Publisher's notebook
Indians will win, will Gorsuch?
Last week we got off the heavily political themes in our weekly online reader poll, switching gears to baseball. Not surprisingly, we learned that people around here like their baseball more these days. Like they say in politics, our readers "voted early and voted often" in response to our question "Will the Cleveland Indians win the 2017 World Series?
You will be happy to know that 89.3 percent of your peers are pretty confident that this is the year. The Tribe will bring home the World Series title to northeast Ohio. Yes, said 48 percent of you, the Tribe will win it all. Another 41.3 percent were a little more cautious (I wonder why?) and just said that chances are good but we will see. Apparently 10.7 percent of you are doubtful Thomases, "they look good on paper, but who knows how they’ll look on the field."
Then the Indians cooperated and won their first two games at the time of this writing. Let's go Tribe!
Back to the "at the time off this writing" theme, The Post went back to politics this week and gambled a little. We picked the Senate "nuclear option" debate for this week's online poll question. "Should Senate Republicans have voted to use the "nuclear option" to overcome the Democrats' filibuster of Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch?"
Notice the past tense. Our print version gets mailed on Friday and goes to press on Wednesday. There is a chance that cooler heads from both parties will prevail and NOT vote to change the Senate rules to allow 51 votes to block a filibuster for Supreme Court nominations.
Obviously we doubt it. So we decided to assume that the Senate Republicans will indeed "go nuclear" over the nomination of Gorsuch. We picked three options for you. (A) Yes, the Democrats should never have filibustered such a highly-qualified candidate. (B) No, the Republicans got what they had coming after refusing to vote on Merrick Garland last year. And (C) Maybe, they had no choice since both sides are unwilling to work together. It's bad for the country because future nominees will be more partisan.
Post Managing Editor David Sickels and I had a tough time coming up with those questions. You can tell I had a hand in it. In my typical "well on the one hand ... but on the other hand ..." style, I would have a hard time choosing myself. Frankly I could vote for all three of them!
We are not letting you make multiple choices so fair is fair, I won't either. I guess I will have to go with C. Without a doubt, I do think it is bad for the country because future nominees will be more partisan.
As for B, yes Democrats have a right to be angry over Republicans refusing to vote on Garland last year. I am not overly swayed by that argument, though. The vacancy was created by the untimely death of arch conservative justice Antonin Scalia, so Republicans waiting for a chance to replace him with another conservative does not change the previous balance of the court. Actually, I don't think that Gorsuch is quite as conservative as Scalia anyway.
I do, however, heartily agree with A. To me the Dems have blundered here on strategy. My advice would to have been to save the filibuster option for the next nominee (if there is one) during the next two or four years. By using up their leverage now, they are very likely to get a much more radical alternative later.
Like Donald Trump, I like to watch the political round table shows on TV. Several respectable journalists suggested that while the Democrats should hold their fire, they won't because of money. Their big donors are all insisting that they filibuster, while the Republican big donors are insisting that their guys go nuclear.
Kaboom!
That's why we gambled and put up the poll question before it happened. We made the bet that money talks. I hope we are wrong. Wait, is that a mushroom cloud I see?
You will be happy to know that 89.3 percent of your peers are pretty confident that this is the year. The Tribe will bring home the World Series title to northeast Ohio. Yes, said 48 percent of you, the Tribe will win it all. Another 41.3 percent were a little more cautious (I wonder why?) and just said that chances are good but we will see. Apparently 10.7 percent of you are doubtful Thomases, "they look good on paper, but who knows how they’ll look on the field."
Then the Indians cooperated and won their first two games at the time of this writing. Let's go Tribe!
Back to the "at the time off this writing" theme, The Post went back to politics this week and gambled a little. We picked the Senate "nuclear option" debate for this week's online poll question. "Should Senate Republicans have voted to use the "nuclear option" to overcome the Democrats' filibuster of Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch?"
Notice the past tense. Our print version gets mailed on Friday and goes to press on Wednesday. There is a chance that cooler heads from both parties will prevail and NOT vote to change the Senate rules to allow 51 votes to block a filibuster for Supreme Court nominations.
Obviously we doubt it. So we decided to assume that the Senate Republicans will indeed "go nuclear" over the nomination of Gorsuch. We picked three options for you. (A) Yes, the Democrats should never have filibustered such a highly-qualified candidate. (B) No, the Republicans got what they had coming after refusing to vote on Merrick Garland last year. And (C) Maybe, they had no choice since both sides are unwilling to work together. It's bad for the country because future nominees will be more partisan.
Post Managing Editor David Sickels and I had a tough time coming up with those questions. You can tell I had a hand in it. In my typical "well on the one hand ... but on the other hand ..." style, I would have a hard time choosing myself. Frankly I could vote for all three of them!
We are not letting you make multiple choices so fair is fair, I won't either. I guess I will have to go with C. Without a doubt, I do think it is bad for the country because future nominees will be more partisan.
As for B, yes Democrats have a right to be angry over Republicans refusing to vote on Garland last year. I am not overly swayed by that argument, though. The vacancy was created by the untimely death of arch conservative justice Antonin Scalia, so Republicans waiting for a chance to replace him with another conservative does not change the previous balance of the court. Actually, I don't think that Gorsuch is quite as conservative as Scalia anyway.
I do, however, heartily agree with A. To me the Dems have blundered here on strategy. My advice would to have been to save the filibuster option for the next nominee (if there is one) during the next two or four years. By using up their leverage now, they are very likely to get a much more radical alternative later.
Like Donald Trump, I like to watch the political round table shows on TV. Several respectable journalists suggested that while the Democrats should hold their fire, they won't because of money. Their big donors are all insisting that they filibuster, while the Republican big donors are insisting that their guys go nuclear.
Kaboom!
That's why we gambled and put up the poll question before it happened. We made the bet that money talks. I hope we are wrong. Wait, is that a mushroom cloud I see?