No comments on Presty the DJ for Oct. 16
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Game 3 of the National League Championship Series is tonight in Los Angeles, with the series tied at one game each.
The Brewers are not playing at home, but some of the Brewers are playing pretty close to home, as the Los Angeles Times reports:
Your National League Championship Series matchup: L.A.’s team vs. L.A.’s team. …
“I don’t think there’s any team that has more L.A. connections than we have,” Brewers outfielder Ryan Braun said.
Braun attended Granada Hills High. Outfielder Christian Yelich, the MVP-to-be, attended Westlake High. Third baseman Mike Moustakas, who attended Chatsworth High, said all three players now live in Malibu.
So does Brewers owner Mark Attanasio, who last month tore his Achilles tendon on the beach, charging to the rescue of his labradoodle, who was under attack by a larger dog. His dog is fine. His rehabilitation includes a modified scooter, decorated in Brewers gear.
Milwaukee is the smallest market in the major leagues, and a long way from the Pacific Ocean.
“We’ve got a lake,” Attanasio said. “Maybe not an ocean, but a lake.”
Attanasio loves to tell the story of how, not long after he bought the team, a guy driving a garbage truck ran up to welcome him to Milwaukee.
“And he took his glove off too,” Attanasio said.
The kids that grew up in the big city swear by Milwaukee, even if they did not know much about the place before playing there.
“I just had the vision of watching Brett Favre play in the snow, so I just assumed that it was cold,” Braun said.
Braun, a six-time All-Star, twice skipped the chance for free agency to sign contract extensions with the Brewers. Attanasio calls him “a cheerleader for the city.”
Said Braun: “It’s such a special place to spend the summer, because it’s such a small window of good weather. In L.A., we’re spoiled. We have good weather year-round. In Milwaukee, it’s a three- or four-month window, so every day, there’s a carnival, concert, festival, something going on. Everybody is outside. It’s 45 degrees, and they have shorts and T-shirts on.
“The time we spend there is the best time of the year in Milwaukee.”
Braun, in his 12th season there, said he has helped newcomers Moustakas and Yelich find good places to eat, nice neighborhoods, and ways to navigate what relatively little traffic there might be.
“It’s an awesome city,” Moustakas said. “I’m from L.A., but I try to keep to myself. I’m not a big-city guy.”
“It’s a great baseball town,” Yelich said. “It’s been a lot of fun.”
The Brewers ranked in the top 10 in attendance this season and last, despite ranking 30th in market size and playing in a city with a population closer to the size of Fresno than L.A. In Attanasio’s 14 seasons as owner, the Brewers have had seven winning seasons, three postseason appearances, and one 90-loss season.
The smallest market in the majors might be the easiest one in which to sell tanking, but Attanasio wants no part of it.
“You can break things down, but it’s not easy,” he said. “Just because you break them down doesn’t mean you’re going to get back to where you want to get to.
“Plus, I just hate to lose.”
Attanasio could have eliminated his frequent Milwaukee commute without sacrificing ownership of a major league team. However, he declined to assemble a group to bid on his hometown Dodgers when Frank McCourt put them up for sale in 2011, even though one of Attanasio’s investors in the Brewers has season tickets “literally behind the dugout” at Dodger Stadium.
“I’ve got things set up, where God willing, my kids can take this over some day,” Attanasio said. “I’m dug in here, for the long haul.
“Every ownership group is different. This is all mine. It’s all the fun, and all the pain. It’s all on me. I have other investors, but I’m the only decision-maker.” …
“It’s going to be way different than when we played there during the regular season,” Yelich said. “It’s going to be strictly a business trip. You won’t be able to cater to anybody’s needs. You’re not going to be able to say hello. You have to minimize the distractions.
“I may even turn my phone completely off.”
But how will all your friends track you down to ask for tickets?
“No one,” Yelich said with a small smile, “is getting any tickets.”
This blog reported Friday about how Major League Baseball hates the idea of the Brewers possibly in the World Series. Nancy Armour can’t understand why:
Why do they hate fun?
Yes, the Brewers are a small-market team. The smallest of the small markets, to be exact. They don’t have the cachet of the Los Angeles Dodgers or the Boston Red Sox, and they don’t have Houston’s bragging rights. The radio guy rivals the soon-to-be NL MVP for star power.
But, man, is Milwaukee fun.
Just the kind of wacky fun baseball needs.
The Brewers took down the mighty Clayton Kershaw and the Dodgers on Friday night with the kind of quirky game you’d normally see in spring training, not Game 1 of the National League Championship Series. Manager Craig Counsell pulled Gio Gonzalez after two innings, the pitcher who relieved him took Kershaw deep and the guy who pinch-hit for him singled in a pair of runs.
There also was a catcher’s interference call to keep one inning alive, and an overturned call on a steal to extend another one. The closer nearly gave the game away, only to strike Yasiel Puig out.
And if that’s not enough for you, the 6-5 victory gives all of Milwaukee a free hamburger.
See, wacky.
“We’re a fun team to watch,” infielder Travis Shaw told USA TODAY Sports. “I think once people get to watch us a little bit, they’ll enjoy watching us.”
You wouldn’t know it from the rabid, towel-waving, sold-out crowd at Miller Park, but baseball is in the doldrums. Attendance was down sharply this season, TV ratings lag well behind the NFL’s and kids just don’t dig baseball like they used to.
Part of that is the length of games and the late starts – Friday’s game lasted 4 hours and 2 minutes and ended at 12:14 p.m. Eastern. But the bigger problem is that all the fun has been sucked out of baseball by esoteric stats, shifts and pitch counts that serve the same purpose as bubble wrap.
The Brewers are not immune to this. Few other managers have embraced the shift like Counsell, and he’s a matchup savant.
But he’s not afraid to turn traditional philosophy on its head, either.
Take Friday’s game.
Gonzalez hadn’t pitched since Sept. 30, so he was fresh enough to pitch a complete game. Yet Counsell’s plan was to have him go two innings and let the bullpen take over. Sure enough, he brought Brandon Woodruff in to pitch the third, and he retired the Dodgers in order the next two innings.
He also took Kershaw deep to right-center to lead off the bottom of the inning and tie the game.
“It certainly changed the energy in our dugout from what you think is going to be the kind of grind-it-out game against Clayton,” Counsell said. “That happens, it gives everybody life.”
With Woodruff dealing as he was, you’d think Counsell might have let him go deeper in the game. Nope. When Woodruff’s spot in the order came up in the fourth, Counsell brought Domingo Santana in to pinch-hit.
Smart move, as Santana drove in a pair of runs with a single to left.
“It’s a breath of fresh air,” Gonzalez said. “You’ve got this kind of stuff where you’ve never been a part of it and now you’re doing it. It’s exciting to see the revolution.”
OK, but some pitchers would be less than pleased at getting such a quick hook. When that question was posed to him, however, Gonzalez’s face left no doubt how crazy that idea is.
“It’s exciting,” he said. “At the end of the day, everybody’s pitching. Everybody gets a chance to pitch. Which is what you’re playing this game for. Everybody wants to be a part of it. Everybody wants to grab an at-bat.”
That’s the most appealing part of these Brewers. They’re playing with the kind of abandon that made them fall in love with the game in the first place. The roster is a glorious mishmash of home-grown products and castoffs reveling in a second chance, so they don’t much care what roles they’re playing or who’s getting the credit.
Derek Jeter will rue the day he thought trading Christian Yelich was a good idea — if he doesn’t already. Jesus Aguilar, whose solo homer in the seventh turned out to be the game-winner, bounced around the minors and had a few cups of coffee in Cleveland over three seasons before the Brewers claimed him off waivers before last season. Mike Moustakas escaped the purgatory that is now Kansas City before the trade deadline.
“We play like a family,” Aguilar said. “We don’t got like a specific hero. The most important thing is to win games.”
And win games they are, 12 in a row — thus, the free hamburgers from local institution George Webb.
The team that wins Game 1 of the NLCS is an overwhelming favorite to reach the World Series. Since the NLCS expanded to seven games 32 years ago, the Game 1 winner has gone on to clinch the pennant 23 times. The last team to buck that trend was the San Francisco Giants back in 2012.
Which means the whole country could be seeing more of the Brewers, like it or not.
“It’s something different,” Shaw said. “The three teams that are left besides us have all been there, done that. We haven’t been … so it’ll be a nice change.”
If you don’t enjoy what the Brewers are doing, then you don’t really enjoy baseball.
And you sure don’t enjoy fun.
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Who are you going to believe, your eyes or the mainstream media? The latest discussion is whether Democratic “mobs” are behaving badly.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is almost chased out of a restaurant. Protesters pound the Supreme Court doors and attempt to pry them open while chanting “shut it down!” Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) can’t even get on an elevator without an angry mob chasing him and preventing the elevator from moving. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was confronted and had to leave a DC restaurant. Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi was harassed by a mob of leftists at a movie theater that was showing a film about Mr. Rogers. And so on…
Democratic hecklers and, yes, a few Republican hecklers, have always been a problem at political events. And before I get the “whatabout” emails from a few liberal readers, no, it didn’t help political discourse when President Donald Trump said during the 2016 campaign he wouldn’t mind seeing a few hecklers roughed up.
Nor did it help matters when an angry mob prevented a Trump rally in Chicago. It was a sign of things to come.
But the situation has gotten worse. When Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) called for Republicans to be harassed wherever they are, only a handful of Democrats condemn her statement. Her call for harassment was echoed elsewhere on the left, and now even Hillary Clinton is calling for mob confrontations of Republicans.
“You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about,” Clinton said on CNN. “That’s why I believe, if we are fortunate enough to win back the House and or the Senate, that’s when civility can start again.”
In other words, politics has become a protection racket. She could have just said, “That’s a nice republic and constitution you have. Would be a shame if anything ‘happened’ to it. Perhaps if you see things from our point of view, we can reach a civil arrangement.” It would have had the same meaning.
Of course, as state Sen. Leah Vukmir (R-Brookfield) pointed out recently, we have been through this before in Wisconsin in 2011 and 2012. There were no limits to the left, and they cheered when one protester threw a beer at Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester). Governor Scott Walker couldn’t even speak at the Special Olympics without protesters disrupting the event. The Capitol was occupied, aided by someone who opened up the office window of then-state Rep. Cory Mason (D-Racine) for the protesters who attempted to shut down debate in the state legislature. Members of the legislature and the governor’s family received death threats. Protesters even marched at the governor’s family home in Wauwatosa.
Democrats, enabled by the media, have objected to the word “riot,” but that’s what the rest of the state saw. Now Democrats are objecting to the word, “mob,” even claiming that it can only be used to describe the alt-Right protesters in Charlottesville. (No word yet on how we should describe the Antifa mob described by the Charlottesville Daily Progress as preparing for battle before the protests.)
Unfortunately, it’s going to get worse before it gets better, and perhaps Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is right. Someone will be successfully assassinated. Paul knows. He was assaulted by his neighbor over politics, and he was also there when Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) was seriously wounded when a supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) opened fire on a Republican Congressional softball team practice field.
Early in the Trump Administration, a theater company in New York couldn’t help itself and put on a version of Julius Caesar with an actor portraying Trump as Caesar, complete with the assassination scene. Let’s pray that Democrats recover their senses before they lead us into the ensuing civil war.
When will it “get better”? After someone gets killed. Maybe.
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The number one single today in 1964:
The number one single today in 1966:
Today in 1971, Rick Nelson was booed at Madison Square Garden in New York when he dared to sing new material at a concert. That prompted him to write …
If I told you the number one British album today in 1983 was “Genesis,” I would have given you the artist and the title:
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The number one song today in 1957 was the Everly Brothers’ first number one:
The number one British single today in 1960 was a song originally written in German sung by an American:
The number one album today in 1967 is about an event that supposedly took place on my birthday:
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The number one British album today in 1973 was the Rolling Stones’ “Goats Head Soup,” despite (or perhaps because of) the BBC’s ban of one of its songs, “Star Star”:
Who shares a birthday with my brother (who celebrated his sixth birthday, on a Friday the 13th, by getting chicken pox from me)? Start with Paul Simon:
Robert Lamm plays keyboards — or more accurately, the keytar — for Chicago:
Sammy Hagar:
Craig McGregor of Foghat:
John Ford Coley, formerly a duet with England Dan Seals:
Rob Marche played guitar for the Jo Boxers, who …
One death of note: Ed Sullivan, whose Sunday night CBS-TV show showed off rock and roll (plus Topo Gigio and Senor Wences) to millions, died today in 1974:
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The Los Angeles Times previews the National League Championship Series, which starts in Miller Park tonight:
The Dodgers’ celebration at Atlanta’s SunTrust Park on Monday was as much about checking off a box as it was what they had accomplished. They expected to advance to the National League Championship Series, to within four wins of another trip to the World Series, after last year’s disappointment. The path this season was rockier than anticipated, but anything less would’ve been a colossal letdown.
The party the Milwaukee Brewers had at Coors Field in Denver a day earlier had a different flavor. They weren’t projected to reach the NLCS. They play in baseball’s smallest market, an afterthought in Chicago’s shadow, and have one of the majors’ slimmest payrolls. It was their first playoff series victory since 2011, the last time they were in the playoffs. They went to the NLCS that year and lost. They haven’t won a World Series or even been to one since 1982. This is unfamiliar territory.
But the clubs will have at leastone thing in common when they arrive at Milwaukee’s Miller Park for Game 1 on Friday: They’re both playing their best baseball. The Dodgers have won seven of their last eight games, outscoring opponents 47-15 during the stretch. The Brewers have been even better, winning 11 straight games and breezing through the NL Division Series by outscoring the Colorado Rockies 13-2 in a three-game sweep.
“It’s going to be great,” Dodgers shortstop Manny Machado said. “Both ballclubs have worked hard to get to this situation. They’re both two good ballclubs facing off in the championship. And we’re just going to go out there and play baseball, be ourselves, keep doing what we’ve been doing all year, and hopefully we come out on top.
Presumptive National League MVP Christian Yelich anchors a deep Brewers lineup that features a little bit of everything. They’re traditional in that regard.
But pitching is another matter. The Brewers deploy their pitchers like most analytically driven clubs; they’d rather not let a pitcher face a lineup three times, regardless of pitch count, and they’re not afraid to shift a heavier onus on to their bullpen. But the Brewers have catapulted the revolution to another level.
Manager Craig Counsell would rather not label his pitchers “starters” or “relievers.” He prefers “out-getters.” In Game 1, he ditched the traditional starter entirely, opting to begin the game with Brandon Woodruff, a reliever. Woodruff tossed three shutout innings. Traditional starters Jhoulys Chacin and Wade Miley started the final two games, but logged just 7 2/3 innings combine
The strategy is effective because Milwaukee’s bullpen — headlined by Jeremy Jeffress, Josh Hader and Corey Knebel — is one of baseball’s best, and the postseason schedule, which affords more off-days, renders the approach more viable. Jeffress, Hader and Kneble each appeared in all three NLDS wins over the Rockies. They gave up two runs and six hits and tallied 12 strikeouts in 8 2/3 innings — and they’ll be fresh Friday after a four-day layoff.
Meanwhile, the Dodgers, realizing their strength lies elsewhere, are countering the sport’s current.
Hyun-Jin Ryu threw seven scoreless innings in Game 1 against the Atlanta Braves. Clayton Kershaw tossed eight in Game 2. Walker Buehler was given enough leash to push through a five-run second inning in Game 3 before settling in to log five innings, and Rich Hill was pulled in the fifth inning in Game 4 after issuing five walks. A year after riding Kenley Jansen and a deep bullpen to Game 7 of the World Series, the Dodgers’ success is dependent on their starting rotation.
“Hyun-Jin [was] unbelievable,” Kershaw said. “And Walker, after he took his lump there in that one inning, came back and threw really well. So I think that was huge for him moving forward and Richie kept us in the game .… Yeah, we’ve got some depth there, which is huge.”
Kershaw will get the first crack on Friday. He found out about the assignment from a reporter amidst the Dodgers’ postgame celebration on Monday. It wasn’t the obvious choice, not after his bosses decided to start Ryu over him in Game 1 of the NLDS. It was the first time Kershaw didn’t start a Game 1 for the Dodgers when he was available since 2009. That order has been restored.
It will be the Dodgers’ first visit to Miller Park since they opened up the second half there. The Dodgers were an unfinished product then. Machado had just arrived from the Baltimore Orioles and made his debut in the series opener. Brian Dozier was a Minnesota Twin. Ryan Madson was with the Washington Nationals. The Pittsburgh Pirates employed David Freese.
Three of the four played significant roles in Monday’s series-clinching win. Freese cracked a pinch-hit, go-ahead, two-run single. Madson escaped a bases-loaded, one-out jam. Machado crushed a three-run home run. It was another display of the depth that buoyed the Dodgers’ internal expectations. Those expectations are high, and they include two more celebrations.
“We had a really good team last year,” Dodgers third baseman Justin Turner said. “We have a really good team this year. The only difference is we’re trying to win one more game.”
Leaving aside how many Brewers were acquired since the end of last season to get to this point, we’ll see if the traditional approach to winning baseball — starting pitching and buying however many players you want to get your championship — will triumph over the Brewers’ newfangled, yet small-market, approach.
Meanwhile, WTMJ-TV in Milwaukee reports:
If one former MLB official is to be believed, the Brewers won’t only be fighting the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League Championship Series — they’ll be up against the league itself.
In an interview with Dan Le Batard and Stu Gotz on 790 AM’s “The Ticket,” former Miami Marlins President David Samson implied the fix is already in for the Dodgers:
“MLB is going to do anything they can to have the Dodgers beat the Brewers,” Samson said.
You can listen to the audio for yourself here. The relevant portion starts around 36:00.
Samson’s comment understandably caught Le Batard and Gotz by surprise.
“Wow. That is a shocking accusation,” Le Batard replied. “He knows he shouldn’t have said that.”
It’s worth noting that Le Batard had previously in the segment described Samson as “a former executive who doesn’t mind speaking the truth.” Oh — and he was born in Milwaukee (but raised in New York City).
Adding fuel to the fire are comments made earlier this week by Dodgers outfielder Yasiel Puig, who said his team would beat the Brewers in a 4-0 sweep. The Brewers are also underdogs in Vegas, according to VegasInsider.com.
It’s unclear how a player from a team that beat the Brewers four out of seven times in the regular season concludes a sweep is imminent. But certainly the history of disrespect of Wisconsin sports franchises, except for possibly the Packers, among major pro sports teams is legion. Do you seriously believe the National Basketball Association had nothing to do with moving Kareem Abdul-Jabbar from the Bucks to the second-largest market in the NBA? Major League Baseball must have jumped at the chance to have the Braves leave Milwaukee for Atlanta, which makes you wonder how MLB ever allowed the Seattle Pilots to move to Milwaukee. (Or how MLB ever thought the Pilots’ ownership group should have a franchise given their bankruptcy during their first season.)
MLB probably would love a seven-game series with the Dodgers winning. Watch what happens with umpire calls in this series.
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A few things are happening in Wisconsin sports starting today, as chronicled by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
There was some to-do Sunday about how the day marked the first time the Packers, Brewers and Bucks all played on the same day. But it’s nothing like what awaits.
The Bucks were playing a preseason game in Ames, Iowa (which they won), while the Packers lost in Detroit and the Brewers won in Colorado to sweep the National League Division Series.
Now, the Brewers know their next game will be Friday at Miller Park, with the first game of the National League Championship Series ahead against either the Dodgers or the Braves. So, starting Friday, you’ll have four days of interesting choices.
Friday, Oct. 12
The ALCS doesn’t start until Saturday, so the Brewers will almost certainly be playing Game 1 of the NLCS on Friday night, just as the Bucks tip off their final pre-season game at 7:30 p.m. at Fiserv Forum.
Saturday, Oct. 13
Both Major League championship series will be playing, so the Brewers could be playing in the afternoon or evening and, at the least, partially conflict with the Wisconsin Badgers huge battle at The Big House at Michigan.
Sunday, Oct. 14
Weirdly, nothing will be happening Sunday. Maybe there’s a church picnic going on?
Monday, Oct. 15
The Brewers will be back, playing on the road, in a game that will be in prime time (with the ALCS in an off day). At Lambeau Field in Green Bay, the Packers will be playing on Monday Night Football, battling the San Francisco 49ers in a 7:15 p.m. kickoff. The two events are almost certainly going to be taking place simultaneously.
Which will you choose?
Bonus: Friday, Oct. 19
Let’s say the NLCS series lasts beyond the first five games. Miller Park will again be hosting Game 6 on Oct. 19, which happens to be the same night that the Milwaukee Bucks host their first regular-season home game at brand new Fiserv Forum downtown, taking on the Indiana Pacers.
Assuming the Brewers series is still taking place, that’s going to be a memorable night in Milwaukee.
Today is also the last day of the high school football regular season, which means some teams will be playing for playoff berths and others will be playing for where they fit in the playoffs. That means next Friday will also be the first weekend of the high school football playoffs. That’s where I will be.
One of the only times a previous weekend like this comes to mind is in 1982, when Wisconsin beat Ohio State 6–0 in the rain in Columbus while the Brewers were tying the American League Championship Series in the rain in Milwaukee. One day later the Brewers completed their comeback by winning the series. The Packers … didn’t play because the NFL was on strike.
There was also 2008, when the Brewers were playing their final regular-season game needing to win and get a Mets loss to go to the playoffs while the Packers were playing. It may have been the first time in the history of WTMJ radio that the Packers, which WTMJ has carried since 1929, moved the Packers off WTMJ. (They moved to their FM, now WKTI.) Now that WTMJ and WKTI both carry the Packers, no decision needed to be made.
Speaking of radio: A colleague in my side thing pointed out that this era right now might be the zenith of Wisconsin sports broadcasting. Bob Uecker announced for ABC and NBC while announcing the Brewers …
… while Brewers TV announcer Brian Anderson is announcing the American League Championship Series for TBS …
… Wayne Larrivee, who has worked for ESPN and Westwood One, now announcing the Packers …
… and Matt Lepay, who could certainly go national if he wanted to, on the Badgers:
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We begin with an entry from the It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time Dept.: Today in 1956, Chrysler Corp. launched its 1957 car lineup with a new option: a record player. The record player didn’t play albums or 45s, however; it played only seven-inch discs at 16⅔ rpm. Chrysler sold them until 1961.
Today in 1957, Little Richard was on an Australian tour when he publicly renounced rock and roll and embraced religion and announced he was going to record Gospel music from now on. The conversion was the result of his praying during a flight when one of the plane’s engines caught fire.
Little Richard returned to rock and roll five years later.
The number one song today in 1963:
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Jonah Goldberg brings to mind the Winston Churchill line:
Confirming Brett Kavanaugh was the best outcome at the end of a hellish decision tree that left the country with no ideal option.
Reasonable people may differ on that. But what seems more obvious: It’s all going to get worse. Because everyone is taking the wrong lessons from the Kavanaugh debacle.
Let’s start with the president. In an interview Saturday night on Fox News Channel’s “Justice with Judge Jeanine,” President Trump said he was the one who “evened the playing field” for Kavanaugh when he mocked Christine Blasey Ford at a Mississippi rally the previous week.
“Well, there were a lot of things happening that weren’t correct, they weren’t true, and there were a lot of things that were left unsaid,” Trump told host Jeanine Pirro. “It was very unfair to the judge. … So I evened the playing field. Once I did that, it started to sail through.”
This is mostly nonsense. Once Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona had forced the FBI’s reinvestigation of Ford’s sexual assault allegation, Kavanaugh’s confirmation hinged on the FBI findings and the votes of three Republican senators: Flake, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
The president’s comments mocking Ford, meanwhile, were singularly unhelpful. Collins called them “Just plain wrong.” Flake: “It was appalling.” Murkowski: “Wholly inappropriate.” Even Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, said he thought the president should “knock it off.”
Nor did Kavanaugh’s nomination “sail through” after that. Instead, the headwinds got stronger, the water choppier and the sharks hungrier.
As Trump chummed the water, his nominee was rescued by a team of RINOs. It was Flake’s FBI gambit, Collins’ sense of decency and decorum, and the steely determination of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell that got Kavanaugh confirmed.
Trump cheerleaders could use a reminder of why Kavanaugh was the nominee in the first place. Trump’s Supreme Court list — brimming with GOP legal establishment types, of whom Kavanaugh is the crown prince — was imposed on him by skeptics who feared he might nominate someone like — Judge Jeanine Pirro.
But so much is forgotten, left behind in the locker room as Trump and team celebrate on the field. The president, who deserves conservative praise for picking Kavanaugh off the Federalist Society’s menu and for sticking by him, is claiming and getting undue credit for the win. The president — himself repeatedly and credibly accused of sexual misconduct — was largely a hindrance in the fight. And he’s now doing further disservice to the new justice and to the Supreme Court by holding up Kavanaugh like a partisan trophy, as he did Monday at a White House swearing-in ceremony that verged on becoming a pep rally.
Such gloating and total war is the new statesmanship. Ryan Williams, of the Claremont Institute, argues that the Kavanaugh battle retroactively vindicates Michael Anton’s famous “Flight 93” argument of 2016: that the presidential election was a “charge the cockpit or you die” moment for American conservatives. Now, Williams says, the middle has collapsed, the parties are pulling further apart, and it’s Flight 93 for as far as the eye can see.
The left largely sees the situation this way, too. In the wake of their failure to destroy Kavanaugh, Democrats and liberal activists insist they must “fight dirty.” Liberals have convinced themselves Democrats lose because they are too nice. This, not ironically, was exactly the view conservatives such as Anton held about the GOP in 2016; many voters rallied to Trump on the grounds that “at least he fights.”
Stormy Daniels’ grandstanding lawyer, Michael Avenatti, is auditioning to be the left’s counterpuncher. In response to the GOP’s Kavanaugh win, he tweeted, “When they go low, we hit harder. There is far too much at stake for any other approach.” Never mind that it was Avenatti’s harder-hitting allegations that steeled the GOP’s resolve to keep Democrats from railroading Kavanaugh.
This is how we got here. It will get worse because there are no incentives to be better. It won’t end well either, but at least it will feel familiar.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 