This is the second day of Senatorial questioning of Alito.

On this third day of the hearings, where do we stand?.

In a deep hole.

The Democratic Senators have been doing a good job, they have.

You won’t know that from reading or watching any of the SCLM, and that is part of the problem, as Armando at Daily Kos demonstrates with devastating precision. Go read it, I’ll wait.

The Democrats went after all the issues they should have - privacy, abortion, the Bush administration’s pursuit of power that encroaches on the power of the congress, not to mention the civil liberties of all of us, they went after Alito’s lack of candor, his multiple explanations for breaking his sworn word to the committee on the issue of recusal, and his memory lapses regarding CAP, the Princeton alumni organization formed with the specific intent of lobbying against admission of women and the use of affirmation action for minorities at Princeton.

Alito was ready, and although his dodging and weaving was considerably less artful than John Roberts’, it was good enough to let the media do what it does best, look the other way when Republicans are lying.

Think that NYTimes reporting is bad? Look what Salon gives us - Walter Shapiro, a typical sort of liberal pundit, the kind who likes to be on Hardball way too much. He hasn’t been recently, and his coverage of the hearings for Salon reads like a sample resume for a place on a Chris Matthews pundit panel.
***********************************************************
It’s title,”The gang that couldn’t question straight,” says it all, all you need to know about where Shapiro is coming from and going to, and in case of any doubts on that score, here’s his sub-headline: “Eight Democratic senators had a chance to grill Samuel Alito Tuesday — but their artless queries could have been dodged by a tree sloth.”

What we get from Shapiro is the same kind of shoddy reporting Armando points to at the Times, but this being Salon, it’s snarky shoddy reporting.

With the clock ticking, the committee Democrats failed to advance any major new lines of argument or prompt any damaging admissions from George W. Bush’s latest pick to replace Sandra Day O’Connor on the bench.

Instead, Alito’s foes fell into the predictable trap of prefacing every question with a three-minute speech and then phrasing the query so artlessly that even the cast of Teletubbies would not have been fooled.

That bit about the speeches simply isn’t true, not of all the Senators, many of them went right after Alito. Shapiro focuses on Biden, and seems to criticize him for being too polite, needlessly praising Alito’s “integrity.” As it happens, having live-blogged yesterday’s proceedings, Biden’s remarks were prompted by many attempts to portray Democrats as unfairly questioning Alito’s integrity in the face of the Bar Association’s giving the nominee it’s highest rating, which included an assessment of his integrity; the remarks were smart, and didn’t keep Biden from revisiting Alito’s forgotten promise to this same committee to recuse himself in a specific circumstance.

I imagine some of you are tempted to leap to Shapiro’s defense, after all, isn’t it always true that Democrats are “feckless” and ineffective? Isn’t Biden always a verbose blowhard. Well, in a word, “no.”Think Democrats would get anywhere if they followed Shapiro’s advice? Let’s take a look at just how coherent is Shapiro.

No one watching the hearing yesterday could fault Schumer for being either too polite, unfocused, or feckless, and Shapiro doesn’t, no, he criticizes Schumer for being too partisan, and…actually, I’m not sure what Shapiro is getting at…too aggressive?

With the 30-minute rounds of questioning alternating between fawning Republicans and feckless Democrats, darkness had already fallen over Washington when Chuck Schumer, the most fiercely partisan Alito foe, finally got his moment at the microphone. Schumer devoted six long minutes to demanding that Alito explain whether he still believes, as he claimed in a 1985 job application, that “the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion.” Each time Schumer repeated the question in a hostile tone, Alito would respond with an evasive answer like, “I would need to know the case that is before me and I would have to consider the arguments and they might be different arguments from the arguments that were available in 1985.” Finally, Schumer gave up in frustration as he said, “I know you’re not going to answer the question. I didn’t expect really that you would.” Question for Sen. Schumer: If you didn’t expect a useful answer, why did you waste six minutes asking the question?

Question for reporter Shapiro: Why did it not occur to you that the point of those six minutes was to provoke from Alito a concrete demonstration of the extreme limitations of Alito’s so-called candor. That moment was extraordinarily effective for anyone paying attention. But is there anything the SCLM does better than it does not paying attention?

The conventional media wisdom is already formed; Alito will be confirmed because the Democrats couldn’t draw blood.

It is true that yesterday’s hearing lacked tension, drama, and ultimately interest. Yes, it was boring. Watching and listening to it felt like a lonely task, like not that many other Americans were paying attention. Which is probably true. I think it may be the case that waiting until the confirmation hearing to get opposition to a judicial nominee in gear is proving to be too late. But Senators are understandably reluctantly to take hard stands on a nominee before that nominee has had a chance to be heard publicaly. And it may also be the case that in the ever-increasing target-rich environment of corruption the Bush administration and the Republican dominated capitol have managed to create, this issue of how Judge Alito’s addition to the Supreme Court will affect the future lives of individual Americans has understandably gotten lost.

I don’t think I’m alone among those bloggers who’ve been paying close attention to the hearings in feeling that the growing likelihood that Alito is headed for approval is not the fault of those Democratic members of the Judiciary committee. They have been tough, focused, and as effective as one can be when up against a well-prepared nominee whose essential arrogance, despite all the odes to humility we’ve heard during these two days of the hearings, justifies his practiced evasions about what he really believes, and how he will approach constitutional issues once he’s elevated to the bench of the Supreme Court.

In case you think that Walter Shapiro might have done better than those pathetic Democrats, here’s how Shapiro describes Alito’s performance.

In a reflection of either overconfidence or a shrewd recognition of his limitations as a public figure, Alito spent the long day refraining from any attempt to make himself charming, colorful or even interesting. Gone was the man-of-the-people number from Alito’s opening statement Monday, which stressed his blue-collar New Jersey roots. In its place was Alito as the Law Student from Hell, the geek who memorized every bit of case law in the library without developing a single opinion that would make him an intriguing dinner-party companion.”

Shapiro does mention the intricate minuet Alito treated Senator Specter to when he inquired about Alito’s current view of Roe v Wade, and Shapiro even gets the implication of Alito’s use of the word “inexorable,” when pointing out, after pledging his troth to “stare decisis,” that the weight of precedent isn’t always, in every case, inexorable. Shapiro gets that it means Alito is likely to be on the side of reversing Roe v Wade, by hook or by crook, but somehow Shapiro doesn’t get that Schumer was making the exact same point in his inquiries of the Judge.

It’s also typical of the media coverage of the hearings that no one mentions that Senator Specter is clearly in the tank on this nomination. That fact is everywhere present, in his invitation to sitting Judges to testify on Alito’s behalf, in the compressed nature of the hearings, in the way Specter has presented the candidate, and in all of his public comments, which have been those one would expect of a perfect representative of the current right wing Republican Party.

Let’s compare this traditional media coverage of the hearings to that of a blogger, “Madman In The Marketplace” at “Liberal Street Fighter.” This Madman’s analysis is exactly right, and presents the picture of Alito’s performance most Americans just aren’t going to get a chance to see.

Samuel Alito, a man manifestly outside the political and social mainstream of American life, is facing the Senate Judiciary panel all this week. Like most rightwing extremists in the modern Republican party, this man is completely unable to straightforwardly express what he believes. He bobs, he weaves, he spins out mealy-mouthed strings of blather…

edit

Lets face the truth of what we face here. Alito is just another drone in a movement that has been advancing steadily toward total domination of our government. A movement that stands for things that most Americans reject, a movement who’s leaders and political infighters have made an art of lying, obfuscating, spinning and soundbiting. A real political party, one that actually stood for something and wanted to fight for it, would demogogue their lies. Point out that Alito is too much of a coward to actually stand by what he really believes.

Be sure to read the whole thing. You’ll notice that there is ample criticism of Democrats, and even liberal interest groups like PFAW there, not all of which I agree with. It was never going to easy to shoot down Alito, and I don’t believe that Democrats exhibited any sign of either being feckless or of cowardice.

For other views from our side of the blogisphere, don’t miss the coverage going on at Liberal Oasis, and at Bush V Choice.” And check out MyDD, whose Chris Bowers is in Washington covering the hearings.

In his post, Madman In The Marketplace, asks this question in reference to Democrats. “Perhaps they don’t fight because we don’t demand that we fight.” Without agreeing that Democrats aren’t fighting, and haven’t spent the last year fighting, and succeeding, on Social Security, for instance, and at the end of the year, congressional Democrats blocked passage of the insufficiently revised Patriot Act, drilling in ANWR, and every Democrat voted against that immoral Bush Budget, though that was not sufficient to stop its passage, Madman’s question is the right one.

We do need to ask ourselves if we are doing enough to support, and to demand through our support, a significant say in the direction of the Democratic Party.

I can’t pretend Alito isn’t a whole lot closer to becoming a Justice to the Supreme Court than he was two days ago, but the hearing isn’t over, the decision as to whether Democrats will find a basis upon which to filibuster is still to be made.

Madman references the Bork hearing; he sees a different Democratic Party there. I think that’s wrong. But one cohort is missing here. Grassroots support. Yes, MoveOn has been active and so have other groups who organize such support. But what could make a difference is if Democrats on the committee were to get, between now and Friday, thousands and thousands of emails and calls, expressing the doubts of ordinary Americans that Alito is being honest, doubts about the impact of his presence on the court, and support for the Democrats to invoke a filibuster on behalf of people who took the time to communicate their sense that Alito, whether by intention or not, was not sufficiently open and honest about his judicial beliefs to deserve approval by our side of the aisle.

The hearings have begun and the first recess has just been called, but I thought it was more important to offer a summary of where we are, than to keep minute track of the hearings.

However, I will be blogging them live again today.

Think about what I have said. I was one of the thousands of activists who organized to oppose Robert Bork; we didn’t have an internet or a blogisphere in those days, but we managed to practically drown Democratic senators in letters and telephone calls of support. We did it the old-fashioned way, made the call, sent the letter yourself, then called our friends to ask them to do the same and then to call ten friends of theirs.

Janet Strange at Booman Tribune, where the coverage is also worth reading, has made the task of getting that communication to Democrats on the committee by providing telephone and fax numbers and email addresses.

Let us know in comments any pithy talking points you recommend from your own message sent to Democrats.