“Winners and losers, which one will you be today?”
— Social Distortion
Bully Pulpit: Judge Roy Moore seeks bully pulpit in U.S. Senate – New American Journal graphic by Walter Simon
The Big Picture –
By Glynn Wilson –
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The California punk rock band Social Distortion summed it up in this song by Michael Ness.
“We’re all good and evil … there’s cowards and heroes … lovers and haters … devils and angels…”
Which one will you be today?
I’ve given that a lot of thought over the past couple of years, especially in the context of former President Donald Trump talking about “so much winning” while calling his supporters, especially those in the military, “losers and suckers” for falling for his unintelligible spiel, voting for him, and following him down the dangerous path of insurrection and sedition on Jan. 6.
We know who won the presidential election of 2020, and it wasn’t Trump. Thus the banner headline on Nov. 15, 2020:
It’s Official: Trump is A Loser – Biden is President-Elect
I’ve been playing the game with my friends of late, toasting to “winning,” like on the 400th anniversary of Thanksgiving.
But that’s not the kind of thing you want to flout too much. Icarus found out the hard way, flying too close to the sun.
There are always going to be ups and downs in any life. They key variable is that when you fall, you get back up.
Every honest successful person knows this and usually admits it publicly.
But not Trump.
Former judge Roy Moore speaks at Oak Hollow Farm in Fairhope with his wife Kayla beside the stage with one week to go in U.S Senate race in Alabma, Dec. 5, 2017: Photo by Glynn Wilson
And not ole Roy Moore from Alabama, who tried to claim he was a winner on Wednesday when a jury dismissed a defamation case against him, ruling neither party the winner.
Friends of Leigh Corfman, the woman who brought the case against Moore, declared her the winner on Facebook.
“Leigh, you are a winner,” one friend said. “You made him … face his horrible behavior in public. And for that, you are a big winner. And while he is one of Ala’s biggest cowards, you are one of America’s heroes. Bless you.”
Roy Moore is the loser, if not in this case, in his bid to become a United States Senator, where he would have been wildly out of place. He is a religious nut who has no real grasp of the meaning of the United States Constitution or the First Amendment. He just knows he wants to change it to put the church over the state, which is at odds with everything the Founding Fathers of America stood for.
He first got famous for blatantly displaying the Ten Commandments in his courtroom in Etowah County, Alabama, when he was sued and forced to take the plaque down. He used his fame for this with conservative Christians and got elected to the state Supreme Court, twice, and was kicked off both times for violating the Constitution. In the first case, which I covered for The New York Times and The Christian Science Monitor, he was removed from the bench after a federal court judge ruled that his granite monument to the Ten Commandments had to be removed from the state Supreme Court building.
His followers elected him again, and he was removed again, for refusing to follow a federal court order to allow same-sex marriages to go forward.
Moore is a homophobic, racist, bigot of the worst sort — in addition to being a “child molester” which he was called in the most recent case in Gadsden, where he was more than once chased out of the Gadsden Mall for hitting on underage, teen aged girls. He has no place holding any public office in this American democratic republic, not even deep-red conservative Alabama.
Birmingham attorney and former U.S. attorney Doug Jones was the winner. And even though he couldn’t hold the Senate seat in 2020 with Trump on the ballot and millions of dollars in radio and TV ads bashing him funded by Mitch McConnell and others, he is still winning.
United States Senator is a title he will carry with him always, and while he was not named as attorney general in 2021, he emerged from the shadows to play an important role in shaping the confirmation strategy for President Biden’s first appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The White House formally tapped Jones and two other advisers who are veterans of politics and communications to help shepherd President Biden’s eventual Supreme Court pick through the Senate confirmation process.
The new team will be led by Jones, and he will be joined by Minyon Moore, a political director in the Clinton White House who is tasked with mobilizing a nationwide constellation of outside groups to build support for Biden’s nominee, and Ben LaBolt, who served as both campaign and White House spokesman for former president Barack Obama. LaBolt will be advising on communications and messaging, according to Washington Post coverage.
Moore, a principal at the firm Dewey Square Group, has a political background that extends back decades, including on the presidential campaigns of the Rev. Jesse Jackson and former Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis. She was a senior adviser on former secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, as well as chief operating officer of the Democratic National Committee.
LaBolt, a partner at the communications firm Bully Pulpit Interactive, was the White House spokesman during the efforts to confirm Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan during the Obama administration. He also served as adviser to the Biden-Harris transition.
Jones, Moore and LaBolt will report to White House counsel Dana Remus. The new appointments were confirmed by a person familiar with the coming announcement, The Post reports.
The in-house team of White House officials who are advising Biden as he works through picking a nominate to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer includes Remus; White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain; Louisa Terrell, the director of legislative affairs; senior adviser Cedric L. Richmond; Reema Dodin, deputy director of legislative affairs; senior counsel Paige Herwig; and Josh Hsu, counsel to Vice President Harris. Andrew Bates, the deputy White House press secretary, is handling press surrounding the vacancy created by the planned retirement of Justice Stephen G. Breyer later this year.
Nearly all are veterans of the Senate, with particular experience in judicial nominations.
Biden has said he will announce his choice, who will be the first Black woman to sit on the Supreme Court, by the end of February.
“The president’s focus is … choosing from a wealth of highly qualified candidates who bring to bear strong records, credentials and abilities to serve on the court in a lifetime appointment,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday.
Midterm Elections
Who will win and lose in the midterm elections, however, is not clear as of this writing.
Story after story in the mainstream press and media over the past few months has cast a cloud of doubt over whether Democrats can hold onto majorities in the House and Senate. The implications of them losing and the Republicans taking over either house of Congress are huge.
As I reported on Wednesday and will repeat today for those who missed it, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer’s retirement gives President Joe Biden an opportunity to fulfill a campaign promise and put the first Black woman on the highest court in America.
“The chance to make history also gives Biden the potential to shore up his base support and enthusiasm — especially among Black voters and younger Democrats, who have for months registered tepid backing for his handling of the job,” according to a poll just out from Morning Consult.
Nearly 7 in 10 Black voters (68 percent) said they support Biden’s decision to appoint a Black woman to replace Breyer, compared with 46 percent of white voters. Black voters are nearly twice as likely as white voters to strongly support the move, 47 percent to 24 percent.
Biden’s choice to elevate a Black woman to the Supreme Court — revealed during his primary campaign for president and reaffirmed upon Breyer’s retirement announcement — has support from 51 percent of the overall electorate, including 47 percent of independents and 82 percent of Democrats.
Black voters, especially those in South Carolina, effectively delivered Biden’s victory in the Democratic primary, according to survey research. But their support for his presidency waned over his first year in office. Since his inauguration, Biden’s approval rating among Black voters fell from 86 percent to 63 percent, while the share who strongly support his job performance dropped from 65 percent to 27 percent.
His support is also tepid among younger Democratic voters, those under the age of 45, who fueled a surge in voter participation during the 2018 midterm elections and Biden’s victory over Trump. According to the latest survey, younger Democrats are slightly less likely to approve of Biden’s job performance than those 45 and older (76 percent to 82 percent), and are less likely to strongly do so (27 percent to 43 percent).
“The nomination provides a much-needed moment for Biden and the Democrats to try to boost that base enthusiasm ahead of November’s contest,” the pollsters say.
Black voters are less likely than white voters to say they’re “extremely” or “very” enthusiastic about voting in midterm elections, 37 percent to 50 percent, and a similar gap appears between the youngest and oldest, 39 percent to 55 percent.
Both figures are indicative of the Democratic Party’s enthusiasm problem heading into the campaign season: 56 percent of Republican voters expressed high excitement for the midterms in the latest survey, compared with 47 percent of Democrats.
When it comes to the prospect of a Black female justice, Democratic voters are more likely to express excitement (75 percent) about Biden’s plans than Republicans are to say they are angry (40 percent) or worried (46 percent) about it, suggesting the energy behind the choice is higher on the left side of the aisle.
So it will be up to you, democrats, to get it together between now and November.
Winner or loser? Which will you be this year?
I can’t do it for you. All I can do is tell the stories and try to get people to share them. If you won’t do it, you will most likely lose.
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