Boo Birds

Disrespect

At first, I thought it was just a really big mistake.  The remains of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg lay “in repose” at the Supreme Court.  In our COVID-19 era, the public is not allowed into the building.   Instead, the casket, placed on the Lincoln Sarcophagus, was moved outside under the portico.  The public gathered forty-four steps below to pay their respects.

Someone at the White House thought it would be a “great idea” for the President and First Lady Melania to come out of the Court and stand behind the flag draped remains, “Il Duce like”, to “pay their respects”.  This after Mr. Trump made it clear that he would nominate a legal and political opposite for the Court. And he’d do it even before the late Justice is interred in Arlington National Cemetery this week.  

It doesn’t take a Masters Degree in politics (I only have a Bachelors in the subject) to figure it out. It’s likely the crowd wouldn’t react well to the President’s presence.  Those civilians on the street who came to honor Ruth Bader Ginsburg are by definition not going to be MAGA supporters.  In fact, they’d be the exact opposite. 

So it should have been no surprise that what started out as just general booing, turned into chants of “Vote Him Out”.  And while it’s probably not the appropriate place or time, I’m sure that most felt Justice Ginsburg smiling from above.

Why the Portico?

The President could have waited a day. He could have paid his respects at Statuary Hall in the Capitol building, where the remains were removed to be honored by the Congress.  She is the first woman, and the first Jewish person, to be so recognized.  While there’s not much of a friendly audience for him there either, at least they wouldn’t have booed.

Was it a colossal error by the White House political staff?  At first I thought as much.  They haven’t proven to be particularly deft at messaging over the three and a half years.  Remember – it was that staff that created the term “alternate facts”.  And there were rumors of Trump blowing up when he returned from his excursion .  

But then I thought about his probable appointment to the Court, a fire-breathing conservative woman Judge Amy Coney Barrett.   She’s against Roe v Wade, against the Affordable Care Act, and is being called the “female Scalia”, as if he hadn’t already appointed a “male Scalia” in Justice Gorsuch.  

It’s an election year. Most normal politicians (even those with degrees in Economics) know it’s time to move towards the middle.  The United States, even with the hyperpolarization of today’s politics, is still a nation where elections are decided by the “undecided”.  It’s the eleven or ten (or maybe four or five this year) percent that haven’t made up their minds already who will decide.   So the “standard” move would be for Trump to nominate a Justice that each side could find some value in. That way each side could get behind her candidacy.

Strategy: Trump 2020

But that’s not the Trump 2020 strategy.  His campaign team is determined to “double-down” on the Trump-wing of the Republican Party, believing that by simply getting every possible Trump voter to turn out at the polls, they will “thread the needle” of the Electoral College once again and secure the Presidency without winning the popular vote.

With that strategy, doing everything possible to mobilize the MAGA team is the only goal, even if it means giving away some of those “middling undecided’s” to the Biden camp.  And how to best mobilize your own “team”?

Let’s nominate a Supreme Court Justice who will give them everything they want on every wedge issue:  abortion, LGBTQ rights, Affordable Care Act, Second Amendment cases.  Let’s give them the greatest gift, longevity, and appoint a forty-eight year old who could serve in office, well, four decades (Ginsburg died at eighty-seven). 

And let’s give them some “red meat”. Give them the disrespect of the President and his poster-worthy wife as they pay “honest” respects to the deceased liberal Ginsburg.  “Those liberal, abortion loving, gun hating, Black Lives Matter folks don’t even respect their own dead”. That will be the campaign mantra.  

Anyone who really has respect for Justice Ginsburg knows from whence those “boos” came.  And everyone at the White House knew it was going to happen.  They expected it, and they wanted it.  The “boos” fit right into their political narrative.  It will drive more MAGA voters to the polls.  

Biden’s Mission

And if you are one of those who joined, at least in spirit, with the crowd at the foot of the stairs, don’t feel bad.  You haven’t been played.  The Trump 2020 campaign is desperate; so desperate that they have given up on expanding their voting base.  The President has an approval rating of just forty-five percent.  If he’s depending on that number to win an election he’s in bad shape.

Just make sure you get all of your “booing” friends to the polls on Election Day.  To overcome the natural Republican advantage in the Electoral College, Biden needs to win by five million.  Hillary only won by three.  There are more of us than there are of them – but we need to SHOW UP!