Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[johnu]

I must say I am really disappointed in the Justices of the SCOTUS ;) Only Alito and Thomas had the courage to dissent!

 

ACB has been bullied over by the Chief; Gorsuch already boasts a track record as a traitor; and Kavanaugh is way too wimpy to be a Republican. This calls for war!!!

 

{just kidding}

 

For the record, Alito and Thomas were willing to hear the case because it is their belief that any case brought by a state(s) against other state(s) should be heard by the Supreme Court whether or not is has any merit, or whether or not it is based on any law or legal theory. So, Texas could bring a suit against Georgia because it doesn't like peaches and doesn't think the state fruit of Georgia should be the peach. And Alito and Thomas would agree to hear the case.

 

Alito and Thomas did say that if they heard the case that would be the only remedy to be obtained. In other words, they would hear the case and rule against Texas.

[cherdano]

But don't they take bets in GBP? The pound may lose more than 4% before they pay out.

Well, I am afraid I make a bet on the future value of GBP whenever I don't do anything with the money in my account...

[y66]

What is left to say about a political party that would throw out millions of votes?

 

The substance of a lawsuit filed by the State of Texas, and backed by more than 17 other states, would be laughable were it not so dangerous. Texas’ attorney general, Ken Paxton — who is under indictment for securities fraud — asked the Supreme Court to overturn the results of the presidential election in four other states. As a legal matter, this is the rough equivalent of objecting on the grounds that the other side is winning. As political rhetoric, however, it is incendiary.

 

The Supreme Court was right to toss out the lawsuit. But that the Republican Party tried and failed doesn’t make the attempt any less odious. There are a lot of Republican leaders who, the history books will record, wanted it to succeed.

 

What makes this entire episode so sad is that the nation needs a vibrant, honest, patriotic opposition party. A party that argues in good faith to win more votes the next time around. Many Republicans, particularly at the state and local level, stood tall and proud against the worst instincts of the national party.

 

The health of a democracy rests on public confidence that elections are free and fair. Questioning the integrity of an election is a matter of the utmost seriousness. By doing so without offering any evidence, Mr. Paxton and his collaborators have disgraced themselves. Attorneys general are sworn to uphold the rule of law.

 

At least 126 Republican members of Congress — more than half of all House Republicans — rushed to sign a court filing endorsing the Texas lawsuit. That misuse of the legal system was not restricted to the fringes of the party. The minority leader, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, said Friday that his name was inadvertently omitted from the original list.

 

It is particularly astonishing that 17 of the House signatories were elected by voters in the states whose election results Texas was seeking to invalidate. They signed a letter directly challenging the legitimacy of their own victories and the integrity of their own states’ elections.

 

These lawmakers were humiliating themselves to conciliate President Trump, a man who once created a coat of arms for himself emblazoned with the words Numquam Concedere — never concede. Mr. Trump, not a man to often place the national interest above his own personal interests, is pursuing a series of increasingly desperate strategies to overturn the election results and remain in power. Having failed to convince the voters, he is now pressing state legislators, the courts and Congress to defy the will of the people as well.

 

That the attacks on Mr. Biden’s victory are unlikely to succeed is a very cold bowl of comfort.

 

Republicans are establishing a new standard for elections that anything short of a fight to the death amounts to not trying hard enough. The old norm of graceful concession was not just an act of good manners. A concession has no legal force, but it has considerable value as an affirmation that the democratic process is more important than the result.

 

Conceding leaves the nation’s political and social systems functional for the winner.

 

This new policy of election denialism, by contrast, is the latest manifestation of the Republican Party’s increasingly anti-democratic tendencies. Rather than campaigning on issues that appeal to a majority of the electorate, the party has made a strategy out of voter suppression. Seeking to toss votes after the fact is a logical if perverse extension of that strategy. So is the growing willingness of Republican Party officials to deny the legitimacy of their opponents.

 

This isn’t really about Mr. Trump anymore. He lost, and his ruinous tenure will soon be over. This is now about the corruption of a political party whose leaders are guided by the fear of Mr. Trump rather than the love of this country — and who are falling into dangerous habits.

 

The events of recent weeks have demonstrated the strength and resilience of the election system. A larger share of American adults voted in the 2020 presidential election than in any previous cycle. The votes were counted, sometimes more than once. The results were certified. In the states that have attracted the particular ire of Mr. Trump and his allies, most officials, including most Republican officials, defended the integrity of the results.

 

But the incendiaries are playing a dangerous game. They are battering public trust and raising doubts about the legitimacy of future elections. Most of it is political theater: Mr. Biden’s decisive victory is difficult to overturn. But a great many voters trust their political leaders, they don’t expect to be lied to, they aren’t in on the grift.

 

It is also a short walk from rhetorical attacks on the legitimacy of the election to denying the legitimacy of Mr. Biden’s administration. Republicans are certainly within their rights to disagree with Mr. Biden and to challenge the decisions made by his administration, but those who refuse to accept his victory are undermining the rule of law. Those who stand silent are complicit.

 

The implications of this assault on truth and trust extend well beyond elections. We are in the midst of a public health emergency. Lives depend on the government’s ability to shape public behavior, including by persuading people to get vaccinated. By denying the authority of those who govern, Republicans are placing lives in danger.

 

They can now demonstrate a modicum of their professed patriotism by mustering the courage to say these simple words: “Congratulations, President-elect Biden.”

 

If they can’t bring themselves to do that, where does a party that rejects democracy go from here?

[sharon j]

I can think of one very hot place they can all go. If indeed such a place existed.

[Winstonm]

If they can't bring themselves to do that, where does a party that rejects democracy go from here?

 

According to my search, some of the top candidates for the "no democracy" Republicans would be: Libya, United Arab Emirates, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Saudi Arabia, Chad, Syria, and North Korea.

 

[Winstonm]

If you are an originalist who believes that the US government should adhere closely to the vision of the Founding Fathers, then almost by definition you do not think the US should be a democracy. The Founding Fathers did not want democracy; they wanted a republic (which just means a government without a king) that, like the British government of the time, combined elements of personal authority, an oligarchy of the wealthiest, and broader participation by all landowners.

 

However, as an originalist you would also be aware that the framers' left a method to alter the Constitution, and the 19th Amendment is why women have the right to vote, and the 26th Amendment expanded voting rights to 18-year olds, both of which expanded democracy. Had the framers' truly wanted a total closed republic, those ideas could have been enshrined in the Constitution; that they were not, and, in fact, a method to alter the document was included, precludes the idea that the Constitution is some type of infallible document that can only been understood in its original meanings.

[Winstonm]

This just in: White House investigators just found 8 million write-in ballots for Donald Trump from the 4 battleground states with every ballot hand-written in black Sharpie - and all votes heading from Florida into Georgia.

[johnu]

 

According to my search, some of the top candidates for the "no democracy" Republicans would be: Libya, United Arab Emirates, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Saudi Arabia, Chad, Syria, and North Korea.

 

The simplest and most likely solution is to let the red states (by county) secede from the USA and form their own country, let's call it the New Confederacy.

[cherdano]

My god. More than half of House Republicans and plenty of State AGs embarrass themselves by asking SCOTUS to end democracy and overturn an election. And it takes SCOTUS three sentences to dismiss it. Doesn't get more Trumpian than that.

US Democracy has been, and will remain so, for a long time, Trumped. /thread

 

I still can't get over this. More than half of House Republicans signed what's essentially a love letter to Trump, saying

"My Dear Leader We Love You SOOOO Much. We Love You SOOOOO MUCH, We Would Happily Dispense Of Democracy For You (if we could)"

[Winstonm]

Might as well face it we're addicted to Trump.

 

This isn’t a metaphor; it’s brain biology. Scientists have found that in substance addiction, environmental cues such as being in a place where drugs are taken or meeting another person who takes drugs cause sharp surges of dopamine in crucial reward and habit regions of the brain, specifically, the nucleus accumbens and dorsal striatum. This triggers cravings in anticipation of experiencing pleasure and relief through intoxication. Recent studies show that similarly, cues such as experiencing or being reminded of a perceived wrong or injustice — a grievance — activate these same reward and habit regions of the brain, triggering cravings in anticipation of experiencing pleasure and relief through retaliation. To be clear, the retaliation doesn’t need to be physically violent—an unkind word, or tweet, can also be very gratifying.

[johnu]

Parody of ultra right fringe site Newsmax

 

‘SNL’ Newsmax Sports Parody Perfectly Sums Up Pro-Trump Conspiracy Logic (Video)

[kenberg]

Might as well face it we're addicted to Trump.

 

 

He speaks of the destructive power of grievance. I agree, but I think it is something that we all must watch for. As a country we are in a very dark place right now, and we must all work on not letting our grievances consume our desire to make things better. 2021 ia going to be a very important year.

[barmar]

It should be noted that SCOTUS didn't reject the Texas lawsuit on its merits, just on the fact that Texas doesn't have standing to sue other states over their electoral procedures.

[barmar]

No, this is a "Media, why are you reporting what the insane is ranting?" non-problem.

It should be said that not all media is like this.

 

I mostly listen to NPR, and they go back and forth between "unfounded" and "false" when describing Trump's claims.

[y66]

At this rate, they might as well install Bob Strauss and Clark Clifford in the cabinet. The stuckness of Trump thinking of Guiliani as his fixer is mirrored by this recreation of the greatest hits of Obama. Everyone is resolutely committed to standing still. As the earth reels.

 

Recreating an administration that oversaw 8 years of disastrous losses for Democrats up and down the ballot, now headed by a president with a small fraction of the political talent: what could go wrong! https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/10/biden-taps-susan-rice-for-top-white-house-domestic-policy-job-444231

As Prof Robin pointed out in an earlier tweet, there is a real tension between wanting to bolster “the institutions” against a wannabe Bonaparte [among other problems] and seeing the institutions’ unresponsiveness as the essence of the problem.

[y66]

Why have Republican judges stood up against President Donald Trump’s attempts to undermine democracy? As the Washington Post’s Rosalind S. Helderman and Elise Viebeck report, dozens of judges, many of them chosen by Republicans and some of them nominated by Trump himself, have ruled against him and his allies — often in sharp, dismissive terms.

 

Paul Campos at Lawyers, Guns & Money explains two possibilities, and favors the latter:

 

The formalist answer would be that all these lawsuits were just an enormous pile of crap in terms of even the most basic legal rules, and that calling balls and strikes is easy when the pitcher throws the ball straight into the ground rather than tossing it at least somewhere in the general vicinity of the plate.

 

The realist answer is that at least some of these various state and federal judges who as a political matter very much wanted Trump to win the election still realized that these lawsuits were so preposterous on formal grounds that giving Trump any sort of even partial rhetorical victory (“this litigation raises serious questions about the procedures used” blah blah blah) would do far more damage to the institutional capital of the courts than it would help the long term goals of the American right wing.

What I find interesting is that if this is correct — that these judges are acting to advance their political goals — the key is that their political program remains the substantive legal agenda they’ve had for some time. In this respect, Republican judges differ from many Republican legislators, who have increasingly become indifferent to public policy at all (which, among other things, has made them easy marks for Trump’s content-free presidency).

 

Still, one of the few things that most Republicans care about intensely is the nomination and confirmation of orthodox Republican judges. And that’s what Trump gave them.

 

What that meant, however, was that Trump’s judges weren’t cronies who were loyal to him while being indifferent to the conservative legal agenda. Quite the opposite. His three Supreme Court nominees are good examples: It’s likely that any other Republican president would’ve made the exact same choices. That’s also true for his circuit and district court nominees. Sure, to the extent that they’re partisan, they’ll rule in favor of policies that Republicans prefer. That’s what they tended to do before the election. And they would probably lean toward Trump if his post-election lawsuits presented them with plausible paths within the law. But they simply don’t share Trump’s total lawlessness — and most of them have longer-range goals in mind, not simply the preservation of Donald Trump’s administration.

 

All of which is yet another example of Trump’s fundamental weakness as a president. He relinquished his influence over the judiciary to orthodox conservative Republicans, rather than attempting to put Trump-loyal judges on the bench. He never had the clout to put his cronies in the federal courts. And now the Republicans he did put there haven’t saved him.

[kenberg]

My guess, and it really is a guess, is that it goes more along the lines of the first option, the lawsuits were not remotely merited. As to why judges appointed by Rs often decide in a way that R's like, and judges appointed by Ds often decide in a way that Ds like, there is an obvious explanation that does not involve anything corrupt. When deciding which judge to appoint, the person doing the appointing looks at the records of those who are being considered and appoints someone who is likely to rule in desired ways. The reason that the coffee that I make has a strong flavor is because I choose the coffee that I will use. If someone who likes mild flavor makes the coffee, there is a good chance the coffee that is made will have a mild flavor. But if somehow the coffee is clearly ruined, I throw it out.

[cherdano]

You can still get 2% return betting on Democrats to win Nevada. Nevada's electors have already voted.

[shyams]

This post will make more sense for the duration this live telecast is underway.

 

 

NBC News YouTube channel currently has 33,446 viewers watching the Electoral College webcast live (I'm one of them). It is one of the most boring things to watch --- yet, so many of us have it running (in the background).

 

I guess it's like watching a high-speed road chase; we are all waiting for the car crash.

[kenberg]

You can still get 2% return betting on Democrats to win Nevada. Nevada's electors have already voted.

 

If I were ever to take up betting. I suppose I would have to think about how tis could be. Nah.

[johnu]

You can still get 2% return betting on Democrats to win Nevada. Nevada's electors have already voted.

 

There is typically a 5-10% vigorish added or included in bets. Even if you win, you lose.

[johnu]

It should be noted that SCOTUS didn't reject the Texas lawsuit on its merits, just on the fact that Texas doesn't have standing to sue other states over their electoral procedures.

 

Alito and Thomas said they wanted to accept the Texas case, but would have ruled against Texas. The other 7 justices didn't offer any dissent. Other state and federal court cases have already ruled that the almost all the Manchurian President lawsuits have no merit.

[Winstonm]

It should be noted that SCOTUS didn't reject the Texas lawsuit on its merits, just on the fact that Texas doesn't have standing to sue other states over their electoral procedures.

The primary reasoning for this attempt seems to have been to bypass district courts where the merits have been ruled to be ridiculous. There was no need for the SCOTUS to listen to more garbage. Lack of standing has derailed some of the emolument lawsuits against Trump as well, so it is a two-way street.

[awm]

Basically, states have a lot of authority to run their elections as they see fit, and no authority to sue other states because they don’t like the election result (or the way the election was run) in that state. This seems a clear cut reason to refuse to hear the Texas case.

 

If there was actual evidence of fraud in a state, then voters from that state could sue or the losing campaign could sue. But such a suit ought to be heard in state courts (as such suits by the Trump campaign have been, although they keep losing because they have no actual evidence).

[y66]

Anyone still clinging to the idea that Donald Trump is a crafty strategist who furthered his goals by corrupting everyone around him during an unspooled and vindictive presidency might want to consider, instead, that Trump himself was often gamed — at least when it comes to some of the signature policies that will define his administration.

 

To be sure, Trump unleashed torrents of dangerous vitriol that made it safe for his party and supporters to embrace racial, economic and cultural divisions more openly and enthusiastically. And Trump’s stagecraft was certainly sui generis, tethered to outre mythmaking and serial fabulism. But apart from propagating a cult of personality, Trump’s performance art rarely revolved around policy debates or goals. It just revolved around him.

 

On the policy frontier, where voters’ lives are shaped and institutions are remodeled, others were in charge. Those people most likely regarded Trump as a useful foil, someone easy to manipulate or outmaneuver if you had the stomach and patience for it. There are myriad examples, but for now let’s focus on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Attorney General William Barr and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.

 

Each of those men embodies some traits needed to turn Trump into a sock puppet — or to simply keep him out of the way. They could be wily (McConnell, Barr, Powell), craven (McConnell, Barr) or courageous (Powell), but needed at least one of those attributes to achieve their goals. History will also probably judge each of them in proportion to how much their particular vices or virtues drove policy and procedure.

 

“At the risk of tooting my own horn, look at the majority leaders since L.B.J. and find another one who was able to do something as consequential as this,” McConnell, a history buff, told the New York Times after he rammed Justice Amy Coney Barrett onto the Supreme Court in October.

 

McConnell regards his conservative reshaping of the federal judiciary as his signature accomplishment, and his legacy goes well beyond the Supreme Court. He has pressed the Senate to confirm at least 229 federal court appointments during Trump’s presidency, and, for the first time in 40 years, hasn’t left a left a single vacancy on district and circuit courts — even if that has meant repopulating the judiciary with young, white men bearing threadbare resumes.

 

Trump didn’t have a sophisticated, informed view of the judiciary before becoming president. But he let McConnell transform such traditionally liberal venues as the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals because the senator sustained him in other ways. McConnell ran interference when Trump was impeached. He helped court Trump’s incendiary political base. He kept to the shadows when Trump attacked the Black Lives Matter movement. He remained silent when Trump savaged the integrity of the presidential election.

 

McConnell, according to those close to him, held Trump in low regard but protected him anyway to feed his own political ambitions, further fuel his fundraising apparatus and go about dismantling the federal government. McConnell’s fealty and machinations came home to roost this year when Trump failed to effectively respond to the Covid-19 pandemic and the Senate was left so broken it appears unable to pass a second coronavirus relief package even though it has bipartisan support.

 

It’s not clear yet whether McConnell, content to wield power for power’s sake alone, will pay any penalties for cuddling with Trump. But there’s no question that he has spun the president like a top the last several years whenever one of his own goals was in play.

 

Then there’s Barr, who, when asked last year whether his ward-heeler’s advocacy for Trump has tainted his legacy and his reputation in the legal community, responded with trademark indifference: “I’m at the end of my career. … Everyone dies.”

 

Barr has been a longstanding proponent of an unrestrained imperial presidency, and those views took root long before he encountered Trump. But he went out of his way to audition for his Justice Department job because he undoubtedly saw Trump as a useful vehicle for furthering those aims.

 

Among other things, Barr helped Trump end-run Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, gave Trump the latitude to misuse federal force on U.S. streets, helped protect White House advisers on the wrong side of the law, knee-capped federal prosecutors investigating matters close to Trump and helped give early credence to Trump’s claims that the presidential election was rigged before later reversing himself.

 

Trump grew weary with Barr after the attorney general refused to rush a Justice Department probe of how law enforcement went about investigating the president, but Barr initiated the investigation to begin with because he shared Trump’s belief that the deep state was out to get him. Barr reportedly worked hard to make sure that a federal investigation into President-elect Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, was kept under wraps during the election, but one wonders, given Barr’s record, how the investigation was started in the first place.

 

Trump harbored authoritarian designs well before he intersected with Barr, but it’s Barr who tried to build a throne for the president — and taught Trump how to go about it.

 

Powell, inhabiting the wonky and cloistered confines of the Federal Reserve, is the brighter tale here. An articulate, compassionate and relatively soft-spoken member of Trumplandia, Powell runs a financially powerful institution that Trump has repeatedly tried to strong-arm during his presidency. “Who is our bigger enemy, Jay Powell or Chairman Xi?” Trump once asked.

 

Powell endured all of this with great calm and confidence, managing to win plaudits as one of the best Fed leaders of the modern era. He’s also been directly responsible for helping the U.S. economy weather the Covid-19 pandemic. He’s well aware that the Federal Reserve Act is meant to protect his independence from the White House, and he’s demonstrated repeated bravery charting his own course despite Trump’s interference.

 

Asked during a congressional hearing if he’d pack up and leave if Trump tried to fire him, Powell said three times that he wouldn’t. “The law clearly gives me a four-year term, and I intend to serve it,” he responded.

 

Trump pressured Powell to adopt rate cuts that would stoke the economy in the short run, but Powell largely made such calls on the merits. He also became one of the strongest voices in the government for using federal powers to support the financial well-being of average workers and the lives and livelihoods of those bowled over by the pandemic. To get there, he essentially ignored Trump — and expanded the Fed’s mandate and mission along the way.

 

Powell’s tenure is a reminder that Trump can’t corrupt people willy-nilly. They have to be primed for it beforehand. And bad things didn’t happen during Trump’s time in office because he landed in Washington with a fully realized plan. Bad outcomes took root because Trump was surrounded by bad actors, some of whom knew exactly how to play him.