinclined to spending the time and effort necessary to acquire expertise on specific issues knowing that, in most cases, that difficult-to-acquire knowledge won’t be nearly as valuable or useful in the assembly or state senate or wherever they're forced to head next. Also, special interests are always ready to jump in to help elected officials bone up on an issue, which distorts policy in favor of those interests.

5. Term limits empower bureaucrats and the special interests. Institutional memory is in the hands of staff: it is difficult to know when you are being manipulated or misled if you don't know the history of the issue being considered. By the same token, if lobbyists don't like an outcome, they don't have to wait long before they can take another shot at new arrivals. The people's representatives will soon be gone; the bureaucrats and special interests will be around forever.

6. Inevitably, there will be the temptation to defer to individuals, groups, and lobbies with matters before the council that may be helpful in getting the next political job.

7. Special interests are empowered at election time: campaign spending becomes all important when new faces need to be sold at every election.

8. Knowing they are going to be termed out, incumbents spend their time running for their next job instead of doing the job they have now.

9. We already have term limits. They're called elections.

Term limit campaigns are often cynical attempts by politicians to exploit voters' frustrations by appearing to favor a "reform." They often reveal a deep distrust of the democratic process. If you're unhappy with the government you have, you have the power to change it. Get involved. Vote.

Vote no on Prop TL.

From the Elders of Zion desk:

Tough time for anti-semites with a political bent. Not possible to hate Sheldon Adelson, Michael Bloomberg and George Soros at the same time. One of them is your man.

From the Political Sideshows Desk:

Donald Trump’s racism, corruption, kleptocracy, endless war, poverty, homelessness -- these, not Elizabeth Warren’s DNA, are the real issues. Another sideshow in our political carnival.

Hey, San Diego, what up?:

"In California, Republican Duncan Hunter -- the second congressman to endorse Trump for president –-- claims in television ads and speeches that his Democratic challenger, Ammar Campa-Najjar, is named after Yasser Arafat, and is supported by the Muslim Brotherhood in an attempt by ‘Islamists’ ‘to infiltrate Congress’. Campa-Najjar is of Mexican and Palestinian descent and is a practicing Christian. (Hunter has been indicted and is awaiting trial for spending at least $250,000 in campaign funds on personal expenses, including trips to Italy and Hawaii, his family’s dental work, his children’s tuition, movie tickets, video games, groceries, international travel for nearly a dozen relatives, and a $600 plane ticket for the family’s pet rabbit. He also purchased golf equipment for himself which he declared on finance forms was for wounded veterans. He first tried to blame his wife for these expenses, but after an outcry took responsibility. He is currently leading in the polls.) " -- Eliot Weinberger, London Review of Books

The rest of the story:

Ten Typical Days in Trump’s America by Eliot Weinberger, London Review of Books

"Vote for Yetta and watch things get betta" (slogan, Yetta Bronstein presidential campaign, 1964)

Both major parties follow scripts leading up to elections. The GOP pitches prayer in the schools, criminalizing abortion and what amounts to racial cleansing. Never happens. The Democrats hawk social and economic justice (this year in the form of free education, Medicare for All and criminal justice reform). Never happens. Whatever is promised turns out to be "too hard," we can't afford it, the other side just won't compromise.

Whichever party wins, though, what does happen is this: endless war, corporate welfare, and unimpeded transfer of public wealth into private hands.

Vote. Vote locally. Vote strategically. But, wherever possible, don't vote for corporate shills and the war machine. Change is a long, slow process. It's not going to happen in one election. Or two. Or probably ten. But it's not going to happen at all if we keep falling for false narratives.

There are plenty of Democrats to vote for, especially at the local level. But we need to be selective. The Democratic establishment

apparently learned nothing from 2016. They may need to hear from you again.

If you don't favor kleptocracy and militarism, then in races where the outcome will be the same, don't vote. Or vote Green or Peace & Freedom or Working Families or whatever other off-brand choice you have. Or write in yourself or Lebron James or Kshama Sawant or Jimmy Dore or Helen Keller or Stormy Daniels or Noam Chomsky or the progressive who got outspent in the primary or anyone else you think will get across the point that you're not accepting business as usual or the lesser evil anymore.

Otherwise, change? Never happens.

Haley Bails

No surprise or consternation over the news that Nikki Haley is stepping down as United States ambassador to the United Nations. It must be wearisome to take Donald Trump's crap as a regular diet. Besides, it's well-known that she has higher aspirations. She wants to be the first female President of the United States.

Yeah. Well. Of course. But for Nikki Haley to be their nominee will require the Republicans to be rational enough to allow it. In the event, probably too few GOP leaders will be able to overcome their misogyny, but neither that nor the assumption that she'd make a terrible president should obscure the fact that it would be a clever move for the Republicans to nominate her. Good presidential candidates and good presidents are not necessarily cut from the same cloth. As a candidate, she'd be hard to beat.

Haley's articulate enough, and she cleans up good, as we used to say of someone making themselves presentable. She has a more solid record than any of the Senate blowhards who will offer themselves: she has business experience, including as a CFO; she was treasurer and then president of the National Association of Women Business Owners; she

Her Master's Voice

served in the state legislature, in her first term beating a long-sitting GOP incumbent, in her last winning re-election by 83 - 17% over the Democrat; she served nearly two terms as governor before resigning to go to the UN: added together, business experience, a national network of contacts, both legislative and executive government service, and extensive foreign policy exposure make her CV hard to top.

In addition, because she agreed to serve Trump, the party whackos will give her a pass: the moneybags never had a problem with her. She demonstrated just enough independence from Trump at the UN to be plausible as an alternative. Now she's jumping ship just as a sea of troubles is washing over the president's gunwales (one way or another Trump himself is likely headed for the lifeboat: impeachment in the remote event the Democrats control the Senate and, even more remotely, man up; evidence of criminal activity -- from Mueller's or other investigations -- so incontestable the president will resign in exchange for immunity or pardon; a stroke; or retirement to his dacha in Mar-A-Lago so to gaze at leisure into gilded mirrors at the greatest president ever).

Finally, as both female and off-white, Haley cuts into two electoral assets the Democrats tend to fetishize (these advantages, if that's what they really are -- it's still the economy, stupid..., these advantages will evaporate if the Dems nominate an elderly white male). If it happened, her presidency would be about as good for women as Obama's was for African-Americans, but inevitably she would get a measurable amount of campaign support because of her gender and the Democrats would lose their "party of women" props in the process.

Nikki Haley's politics are terrible -- the best that can be said is that she evolved on the confederate flag issue under political pressure and she demonstrated a degree of independence on women's issues, but on other matters her policy positions are hard right: she was the Tea Party candidate for governor with a rousing endorsement from Sarah Palin, she is hostile to unions, she opposed the Affordable Care Act, she is against gun control, she has consistently voted for bills that restrict abortion, as governor she slashed the state budget at the expense of social programs, and she resigned her UN job one-day after being accused of accepting while in office a series of free private luxury plane flights from three South Carolina businessmen and GOP donors. She can't be held directly responsible for promoting Trump's anti-human rights agenda at the UN, because she was just doing her job, but she can be blamed for taking the job. Still, having shown a willingness to work across the aisle as legislator and governor, she will be hard to demonize. She'd be a formidable candidate for the Democrats to run against.

The next president will be a woman. Elizabeth Warren or Nikki Haley: Your choice.

The rest of the story:

Nikki Haley to Resign as Trump’s Ambassador to the U.N. by Maggie Haberman (New York Times)

Until this moment, Senators, I think we never really gauged your cruelty, or your recklessness.

So let's see if we have this straight.

The National Council of Churches opposes Brett Kavanagh. Countless Jewish and Roman Catholic leaders and organizations (not associated with fundamentalism) oppose Brett Kavanagh. The Human Rights Campaign opposes Brett Kavanaugh. The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights opposes Brett Kavanaugh. The American Bar Association opposes Brett Kavanagh. The American Civil Liberties Union opposes Brett Kavanagh. The National Women’s Law Center opposes Brett Kavanaugh. Over 1000 law school professors oppose Brett Kavanagh. Hundreds of psychiatrists and psychologists oppose Brett Kavanagh. Every women's group in the country (not associated with fundamentalism) opposes Brett Kavanagh. A majority of Americans opposes Brett Kavanaugh.

Even so, the Senate Republicans think it's a fine idea to install him on the Supreme Court, there to remain until well after most of those who put him there are dead.