>There is a tremendous amount of circumlocution around Doug's point:
>ousting Bush means greater breathing room for even the activist left.
On the flight out to Seattle this morning, I read David Margolick's piece in the December Vanity Fair about Bush's judge nominees. I've heard them described as right wing, but never fully appreciated how dangerous and insane they are. When I said that I'd rather have politics be about something other than preserving the social gains of the 20th century, this is exactly what I meant. Bush's gang of enforcers in black robes want to eliminate any positive social role the federal government has, and restore us to a 19th century weak state laissez-faire model. One of them, Janice Rogers Brown (thankfully blocked the other day in the Senate) defends Lochner v. New York, a 1905 Supreme Court ruling that invalidated a New York State law that limited the work hours of bakers. If politics is conducted on this terrain, we're fucked. Remember the Clinton years, when disappointment over his industry-friendly sweatshop monitoring body led college activists to found a real one?
Doug