TRUMP AND SANDERS: THE NOT SO ODD COUPLE

TRUMP AND SANDERS: THE NOT SO ODD COUPLE

By:

LeRoy Goldman

February 29, 2016

Back in 2011 Mike Tower, a good friend and then op-ed columnist for the Hendersonville Times- News, and I founded CAPAU, Citizens Against Politics As Usual. We believed, and still believe, that the Democratic and Republican parties are corrupt. We hoped that CAPAU would ignite a grassroots movement to bring about urgently necessary political reform in America. We were wrong.

That CAPAU was stillborn had nothing to do with the fact that Mike and I were right in knowing that politics in Washington no longer served the American people. And now the fat's in the fire.

The political establishment in Washington now confronts its worst nightmare. It has lost control of its ability to manipulate you and me. That is the controlling reality of the 2016 election.

But wait, some of you will say. This ferment has without doubt taken control of the Republican contest, but Hillary Clinton, the Democrat's establishment candidate, is now on her way to the nomination. After all, she defeated insurgent Bernie Sanders in Nevada and overwhelmed him in South Carolina. On March 1st it's likely she will win most of the SEC primaries by running up huge margins among African-American and female voters. Her campaign would have you believe her nomination and election in November is in the bag. Maybe, maybe not.

Most voters would agree that Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are mirror opposites. One is a brash, trash talking billionaire who operates in capitalism's fast lane in Midtown Manhattan. The other is a subdued, polite speaking Socialist turned Democrat from rural Vermont. Those differences, while real, miss what's really important, their similarity.

Both are insurgents who have successfully tapped into immense voter anger. Both are infusing the political process with new voters. Many Trump voters are people who have not voted in years because they have been turned off by Washington. Many Sanders voters are young people who have never voted before, and are energized by Sanders' call for reform.

In 2016 the number of Republicans voting in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina was 20% higher than it was in 2012. The increase for the Democrats, while substantial, is harder to quantify because Obama was unopposed in 2012.

The political class in Washington can't comprehend why Trump can be so offensive and yet keep winning. Moreover, many of them continue to believe that Trump will self destruct. Perhaps, but I doubt it. About 70% of the American people, including large numbers of Democrats, believe America is in decline. Trump not only gives voice to that despair, he promises to end it. Trump's bombastic message is an undeniable and alluring message of hope.

If the Conventions nominate Trump and Clinton, fasten your seat belt. The central dynamic of the Fall campaign will be change versus same old, same old. What Donald Trump will unleash on Hillary Clinton will make his assaults on Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz look tame by comparison. With either Marco Rubio or John Kasich as his running mate his, we're going to take back our country message, may well add more purple to the Electoral College map.

Finally, Hillary's clear road to the nomination, singularly dependent on African-American block voting, is not certain. Bernie Sanders will not go quietly into the night. He has ignited a movement, and he knows it. He's got plenty of cash, a message that resonates with millions of dispossessed Americans, and, most importantly, he may be the beneficiary of the joker in the deck this Spring. The joker's name is, FBI.

The FBI investigation into all that surrounds Clinton, her private email server, and possible breaches of national security is on the way. FBI Director James Comey will not permit politics to taint the investigation. An adverse finding against Clinton will destroy her, and Bernie knows it. Stay tuned.

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By:

LeRoy Goldman

Guest Columnist

February 21, 2016

Scalia was a man for all seasons

BlueRidgeNow.com

With all respect to John Roberts, the Supreme Court has lost its chief justice. The tragic and unexpected death of Antonin Scalia will have consequences that go far beyond what's being reported in the press. 

Those reports focus on the fact that the high court is now deadlocked in a 4-4 ideological split between liberals and conservatives, and that the president and the Republican-controlled Senate are deadlocked over how and when to fill Scalia's seat.

In fact, the philosophical deadlock within the court and the partisan political deadlock between the president and the Senate stand as proxies for the disintegration of the federal government over the past quarter-century. That this deadlock goes beyond the president and Congress to the Supreme Court is especially troubling.

One does not have to be brilliant or superbly well educated to know that the words on the west and east pediments of the Supreme Court, “Equal Justice Under Law” and “Justice The Guardian Of Liberty,” ring hollow when the people see the court and its decisions in major cases as simply a zero-sum game reflecting the nation's political polarization.

The spectacle that is about to unfold regarding the president's nomination of an individual to fill the vacancy and the Senate's action thereon will be disgusting political theater of the absurd. Moreover, it will be the opening move on the political chessboard that will likely be repeated three or four more times during the tenure of the next president. That is a genuinely terrifying prospect.

But that is where we are, and it is also why the sudden and unexpected loss of Scalia is so harmful. He was head and shoulders above his colleagues on the court in many ways. But it was his superiority in one realm that made his role on the court unique. Whether one agreed with Scalia or not, there is no doubt that he reached his decisions because he had an organizing theory that guided his reasoning, decision-making and writing.

That theory is a combination of originalism and textualism. Scalia's use of those two principles led him to argue that the interpretation of the Constitution or a law should be based upon its text and what reasonable people at the time of its adoption would have defined its meaning to be. This approach generally rules out any attempt to interpret the meaning of a statute by relying on non-textual sources such as legislative intent.

Perhaps the most powerful and imaginative use of originalism and textualism by Scalia was that it provided him with a way to successfully confront what he believed were the excesses of liberal jurists dating to the Warren court. Scalia and other conservative justices took umbrage as liberal judges infused their own ideological views into their opinions as scantily clad constitutional law.

Geoffrey Stone, professor of law at the University of Chicago, wrote recently that a way to prevent this abuse would be “for judges to take a consistently deferential approach to the judgments of the elected branches of government.” But such an approach creates a new problem. Stone wrote, “But Scalia and his fellow proponents of originalism recognized that such an across-the-board commitment to judicial restraint was inconsistent with the understanding of the framers of our Constitution, who clearly anticipated that judges play an important role in enforcing constitutional guarantees.”

Thus, the challenge was how to navigate between the need to sometimes be deferential and the need to sometimes be aggressive. Scalia's brilliance enabled him to successfully navigate these constitutional cross currents. His approach was breathtakingly simple. Use restraint unless the original text mandated otherwise.

Thus, Stone argued that “it would be appropriate for courts to invoke the Equal Protection Clause to invalidate laws that deny African-Americans the right to serve on juries, but not to invalidate laws that deny gays and lesbians the right to marry, because the latter was not in any way anticipated by the 'original meaning' of the Equal Protection Clause.”

Scalia was an American original, “A Man For All Seasons,” like Sir Thomas More who, as you will recall, was the 16th century lord chancellor of England who refused to sign a letter to the pope urging him to annul the marriage of King Henry VIII to Catherine of Aragon so the king could marry Anne Boleyn. More's resistance cost him his life, and near its end he said, “And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?”

I can see the irrepressible smile on Scalia's face and the twinkle in his eyes as he paraphrases Sir Thomas More to the court's four horsepersons of the left.

LeRoy Goldman is a Flat Rock resident. Reach him at:  EmailMe

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