February 1, 2017

Is It Payback Time For Blocking Merrick Garland?

Yin Bogu/Xinhua via ZUMA

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Lots of Democrats want to take a scorched-earth approach toward the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch, President Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court. I’m totally on board with this. The Republican blockade of Merrick Garland was flat-out theft, and no party with any self-respect can let that go without a fight.

Still, I’m curious: how is this supposed to play out? If Democrats filibuster Gorsuch, then either Mitch McConnell kills the filibuster or he doesn’t. If he allows the filibuster to stand and Gorsuch is defeated, Trump will nominate another conservative. And no matter how much McConnell is dedicated to Senate institutions, the second time around he’d kill the filibuster for sure. He’s not going to allow Dems to filibuster Supreme Court nominees for four years, after all.

Substantively, then, it doesn’t matter much. We’re getting a conservative Supreme Court justice one way or another. But Jonathan Chait says a filibuster is important because Dems have to make McConnell own the brave new world he’s created. Richard Yeselson agrees:

I’m fine with this. But why is forcing McConnell to kill the filibuster a win for Democrats? Personally, I think they should block Gorsuch just to show they have a spine. I just don’t understand why anyone cares whether McConnell is forced to get rid of the filibuster.

POSTSCRIPT: When I first heard that Gorsuch was on Trump’s short list a couple of days ago, I thought: I know it’s just a coincidence, but I’d sure want to avoid anyone named Gorsuch. But no. It turns out it wasn’t a coincidence at all: Gorsuch is indeed the son of infamous Reagan EPA director Anne Gorsuch Burford. Enough with the dynasties!

ANOTHER POSTSCRIPT: Anne Gorsuch Burford did her best to tear down the EPA, and perhaps her biggest blunder was her determination to scrap the rules for phasing out lead in gasoline. Thank God she failed.

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In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

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