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.

As a follow-on to Gov. Vilsack’s comments about conservative incompetence in governance, I highly recommend Noam Scheiber’s latest TRB column in The New Republic. Noam presents a general theory of the difference between “normal” cronyism and the sort of extended, exponential cronyism that’s often found in conservative administrations, where you don’t just hire your friends, but your friends are allowed to hire their friends, ad infinitum.Like Tom Vilsack, Noam Scheiber thinks conservative hostility to government’s legitimate purposes has consequences for how competently government is run:

If you happen to think bureaucracies are structurally incapable of improving people’s lives, and if you have contempt for the kinds of people who reside in them, then you have two choices: You can either slash the bureaucracy and refund taxpayer’s money, or you can reconcile yourself to the existence of bureaucracy and run it as a patronage operation.

It’s pretty clear which fork in the road the Bush administration has taken. Yes, they’ve rebated some well-heeled taxpayers’ money, but have actually increased spending at a remarkable pace. But in the end, all those Treasury notes the Chinese are buying are essentially financing a patronage operation of epic proportions.

I’ve written a quick and unhappy reaction to the president’s big speech from New Orleans this evening over at TPMCafe.But in terms of understanding the broader issues being raised by the Katrina disaster, the incompetent response, and the impending recovery, I urge you to read a statement by DLC Chairman and Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack that was posted earlier today.Here are some excerpts:

The failures in our national response to Hurricane Katrina did not simply stem from mistakes, however egregious, of individuals whose replacement with more experienced and competent public servants will take care of the problem in the immediate and distant future. These failures represent the broader failure of an ideology of contempt for the responsibilities of government, and for the sense of community that is fundamental to genuine self-government….We are learning every day that there really is something worse than a big, debt-ridden government that tries to do too much and fails. It’s a big, debt-ridden government that tries to do too little, and succeeds….The devastation and human tragedy of Hurricane Katrina provides a painful but necessary opportunity for us all to rethink our attitude towards our own public institutions and those who serve in them, rejecting the false choice of government as an end in itself and government as a dead end remote from our worthier endeavors.And that’s why current Republican proposals to turn the Gulf Coast into a conservative ideological laboratory with private-school vouchers, wholesale deregulation, and suspension of wage standards on federally financed construction projects must be rejected. A second, ideologically driven abandonment of public responsibility in this region would be intolerable.

Vilsack nicely ties together the past, present and (potentially) future failures of the conservative ideology in addressing America’s most urgent needs. It’s a timely analysis, and warning.

With so much else going on, I’ve neglected to blog about the gubernatorial race–one of two in this off-year–in Virginia, featuring Democrat Tim Kaine and a Republican with the unfortunate surname of (Jerry) Kilgore.The race is now heating up and heading into the home stretch. And the dynamics are very interesting. Virginia is a state with a small but significant built-in Republican advantage in statewide races. Yet incumbent, term-limited Democratic Governor Mark Warner is extremely popular, and George W. Bush’s approval ratings here have dropped well below 50 percent.Both gubernatorial candidates have notable strengths and weaknesses. Lt. Gov. Kaine is a former Richmond mayor and one-time civil rights lawyer–not the best biography for a statewide candidate in Virginia. Moreover, he’s a “seamless garment” Catholic who opposes both abortion and the death penalty, though he’s repeatedly pledged to enforce existing laws on both topics. Kaine is also very smart, very disciplined, and has pretty much run circles around Jerry Kilgore on the few occasions when the Republican has agreed to debate. He’s come up with a credible proposal for holding down property taxes (skyrocketing in the D.C. suburbs of northern Virginia), and is now accentuating a plan for universal access to pre-K education. And most of all, Kaine will benefit from support from Warner, who is expected to expend some serious political capital on his preferred successor down the stretch.Kilgore is firmly aligned with the anti-tax, Christian Right faction of the Virginia GOP, which has seen better days, but is still capable of delivering a virtually uncontested nomination. His main strength (other than a pretty-boy appearance and an ability to cheerfully perform every inane campaign stunt in the books) is his base in southwest Virginia, a normally Republican region that Warner carried in 2001. The wild card in the race is independent Russell Potts, a renegade Republican state senator from the Shenandoah Valley who supported Warner’s budget and tax deal, and is basically running to Kaine’s left on taxes and abortion. Despite intensive efforts by the Washington Post editorial page to hype his candidacy (the Post is strangely angry at Kaine for not supporting another major tax increase to deal with traffic congestion), Potts doesn’t seem to be catching on. The two major candidates are evenly matched financially, and in terms of national support. A poll by the Post released last weekend confirmed the conventional wisdom of the race by showing Kilgore up over Kaine by a small but statistically significant 4 percent (7 percent among likely voters), with Potts getting about 5 percent, and 9 percent still undecided. Nearly half of voters indicated their preferences were fluid, and name ID for both candidates was surprisingly low, given their recent ubiquity. The regional breakdown of the poll showed Kilgore with big leads in the three most conservative regions of the state–Southside, the Valley, and Southwest Virginia–and Kaine ahead in Central Virginia and Hampton Roads. If there was a surprise in the poll, it was that Kilgore is running nearly even with Kaine in Northern Virginia, mainly due to big margins in the exurbs. This showing may be attributable to Kilgore’s noisily abrasive exploitation of an immigration controversy in the area, where local officials approved a publicly financed gathering site for day laborers, often new immigrants from Central America. Aside from the usual conservative line about immigration enforcement, Kilgore has luridly suggested links between Hispanic gangs and al Qaeda. No kidding.The same poll showed Warner is the most popular politician in the state, and also showed heavy support for Kaine’s pre-K proposal.To the extent that Kilgore’s lead depends on a generic Republican advantage in the Commonwealth, the recent troubles of the Bush administration, and the likelihood that late-deciding voters may treat the election as in part a national referendum, are potentially bad news for this most generic of GOP conservatives. There’s also a statewide-televised candidate debate on tap in early October, which could accentuate Kaine’s verbal and intellectual advantage.The crucial X-factor in this race may well be Mark Warner. It’s no secret he is considering a presidential race in 2008. And while potential presidential primary voters won’t care about what happens in the contest to succeed him in Virginia, Warner’s already formidable insider reputation for political skill would definitely be enhanced if he succeeds in helping Kaine pull off a come-from-behind victory. Whatever happens, people outside Virginia are likely to view this election in the context of national politics; with Jon Corzine now almost certain to romp in the other off-year gubernatorial election in New Jersey, Virginia’s contest will determine whether Democrats achieve a portentous sweep or an ambiguous split.For those of us who live in the Commonwealth, the stakes are higher: will we continue Warner’s remarkable record of accomplishment, or go back to the days when GOP governors seemed determined to make Virginia a laboratory for bad, mean-spirited and deficit-ridden government? For me, of course, this is really personal. As a resident of Virginia, I just don’t want to spend the next four years explaining that I am neither biologically or politically related to Jerry Kilgore. Please help me, my fellow citizens.

Over at TAPPED yesterday, Garance Franke-Ruta asked a compelling question: how, exactly, can we really expect to hold Bush and his minions accountable for their serial acts of misgoverment? And over at TPMCafe, Mark Schmitt responded by making a strong argument that today’s Republicans escape accountability because, well, they don’t really give a damn what anybody thinks about them other than on general election days.Maybe I’m just consumed with anger at the administration and its congressional allies right now, but I think Mark’s basically right. Most of these people have no concept of “accountability”–in terms of short-term performance, long-range consequences, the judgment of history, or even public opinion. Their only benchmark is progress towards their own ideological goals, which are “starving the beast,” destroying the very possibility of meaningful bipartisanship, radicalizing permanent institutions like the judiciary, the military and the corporate sector, and keeping Americans afraid of the world and each other. That’s why they’ve relied so heavily on abuse of power; it’s the only way to perpetuate their power without compromise or accountability. And that’s why they are so uninhibited by most considerations of truth or decency. In fact, I would argue that their most important tactical consideration has been to destroy the possibility of accountability by short-circuiting all the signals whereby a healthy society normally judges its leaders. Any source of objective measurement has been systematically discredited as inherently ideological: scientists are secularist fanatics; the media are elitist liberals; the judiciary is full of anti-Christian activists; the opposition party is anti-American. We’ve all had much fun with the conservative characterization of “liberals” as “reality-based,” but it’s no laughing matter: the essence of Rovism is to eliminate any zone of rational persuasion and force Americans to pick sides in an identity politics of real and perceived privileges under imaginary assault. Years ago, a friend of mine from Alabama observed that what bugged her about Republicans as people is that they had the subtelty and sensitivity of hammerhead sharks. So the question is: how do you fight a hammerhead shark, particularly a wounded hammerhead shark? Clearly, you can’t go very far negotiating or reasoning with this kind of beast; you just become chum. But I don’t put a lot of stock in the reigning opinion of so many Democratic bloggers that the answer is to become sharks ourselves. I’ve always opposed the idea that Democrats can win a selfishness competition with the GOP, offering our government benefits versus their tax cuts; they’ll win every time if voters are asked to conduct a personal cost-benefit analysis of what they think they are “getting” for their tax dollars. Nor do I believe, in the end, we can out hate them or out thug them; even if that course was not morally repugnant, it’s politically self-defeating; the ultimate sell-out to Republican values.So if we do not happily cooperate with the GOP in reducing all politics to our team versus their team, and our “truth” versus their “truth,” to what higher standard can we appeal? And that gets back to the problem of accountability in an age with few uncontested facts and no credible referees to keep a score card.Our task can be summed up as this: we have to rebuild accountability, brick by brick. That requires relentlessly putting forth a message that reminds Americans of their real and tangible interests, individual and collective, and then measuring GOP governance, and GOP candidates, accordingly. This effort will naturally involve presenting Democratic alternatives to meet the accountability standards we propose, which means dealing aggressively with entrenched (if generally false) negative stereotypes about our own party. And ultimately, the “accountability moment” will indeed have to happen at election time, or sufficiently in advance of election time to convince Republicans they are at risk not only of losing seats, or losing power, but losing a political argument with epochal consequences, just as they did during the Great Depression. The good news is that the whole Republican identity politics game is a house of cards based on the perception that Bush and the GOP are competent stewards of a threatened status quo ante of moral certainty, economic growth, and American power. Iraq and Katrina–and perhaps the impending cascade of ethical disasters–could damage those perceptions and greatly aid a Democratic effort to remind Americans of what their government should actually stand for.

As you may have heard, in his very brief opening statement for his confirmation hearings as Chief Justice of the United States, John Roberts regaled the Senate Judiciary Committee with a baseball analogy to explain his basic judicial philosophy:

Judges and justices are servants of the law, not the other way around. Judges are like umpires. Umpires don’t make the rules; they apply them.

The role of an umpire and a judge is critical. They make sure everybody plays by the rules.But it is a limited role. Nobody ever went to a ball game to see the umpire….I will decide every case based on the record, according to the rule of law, without fear or favor, to the best of my ability. And I will remember that it’s my job to call balls and strikes and not to pitch or bat.

My first reaction to this homespun wisdom from the extremely sophisticated habitue of Washington society, with an impeccable High Tory background to boot, is that he’s being coached by the ultimate Homespun High Tory, George Will, just as Will once coached Roberts’ boss and idol, Ronald Reagan, in communications skills prior to a presidential debate.My second reaction echoed that of Armando on the Daily Kos site, who made this acute observation:

It is an interesting analogy Judge Roberts draws. And it seems to me to be an excellent argument for why Judge Roberts must answer the questions put to him by the Senate. As any baseball fan knows, umpires are not uniform in the delineation of the strike zone. Some are “hitters” umpires. Some are “pitchers” umpires. Some call the high strike. Some call the outside pitch.And when it comes to the Supreme Court of the United States, it is important that we know what Judge Roberts’ “strike zone” is. His record, the part that was not concealed by the Bush Administration, gives many of us pause regarding Judge Roberts’ “strike zone.” His stated antipathy for the right to privacy, for voting rights measures, for discrimination remedies, etc., demands followup. What does your “rulebook” say about these things Judge Roberts?

But why stop there? Maybe the Judiciary Committee should conduct the whole hearing in baseball metaphors.Worried about Roberts’ disposition towards Roe v. Wade? Maybe he should get this question:

SEN. FEINSTEIN: Judge Roberts, it’s safe to say the American League’s Designated Hitter rule, adopted in the same year that the Supreme Court announced Roe v. Wade, overturned a rule of play that stretched back to the beginnings of baseball. The DH still upsets a very large number of people who view it as a violation of the sacred canons of the game.We only have one Supreme Court, not one for each “league,” not one for pro-choice and pro-life Americans. Do you think as an “umpire” you should have the power to overturn a precedent of more than thirty years, and change the rules? Would you call out every designated hitter?

Concerned about Roberts’ views on civil rights? Okay:

SEN. KENNEDY: Judge Roberts, a few years before the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision–a decision your mentor, the late Chief Justice Rehnquist, deplored in at least one memo–a man named Branch Rickey unilaterally and arrogantly violated a baseball tradition going back to well beyond the date of the “separate but equal” doctine of the Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson, by employing Jackie Robinson as a major league baseball player. Should an umpire in 1947 have refused to “bend the rules” and responded by calling Robinson out every time he came to bat? And if not, should today’s umpires interpret the rules to counteract all those years of “judicial arrogance” by changing the strike zone to handicap minority players who hit or pitch?

See how this works?

There’s even a nice analogy on all those economic issues where Roberts is almost a sure vote for protecting property rights against the predations of labor and Big Government:

SEN. SCHUMER: Judge Roberts, shortly after the Great Society years, baseball’s economics were revolutionized by a series of court decisions that culminated in the elimination of baseball’s “reserve clause,” which made free agency possible. As you know, to this day, baseball owners–or at least those who are not pursuing free agents–argue that this decision destroyed baseball’s balance of power and led to today’s high salaries and ticket prices.

Would you, as an umpire dedicated to the greater welfare of the game, try to reimpose the “reserve clause”? And if so, how would you do it without abandoning your role as a mere dark-robed arbiter of the rules as they stand?

Maybe Roberts should have tried football as a metaphor.

While most of us have been otherwise preoccupied, there have been two significant developments on the redistricting reform front, one positive, one negative.The good news is that the package of Ohio ballot initiatives, bearing the rubric of “Reform Ohio Now,” has been certified as having received the requisite petitions to appear on the November 2005 general election ballot in the Buckeye State. One of these, as you may know, creates an entirely new redistricting system under independent auspices and sets out criteria placing a premium on competitiveness (one leading GOP opponent in the state predicts it could cost his party, which had previously carried out an egregious gerrymander, up to six U.S. House seats). Republicans will continue to fight the initiatives in court, and are already raising money to beat them in November, but at the moment, RON’s future looks bright.The bad news is in Florida, where one of that state’s three political reform initiatives has been ruled off the ballot by a state court on grounds that its text exceeded the state’s 100-word limit by six words. The disqualified initiative was the one that set out criteria for redistricting; another still viable initiative creates an independent redistricting commission, and still another requires immediate redistricting prior to the 2008 elections. Since, IMHO, redistricting criteria are the key to successful redistricting reform, the Florida development was a serious though hardly fatal setback. Still, it looks like Ohio will provide the earliest and perhaps the best testing ground for reform.