Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[Winstonm]

It is also unfortunate for Winston - he is finally going to have to stop calling Dodgy Donald a mobster. After all, the every mob boss alive actually makes a profit.

 

 

I wouldn't be so quick to discount mobsterism - after all, Al Capone was sent up the river for tax evasion.

[y66]

Like many other liberals, I’m devastated by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, which opened the way for President Donald Trump to nominate a third Supreme Court justice in his first term. And I’m revolted by the hypocrisy of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s willingness to confirm Trump’s nominee after refusing to even allow a vote on Judge Merrick Garland.

 

Yet these political judgments need to be distinguished from a separate question: what to think about Judge Amy Coney Barrett, whom Trump has told associates he plans to nominate. And here I want to be extremely clear. Regardless of what you or I may think of the circumstances of this nomination, Barrett is highly qualified to serve on the Supreme Court.

 

I disagree with much of her judicial philosophy and expect to disagree with many, maybe even most of her future votes and opinions. Yet despite this disagreement, I know her to be a brilliant and conscientious lawyer who will analyze and decide cases in good faith, applying the jurisprudential principles to which she is committed. Those are the basic criteria for being a good justice. Barrett meets and exceeds them.

 

I got to know Barrett more than 20 years ago when we clerked at the Supreme Court during the 1998-99 term. Of the thirty-some clerks that year, all of whom had graduated at the top of their law school classes and done prestigious appellate clerkships before coming to work at the court, Barrett stood out. Measured subjectively and unscientifically by pure legal acumen, she was one of the two strongest lawyers. The other was Jenny Martinez, now dean of the Stanford Law School.

 

When assigned to work on an extremely complex, difficult case, especially one involving a hard-to-comprehend statutory scheme, I would first go to Barrett to explain it to me. Then I would go to Martinez to tell me what I should think about it.

 

Barrett, a textualist who was working for a textualist, Justice Antonin Scalia, had the ability to bring logic and order to disorder and complexity. You can’t be a good textualist without that, since textualism insists that the law can be understood without reference to legislative history or the aims and context of the statute.

 

Martinez had the special skill of connecting the tangle of complex strands to a sensible statutory purpose. She clerked for Justice Stephen Breyer, who also believes in pragmatically engaging the question of what a statute is actually trying to do in order to interpret it.

 

In a world where merit counts, Barrett and Martinez would both be recognized as worthy of serving on the Supreme Court. If a Democratic president with the support of a Democratic Senate asked me to recommend a current law professor for the bench, Martinez would be on my short list.

 

But a Republican is president, and the Senate is Republican. Elections have consequences, and so do justices’ decisions about when or whether to retire. Trump is almost certainly going to get his pick confirmed.

 

Given that reality, it is better for the republic to have a principled, brilliant lawyer on the bench than a weaker candidate. That’s Barrett.

 

To add to her merits, Barrett is a sincere, lovely person. I never heard her utter a word that wasn’t thoughtful and kind — including in the heat of real disagreement about important subjects. She will be an ideal colleague. I don’t really believe in “judicial temperament,” because some of the greatest justices were irascible, difficult and mercurial. But if you do believe in an ideal judicial temperament of calm and decorum, rest assured that Barrett has it.

 

This combination of smart and nice will be scary for liberals. Her old boss, Scalia, did not have the ideal judicial temperament (too much personality, a wicked sense of humor) and managed over the years to alienate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, which may conceivably have helped produce more liberal outcomes as she moved to the left.

 

Barrett is also a profoundly conservative thinker and a deeply committed Catholic. What of it? Constitutional interpretation draws on the full resources of the human mind. These beliefs should not be treated as disqualifying.

 

Some might argue that you should want your probable intellectual opponent on the court to be the weakest possible, to help you win. But the Supreme Court is not and should not be a battlefield of winner-take-all political or ideological division.

 

It would be naïve to deny that there is plenty of politics in constitutional interpretation. There are winners and losers every time the justices take a stance on an important issue of law. Nevertheless, the institutional purpose of the Supreme Court is to find a resolution of political conflicts through reason, interpretation, argument and vote-casting, not pure power politics. It follows that the social purpose of the Supreme Court is best served when justices on all sides of the issues make the strongest possible arguments, and do so in a way that facilitates debate and conversation.

 

We have a Supreme Court nominee who is a brilliant lawyer, a genuine and good person — and someone who holds views about how to interpret the law that I think are wrong and, in certain respects, misguided. I hope the senators at her hearing treat her with respect.

 

And when she is confirmed, I am going to accept it as the consequence of the constitutional rules we have and the choices we collectively and individually have made. And I’m going to be confident that Barrett is going to be a good justice, maybe even a great one — even if I disagree with her all the way.

Let us hope there will be many future appointments to the Supreme Court in the near future who are as qualified to serve as Ms. Barrett appears to be and that a unified government will take note of shyams recent comments and do its part to relieve the Court of its heavy burden.

[y66]

From Gail Collins and Bret Stephens at NYT:

 

Bret: Gail, I feel like we’re living in a sci-fi movie, on a dying planet, getting bombarded by at least one giant asteroid a day. Let’s take them one at a time: The Times’s latest scoop on President Trump’s tax returns. On one hand, I’m appalled. On the other, not shocked in the slightest. I mean, it’s not exactly news that Trump’s businesses have usually lost money hand over fist. Your thoughts?

 

Gail: Well for sure unshocked. But fascinated. It’s great to have this info just as we’re moving into the election. Trump likes to brag that he’s a big-time business genius. But according to the newsroom reporting, he paid $750 in taxes in 2016 and 2017, which I’ll bet is way less than the guy who cuts his lawns.

 

Bret: He’ll brag that it’s all part of his business genius.

 

Gail: And for sure I want to talk a lot about the $70,000 deduction for hair styling.

 

Bret: Comb-overs can be an art, Gail!

 

Another asteroid: Trump’s declaration last week that there will be no peaceful transition of power. I have to say — and I can’t believe I’m saying this — that it’s getting me to rethink my call to repeal the Second Amendment.

 

Gail: Bret, don’t go there with the gun thing. The N.R.A. loves nothing more than to argue they need guns to protect themselves from a possible uprising against what Ted Cruz called “government tyranny.” We’ve got enough trouble already.

 

Bret: Except, in this case, the evil anti-American force is the Republican president. Sorry, go on.

 

Gail: Looks to me like there are lots of people in powerful positions privately discussing how to get the government back if Trump tries to pull a takeover. Even Mitch McConnell seems horrified. Although if it happened, I’ll bet the ever-practical majority leader would … adjust.

 

Bret: I can already see the editorial line coming from the right-wing press. It would read roughly as follows: “When the American people elected Donald Trump in 2016, they knew they were voting for a breaker of norms. While we believe it is unfortunate that President Trump has chosen to violate the oldest and most sacred norm in American politics by declaring himself the winner of an election he appears to have lost, it is certainly of a piece with his unique and compelling style. Also, let’s not forget that the taboo against extending presidential terms beyond their traditional bounds was originally violated by a Democratic incumbent — leftist icon Franklin D. Roosevelt….”

 

Gail: Love it that there are still people chafing about F.D.R. …

 

Bret: Hey, I have a Wendell Willkie bumper sticker I mean to stick to my rear fender.

 

As for McConnell, I’m sure he could find a way to get on board this train of self-serving logic, just as he’s found a way to move forward with Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court in a presidential election year, after blocking Merrick Garland’s nomination in 2016. Which is another reason we need Joe Biden to win in a landslide. Speaking of which, any hope for one?

 

Gail: I’ve been telling folks in New York that even though their ballot isn’t really needed to get Biden the state’s electoral votes, it’s important that we have a huge, ginormous national popular vote margin to help make the point that the Democrat really got elected.

 

Bret: Fine, but victories in three swing states would be better.

 

Gail: The problem, of course, is our weird system. Biden could get caught up in an electoral vote crisis over a few votes in Pennsylvania and Michigan and Wisconsin.

 

And then Donald Trump … what do you think it would take to convince Trump he lost and there was no way out?

 

Bret: It’s either the 82nd Airborne or someone promises him another reality TV show. In the next one, he can pretend to be a competent president just like he pretended to be a competent businessman in the last one.

 

But this brings me to our third asteroid: the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett. From a political standpoint, I think she was a very canny pick. As a judge and former law professor who is well-versed in Constitutional jurisprudence, she knows the law and won’t present Harriet Miers or Harrold Carswell issues, and she won’t present any Brett Kavanaugh or Clarence Thomas issues either. As a rock-solid conservative who clerked for Antonin Scalia, she won’t present any Earl Warren or David Souter issues. And as a devoted Catholic, she might tempt liberals to attack her, foolishly, for her private religious convictions, which is what Dianne Feinstein did in 2017 when she told Barrett in her confirmation hearing for the Appellate seat that “the dogma lives loudly within you.”

 

My advice to Senate Democrats is to treat her respectfully, question her very closely about the constitutionality of Obamacare, and remember that the Kavanaugh hearings only helped Republicans expand their Senate majority in 2018. What do you think?

 

Gail: My rational self totally agrees. Barrett is certainly a way, way more sympathetic character than Kavanaugh was. At this point it’s hard to imagine her being blocked.

 

However, my extremely ticked-off and cranky side just wants to drive home to the public that with this new, 6-3 conservative majority they can wave goodbye not only to abortion rights, but also a ton of other things including protection against gender discrimination and any aggressive federal attempt to beat back climate change.

 

To be honest, I’m pretty much resigned to the fact that the Senate will vote to confirm Barrett soon. All hope requires believing Mitt Romney will announce he’s voting against her as a matter of principle because we’re so very, very close to a presidential election. What would you say the odds are on that?

 

Bret: Well, zero, despite my best efforts to convince him otherwise. And with only Susan Collins and maybe Lisa Murkowski opposing the nomination, the G.O.P. appears to have 51 votes to confirm. Even if Mark Kelly wins his special election in Arizona against Martha McSally and is seated in November, Barrett would still win on a 50-50 vote with Mike Pence as the tiebreaker.

 

All of which is to say, barring something very unexpected, Barrett is going to be confirmed and provide a sixth conservative vote — even if, over time, she winds up shifting John Roberts and Neil Gorsuch a bit further to the left. (They both seem to be moving that way already.) That just means Biden has to win so he might have a chance to appoint Clarence Thomas’s eventual successor and bring the Court back to a 5-4 balance.

 

Speaking of winning, we have our first presidential debate coming up soon. What’s your advice to Joe?

 

Gail: Well I do like your theory that Trump has spent so much time painting his opponent as a senile idiot, the bar for beating expectations is pretty low.

 

Bret: Right. All Biden has to say is, I’m Joe, two plus two is four and 10 times 10 is one hundred, I love my wife, I’m not going to declare war on anyone’s suburb, my economic plan is to cut taxes on the middle class, build a faster Acela and declare the Trump hotel in Washington a toxic-waste dump, I won’t blow up the world and I’m definitely not Donald Trump. Argument over.

 

Gail: Can I say I’m simultaneously hoping he projects a cheerful, warm personality while beating his opponent to a pulp on issues like health care and the environment?

 

Bret: It’s very important for Biden to play the Happy Warrior. A few jokes would be great (assuming he doesn’t fumble the punch lines). Above all, he shouldn’t scare away wavering voters, either with a memory lapse or by advocating a far-left position, like free health care for illegal immigrants. He won the Democratic nomination as a moderate and that’s the brand he needs to win the White House.

 

Gail: What about you? On matters of pure policy — like health care or unions — you may actually agree with Trump more often than Biden, right?

 

Bret: Well, it isn’t so much that I agree more with Trump — I’m a much more libertarian conservative than this administration when it comes to trade, abortion, legal immigration and international alliances, to mention a few issues. But my disagreements with Biden, as broad as they are, seem fairly trivial given what’s at stake in the election. I’d rather have a president who might sometimes get a bit confused than one who deliberately sows confusion. I’d rather lose more of my paycheck in taxes under Biden than lose more of my democracy in demagogic deceit under Trump. And I’d rather have a president who willingly pays lots of taxes on a relatively low income than one who pays almost no taxes on a high one.

 

Gail: Ah. That’s why you’re such a great sparring partner. Always with underlying principles.

 

Bret: Principles is a little too generous, Gail. I just like democracy.

 

Gail: Good slogan!

 

Bret: What about you? Do you have any serious policy differences with Biden?

 

Gail: Back in the day I wanted to see a way more ambitious health care plan, but truly, I’m past the point of caring. I’ll take Biden’s Medicare expansion over Trump’s repeal of protection for people with pre-existing conditions. But I admit that I am looking forward to complaining constantly if Biden is elected.

 

And you know, Bret, we got into the conversation idea with the expectation it’d be liberal v. conservative. But Trump’s candidacy sort of made us the Gang of Two.

 

Bret: I just hope we can be part of the Gang of 271 (or more) come November.

[kenberg]

From Gail Collins and Bret Stephens at NYT:

 

 

From the quoted discussion:

"My advice to Senate Democrats is to treat her respectfully, question her very closely about the constitutionality of Obamacare, and remember that the Kavanaugh hearings only helped Republicans expand their Senate majority in 2018. "

 

That's pretty much as I see it, I think that I said something akin to it, but less specific, early on.

 

Maybe a further thought. Some people agree Trump is awful, but they really like the court nominations. Maybe some of them would be open to thinking the monster has served the purpose for which he was brought out, and it is now time to raise a crucifix and send him back to the netherworld.

As far as ObamaCare is concerned there will not be a Supreme Court Ruling that forbids health care support, There might well be a ruling that some aspects of the ACA are unconstitutional. So it would be a good time to argue that we will need to constructively address both legal and practical difficulties of the ACA, and in order to do this we need a lot of elected Dems. At least enough to tell McConnell tio sit down and shut the --- up. I am pretty sure many people can see the need for help in dealing with medical costs, and to think this help is going to come from Trump? There might be some skepticism about this even from those who voted for him in 2016.

 

As for the 70K deduction for hair styling, forget about the legalities, the IRS will or will not address this. Instead we could focus on whether he got he got his money's worth. Seems that if I spent 70K, or even 7 dollars, I might expect better.

 

An overall point: Maybe the extent can still be a bit shocking, but clearly Trump is a fraud. Maybe he is a fraud claiming that he is a great businessman, maybe he is a fraud with the IRS, quite possibly both. But we already knew that. It's lie saying McConnell is a hypocritical SOB. Well, sure. And Russia is not our friend. And eating marshmallows by the box (as I did when a child) is bad for you. No kidding, no kidding to all of this. Dumping the marshmallows and dumping Trump. Two very good ideas.

 

A nice straightforward approach.

[Winstonm]

From the quoted discussion:

"My advice to Senate Democrats is to treat her respectfully, question her very closely about the constitutionality of Obamacare, and remember that the Kavanaugh hearings only helped Republicans expand their Senate majority in 2018. "

 

That's pretty much as I see it, I think that I said something akin to it, but less specific, early on.

 

Maybe a further thought. Some people agree Trump is awful, but they really like the court nominations. Maybe some of them would be open to thinking the monster has served the purpose for which he was brought out, and it is now time to raise a crucifix and send him back to the netherworld.

As far as ObamaCare is concerned there will not be a Supreme Court Ruling that forbids health care support, There might well be a ruling that some aspects of the ACA are unconstitutional. So it would be a good time to argue that we will need to constructively address both legal and practical difficulties of the ACA, and in order to do this we need a lot of elected Dems. At least enough to tell McConnell tio sit down and shut the --- up. I am pretty sure many people can see the need for help in dealing with medical costs, and to think this help is going to come from Trump? There might be some skepticism about this even from those who voted for him in 2016.

 

As for the 70K deduction for hair styling, forget about the legalities, the IRS will or will not address this. Instead we could focus on whether he got he got his money's worth. Seems that if I spent 70K, or even 7 dollars, I might expect better.

 

An overall point: Maybe the extent can still be a bit shocking, but clearly Trump is a fraud. Maybe he is a fraud claiming that he is a great businessman, maybe he is a fraud with the IRS, quite possibly both. But we al know that. It's lie saying McConnell is a hypocritical SOB. Well, sure. And Russia is not our friend. And eating marshmallows by the box (as I did when a child) is bad for you. No kidding. Dumping the marshmallows and dumping Trump. Two very good ideas.

 

A nice straightforward approach.

 

 

 

 

I cast my ballot today. Took it in person to the state election office and watched it be stamped with the date and go into the box. Surprisingly, there were many there to vote. The ballot itself was odd - but being in a Republican state no surprise. Trump/Pence was first on the ballot. Next down was a candidate I had never hear of. Third place down was Biden/Harris. In total, there were 5 pairs on the ballot running for president.

 

I bring this up in response to Ken's post because elections matter. It is a shame that Ginsburg did not allow Obama to replace her years ago - but that can't be changed. Neither can we change the fact that this nominee will be appointed. The only thing to do for Democrats is to point out the hypocrisy of the Republicans but an all out attack on the nominee would be futile and damaging to Democrats. We have to suck it up and take our medicine. We were the group who didn't show up in force in 2016 to make sure this didn't happen. We can't bitch about it now.

 

All we can do now is try to salvage the democratic norms as much as possible and destroy Donald Trump and his brand of Republicanism - or simply help it to self-immolate is more like it.

[y66]

From NYT Evening Briefing:

 

Republican lawmakers reacted with nearly complete silence to a New York Times investigation of President Trump’s federal income taxes.

 

Democrats in the House who have long sought access to the president’s tax records, however, hailed the revelations that he paid just $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017 and none at all in 11 of 18 years as proof that their inquiries were justified. Above, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in a Senate subway car on Capitol Hill last week.

 

Mr. Trump initially called the article “totally fake news,” and then shifted to falsely accusing the paper of basing the report on illegally obtained information about his finances.

 

He lashed out at the suggestion that he is not as wealthy as he has repeatedly claimed to be, insisting — without providing any evidence — that his finances are in very good shape.

 

The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said that the report raised national security concerns because the president owes money, possibly to foreign lenders.

Every Republican in congress has chosen, over and over again, to let a criminal ransack the government for years in order to better pursue the higher cause of cutting the corporate income tax and making it harder for people to get health care benefits. -- Matt Yglesias

[y66]

For once in his life, Trump seems tongue-tied. His supporters, even those willing to be shameless, have been left to desperately contrive messages of their own. They are not doing a very good job, in part because they must worry about the line that Trump will eventually want them to take, when he finally announces a line. Not many days and hours remain, and Trump has abruptly lost almost any vestige of control over either the game or the clock.

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/09/trumps-tax-returns-proves-he-just-another-moocher/616516/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=atlantic-daily-newsletter&utm_content=20200928&silverid-ref=NjY3MDUwMTE4MTk0S0

Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania

 

Biden leads Trump in Pennsylvania, 49 to 40 percent among likely voters, in a new Times/Siena poll.

 

The Biden lead, as in other battlegrounds, was driven by a yawning gender gap with women voters, as well as a narrower deficit with men compared to the 2016 election between Mr. Trump and Hillary Clinton. Women in the survey preferred the former vice president by 26 percentage points. Men sided with Mr. Trump by a narrower eight-point gap.

 

Both measures were an improvement for the Democratic nominee over 2016, when Mr. Trump eked out a 44,000-vote win in Pennsylvania, less than one percentage point, by carrying men by 17 points and only losing women by 13 points, according to exit polls.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/28/us/politics/supreme-court-pennsylvania-poll.html

Maybe the other 11% are just waiting for a sign.

[kenberg]

I am feeling chipper this morning, and in that spirit I predict the debate tonight will go well for Biden Bt "go well" I mean that My advice to Senate Democrats is to treat her respectfully, question her very closely about the constitutionality of Obamacare, and remember that the Kavanaugh hearings only helped Republicans expand their Senate majority in 2018. post debate polls will show that a substantial majority will see him as having done better than Trump.

 

A general thought: Trump is on the ropes from covid, from the financial disclosures, from other matters, and few things look more ridiculous than a bully on the ropes.

 

A more specific thought. Health care costs must be dealt with. The ACA needs some fixing regardless of the Supreme Court rulings, past and future.. Just what was it Trump said back in 2016? He had a beautiful plan. We would all love it. Time to get to reality.

 

And a moment for the silly, the 70K for the hair jobs. An old song begins "They say to have her hair done Liz flies all the way to France .." Yes, but Liz looked good.

[Zelandakh]

And a moment for the silly, the 70K for the hair jobs. An old song begins "They say to have her hair done Liz flies all the way to France .." Yes, but Liz looked good.

They say to have her hair done Liz flies all the way to France

And Jackie's seen in a discotheque doin' a brand new dance

And the White House social season should be glittering and gay

But here in Topeka the rain is a fallin'

The faucet is a drippin' and the kids are a bawlin'

One of them a toddlin' and one is a crawlin' and one's on the way

I'm glad that Raquel Welch just signed a million dollar pact

And Debbie's out in Vegas workin' up a brand new act

While the TV's showin' Newlyweds a real fun game to play

But here in Topeka the screen door's a bangin'

The coffee's boilin' over and the wash needs a hangin'

One wants a cookie and one wants a changin' and one's on the way

Now what was I doin' Jimmy get away from there darn there goes the phone

Hello honey what's that you say you're bringin' a few ole Army buddies home

You're callin' from a bar get away from there

No not you honey I was talkin' to the baby wait a minute honey the door bell

Honey could you stop at the market and hello hello well I'll be

The girls in New York City they all march for women's lib

And Better Homes and Gardens shows the modern way to live

And the pill may change the world tomorrow but meanwhile today

Here in Topeka the flies are a buzzin'

The dog is a barkin' and the floor needs a scrubbin'

One needs a spankin' and one needs a huggin' Lord one's on the way

Oh gee I hope it ain't twins again

A pretty good catch here Ken. This song could easily be played at Biden rallies in the Deep South - it pretty much sums up the message he is trying to send.

 

For tonight I suggest a drinking game - a shot of vodka every time "Hunter" gets said; a shot of tequila for "The Wall"; whisky or scotch for "golf"; and rice wine for "virus" or "covid". I would suggest taking a shot of anything at all every time a clear lie gets told but you would be on the floor well before half way through the debate so perhaps better to steer clear of that.

[y66]

Joan Williams, UC Hastings College of Law prof, makes The Case for Accepting Defeat on Roe which is basically that the fight has already been lost and that Roe was a mistake to begin with that “halted a political process that was moving in a reform direction and thereby prolonged divisiveness and deferred stable settlement of the issue" (RGB)

 

I’m still reluctant to embrace the “overrule and move on” strategy, but moving on may be our only choice. And if abortion stops playing such a role in presidential elections, then Democrats may fare better with the 19 percent of Trump voters who have bipartisan voting habits and warm feelings toward minorities; we know 83 percent of them think the economy is rigged in favor of the rich and 68 percent favor raising taxes on the rich.

 

Once their presidential vote is not driven by Supreme Court appointments, how many might decide to vote on economic issues? And what greater tribute could there be to R.B.G. than both a legislative restoration of abortion rights, and a new Democratic Party that can win — not just by a hair but by a landslide?

[Zelandakh]

Are you on the list for 2020?

[kenberg]

Joan Williams, UC Hastings College of Law prof, makes The Case for Accepting Defeat on Roe which is basically that the fight has already been lost and that Roe was a mistake to begin with that "halted a political process that was moving in a reform direction and thereby prolonged divisiveness and deferred stable settlement of the issue" (RGB)

 

 

 

I have been a long time supporter of abortion rights, mostly on the grounds that unless I absolutely must, I would prefer not to make moral choices for someone else.. At one time, and perhaps still in some places, religious teaching would forbid using contraception. During my lifetime debates have ranged from whether contraception is moral to whether abortion is moral, and whether the law should impose an answer. I am adopted, born to a 20 year old unmarried farm girl, so if abortion were legal in 1938 there is a fair chance I would not exist. But if birth control were more easily available back then, the same possibility of non-existence applies to many others.

 

I recall when Barbara Bush died there was a review of various things she had said over the years, one of them being that while she regarded abortion as something she could never do, she had no interest in making that decision for another person. Exactly.

 

As I have gained more experience with life, there is another reason as well. The rich, and really the well off, "don't have abortions". The young woman goes on vacation somewhere for a while. The hypocrisy is immense. The poor go to back alleys, the well off go on vacation.

This is another of those things that I think is pretty well understood by many.

Sex should be done responsibly, most everyone agrees with that. But it doesn't always go that way, and we could back off a bit when someone has a crisis, unless we can help. And help starts with acknowledging the rights, and the difficulties, of others.

 

So yes, Joan Williams has a point.

[Winstonm]

I have been a long time supporter of abortion rights, mostly on the grounds that unless I absolutely must, I would prefer not to make moral choices for someone else.. At one time, and perhaps still in some places, religious teaching would forbid using contraception. During my lifetime debates have ranged from whether contraception is moral to whether abortion is moral, and whether the law should impose an answer. I am adopted, born to a 20 year old unmarried farm girl, so if abortion were legal in 1938 there is a fair chance I would not exist. But if birth control were more easily available back then, the same possibility of non-existence applies to many others.

 

I recall when Barbara Bush died there was a review of various things she had said over the years, one of them being that while she regarded abortion as something she could never do, she had no interest in making that decision for another person. Exactly.

 

As I have gained more experience with life, there is another reason as well. The rich, and really the well off, "don't have abortions". The young woman goes on vacation somewhere for a while. The hypocrisy is immense. The poor go to back alleys, the well off go on vacation.

This is another of those things that I think is pretty well understood by many.

Sex should be done responsibly, most everyone agrees with that. But it doesn't always go that way, and we could back off a bit when someone has a crisis, unless we can help. And help starts with acknowledging the rights, and the difficulties, of others.

 

So yes, Joan Williams has a point.

 

Utilizing the SCOTUS to determine moral questions is an abandonment by Congress of its responsibilities. The Legislative branch makes laws. It should be quite simple to determine by law if abortion is legal or illegal, which has nothing to do with its moral status. It would only then be the role of the SCOTUS to determine if the federal government can make that law or whether it is a question for each individual state. Either way, at least it would be clear - then those who favor or oppose could try to get it changed their way through means that actually work.

[kenberg]

I see that Joe and Jill Biden paid out about 300K in taxes last year. No doubt DT will explain that they are suckers.

 

When, oh when, will this be over. Please.

[Winstonm]

I see that Joe and Jill Biden paid out about 300K in taxes last year. No doubt DT will explain that they are suckers.

 

When, oh when, will this be over. Please.

 

What an incredible shite-show. It's professional wrestling of the mouth.

[y66]

There has never been a better advertisement for women candidates.

Trump and his TV ad makers have spent months ridiculing Biden as mentally agog, lost or “sleepy.” Trump’s supporters may be surprised that that guy hasn’t shown up tonight.

Wallace is struggling to end the debate.

 

But he did it!

Presidential debates are usually somber events. This was … not that.

 

But I’m not sure it changes the dynamics. Trump needed to shift the race. I think he was mostly on defense.

This is going to be the story

 

Trump again refused to condemn white nationalism tonight.

 

We can't risk four more years of Donald Trump.

[kenberg]

 

"There has never been a better advertisement for women candidates." Thus is perhaps the best one sentence summary of the debate.

 

 

 

[y66]

From Max Fisher and Amanda Taub at NYT:

 

Here’s something telling: When American technocrats and diplomats go abroad to help new democracies establish themselves or struggling ones to reform, one of their top pieces of advice is to set up a system that looks very little like their own.

 

They typically encourage parliamentary systems, like that of Germany (itself a postwar, American-led project), rather than an American-style presidential model. They suggest one legislative house, rather than two. And they tend to encourage a style of election known as proportional representation, in which each party receives a share of seats proportional to its share of the national vote, rather than having each seat be determined by a separate, winner-take-all election. This fosters multiparty, rather than two-party, systems. And one more thing: No Electoral College.

 

America’s democracy is so historic and important precisely because it was also the world’s first modern democracy. Its founders had little in the way of case studies or firsthand knowledge to draw from. In retrospect, they showed remarkable wisdom and foresight. But 200 years of real-world experience, drawn from dozens of democracies around the world, have produced some useful lessons.

 

For decades, American democracy experts have flown abroad urging other countries to follow those lessons, or contributing to those lessons’ accumulation. Now, many of them are raising the alarm at home, calling — in some cases with urgency — for something they have studied or overseen in many other contexts: democracy reform.

 

The United States has overseen or encouraged democracy reform abroad many times, guiding countries as they retooled the rules and structures of their political system to function more effectively and safely. It’s a common response to disputed elections, civil unrest or a general sense that a democracy is no longer sufficiently achieving its goals of stability, cohesion, and fair representation.

 

Expert surveys and opinion polls show that scholars and voters broadly agree that all of these problems are not only present but severe in the United States. The Bright Line Watch, a project by leading experts to monitor the health of the American system, warns in its mission statement, “One of the greatest threats to democracy is the idea that it is unassailable.”

 

So why is there no consensus push in the United States for this sort of corrective, as there might be in almost any other democracy? Even Britain regularly tweaks its system, most recently attempting to alter its voting rules in 2011.

 

Consider what events and trends are drawing such alarm among scholars. One is that the representative bodies are growing less representative. Institutions like the Senate and the Electoral College have always made American democracy unusually undemocratic. Rural voters are granted more power than their urban peers. A state that favors a presidential candidate by one vote is treated the same as a state that favors her by one million and one, effectively disenfranchising those million incremental voters.

 

“If you look at the Constitution, you see that it was drafted by people who were not little-‘d’ democrats,” Sanford Levinson, a constitutional legal scholar at the University of Texas, told The New Yorker in 2013. In a still-influential 2006 book, “Our Undemocratic Constitution,” Mr. Levinson had argued that the country’s founders, operating in a world where political representation still felt radical and untested, had imposed “almost insurmountable barriers in the way of any acceptable notion of democracy.”

 

For generations, the electoral imbalances imposed by those institutions more or less balanced one another out; no one party consistently benefited. But in recent years, the party electorates have changed such that those imbalances all favor the Republican Party. The Senate now heavily favors, in a way that it did not before, a minority of voters controlling a majority of the seats. The presidency going to the popular vote loser has gone from an extreme aberration — only three times between founding and 1996 — to a regular occurrence.

 

Mr. Levinson, like other legal scholars, has also had harsh words for the American system’s practice of lifetime judicial appointments. Other countries have broadly moved away from this practice, in large part because it proves so destabilizing. The stakes are just too high, inviting politicization and meddling — a lesson learned many times over in Latin America before, in recent years, many Americans took notice as well.

 

At the same time, an unprecedented spike in ruthless partisan conflict is eroding the democratic norms that are meant to constrain political behavior. Faith in the integrity of elections is plummeting. Polarization is skyrocketing, leading more and more Americans to believe that the other party poses such a grave threat that extreme steps are justified to keep them from power. Four years before militias appeared on an unusually high number of American streets this summer, scholars who study civil conflict warned me that the United States showed all the warning signs.

 

Only the severity of these trends is new. Since the 1990s and early 2000s, a wide spectrum of experts have warned that the American system was showing signs of trouble. Constitutional scholars said that the bill was coming due for horse trading compromises the framers had made among one another 200 years earlier. Political scientists said those founders’ had built cracks into the system that had been slowly widening ever since.

 

Theoretically workable ideas for American democracy reform are hardly in short supply. Lee Drutman, a Johns Hopkins University and New America Foundation scholar who has warned that the two-party system creates a “doom loop” of self-reinforcing backsliding, has laid out detailed plans for breaking the two-party hold. A number of legal scholars, most recently Ryan Doerfler of the University of Chicago and Samuel Moyn of Yale, have produced one roadmap or another for reforming judicial appointments without destabilizing the courts. Two Democratic presidential candidates, Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren, ran in part on democracy reform plans.

 

So why didn’t things change? The 1990s were the golden years of American democracy reform programs abroad. Why none at home?

 

For one, deep change would be politically unthinkable. Partly as a result of Cold War-era jingoism, perhaps no other country so romanticizes its own system, which presidential candidates from both parties routinely endorse as the greatest in history. Even France, the rare country whose civic nationalism reaches American-lever fervor, is willing to tweak its system. The French Republic is now in its fifth iteration, while America’s is still on 1.0.

 

For another, there is no plausibly objective outside broker who can mediate reforms. It’s often the United States that helps play this role in other countries. And the United States, as a superpower and the engineer of many of the international order’s governing bodies, has long insulated itself from their influence.

 

But perhaps the greatest impediment is the very two-party system that many consider part of the problem. Almost any reform would benefit one party over another. The worsening partisan distrust and spirit of zero-sum competition makes that difficult to overcome. There is little raw political incentive, for example, for Republicans to accept moving Supreme Court justices to set term limits. Though this is a widely popular reform among experts, it would have to be implemented by Democratic lawmakers, risking the appearance of a raw power play that might further erode popular faith in democracy.

 

The result is what you might call the democracy reform paradox: The flaws in democracy that require reforming also make implementing those reforms difficult, if not impossible. And the more that the need for reform grows, the harder it will be to implement.

 

Quote of the Day

From a 2019 study on the recent, global rise of autocratization, which refers to a country backsliding from democracy toward authoritarianism, by the political scientists Anna Lührmann and Staffan I. Lindberg of the University of Gothenburg:

 

About a third of all autocratization episodes started under a democratic dispensation. Almost all of the latter led to the country turning into an autocracy. This should give us great pause about spectre of the current third wave of autocratization. Very few episodes of autocratization starting in democracies have ever been stopped before countries become autocracies.

[Winstonm]

Last night Donald Trump called on the white supremacist group Proud Boys to "Stand back and be ready."

 

Are there still those Trump supporters who claim that what he says is irrelevant, that only what he does matters? Be honest - he doesn't do anything - except say things. What he says matters. Now, as president, more than ever.

 

And Bill Barr's DOJ is complicit.

[y66]

Last night Donald Trump called on the white supremacist group Proud Boys to "Stand back and be ready."

 

Are there still those Trump supporters who claim that what he says is irrelevant, that only what he does matters? Be honest - he doesn't do anything - except say things. What he says matters. Now, as president, more than ever.

 

And Bill Barr's DOJ is complicit.

"The more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence reigns, the better it is for the very clear choice on who's best on public safety and law and order" -- KellyAnne Conway, 8/26/20

 

Anyone who thinks the "law and order candidate" (in Bizarro world) and his administration are not inciting violence in Portland is not paying attention.

 

As Mike Reese, the Sheriff of Multnomah County and Portland Oregon stated last night after Trump falsely claimed he was a supporter:

 

As the Multnomah County Sheriff I have never supported Donald Trump and will never support him.

 

Donald Trump has made my job a hell of a lot harder since he started talking about Portland, but I never thought he'd try to turn my wife against me!

[y66]

West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin (D) said Wednesday that President Trump’s claim on the debate stage the night before that his state experiences widespread voter fraud connected to mail-in ballots is “just plain wrong.”

 

Trump claimed that in West Virginia, “Mailmen are selling the ballots, they're being sold.”

 

“It’s plain wrong that President Trump would mislead Americans to think mail-in voter fraud is happening in West Virginia,” Manchin said in a statement. “There is no widespread voter fraud in West Virginia and any claim to the contrary is false.”

 

Trump appeared to be referring to an individual case in which one mail carrier pleaded guilty to altering five ballot request forms to change their party affiliation. The worker reportedly told prosecutors he did it as “a joke.”

 

“The truth is one mail carrier altered five ballot request forms from Democrat to Republican in the primary election in Pendleton County,” Manchin said. “The judicial and electoral system worked: he was caught, charged with attempted election fraud and pled guilty."

 

“Mail-in voting is safe and altering ballots is a felony punishable with up to 5 years in prison and a $20,000 fine in West Virginia, in addition to any federal penalty. To suggest anything different is just not true and an attempt to undermine Americans’ faith in our Democratic process and disparage West Virginia is wrong," he continued.

 

Trump — who has often peddled misleading and inaccurate information about mail-in voting — also said at the Tuesday debate that people in some states can vote after Election Day. That is not the case in any state, though some states count absentee ballots received as late as Nov. 10 as long as they are postmarked by Election Day.

Trump, Barr, our resident troll and the proud boys. What a crew.

[Winstonm]

A bit more about the complicity of the DOJ under Barr to help Trump and hurt Biden: This is from Marcy Wheeler, an independent journalist who is closely following the Flynn case.

 

As noted, Peter Strzok's lawyer has confirmed something I laid out earlier: DOJ submitted at least two sets of Strzok's notes in its effort to blow up the Mike Flynn prosecution that had been altered to add a date that Strzok did not write himself.

 

It is beyond odd that Flynn's lawyer, as ex-Fox News contributor, conferred with Donald Trump and then during the debate Trump claimed Biden had brought up the Logan Act to use against Flynn - but the meeting Biden was in was on the wrong date for that to have happened - but the date was conveniently changed by someone - not the guy who wrote the notes - and that change would make the claim possible - impossible without the date change..

 

More on this here:

[Winstonm]

Here's hoping that last line is only wishful thinking.

 

Top GOP officials have reportedly been sent into a blind panic after seeing numbers showing that Democratic voters in key states are returning mail-in ballots at much, much higher rates than Republican voters. According to The Washington Post, the Democratic lead in mail voting is so extreme that it’s led to urgent discussions among senior GOP officials. “It’s astronomical,” said one unnamed Republican strategist, who added that he was left “horrified” by the numbers. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has reportedly twice met with Trump to urge him to stop bashing mail balloting, and is said to have told others he’s worried that the president’s rhetoric could stop Republican voters—especially elderly ones—from sending in their ballots. Republican National Committee spokesman Mike Reed insisted there was no panic, saying Republicans “will come out in droves to vote in person” on Election Day.

[y66]

Republican National Committee spokesman Mike Reed insisted there was no panic, saying Republicans “will come out in droves to vote in person” on Election Day.

 

Here's hoping that last line is only wishful thinking.

Panic, schmanic.

[y66]

From NYT:

 

The biggest threat to the election is the president himself, our national security correspondent writes in an analysis of last night’s showdown between President Trump and Joe Biden.

 

Mr. Trump’s claim that balloting, already underway, was a “fraud and a shame” and proof of “a rigged election” amounted to a declaration that he would try to throw any outcome into courts, Congress or the streets if he were not re-elected.

 

That assertion is part of an extensive Republican plan to disrupt the election by claiming that voter fraud is a pervasive problem, a five-month Times Magazine investigation found.

 

Despite the rhetoric of administration officials and right-wing media, voter fraud is a largely nonexistent problem, and most claims of fraud have fallen apart under closer scrutiny. Here are the main takeaways from the report.