I had a very interesting morning at the Day Job. The DLC’s think tank, the Progressive Policy Institute, held a forum on the changing politics of judicial nominations, featuring Stuart Taylor of National Journal, Jeffrey Rosen of George Washington University and The New Republic, and yours truly.PPI’s Will Marshall moderated and introduced us, and after citing Taylor and Rosen’s impressive legal resumes, mentioned my law degree from the University of Georgia and said: “It’s good to have some kudzu among the ivy here today.” After some consideration, I decided to take that as a compliment.It fell to me to serve as the defender of Democrats who voted against Roberts’ nomination, and, more generally, to remind everyone of the real roots of the recent polarization of judicial nominations, in the devil’s bargain the GOP has made with the Cultural Right. I also took issue with the idea that it would be just peachy keen for progressives if abortion policy were returned to Congress and state legislatures.If you’re interested, the forum will probably be offered up to insomniacs at some point this weekend over CSPAN or CSPAN2. Or you can check out the streaming video available via CSPAN3. If you do, please kindly ignore my face-made-for-radio and listen to what I said. I did wear a cool red-white-and-blue donkey tie.

Well, the big news today has been the surprise decision of a Texas grand jury to indict House GOP Leader Tom DeLay for a criminal conspiracy to violate that state’s ban on corporate campaign contributions. I’ve written about the broader implications of this thunderbolt over at TPMCafe, and the DLC weighed in institutionally in a manner that I cannot really improve on.The really big picture is that all sorts of chickens are now coming home to roost for the GOP. You can hear them clucking all over Washington: in the White House, where the FBI investigation of Jack Abramoff is now penetrating the previously impermeable heart of Bush Era politics and policy; in the conservative commentariat, which is now torn between defending the Republican establishment and accusing it of betraying its principles; and in Congress, where DeLay’s troubles are creating a power vaccum among GOPers for whom power has been the only unifying principle. More and more, the Bush Era is beginning to resemble the Harding Era, without the humanizing features of sex and liquor. The self-righteous, clean-living (when it comes to private behavior other than indulgence in interest-group financed golf junkets) Tom DeLay is a perfect symbol of today’s GOP, and its unacknowledged sins.

This is going to be a rather self-indulgent post, but perhaps of interest to those of you who are into in political history, or just history.On Sunday I did a post about the big antiwar rally in Washington, and by way of suggesting that this assemblage wasn’t as radical as it might have been, reminisced about an antiwar rally I attended in Atlanta in 1970 in which Trotskyist cadres coopted a bunch of peaceniks into marching alongside Viet Cong flags.My colleague The Moose, a fellow baby boomer who shared my youthful flirtation with Marxism back in the day, upbraided me by the water cooler to inform me that my memoir was objectively impossible, since the Socialist Workers Party and its collegiate wing, the Young Socialist Alliance, had in fact promulgated a Popular Front Party Line that eschewed identification with the NLF, or indeed, any message other than “U.S. Out of Vietnam Now.”The Moose knows his Trotskyists very well. Indeed, after subjecting me to a round of criticism-and-self-criticism about my understanding of SWP policies, he went on to school me on the particular provenance of the Workers World Party (one of the indirect sponsors of the rally in Washington this weekend), which was born as a protest against the SWP’s condemnation of the Soviet supression of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.But I remember what I remember from 1970, as I trudged along in an antiwar march controlled by YSA activists, under the watchful eye of local SWP boss and future perennial presidential candidate Linda Jenness, an Atlanta native, and as YSA bullhorns redundantly intoned pro-NLF chants.I have no idea if, or if so, how many, Vietnam-era Marxists read New Donkey, but if so, we need some arbitation here. Was I ignorantly witnessing some weird Atlanta-based Left Deviationist strain of American Trotskyism? Was the march actually controlled by agents of RYM (Revolutionary Youth Movement) II, the residue of SDS after RYM I (a.k.a., the Weathermen) and the Progressive Labor Party (briefly the home of Lyndon Larouche) left? Was the whole thing an FBI plant?Inquiring minds want to know. And the whole subject is a reminder that today’s internecine battles on the Left are a pale reflection of what they used to be, back when state socialism was still cool.

Remember this spring’s premium Blonde In Peril, Ashley Smith?You know, Ashley Smith, the Atlanta woman who was taken hostage in her apartment by fugitive cop-killer Brian Nichols, and eventually lulled him into submission by reading him a few passages from the Christian Self-Help classic The Purpose-Driven Life.Well, Ashley released a book today, and turns out that in dealing with Nichols she had something up her sleeve other than the wisdom of Rick Warren. In an interview with the Atlanta Constitution, she allows as how she gave the killer her personal stash of crystal meth.Smith did not, however, join Nichols in a quick, convivial snort. “I was not going to die tonight and stand before God, having done a bunch of ice up my nose,” she writes.And people wonder why I love the South.In any event, this disclosure probably cost Smith a guaranteed spot in the gallery next to the First Lady for George W. Bush’s next State of the Union Address.But she appears to have decided to take her story to a loftier venue. She’s appearing on Oprah tomorrow.

Sometimes a political news story barely requires commentary. This is from today’s Washington Post:

Since Hurricane Katrina struck Aug. 29, Congress has approved spending bills and tax cuts worth nearly $71 billion. An additional $5 billion in housing, education and small-business assistance cleared the Senate, even before the Medicaid bill was considered. A united Louisiana congressional delegation is seeking $250 billion more.Republican leaders say the overall cost could be $100 billion to $200 billion. Although mindful of criticism, the leaders contend that such one-time expenditures — albeit huge — should not harm deficit-reduction efforts.Prodded by conservatives, President Bush and GOP leaders have said they are willing to offset those costs with spending cuts. But realistically, the political will does not exist to vote through the cuts that have been proposed, said House leadership aides and sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. Nor have Republican leaders given serious thought to reversing course on tax cuts, lawmakers said yesterday.”I don’t see any change in fiscal policy,” said Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), a former vice chairman of the Budget Committee.The leadership has, however, felt the political sting of the recent deficit spending, which began with huge new transportation and energy bills this summer and cascaded into debt-financed hurricane relief this month. Republican leaders plan appearances this week on the syndicated radio talk shows of conservatives Sean Hannity, Tony Snow, Mike Gallagher and Lars Larson, as well as local radio and television shows, leadership aides said.

What a process. Enact unnecessary tax cuts, mostly for people who don’t need them. Spend like a drunken sailor. Borrow money from foreign governments and future generations. And when the red ink mounts to a degree that your own political base gets disgusted, then get out there and spin!If Democrats can’t figure out how to exploit the ongoing tragi-comedy of Republican fiscal policy, then we don’t deserve power.

As you probably know, there was a major antiwar rally in Washington yesterday, with the number of participants ranging between 150,000 (the police estimate) and 300,000 (rally organizers’ estimate). In any event, it was the largest anti-Iraq protest yet in the U.S., and inevitably, it is being compared to the monster antiwar rallies against the Vietnam War some 35-40 years ago.Indeed, the Washington Post’s coverage of the protest was laden with nostalgia, including constant references to the greyhaired boomers who were liberally sprinkled in the assemblage. The Post’s Style section spread on the event featured a large photo of Antiwar Horse Joan Baez performing at the post-rally concert on the Mall. You half-expected Country Joe McDonald to materialize and belt out: “One, Two, Three, What are we fighting for?/Don’t ask me I don’t give a damn/Next stop is ol’ Baghdad.”The event was decisively peaceful, and organizers did a good job of ensuring that no one went away without hearing arguments that the mess in Iraq is related to the mess on the Gulf Coast. Still, a lot of participants probably shared Matt Yglesias’ worry that the antiwar message was blurred and perhaps even countered by the different, and, er ah, rather eccentric preoccupations of some of their peers:

[T]he organizers of any future events of this sort should try to implement some message discipline. If you organize a gathering to protest the war in Iraq, political beliefs expressed on the stage should be about the war in Iraq and not, say, the evils of the fast food industry or the tyranny of copyright law.

Matt makes a good point, but as a minor veteran of the Vietnam protest generation, I can tell him it could have been a lot worse. I’ll never forget attending an antiwar rally in Atlanta, as a member of the High School Mobilization Committee To End the War in Vietnam, aimed at an appearance by Vice President Spiro T. Agnew. Several hundred of us earnest peaceniks struck out from downtown Atlanta in a march towards a hotel where Spiggy was speaking at a Republican fundraiser. Unfortunately, the local Mobe effort was controlled by the Young Socialist Alliance, the collegiate wing of the Trotskyist Socalist Workers Party. Its commissars placed Viet Cong flags at both ends of the procession, and controlled the bullhorns, from which bellowed such consensus antiwar slogans as “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh/The NLF is gonna win“, and “Two, four, six, eight/We don’t want your fascist state.” A few naive “message discipline” advocates in the assemblage tried to counter with lame offerings like John Lennon’s “All we are saying/Is give peace a chance,” but no one could hear what they were saying over the cacophony from Leon’s cadres. I’m pretty sure no one yesterday was chanting “O, O, O-B-L/Jew Crusaders Go To Hell,” and if they were, nobody would have let them get close to a bullhorn. So maybe the current antiwar movement, whatever its tolerance for cranks, is closer to American public opinion than its much-hyped predecessor. Having said that, it’s also clear that the “out now” faction dominating the Washington protest remains marginal, at least for now. In terms of reflecting any sort of national movement, it was a mere shadow of the gigantic rally held in London just prior to the invasion of Iraq. And that, folks, is probably the important thing to remember about “protest” politics generally in a democratic society: other than as an expression of free speech rights, they only matter if they eventually coincide with the views of those people who spent yesterday watching college football and worrying more about the March of Hurricane Rita than the March on Washington.

Today the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 13-5 to approve John Roberts as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. The three Democrats who voted with all ten GOPers to send the smooth but shifty lawyer towards his Supreme Goal were Senators Leahy, Kohl and–surprise, surprise–Feingold. Among Democrats outside the committee announcing their position today was Sen. Hillary Clinton, who said she’d vote “no.” Some Democratic activists and bloggers sort of went medieval on Pat Leahy yesterday for announcing his support for Roberts. The reaction to Feingold–a probable presidential candidate in 2008 who has earned a fair amount of blogospheric support due to his perfectly timed call for a fixed timetable for withdrawal from Iraq–was more muted, though occasionally shocked and saddened. One common interpretation has been that 2008 wannabees are treating this vote as an opportunity to reach out beyond their natural political bases. Thus, according to this theory, “centrists” Biden and Clinton are building credibility with activists and the netroots, while Feingold is moving in the other direction to avoid typecasting as the candidate of the Left. My favorite take, by Daily Kos diarist LarryInNYC, goes well beyond the “keep your powder dry” theory that Democratic Senators voting “yea” are making sure they have maximum credibility to go after Bush’s nominee to replace O’Connor, which will almost certainly change the overall balance of the Court. Actually, suggests Larry, some “yes” voters (presumably Leahy and Feingold) are actually planning to lead a filibuster against said nominee, and thus have signalled by their support for Roberts that they are in truth the shrewd, fighting Dems that disappointed activists had hoped they would be, while some of the “no” voters are probably unprincipled trimmers.Those of you who have studied Karl Marx or Karl Barth will recognize this as a fine example of dialectical reasoning. Is Larry right? Beats me. But I think we should all be open to the possibility that Democratic Senators voting for or against Roberts are actually doing so for the reasons they publicly state, just like all us bloggers and activists who have weighed in on the subject in recent days.

Today Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT) announced he would vote to confirm John Roberts as Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, dashing expectations that Judiciary Committee Democrats would oppose the confirmation en masse, and lowering expectations of a big vote against Roberts in the full Senate.While I was disappointed by Leahy’s announcement (especially given its timing, which neutralized Harry Reid’s decision to vote otherwise), I didn’t find it terribly surprising. Leahy is Ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. As such, he will be the particular object of a massive Republican propaganda campaign about “Democratic obstruction” when the next, crucial Bush Court nominee is sent up in a couple of weeks. I would guess that Leahy calculated he would be more effective in opposing a Justice Brown or Owens or Jones or Garza if he takes a dive on Roberts. But it’s certainly ironic that Leahy, given his history and voting record, and even his home state, has wound up taking a position “to the right” not only of Harry Reid, but of people like, well, me, not to mention DLC president Bruce Reed, who came out against Roberts in his blog on Slate.Maybe all those bloggers who keep saying the argument among Democrats is not about ideology, but about strategy, tactics and attitude, have a point, though when it comes to John Roberts, maybe not the point they expected. I suspect we will have much more unanimity when Bush makes his next Court appointment, under extreme pressure from the cultural conservatives he’s asked to show faith in John Roberts.On this last point, I was really struck by a recent National Review piece that supplies a devious, jesuitical interpretation of Roberts’ testimony on the constitutional law of abortion. If the author is right, Roberts didn’t simply evade his Senate inquisitors; he threw sand in their eyes. That is certainly what his advocates believe, and need to believe. Given Roberts’ almost certain confirmation, I hope they are wrong, and that their support will someday be viewed as ironic.But it ain’t likely.

Back in May, a lot of us Democratic bloggers took note, and heart, from the first in a series of tracking polls of all 50 Governors’ approval ratings by the polling outfit SurveyUSA.The latest SUSA tracking poll, as Chris Bowers of MyDD quickly noted, shows some significant changes, especially in the states affected directly and indirectly by Hurricane Katrina. Indeed, while Katrina has helped push George W. Bush’s approval ratings to their lowest levels ever, the disaster is helping several GOP governors.With the exception of Kathleen Blanco of Louisiana, virtually every Governor with a significant role in Katrina relief or recovery got a tangible bounce. In the following list, the first number is the governor’s approval/disapproval rating in the September 16-18 SUSA tracking, while the second (in parenthesis) is his ratio in the May poll.Haley Barbour (R-MS) 58/39 (37/55)Bob Riley (R-AL) 58/37 (36/52)Rick Perry (R-TX) 49/45 (38/48)Mike Huckabee (R-AR) 58/38 (51/41)Sonny Perdue (R-GA) 61-34 (47/40)Perdue’s Georgia wasn’t hit directly by Katrina, but did suffer some storm and tornado damage; he got a lot of ink for immediately calling the legislature into a special session to approve a gasoline price gougingbill.One Democratic Governor benefitted from an “Ophelia effect:” NC’s Mike Easley, whose approval ratio improved from 52/34 to 64/30.The “Katrina effect” helps three incumbent Republican Governors up in 2008 who were and may still be in some political peril, Rick Perry, Sonny Perdue and especially Bob Riley. The latter faces a primary challenge from “Ten Commandments” Judge Roy Moore, and a potentially tough general election opponent in Lt. Governor Lucy Baxley. (Riley got some more good news today when his predecessor, Don Siegelman, formally announced he was challenging Baxley for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, ensuring an expensive and possibly divisive primary).Barbour’s boost not only gets him out of the political woods in Mississippi (where he doesn’t face re-election until 2007), but also provides some fuel for the previously laughable boomlet of support for the ol’ rascal to run for president in 2008.All these effects are probably temporary, and all these Republican beneficiaries have lots of other problems. Perdue, for example, is presiding over a significant economic slide in a state that has known little but boomtimes for much of the last two decades. In Alabama, Roy Moore’s supporters are going to back him against Riley come hell or high water. And in both these states GOPers remain vulnerable to slow-developing fallout from the Jack Abramoff/Ralph Reed Indian Casino Shakedown Scandal.Outside the Katrina Region, the SUSA tracking polls don’t show a great deal of movement. Among Democrats, Ed Rendell (PA) and Phil Bredesen (TN) have slipped a bit, but both still look like solid bets for re-election. Mark Warner (VA) now has an approval/disapproval ratio well over two-to-one (66/29), which could help his designated successor, Tim Kaine, this November. Christine Gregoire of Washington has climbed from 34/58 in May to 45/49 in September.And the bottom five Governors are all Republicans: Blunt (MO), Fletcher (KY), Schwarzenegger (CA), Murkowski (AK) and Taft (OH). Ah-nold was already in trouble in May, with a ratio of 40/56; now he’s down to 32/65, in polling done about the time he announced his re-election bid.All in all, it’s a timely reminder that national issues cut differently in the states, and that whatever happens with Congress, there’s an enormously important series of pitched battles going on over governorships across the country.

I don’t want to start the fur flying with my colleague The Moose, who did a post earlier today explaining why he’d unenthusiastically vote to confirm John Roberts Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. But I definitely disagree; like him, speaking for myself only. To compress The Moose’s argument somewhat, he suggested that Roberts is acceptable because (a) he’s not a crazy person, and (b) Bush won the election, and presidents of either party deserve some benefit of the doubt on judicial nominations.I, too, am happy that Roberts appears to have ruled out paid-up-membership-in-good-standing in the Constitution In Exile movement. But Lord-a-Mighty, I hope we haven’t gotten to the point where the only disqualifier for a conservative Chief Justice would be if he or she openly and defiantly declares that most of the works of all three branches of the federal government over much of the twentieth century violates the Original Intent of the Founders, and must be overturned by judicial fiat.The fruits-of-victory argument is probably more important to the case for accepting Roberts, since it applies to the Democratic presidents of the future as well as to Bush.But I would respond that Bush has already deeply undermined that tradition by (1) refusing any serious bipartisan consultation over his judicial nominations, in sharp contrast with his predecessor, Bill Clinton, who almost certainly took a few names off his potential SCOTUS list to avoid a confirmation fight; and (2) engaging in an open, high-stakes campaign to reshape the Court and U.S. constitutional law through his appointments, with Roberts serving as the linchpin if not the ultimate tipping point.In other words, we are at a moment in which Supreme Court appointments represent a lunge towards Eternal Life for this wounded presidency. If stopping that lunge means sacrificing routine Republican votes for future Democratic SCOTUS nominations, so be it.And that, I would contend, is the most compelling argument against the final and best rationale for not worrying about Roberts: he’s just a one-for-one replacement for Rehnquist, and thus does not change the balance on the Court.That’s true, but Roberts is 50 years old, and since, as I profoundly hope, 50 is the new 30, he therefore represents in all probability at least a thirty-year extension of Rehnquist’s conservative and occasionally counter-revolutionary jurisprudence. Think about this: for the next seven or so presidential terms, SCOTUS will be “the Roberts Court.” This is not something progressives should minimize according to tactical considerations of the nomination in this moment’s political struggles.I do agree that the next presidential nomination to replace Justice O’Connor is even bigger in terms of shaping the future Court. And I don’t think Democrats should be forced to walk the plank to oppose or filibuster Roberts, who will probably get universal support from Senate Republicans.But given this nominee’s enduring significance; the Bush administration’s clear right-wing judicial-activist intentions; and the need to make it abundantly clear that the next nominee, if he or she is to the right of O’Conner, will face obstruction sho nuff–a robust Democratic vote against Roberts would be a very good thing.