Alito is Dangerous, but There’s Little We Can Do

When Harriet Miers was nominated, I thought that with enough phone calls to our Senators and enough organization, progressives could defeat her nomination. I was wrong.

The only people who could defeat Miers’ nomination were Bush’s base. And you have to admire them. They didn’t work this hard and long to rile up the anti-choice and anti-gay zealots only to have an unqualified “cleaning lady” - as Ann Coulter so aptly put it - seated on the Supreme Court of the United States. They stood up for the judicial legacy of their movement, and they succeeded. And Sam Alito, unfortunately, is that legacy.

The conservative zealots won the 2004 election when they sent W. to a second term and retained their majority in both houses of Congress. They chose the ideology of the president who would turn around and choose the ideology of the next two Supreme Court justices. Miers was defeated because she was unqualified, not because of her ideology. And if Democrats try to defeat Sam Alito - who is clearly qualified - on the grounds of ideology, then they are overstepping their role to “advise and consent.”

It doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t raise the issues of a woman’s right to choose, gay rights, and the overexpansion of presidential power. Those issues are critical, and should play a front-and-center role in Alito’s confirmation hearings. But there isn’t much we can do to actually thwart them - unless some sort of impropriety rises Anita Hill-like from Alito’s past.

Like it or not, Sam Alito will almost certainly replace Sandra Day O’Connor. He’ll probably do a lot of damage in his years on the court. But that’s the battle that Bush’s base has won. Backlash succeeded. Game over.

We’ve got to refocus our attention to the battles we can win, like the 2006 Congressional midterm. The American people are fed up with the corruption on Capitol Hill, and with hard work and good reframing of the issues - we can take back Congress. And with the right nominee - not Hillary Clinton, unfortunately - we can take back the White House in 2008.

With hard work and enough organization, we can make sure that the next time there’s a vacancy on the high court, a progressive will be sitting in the White House, ready to choose a justice whose philosophy reflects the values of the true American majority.