I must say he’s a rather puffy and haggard-looking 53. He’s only four days older than me, but I’m a blooming rose in comparison.

I'm sure Hilary Clinton would've nominated him as well, after all, Clinton and Trump were exactly the same.

Didn’t the dems allow the seat to be stolen? Couldn’t they have done a recess appointment?

Also anyone ask CM Sawant if she still stands by her anti cliton rhetoric

So how's that ideological purity thing working out, Bernie and Jill? Thanks.

I don't really know shit about Cavanaugh and don't especially care to. I just want answers to these questions:

1 - Is there absolutely anything that can actually be done in order to stop Trump from nominating and confirming whomever he pleases?

2 - Where does he rank among the actual potential candidates? Most odious? Least odious?

Side note, can someone please do some actual research on Kavanaugh's opinion that the President should not be tried for crimes? I simply can't believe that the argument included potential violations of the Office such as the Mueller gang is investigating. I have zero faith that these insta-referenced tweets were concluded by anyone with a real understanding of the text.

@8: As to the odiousness question: on the NPR news report that I heard on my way home this evening, their estimation is that Clarence Thomas is the only person on the bench to the right of Kavanaugh.

Someone from this esteemed publication should ask Sawant if she still thinks that there is no difference between Trump and Clinton, and if she is ready to accept accountability for her incredibly bad judgment by retiring from public life.

@1 Catalina Vel-DuRay: I'll be 54 in three weeks and I look better than Kavanaugh. Yes, he is rather puffy, isn't he? Too much gluten, sugar, and six martini lunches, maybe?
@2 Urgutha Forka: Hillary Clinton is NOT Mein Trumpfy! How did you arrive at that conclusion?
@10 Choska: Kshama Sawant believes that Hillary = Trump, too? Seriously, WTF?
How can ANYONE see Hillary Clinton the same as Donald J. Trump? She was our only hope for a good president and should rightfully be in the White House now.

I love how people here are bashing on Sawant while the flaming cheetoh turd is literally second-by-second making everyone but the 1% his bitch. FOCUS PEOPLE, FOR FUCKS SAKE.

@12
The only thing the left loves more than impotently screeching about Trump is impotently screeching at EACH OTHER over perceived ideological infidelities. Where the hell have you been?

@9,

Yeah, the NPR report I was listening to in bed this AM suggested he was the most conservative of the four.

@ sawant bashers,

I was pretty unabashedly in the Clinton camp and thought Kshama should've probably joined in as well. That said, I'm skeptical of the notion that her doing so would've made any difference in the outcome.

@ Dan Savage,

I can't imagine we'll make it through the confirmation hearings without some brave representative(s) addressing the Clinton ejaculation issue. Should make for some fun SLLOTD readings around the time that's all happening. Small, small consolation.

Always a thrill to see effete, corporate, war-mongering doormats drag their cheap excuses to the threshold. Did I say 'doormats'? I meant Democrats.

Neoliberalism Exhibit A: Republican presidents are allowed, even expected, to bend or shatter all manner of rules and/or traditions. Democratic presidents claim to have less power than a fast-food cashier, no matter what political avenues actually exist. That is, when they're not actively doing the work of the other party. Had Obama showed as much enthusiasm for appointing a justice as he had throwing Jeremiah Wright under the bus, this conversation wouldn't be happening.

Hacks like Eli Sanders live to push blame onto voters who are smarter than they (using the NYT as leverage? s l o w c l a p). If the mid-terms are so crucial, and each presidential the most important since ever, then why such shite candidates and policies? Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, that's why. Democrats could run rampant with her platform, but that would end the corporate gravy train. Here's to it.

Screw the Supremes, The Stranger, and corporate Democrats. Americans have attacked all manner of dreadful social problems without the permission of the high court, so find your backbone or get the fuck out of the way.

Of course, no mention of prosecuting the seat-stealing enablers like McConnell, after all Republicans getting the better of you through a slow coup setting us "back a generation" is a normal state of affair according to corporate Democrats.

Che: Self-righteous no-nothings like you are the reason we're in this awful situation. Just STFU next time. Please.

Now now 18, have you considered that the white hot purity of Che's ideology will remove those unwanted pregnancies from poorer American women who don't happen to live near Canada ....

The revolution is (not) coming! Viva the (not) revolution!

"That said, I'm skeptical of the notion that her doing so would've made any difference in the outcome"

Yes but are there better dead horses for beating?

@18 & 19 Well of course, the low voter turnouts that lead us here are the responsibility of the "purists", not because your corporatist candidates are compromised in the public eye. People like you will never learn.

@15: Yes, America has a long history of electing left-wing presidents like, uh . . . .

@21:

I can only speak anecdotally, but in my family, of those who don't vote, I seriously cannot imagine any single one of them attributing that to "both sides are the same" or "corporate co-modification of politics", especially given that nearly all of them lean decidedly to the Right. It's just that their world-views are so small and narrowly focused that things like who's in charge at any level higher than mayor or city council simply has no relevance or impact on their daily lives.

Of course, they're all white as well, so take that as you will...

I hadn't noticed that he looks puffy or haggard; my two first impression where that he looks ridiculously shiny all the time, like someone varnished his face, and that he has even less chin than Don Jr.

My third impression was that of all the alleged shortlist candidates, he has by far the most backpfeifengesicht, so of course he was going to be the nominee. I want to punch him in the face even more than I want to punch Ted Cruz.

@1: That is a man you call "haggard?" Honey, either you only spend time with very young people, or don't spend time with many older men.

I know you are some kind of sentient mannequin, but human beings are covered with this spongy, stretchy stuff called "skin" which tends to sag when they age. We can't all just get buffed with some furniture polish and look fresh off the factory floor.

If MItch McConnell can postpone a Supreme Court nomination FOR TEN MONTHS, because he COULD, we can sure as shit wait -- at fucking least -- till this President's been cleared of election fraud. Etc. Or, till the next election -- IN FOUR FUCKING MONTHS.

Elections -- and under-investigation election fraud allegations against this president -- have Consequences.

This is waaaaaaaaaaaay bigger than the majority leader of the Senate.

@23 " things like who's in charge at any level higher than mayor or city council simply has no relevance or impact on their daily lives. "

There, you said it: they think it doesn't matter who they vote for ("they are all the same"). What you describe is called disenfranchisement from the political process, whether or not they recognize the capture of the duopoly by special interests.

@27 indeed but holding key enablers accountable is the only way to begin fixing this mess and regain the trust of the electorate (not to mention preventing it from happening again). Who is going to believe that Democrats will go to bat for them when it matters if they can't even say this SC has lost all legitimacy?

18 & 19 can agressively blow me, but not before answering why pearl-clutching crises in the Party are always and only in reaction. Corporate Democrats have no end of excuses for what the right does, but addressing their own pathetic politics that would forestall such things - forget it. Thomas Frank noted that Democrats ran against Hoover for 50 years and were nearly unbeatable. Now it's cheap slogans and licking techie billionaire bung and hope for the best. How's that workin' out?

As for reproductive rights, cushy middle-class feminists have repeatedly failed to solve access in rural areas; this stretches back through Obama and before. Are the unwashed unworthy, in the eyes of Hillary-humping zilches? It has certainly seemed so for quite some time. Were there a magical guarantee of House/Senate majorities and the White House (as happened with Clinton and Obama), neoliberal Democrats would still fail miserably at any given issue. I'd wish you luck, but you wouldn't know what to do with it.

In the next installment of Why Party Can't Read, discussion of why Washington Democrats are blocking candidate Sarah Smith's access to voter registration info.

Thanks to the Democratic Party Establishment choosing to lose with Hillary, rather than win with Bernie. Thanks to President Obama helping Clinton make the DNC an arm of her campaign as soon as Obama was reelected, instead of focusing on getting out the vote in the 2014 mid-terms.

29's well thought plan:

The Democratic party hasn't made the country perfect;

So let the Republicans skull fuck the disenfranchised into utter and total medieval misery;

Until the revolution, the stylings of which I use to construct my persona on Insta, rises and hands power to the people.

Saving villages by burning villages!
Brought to you by stone-dumb ideologues since 1968!

Hey, XXIX: Don't look now, it's the "perfect-is-enemy-of-the-good" trope, except "good" means accepting four decades of rising, and now nearly-terminal, inequality while corporate airhead deluxe Nancy Pelosi responds to the primary axing of one of her deputies by claiming "I'm female and progressive and worth between $43 and $202 million! I'm dead sexy to voters!"

Neoliberal Democrats have marched in lock-step with the medieval right because, behind the blue-chip degrees and polished-turd resumes, they're natural allies. Resume-worshiping neoliberal wankers are horrified when their assumed lessers confront them with demands for long-overdue action on key issues. The response? "You're ruining the ruins for everyone! Can't you be happy with nothing?"

Also: No reply on that "We urban, middle-class women have our rights and services, so fuck rural access" problem, eh? Hearing Sarah Smith footsteps yet?

30: Do you realize how illogical it is to interpret the election of Trump and republican majorities in the house, senate, and most state legislatures and governorships as some kind of clarion call for socialism? Think about it.

Pew just released a survey of 1,500 voters that asked whether they thought the democratic party was too liberal, not liberal enough, or just right, a classic generic survey question. Only 19% choose "not liberal enough". About the same number thought it was too liberal. But over 40% thought it was just right, like Goldilocks' warm porrage. Another Pew survey showed that people would vote for a muslim, atheist or gay candidate before they'd vote for a socialist. The word scares them.

The word scares them because it conjures up gulags, pogroms, and really bad people. And any political movement that doesn't understand that very simple, branding 101, concept is doomed anyway. Socialism could be the greatest thing since the Enlightenment but we'll never know because far too many of the people selling it act like petulant teenagers when they don't get what they want, rather than serious members of a serious political movement. And no, Bernie wouldn't have won.

PERHAPS Bernie wouldn't have won -- but he'd have succeeded in moving the Goal Posts at least somewhat back towards the Middle.*

And the ignorant old Farts who fear socialism because the word was predominate in the U.S.S.R.'s title, and in the Nazi's name, well, those old Farts are dying off and Millennials, who have NO innate fear of Socialism -- lookit Scandinavia -- New Zealand -- Germany -- Oh,Canada! -- outnumber them.

Time to think of a Strategy that isn't, "Well, WE're not nearly as bad as they are!" dontchya think?

*remember Hilary's MOVE RIGHT campaign sign?
I do.

@33: I dunno about that, because young folk love socialism; Millennials who've been trashed by the nonstop warfare, police, prison, surveillance, and debtor states are now trending off the left side of the chart. Pollsters, including climate criminal Frank Luntz, have been confused and alarmed to find responses that far left.

That said, does 'petulant' describe Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson threatening to destroy the economy unless he got a blank check to bail out the financial sector, which had removed regulations that would have prevented such a crisis? That little stunt, and ensuing years of 'cash-for-trash' cleanups of worthless loan paper, logged about $29 trillion (with a T) in bailout money. That's nearly the total value of the US economy for two full years.

Would people rather spend that money for housing, education, medical care, the environment, rehabbing prisoners, and prosecuting financial and war criminals? There's your socialism, sir.