Questions Over on Alito (by Matt Singer)

OK, when David asked me to guest-blog again, I decided to hold off on a couple lengthier items I'd been thinking about writing at my own site. It turns out he's got a better bully pulpit than I do. Go figure. Anyways, I'll have that up later. In the meantime, here's a couple things to chew on.

First, the question of where Alito stands on choice should be over. The question now isn't whether he believes Roe is wrongly decided and needs to undermined or overturned, the question now is how quickly he'll do it. I think the slow undermining is actually far worse for liberals than it is for conservatives. Please, don't get too enthralled hoping that Alito only ends up slowly chipping away, especially with Roberts likely to do the same. With Kennedy also (it seems) in the chip away camp and with Thomas and Scalia in the overturn camp, it seems likely to me that this appointment will have serious consequences for abortion laws across the country. It won't, however, seriously impact us here in Montana where our right to privacy is explicit in our Constitution.

Second, Kos is right that these stupid Dean ain't fundraising memes need to die. We understand that there's some people in the DC class who aren't big Dean fans, but all of the evidence on fundraising is that Dean is running a far more successful operation than Terry McAuliffe did. Given that Dean's strength was never supposed to be fundraising while that was McAuliffe's claim-to-fame, that says something.

Unlike David, I was a Dean fan from early on. Even in his days as Governor when he beat up on liberals and progressives in the legislature, he still wasn't a mealy-mouthed cautious Democrat. Early on, it seemed clear to me that people like him were precisely what this country needed. Still, I think he's wrong on some issues (his pragmatic objections to single-payer health care, for example). That said, he's doing a good job. And the D.C. crowd trying to undermine him since they haven't liked him from day one is getting super-old.

--Matt Singer

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