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How Hillary Clinton's Press Secretary Self-Radicalized and Became a Resistance Leader
Brian Fallon was once one of the most sought after operatives in Democratic politics: a brass knuckle brawler with experience at the highest levels of government, a cellphone filled with the top journalists in town, and a reputation for being preternaturally on message. Most offices would have died to hire him. But that was before he decided to devote his career to making the courts more progressive—and to doing so with little care for who he pissed off along the way. Now, many top Democrats can’t stand him.
...In the wake of that Clinton loss, he started the progressive organization Demand Justice in the spring of 2018. In theory, it was dedicated to stopping President Donald Trump’s judicial appointments. But in practice it’s been about redirecting the Democratic id as it pertains to the judicial wars. The group has rattled many Democratic senators who, Fallon believes, are supporting the president’s judges as an olive branch to Republicans or out of some bygone commitment to courtesies and norms. The group has issued report cards going after Democratic senators’ voting patterns, run ads calling out Democrats who vote with Trump the most, and pushed progressives to embrace new liberal priorities like getting rid of the legislative filibuster and expanding the Supreme Court.
...he gradually became irked by how quickly many Democrats expressed willingness to work with the incoming Trump administration. During the campaign, they’d called Trump a threat to the foundation of the United States. But within days of the election, some were already positioning themselves to cut legislative deals with him. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the willingness of some Senate Democrats to greenlight Trump’s judicial appointees.
“This seemed like an issue where Trump was having an immense impact, in fact arguably going to be his biggest legacy beyond the tax legislation or anything he’s done administratively,” Fallon said. “You have these Democrats, some of whom now want to run for president, that present themselves as champions on climate change or champions of reproductive rights but they’re voting for huge swaths of Trump appointees that when those cases touching those issues reach them they’re going to rule exactly the wrong way. Why is that viewed as acceptable?”
...That Fallon spends a good chunk of his days calling his fellow Democrats squishes isn’t lost on him. Nor is he entirely unmoved by the argument that his time would be better spent focused on Republicans exclusively. It’s just that he no longer buys into that worldview. If anything, he’s grown more convinced that the lack of political willpower of the “centrist go-along, get-along Democrat[s]”—as he calls them—is the fundamental hurdle Democrats face.
“I suppose we could take the very dog bites man approach to focusing attention on Republicans,” he said. “But no one would be surprised or fault Republicans for voting for judges that they agree with. The twisted thing that’s going on is Democrats are voting two-thirds of the time for judges that they don’t agree with.”
More at https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-brian-fallon-hillary-clintons-press-secretary-self-radicalized-and-became-a-resistance-leader?ref=scroll
...In the wake of that Clinton loss, he started the progressive organization Demand Justice in the spring of 2018. In theory, it was dedicated to stopping President Donald Trump’s judicial appointments. But in practice it’s been about redirecting the Democratic id as it pertains to the judicial wars. The group has rattled many Democratic senators who, Fallon believes, are supporting the president’s judges as an olive branch to Republicans or out of some bygone commitment to courtesies and norms. The group has issued report cards going after Democratic senators’ voting patterns, run ads calling out Democrats who vote with Trump the most, and pushed progressives to embrace new liberal priorities like getting rid of the legislative filibuster and expanding the Supreme Court.
...he gradually became irked by how quickly many Democrats expressed willingness to work with the incoming Trump administration. During the campaign, they’d called Trump a threat to the foundation of the United States. But within days of the election, some were already positioning themselves to cut legislative deals with him. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the willingness of some Senate Democrats to greenlight Trump’s judicial appointees.
“This seemed like an issue where Trump was having an immense impact, in fact arguably going to be his biggest legacy beyond the tax legislation or anything he’s done administratively,” Fallon said. “You have these Democrats, some of whom now want to run for president, that present themselves as champions on climate change or champions of reproductive rights but they’re voting for huge swaths of Trump appointees that when those cases touching those issues reach them they’re going to rule exactly the wrong way. Why is that viewed as acceptable?”
...That Fallon spends a good chunk of his days calling his fellow Democrats squishes isn’t lost on him. Nor is he entirely unmoved by the argument that his time would be better spent focused on Republicans exclusively. It’s just that he no longer buys into that worldview. If anything, he’s grown more convinced that the lack of political willpower of the “centrist go-along, get-along Democrat[s]”—as he calls them—is the fundamental hurdle Democrats face.
“I suppose we could take the very dog bites man approach to focusing attention on Republicans,” he said. “But no one would be surprised or fault Republicans for voting for judges that they agree with. The twisted thing that’s going on is Democrats are voting two-thirds of the time for judges that they don’t agree with.”
More at https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-brian-fallon-hillary-clintons-press-secretary-self-radicalized-and-became-a-resistance-leader?ref=scroll
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