Donald Trump isn’t running a conventional campaign and that’s why angry white people love him — but probably not enough angry white people to ever make him president.
This week he’s going to do something no candidate has ever done before. No, not just continually incite violence or hire someone who can’t seem to keep his hands or sexist thoughts to himself as his campaign manager.
Trump is going to name his “shortlist” for Supreme Court Justices. He’s already named two ultra-conservatives he’d consider for the Court.
Why is he doing this?
To reassure GOP donors that though he may act crazy, he completely understands what their real agenda is.
Ronald Reagan and both George Bushes ultimately disappointed conservatives donors when it came to executing their agenda — gutting government services for the middle class. Republican presidents realized what Trump has by promising to preserve Medicare and Social Security: people really like what government does for them.
The Supreme Court, however, can radically alter our society in ways elected officials wouldn’t dare.
It happened with reproductive rights and same-sex marriage. And it certainly has happened with voting rights, Citizens United and a series of campaign finance decisions that have turned our election system into something like democratic feudalism.
If the right ever really wants to finish off of labor unions, eliminate environmental regulations and get to work on the its real agenda — rolling back Medicare, Social Security and federal minimum wage laws — it needs the Court.
When it comes to the future of our highest Court there hasn’t been an election this important since at least 1968.
Not only is there a vacancy that could swing the majority right now, three Justices are either in or rounding the corner on 80 — and they just happen to be the majority of the majority that is upholding Roe v. Wade.
By naming Justices who’d reverse that historic decision, Trump signals to the religious right why they can’t sit out in November. But even more importantly, it tells the party’s big donors that he’s on their side when it comes to the Long Con they’ve been working on since big business decided that they couldn’t afford not to own our government any longer.
Trump is a conventional Republican dressed in a parade float of an ego. This is another sign that he’s just another in a long line of Republicans out to wreck the middle class by the most effective means necessary.
[CC image credit: Gage Skidmore | Flickr]
