We’re going about the Samuel Alito scandal all wrong
Here we are dealing with the Samuel Alito flag scandal, and at times like this I wish more of you had more of an understanding about how political leverage actually works. Please don’t take that as some kind of slight. It’s really just my frustration with how few leading voices on TV and Twitter are willing to educate you on how these things really work, and how far astray they’re willing to try to lead you in the name of scoring personal points.
Many of you have been conditioned to want Democratic Senators to absolutely set their hair on fire over the Alito flag scandal. But that won’t move the needle. You want an immediate subpoena issued to Alito. But he could just stall that in court. We’ve seen time and again that the courts do not enforce congressional subpoenas in a timely manner. Nor is an immediate impeachment motion against Alito going to do anything. There aren’t the votes to remove him. These are all simplistically “aggressive” magic wand ideas that are, in reality, dead ends.
There are much smarter and more effective ways to deal with this, and we’re watching the Democratic Senate embark down that path. First they have to build enough media attention and public pressure such that Alito concludes he has to testify in order to protect his own political muscle. Then they have to try to trip him up during his testimony such that he makes things even worse for himself. By that time it’s such a huge scandal that at best Alito “retires” to make it go away, and at the least the scandal peaks during the election such that the Democrats retain the Senate and can therefore replace Alito if he passes away over the next few years.
This is how things actually work. No matter how many “aggressive” magic wand ideas might go viral on Twitter or get repeated on TV, they still don’t become real things that can work in the real world. If this were so simple that it were instantly solvable through an idea contained in a tweet, you bet your ass that the Democratic Senate would be doing precisely that. Democratic Senators are more politically savvy than the average talking head on TV or Twitter, not less savvy.
The Democratic Senate is, so far, handling this smartly and correctly. I’m frankly tired of the pundits on TV and Twitter who know how things really work, yet are still touting simplistic magic wand ideas and bashing the Democrats for not acting on those magic wand ideas. They’re just trying to score cheap points for themselves at the expense of the Democrats, and at the expense of educating all of you about how political leverage actually works.
