"Progressive for Kagan"..Al Giordano

[Cha]

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"As a court reporter and civil libertarian journalist during many of my years in the United States – prior to ducking under the border thirteen years ago – I probably followed US Supreme Court and Court of Appeals decisions more closely than any reporter I knew for whom the Court itself wasn’t his or her beat (Cynthia Cotts, who later covered the Court for Bloomberg, being an important exception). And the dynamics of the Court in 2010 and in the years to come ain’t rocket science. There are nine justices: four arch reactionaries, four reliable liberals (including the retiring Justice John Paul Stevens, whom Kagan will replace), and one swing vote in Justice Anthony Kennedy. And if I were in President Obama’s shoes, I would look for a justice who could wow Judge Kennedy on the merits of law toward the left and civil libertarian side of the dial. I’d seek one who has the people skills and persuasive abilities to do just that.

According to Lessig, that is Kagan’s strong card: “it is this quality that distinguishes Kagan most strongly. For the core of Kagan's experience over the past two decades has been all about moving people of different beliefs to the position she believes is correct. Not by compromise, or caving, but by insight and strength. I've seen her flip the other side.”

That skill set is what we call community organizing. And the Supreme Court is a very small community of nine residents – four on the right, four on the left, and one that needs to be organized to win any vote there – that needs an organizer, like any other.

Now, it has been entirely predictable that the board members of Poutrage, Inc. – those self-proclaimed “progressive” pundits who have never been community organizers and resent Obama and all the rest of us that have actually done that work and won political battles because they keep failing at it – are caught up in their cyclical careerist protagonism over the Kagan nomination. I won’t mention any names, but of course Glenn Greenwald and Jane Hamsher are up to their Johnny-one-note tricks of getting their faces on the cable talk shows and in the media by proclaiming themselves “progressives against an Obama proposal” on any particular policy. They are as predictable as they are unconvincing, and although they always lose, they never change their bumbling tactics, I conclude that they are not interested in winning the issues they claim to care about. They are only interested in their own careers and egos and in fooling the gullible to send donations to their projects of self-enrichment.*** The issues are merely the means to try to make themselves relevant to the national discourse."

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http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/

***Hmm..that's what I've concluded from observing their actions regarding anything President Obama.