It's been a long time since I was in the Hideout neighborhood. While digesting the news about them, I also looked at another place where I've been entertained. Exit too, is gone. I missed that. But then my ability to stay up and out that late is also gone.
Maher is right. It was forseeable since election denialism took over Republicans and they started fielding candidates to take over elections. And it was baked in when Democrats in Congress failed to pass a new Voter Rights Act to prevent it. And let us never forget that was due to the refusal to overturn the Senate filibuster rules by Joe Manchin and Kirstin Sinema. For shame.. There well never be another chance..
The problem is the Republican Party, has been since the Southern Democrats joined it in retaliation to the passage of the Civil Rights Act because of the GOP's "state's rights" plank. Atwater showed the GOP how to abuse the media to their advantage, with his dirty politics, from his experience with Southern Democrats who were now in the GOP, to win over the worst among the electorate on hate and fear, not issues. The Democrats, liberals who stayed in the party, never developed or never had the fight necessary to oppose the GOP's combined conservatism and libertarianism and so here we are.
Still, it is important to vote Democratic but force them to FIGHT because claiming the "higher ground", "going high when they go low" has NOT worked. The GOP will use democracy to tyrannize those that don't agree with them as they did to women in the unconstitutional Dobbs decision. It will get worse if the GOP maintains power.
I love Maher, but come on, his predictions of the end of democracy are over the top, just as were his predictions that Trump "wouldn't leave" last time. Granted, he was more right about that than I realized he would be, but we still didn't come anywhere close to an actual coup. There was never any genuine prospect of Trump occupying the Oval Office after he lost to Biden.
We are about to have a midterm election that will have a reassuringly normal result: the party in power, with low approval and economic gripes ascendant, will get a "shellacking." This happens almost every time. Republicans will lose support with their maniacal obsession with cutting rich people's taxes and screwing over ordinary people, and Democrats can and will return to power, sooner rather than later if they start campaigning like Tim Ryan. (And before you say that, yeah, well, he's gonna lose, note that Ohio is super red at this point and Ryan should easily beat the R-D spread).
The difference this time is that there are lots of election deniers on the ballot and the whole party has turned into Sarah Palin. I get it. But why is it so hard to grasp that a whackadoo secretary of state, say, cannot actually just do whatever he wants? Maher and others talk as though there is no such thing as rule of law in this country, as though judges are just in the tank for one side or another. This is -- really obviously -- way off, and one of the reasons we are not Hungary or Pakistan or Russia or various other places where liberal democracy is a joke. Trump-appointed judges threw out his bullshit last time, and they will throw out Trumpy bullshit this time. I have no reason to suspect otherwise. The Federalist Society does not simply name a bunch of hacks. An old friend of mine was on the list and was nominated by Trump -- a more thoughtful, honorable fellow you'll never meet.
Bottom line: I don't think the predictors of doom have a persuasive story of how it will actually happen. As soon as that whakadoo does something crazy, he'll be hauled into court by the other side.
I'm not discounting the possibility there could come a time when democracy dies in America. But, sheesh, we're quite a ways off. As soon as a candidate is actually able to steal an election, give me just one, I will start to despair. I just don't think we're there. I don't think we'll see that this time, and I don't think we'll see it in two years.
Not on message for Election Day, I guess, but the democracy-on-fire talk is counterproductive for two reasons. First, persuadable voters don't buy it. They think "both sides" do shit. (That's why they're persuadable. They're ideologically and factually illiterate.) Second, it sends the good guys off their game. The good guys need to be focused on expanding their appeal and winning elections instead of constantly whining about how the system is rigged and about to be rigged more. I thought that would have been obvious.
I agree that the death of democracy in the US rhetoric is overblown. Eric, If the election goes in that direction, what are some concrete milestones we can place bets on?
Boy, are you naive. They've got you thinking this is all on the square, when they don't have any intention of playing fair, and invent new rules whenever needed, to suit their purposes.
Take Wisconsin as an example. The Republican legislature has so gerrymandered the state that they likely will have a veto proof majority, and will pass any law they want. And when the Democrats actually achieve a statewide majority and succeed in winning statewide offices, such as the governor, the Legislature just passes laws limiting his authority to do anything that will thwart them. If the US Supreme Court approves the “independent state legislature theory” in a case now before it, not even the Wisconsin Supreme Court could put a stop to this gerrymandering. (The most expansive view of the that theory raises the prospect that the Legislature could even overrule the popular Presidential vote results). There was no reason for the US Supreme Court to accept this case, unless, as in Roe v. Wade, the justices who voted to hear it want to overrule past precedent. The Wisconsin Republican candidate for governor has just boasted that if he wins, no Republican would ever lose an election there again.
The Republicans now want to make all the states whose legislatures they control like Wisconsin. And they control all the mostly rural states, which outnumber those controlled by Democrats. Their goal is to implement voter suppression laws aimed at voters they think will vote Democratic, and thereby to prevent them from ever achieving a majority in the Legislatures. Or from achieving election of a Democrat in presidential elections, thereby winning the Electoral College votes of those states. All they need, to succeed in those efforts, are results in a handful of “swing” states.
As far as your faith in judicial review, you are particularly naive. The Republicans have successfully packed the Supreme Court with judges who are hostile to voters' rights (unless they are the rights of corporations to spend unlimited amounts on elections). They abolished the main provisions of the Voting Rights Acts of the 1960s, which is how and why these Republican legislatures are now able to pull these shenanigans off. Do you expect those Justices to do any less when these draconian laws are appealed to them? And did you expect them to affirm Roe v. Wade, too?
All lower court judges will simply have to follow whatever precedent the Supreme Court lays down, no matter how undemocratic the results they dictate. So don't look to them to undo the Republican outrages.
And as for playing fair, do you think that, if Mitch McConnell gets control of the Senate, and by chance another SC Justice should die in office, that Biden will ever get to appoint a successor? Of course not: it's too close to the next presidential election, and the next president ought to be the one to do that.
No. The die is cast. And for that, we owe Manchin and Sinema, who refused to put a stop to it with a new Voting Rights Act, by refusing to abolish the filibuster. We're screwed.
Hi, thanks for your reply. My general response is that most of what you describe is in fact playing within the rules and, though frequently odious I agree, does not constitute a fundamental loss of democracy, a change in our regime, a path to, as Maher would have it, Hungary or Nazi Germany. And the most outrageous aspects of what you suggest are unlikely to occur. Let me take your points one at a time:
1. Gerrymandering. Partisan gerrymandering is legal. It isn't new. It's almost as old as the country itself. And both sides do it as much as they can (or should). The proof of gerrymandering's iniquity is often framed as a comparison between statewide vote totals and the partisan makeup of that state's congressional delegation. So we'll hear, for example, that a state's voters are roughly 50/50, let's say, and yet its congressional delegation is majority Republican by a lot. In some egregious cases, like Wisconsin, a majority might vote Democratic and yet its congressional delegation is substantially majority Republican. But consider Massachusetts (or Maryland or Illinois). In Massachusetts, our bluest state, there are still lots of Republicans. Maybe a third voted for Trump over Biden in 2020. And yet they don't have a single Republican congressperson. See what I mean? Consider also the reason why Republican gerrymandering is so effective. They get a big assist from where liberals live. They tend to pack themselves into uniform enclaves and thus "waste" more of their votes. (This is, I think, a major problem in Wisconsin.) This means that even with no partisan gerrymandering, Republicans would still have an advantage so long as we have single-member districts. The solution for Democrats is clear. Appeal to a broader swath of the electorate that resides outside of those enclaves. There's no other way.
2. The independent legislature doctrine will not do what you think it might -- allow state legislatures to cancel the presidential popular vote in their state because they don't like the outcome. To see why, read this from Brookings, which comports with my understanding of the law:
Key quote, couldn't have said it better: "[W]hile the Constitution gives state legislatures the power to choose electors, every state legislature has delegated to the voters the power to choose the President by voting for the presidential electors of the candidate they choose. While a state legislature in theory could take this power away from voters prior to Election Day, it is politically unfeasible and would lead to a national firestorm." I share your concern about laws that strip courts of jurisdiction to interpret them. The power of legislatures to do this is an age-old legal conundrum, and I'm firmly against stripping jurisdiction. I note with horror, however, that progressives are increasingly calling for liberals to do the same to sidestep a conservative Supreme Court:
It's just and fair and right when we do it; it's the end of democracy when they do it? That can't be right. Lastly, I note that the Supreme Court hasn't even ruled on this issue yet, and even this Court has a way of not fulfilling progressive caricature in ways progressives stubbornly refuse to see. It did not hand the election to Trump -- nowhere close -- even though Trump wanted it to. It did not overturn Obamacare, even though its most conservative members wanted it to. A decision by Gorsuch interpreted sex discrimination to include gay- and trans-discrimination, which nobody expected, an unsung progressive triumph. It just required Graham to testify in Georgia. Before that, it refused to help Trump in docu-gate. It was widely reported that the Court was not buying Alabama's position on the Voting Rights Act at oral argument -- that the state was permitted or required to be race-blind. Even Eastman, the architect of the looney-tunes plan to overturn the presidential election, reportedly admitted that his scheme would have lost in the Supreme Court 9-0, or at least 7-2.
3. But what about Dobbs? I did not expect this Court to uphold Roe, and I find gripes to the effect that Kavanaugh lied to Susan Collins or at his confirmation hearing or whatever to be either, to use your favorite word, naive on the one hand or disingenuous on the other. You have to understand -- as I did and as I supposed most commentators did -- that the main reason there's even such a thing as a conservative judicial philosophy, the main reason the Federalist Society exists, the main reason that, in modern times, there's such a thing as a "conservative justice" is because of Roe. Overturning Roe is, it's not much of an exaggeration to say, these people's purpose in life. I would have been relieved but also surprised if they had decided to keep Roe afloat or had agreed to Roberts's minimal approach. Does Dobbs signal the end of democracy? Of course not. Never mind that Dobbs, as a legal matter, actually hands abortion to the democratic process. More broadly, I find the current progressive tendency to see conservative Supreme Court decisions as automatically illegitimate to be obviously and painfully wrongheaded. The cases you and others mention -- like uncoordinated political expenditures as free speech, or the power of the administrative state, or affirmative action, even gun control, and, yes, especially Roe -- are HARD cases. It doesn't take long to see this when you immerse yourself in the arguments. Indeed, on Roe, the person who says the Constitution protects a right to abortion seems to have the heavier lifting to do on the paltry text. There's no "calling balls and strikes" in these cases. Meanwhile, we are the beneficiaries of some 70 years or so of liberal jurisprudence (more if you count the rejection of the conservative liberty to contract doctrine and authorization of the administrative state and federal intervention in social welfare), often initiated by the Warren Court -- on speech, criminal procedure, equal rights, the list goes on -- much of which made and continues to make conservatives' blood boil. And yet not even this Court will come anywhere close to undoing all of it. They will chip away at that legacy in some important ways. Because they have the votes. Once again: okay for us, not for them? A conservative turn on highly contested, difficult matters of law transforms the country from a democracy to something else? I don't buy it.
4. You mention voter suppression. It's worth noting that it's never been easier to vote in this country. We never used to have voting by mail (except in unusual circumstances) or early voting or motor-voter. You showed up on election day and hoped there wouldn't be a hitch. Claims that, say, restrictions on the number of drop boxes and so on are the new Jim Crow thus ring awfully hollow to me. In the era of actual Jim Crow, pre-Civil Rights, as recently as the '40s almost no black people could vote in the South. Voting roll purges such as what we've seen in Ohio are certainly outrageous. My point isn't that people aren't up to alarming things. My point is only to keep it in perspective. The reason we don't win elections isn't mainly because of cheating. It's overwhelmingly because, as today (to forecast my dire prediction), our side isn't showing up, or else we're not actually winning over most voters.
5. Yes, I don't foresee a president having their Supreme Court pick approved by a Senate of the opposing party. You might be under the mistaken impression that is common. In modern times, it rarely occurred. (This is perhaps because justices, unlike RBG, peace be upon her, are typically strategic about when they step down.) The two times were Thomas and Souter. Souter was barely a conservative (and, indeed, turned into a "liberal" on the Court), and Thomas got a lot of help from blue dogs (something that barely exists anymore) amid a misplaced focus on his race and Anita Hill's accusations as opposed to the sort of judicial radicalism that got Bork Borked. In any case, this is allowed under the rules. You only get someone on the Court with the consent of the Senate. Withholding consent hardly amounts to the end of democracy. Indeed, if the roles were reversed, I would expect and urge Democrats to do the same thing (perhaps with less oily hypocrisy) to halt the addition of a conservative -- too much is at stake. Okay for us; not for them?
6. You direct your ire at Manchin and Sinema -- odd insofar as they are why Democrats have a majority today and why Democrats were able to get anything done. In Manchin, you have a real outlier and dying breed -- a Democrat from West Virginia of all places. We have no right to expect anything from him. And yet he did ultimately do his part. He confirmed Jackson, he voted for the big Climate/health care bill (called the Inflation Reduction Act) and for infrastructure and so on.
7. You hanker for filibuster reform even though Congress is about to switch hands and, if we lose the presidency in 2024, liberals would then be defenseless against a right-wing legislative onslaught. The filibuster mitigates other unfairnesses of our system when Democrats are in the minority -- it's the only thing that does. I wouldn't be so quick to get rid of it. As for the argument that they will surely get rid of it anyway, I wouldn't be so sure. They recently had the chance -- Trump demanded it -- and refused. Thank you Mitch McConnell?
8. More broadly, I subscribe to the argument that Democratic strategy -- strategy on both sides really -- needs to move past the two bases, past being satisfied with a slim or bare majority. The Big Sort is unsustainable. The solution to all of our concerns, including our concerns about democracy, is to win more races by appealing to a broader range of voters. It's rigged so we can't? Nonsense. We've done it before, and recently, even with uglier maps. We need to 86 wokeitudes as toxic sludge. We need to show that we are patriots, value hard work, admire small business and striving and might even support lowering barriers, take the working class side (of all racial and ethnic backgrounds) against the side of corporate elites, stick it to China, replace the war on drugs with a war on gun violence, champion freedom in most all its forms, yes more actively champion an end to partisan gerrymandering and other unimpeachable and popular democratic reforms, support immigration reform coupled with border security, and generally show that Democrats do not subscribe to some peculiar "faculty lounge" ideology. I mean it's pretty criminal that Democrats have allowed today's Republican party -- firmly under the thumb of round-the-bend nutjobbery -- to continue to claim all that common sense as their territory.
9. Finally, my challenge remains. I'll get depressed as soon as someone can show me one actually stolen election, or even a genuinely close call! Our institutions, unlike in those other places and times, have proved durable through far tougher times. I'm worried, but to say that tonight's outcome portends the end of a good run is.... overstated.
I'll show you an actually stolen election: all the elections you cite in the 40s, before the Voting Rights Act, when almost no blacks were able to vote in the South. Weren't they “stolen” enough for you? Get depressed. The Republicans are now, today, trying to accomplish the same thing, by different means, and they are likely to succeed. They are indeed trying to “play by the rules”—set up by them to choose who can vote: their voters.
You misread what I said about the independent legislature theory; I had read the Brookings article before posting. It is a brilliant legal analysis. But it is also merely a prediction. And don't think you can rely on that in front of the intellectual dishonesty of a guy like Alito, and the lying and deceptive Kavanaugh and Barrett.
As for your aspersions on Roe: I read Roe when it came out, and despite being a very liberal, (almost) new lawyer, intellectually, I found its reasoning rather unsatisfying. Instead I ascribed the result to an (unstated) practical view by the court majority that the legislative battle had been lost in enough states that any other outcome would have created a national chaos, the very one we are now faced with: what is an ordinary medical procedure on one side of State Line Road is murder when done across the street. On that grounds alone, they should have left well enough alone. Now we are in for a Republican onslaught, where, if they also take the Presidency, will likely result in a nation wide ban on abortion.
For the rest: “Methinks the lady doth protest too loudly.” Sorry for going short; I'm done.
Okay, well, I clearly meant I'll get depressed if we see a stolen election in current times. Of course all those pre-Civil Rights southern elections were stolen. My point was precisely that we've made spectacular progress since then, and to equate, as you do, that horror show with Republican moves today -- they want to "accomplish the same thing" -- rings hollow and only proves my point. They can't possibly accomplish the same thing, nothing close, not in the same universe of the same ballpark. I mean, we have black Democrats winning in Georgia.
On the independent legislature doctrine, yes, I think it's a reasonable prediction. I don't place a lot of trust in Alito or Thomas, but they're two votes. I don't think Kavanaugh, Kennedy disciple, would in the end, gun to the head of liberal democracy, pull the trigger.
Re Roe, you seem to accept my point that it's at least legally questionable. I actually support it, as you do. In the end, I'm more persuaded by the pro-Roe legal arguments. I don't even feel the need to cast aside legal judgment in favor of practicality. But I won't get into all that. My point was only that it's a tough case and that going one way or the other does not signal the end of democracy.
As for protesting too much, I think I made some fair points in response to yours -- they came quite easily! -- and I frankly read you as protesting too little, but okay -- I did throw out quite a lot -- thanks for engaging anyway. Cheers.
Very thorough and well said. Barrett, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch are not slavish sycophants to Trump, despite the constant attempts by progressives to characterise them that way. They’re very honourable jurors who act with integrity, and they would certainly reject any bullshit election challenge that Trump would throw their way the same way that the fifty some or so other judges rejected his bullshit. They’re not remotely close to being illegitimate, they simply hold judicial philosophies that sometimes yield rulings that are not to liberals’ likings.
Maher's assertion "... no one in America can be persuaded of anything anymore anyway" troubles me. Is it that no one remains persuadable, or actual persuasion is even ATTEMPTED less and less?
My children around middle-school age used to declare what they thought were truths, and when I questioned how they knew whatever they had declared, would roll their eyes and dismiss my question with, "Mom!!! EVERYONE KNOWS [whatever]." It took years of patient refusal to accede to what "everyone" knew or did to train them that I could be persuaded to their way of thinking, but only if they presented me with facts and reasoning rather than loud overblown indignation. They did learn, and the thinking skill has served them well.
Of course, substituting noisy emotion for rational debate is to be expected of children. It's frightening when adult citizens of a democracy do likewise and expect that tantrums will cause them to get their way.
I think that part of the problem is the equally childish assumption that everyone is one-dimensional and has picked a side. This makes it much easier to assert that no one is persuadable. And if they are not persuadable on topic A then they must be opposed to everything that is good and right. Of course, there is no room for nuance in disagreement, only 'fer' or 'agin'. I am more optimistic and believe that the 60% of the electorate that consider themselves independent or persuadable is a good indicator that we live in a better community than we see in the media and much political behavior.
Here's why Maher might be / could be made to be wrong: All the conditions of authoritarianism he describes as headed our way, these were the daily conditions of life for [three hundred?] years for Black people in America. But Black people found a thousand ways to resist, to push back, fight back, gain space, win allies, and dilute the power of white supremacy to a very large degree. They fought every day, in every generation. The odds to succeed most of the time were awful. But they, and their allies, and people everywhere of good faith persisted and have so far wrestled white power to a draw. Maher sounds like he's done fighting, but that's a privilege others won't share. Press on!
this was the best grp of PS visual tweets yet! loved 4 of the 5 - but had to vote for the one with the guy climbing the ice wall - i've been telling that one to my kids [now in their 30s] for yrs!
I sort of agree with Eric's opening paragraph. An engaged and knowledgeable electorate are the foundation of a strong democracy. A predominantly uninformed electorate that is driven by short-hand emotional appeals is not a good thing for democracy, regardless of the ideological bent of the herders.
"Of course I would rather you not vote today if you don’t appreciate the gravity of the threat to democracy itself posed by so many Republican candidates, but either way, traditional non-voters should get out there while they still have the chance, as we see in the following item." --Zorn
The false accusation is that republicans are undermining democracy in America with their “extreme” positions, or that as a whole they are extremist characters in themselves; people commonly see this claim on TV or read about it in the papers every day. Another way of saying this is that – especially in an election season -- politically zealous (republican) people holding everyday strict moral beliefs are vying for political power in democratic territory; it seems to me that what is going on is that the Democrats have established a media narrative accusing the Republicans of undermining democracy, augmented by the public narrative claiming that the January 6th insurrection of the United States Capitol was an explicit attack on democracy (the structure and ideology) itself, as if domestically the republicans represent an invading foreign power -- another political ideology – like fascism, totalitarianism, or socialism, for example. The claim assumes truth in esse (in essence). This is deceptive, dishonest, and apathetic as pertains to power and control in America, especially since it is this fictitious narrative that we hear projected in the media every day. Who will save us? Is the republican situation any better? No. They’re like two mad dogs in a ring fighting to the bloody death; and how does this help America? What are our limits on free speech and do they include dogmatic moralism, which it seems is pro et contra (for and against) many everyday issues of life? How are people to conduct themselves with respect to political discussion in America, especially during election season?
“ The false accusation is that republicans are undermining democracy in America”
They are.
“ domestically the republicans represent an invading foreign power -- another political ideology – like fascism, totalitarianism, or socialism, for example.”
They do. They’re domestic, but that just makes them worse.
“ How are people to conduct themselves with respect to political discussion in America, especially during election season?”
They should vote against the hundreds of candidates who irrationally deny the results of the 2020 election.
Wow! No grey area in that response. I tried, but have finally hit the breaking point. Will miss tweets and song of the week. I know you write from the heart and wish you the best, but I’m with Shaun. Both sides are devisive and I feel that I too rarely see a balanced view of that in the Picayune.
Hey Eric, any current reflections on Bill Maher's apoplectic pre-apocalyptical prognostication? I have to admit I shared his worries, although maybe at a slightly lower temperature.
This group of visual tweets is the best you have presented! If I could have, I would have given them all a vote!!
It's been a long time since I was in the Hideout neighborhood. While digesting the news about them, I also looked at another place where I've been entertained. Exit too, is gone. I missed that. But then my ability to stay up and out that late is also gone.
Maher is right. It was forseeable since election denialism took over Republicans and they started fielding candidates to take over elections. And it was baked in when Democrats in Congress failed to pass a new Voter Rights Act to prevent it. And let us never forget that was due to the refusal to overturn the Senate filibuster rules by Joe Manchin and Kirstin Sinema. For shame.. There well never be another chance..
The problem is the Republican Party, has been since the Southern Democrats joined it in retaliation to the passage of the Civil Rights Act because of the GOP's "state's rights" plank. Atwater showed the GOP how to abuse the media to their advantage, with his dirty politics, from his experience with Southern Democrats who were now in the GOP, to win over the worst among the electorate on hate and fear, not issues. The Democrats, liberals who stayed in the party, never developed or never had the fight necessary to oppose the GOP's combined conservatism and libertarianism and so here we are.
Still, it is important to vote Democratic but force them to FIGHT because claiming the "higher ground", "going high when they go low" has NOT worked. The GOP will use democracy to tyrannize those that don't agree with them as they did to women in the unconstitutional Dobbs decision. It will get worse if the GOP maintains power.
John Greenfield offers the best reporting on the Hideout situation I've read so far.
I don't believe the Hideout should face permanent closure.
I love Maher, but come on, his predictions of the end of democracy are over the top, just as were his predictions that Trump "wouldn't leave" last time. Granted, he was more right about that than I realized he would be, but we still didn't come anywhere close to an actual coup. There was never any genuine prospect of Trump occupying the Oval Office after he lost to Biden.
We are about to have a midterm election that will have a reassuringly normal result: the party in power, with low approval and economic gripes ascendant, will get a "shellacking." This happens almost every time. Republicans will lose support with their maniacal obsession with cutting rich people's taxes and screwing over ordinary people, and Democrats can and will return to power, sooner rather than later if they start campaigning like Tim Ryan. (And before you say that, yeah, well, he's gonna lose, note that Ohio is super red at this point and Ryan should easily beat the R-D spread).
The difference this time is that there are lots of election deniers on the ballot and the whole party has turned into Sarah Palin. I get it. But why is it so hard to grasp that a whackadoo secretary of state, say, cannot actually just do whatever he wants? Maher and others talk as though there is no such thing as rule of law in this country, as though judges are just in the tank for one side or another. This is -- really obviously -- way off, and one of the reasons we are not Hungary or Pakistan or Russia or various other places where liberal democracy is a joke. Trump-appointed judges threw out his bullshit last time, and they will throw out Trumpy bullshit this time. I have no reason to suspect otherwise. The Federalist Society does not simply name a bunch of hacks. An old friend of mine was on the list and was nominated by Trump -- a more thoughtful, honorable fellow you'll never meet.
Bottom line: I don't think the predictors of doom have a persuasive story of how it will actually happen. As soon as that whakadoo does something crazy, he'll be hauled into court by the other side.
I'm not discounting the possibility there could come a time when democracy dies in America. But, sheesh, we're quite a ways off. As soon as a candidate is actually able to steal an election, give me just one, I will start to despair. I just don't think we're there. I don't think we'll see that this time, and I don't think we'll see it in two years.
Not on message for Election Day, I guess, but the democracy-on-fire talk is counterproductive for two reasons. First, persuadable voters don't buy it. They think "both sides" do shit. (That's why they're persuadable. They're ideologically and factually illiterate.) Second, it sends the good guys off their game. The good guys need to be focused on expanding their appeal and winning elections instead of constantly whining about how the system is rigged and about to be rigged more. I thought that would have been obvious.
I agree that the death of democracy in the US rhetoric is overblown. Eric, If the election goes in that direction, what are some concrete milestones we can place bets on?
Looks like Democracy won! So there’s nothing to bet on there.
JakeH
Boy, are you naive. They've got you thinking this is all on the square, when they don't have any intention of playing fair, and invent new rules whenever needed, to suit their purposes.
Take Wisconsin as an example. The Republican legislature has so gerrymandered the state that they likely will have a veto proof majority, and will pass any law they want. And when the Democrats actually achieve a statewide majority and succeed in winning statewide offices, such as the governor, the Legislature just passes laws limiting his authority to do anything that will thwart them. If the US Supreme Court approves the “independent state legislature theory” in a case now before it, not even the Wisconsin Supreme Court could put a stop to this gerrymandering. (The most expansive view of the that theory raises the prospect that the Legislature could even overrule the popular Presidential vote results). There was no reason for the US Supreme Court to accept this case, unless, as in Roe v. Wade, the justices who voted to hear it want to overrule past precedent. The Wisconsin Republican candidate for governor has just boasted that if he wins, no Republican would ever lose an election there again.
The Republicans now want to make all the states whose legislatures they control like Wisconsin. And they control all the mostly rural states, which outnumber those controlled by Democrats. Their goal is to implement voter suppression laws aimed at voters they think will vote Democratic, and thereby to prevent them from ever achieving a majority in the Legislatures. Or from achieving election of a Democrat in presidential elections, thereby winning the Electoral College votes of those states. All they need, to succeed in those efforts, are results in a handful of “swing” states.
As far as your faith in judicial review, you are particularly naive. The Republicans have successfully packed the Supreme Court with judges who are hostile to voters' rights (unless they are the rights of corporations to spend unlimited amounts on elections). They abolished the main provisions of the Voting Rights Acts of the 1960s, which is how and why these Republican legislatures are now able to pull these shenanigans off. Do you expect those Justices to do any less when these draconian laws are appealed to them? And did you expect them to affirm Roe v. Wade, too?
All lower court judges will simply have to follow whatever precedent the Supreme Court lays down, no matter how undemocratic the results they dictate. So don't look to them to undo the Republican outrages.
And as for playing fair, do you think that, if Mitch McConnell gets control of the Senate, and by chance another SC Justice should die in office, that Biden will ever get to appoint a successor? Of course not: it's too close to the next presidential election, and the next president ought to be the one to do that.
No. The die is cast. And for that, we owe Manchin and Sinema, who refused to put a stop to it with a new Voting Rights Act, by refusing to abolish the filibuster. We're screwed.
Hi, thanks for your reply. My general response is that most of what you describe is in fact playing within the rules and, though frequently odious I agree, does not constitute a fundamental loss of democracy, a change in our regime, a path to, as Maher would have it, Hungary or Nazi Germany. And the most outrageous aspects of what you suggest are unlikely to occur. Let me take your points one at a time:
1. Gerrymandering. Partisan gerrymandering is legal. It isn't new. It's almost as old as the country itself. And both sides do it as much as they can (or should). The proof of gerrymandering's iniquity is often framed as a comparison between statewide vote totals and the partisan makeup of that state's congressional delegation. So we'll hear, for example, that a state's voters are roughly 50/50, let's say, and yet its congressional delegation is majority Republican by a lot. In some egregious cases, like Wisconsin, a majority might vote Democratic and yet its congressional delegation is substantially majority Republican. But consider Massachusetts (or Maryland or Illinois). In Massachusetts, our bluest state, there are still lots of Republicans. Maybe a third voted for Trump over Biden in 2020. And yet they don't have a single Republican congressperson. See what I mean? Consider also the reason why Republican gerrymandering is so effective. They get a big assist from where liberals live. They tend to pack themselves into uniform enclaves and thus "waste" more of their votes. (This is, I think, a major problem in Wisconsin.) This means that even with no partisan gerrymandering, Republicans would still have an advantage so long as we have single-member districts. The solution for Democrats is clear. Appeal to a broader swath of the electorate that resides outside of those enclaves. There's no other way.
2. The independent legislature doctrine will not do what you think it might -- allow state legislatures to cancel the presidential popular vote in their state because they don't like the outcome. To see why, read this from Brookings, which comports with my understanding of the law:
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2022/11/04/the-independent-state-legislature-theory-will-not-empower-state-legislatures-to-override-presidential-election-results/
Key quote, couldn't have said it better: "[W]hile the Constitution gives state legislatures the power to choose electors, every state legislature has delegated to the voters the power to choose the President by voting for the presidential electors of the candidate they choose. While a state legislature in theory could take this power away from voters prior to Election Day, it is politically unfeasible and would lead to a national firestorm." I share your concern about laws that strip courts of jurisdiction to interpret them. The power of legislatures to do this is an age-old legal conundrum, and I'm firmly against stripping jurisdiction. I note with horror, however, that progressives are increasingly calling for liberals to do the same to sidestep a conservative Supreme Court:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/01/opinion/dobbs-roe-supreme-court.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/19/opinion/liberals-constitution.html
It's just and fair and right when we do it; it's the end of democracy when they do it? That can't be right. Lastly, I note that the Supreme Court hasn't even ruled on this issue yet, and even this Court has a way of not fulfilling progressive caricature in ways progressives stubbornly refuse to see. It did not hand the election to Trump -- nowhere close -- even though Trump wanted it to. It did not overturn Obamacare, even though its most conservative members wanted it to. A decision by Gorsuch interpreted sex discrimination to include gay- and trans-discrimination, which nobody expected, an unsung progressive triumph. It just required Graham to testify in Georgia. Before that, it refused to help Trump in docu-gate. It was widely reported that the Court was not buying Alabama's position on the Voting Rights Act at oral argument -- that the state was permitted or required to be race-blind. Even Eastman, the architect of the looney-tunes plan to overturn the presidential election, reportedly admitted that his scheme would have lost in the Supreme Court 9-0, or at least 7-2.
3. But what about Dobbs? I did not expect this Court to uphold Roe, and I find gripes to the effect that Kavanaugh lied to Susan Collins or at his confirmation hearing or whatever to be either, to use your favorite word, naive on the one hand or disingenuous on the other. You have to understand -- as I did and as I supposed most commentators did -- that the main reason there's even such a thing as a conservative judicial philosophy, the main reason the Federalist Society exists, the main reason that, in modern times, there's such a thing as a "conservative justice" is because of Roe. Overturning Roe is, it's not much of an exaggeration to say, these people's purpose in life. I would have been relieved but also surprised if they had decided to keep Roe afloat or had agreed to Roberts's minimal approach. Does Dobbs signal the end of democracy? Of course not. Never mind that Dobbs, as a legal matter, actually hands abortion to the democratic process. More broadly, I find the current progressive tendency to see conservative Supreme Court decisions as automatically illegitimate to be obviously and painfully wrongheaded. The cases you and others mention -- like uncoordinated political expenditures as free speech, or the power of the administrative state, or affirmative action, even gun control, and, yes, especially Roe -- are HARD cases. It doesn't take long to see this when you immerse yourself in the arguments. Indeed, on Roe, the person who says the Constitution protects a right to abortion seems to have the heavier lifting to do on the paltry text. There's no "calling balls and strikes" in these cases. Meanwhile, we are the beneficiaries of some 70 years or so of liberal jurisprudence (more if you count the rejection of the conservative liberty to contract doctrine and authorization of the administrative state and federal intervention in social welfare), often initiated by the Warren Court -- on speech, criminal procedure, equal rights, the list goes on -- much of which made and continues to make conservatives' blood boil. And yet not even this Court will come anywhere close to undoing all of it. They will chip away at that legacy in some important ways. Because they have the votes. Once again: okay for us, not for them? A conservative turn on highly contested, difficult matters of law transforms the country from a democracy to something else? I don't buy it.
4. You mention voter suppression. It's worth noting that it's never been easier to vote in this country. We never used to have voting by mail (except in unusual circumstances) or early voting or motor-voter. You showed up on election day and hoped there wouldn't be a hitch. Claims that, say, restrictions on the number of drop boxes and so on are the new Jim Crow thus ring awfully hollow to me. In the era of actual Jim Crow, pre-Civil Rights, as recently as the '40s almost no black people could vote in the South. Voting roll purges such as what we've seen in Ohio are certainly outrageous. My point isn't that people aren't up to alarming things. My point is only to keep it in perspective. The reason we don't win elections isn't mainly because of cheating. It's overwhelmingly because, as today (to forecast my dire prediction), our side isn't showing up, or else we're not actually winning over most voters.
5. Yes, I don't foresee a president having their Supreme Court pick approved by a Senate of the opposing party. You might be under the mistaken impression that is common. In modern times, it rarely occurred. (This is perhaps because justices, unlike RBG, peace be upon her, are typically strategic about when they step down.) The two times were Thomas and Souter. Souter was barely a conservative (and, indeed, turned into a "liberal" on the Court), and Thomas got a lot of help from blue dogs (something that barely exists anymore) amid a misplaced focus on his race and Anita Hill's accusations as opposed to the sort of judicial radicalism that got Bork Borked. In any case, this is allowed under the rules. You only get someone on the Court with the consent of the Senate. Withholding consent hardly amounts to the end of democracy. Indeed, if the roles were reversed, I would expect and urge Democrats to do the same thing (perhaps with less oily hypocrisy) to halt the addition of a conservative -- too much is at stake. Okay for us; not for them?
6. You direct your ire at Manchin and Sinema -- odd insofar as they are why Democrats have a majority today and why Democrats were able to get anything done. In Manchin, you have a real outlier and dying breed -- a Democrat from West Virginia of all places. We have no right to expect anything from him. And yet he did ultimately do his part. He confirmed Jackson, he voted for the big Climate/health care bill (called the Inflation Reduction Act) and for infrastructure and so on.
7. You hanker for filibuster reform even though Congress is about to switch hands and, if we lose the presidency in 2024, liberals would then be defenseless against a right-wing legislative onslaught. The filibuster mitigates other unfairnesses of our system when Democrats are in the minority -- it's the only thing that does. I wouldn't be so quick to get rid of it. As for the argument that they will surely get rid of it anyway, I wouldn't be so sure. They recently had the chance -- Trump demanded it -- and refused. Thank you Mitch McConnell?
8. More broadly, I subscribe to the argument that Democratic strategy -- strategy on both sides really -- needs to move past the two bases, past being satisfied with a slim or bare majority. The Big Sort is unsustainable. The solution to all of our concerns, including our concerns about democracy, is to win more races by appealing to a broader range of voters. It's rigged so we can't? Nonsense. We've done it before, and recently, even with uglier maps. We need to 86 wokeitudes as toxic sludge. We need to show that we are patriots, value hard work, admire small business and striving and might even support lowering barriers, take the working class side (of all racial and ethnic backgrounds) against the side of corporate elites, stick it to China, replace the war on drugs with a war on gun violence, champion freedom in most all its forms, yes more actively champion an end to partisan gerrymandering and other unimpeachable and popular democratic reforms, support immigration reform coupled with border security, and generally show that Democrats do not subscribe to some peculiar "faculty lounge" ideology. I mean it's pretty criminal that Democrats have allowed today's Republican party -- firmly under the thumb of round-the-bend nutjobbery -- to continue to claim all that common sense as their territory.
9. Finally, my challenge remains. I'll get depressed as soon as someone can show me one actually stolen election, or even a genuinely close call! Our institutions, unlike in those other places and times, have proved durable through far tougher times. I'm worried, but to say that tonight's outcome portends the end of a good run is.... overstated.
Sorry for going long!!
I'll show you an actually stolen election: all the elections you cite in the 40s, before the Voting Rights Act, when almost no blacks were able to vote in the South. Weren't they “stolen” enough for you? Get depressed. The Republicans are now, today, trying to accomplish the same thing, by different means, and they are likely to succeed. They are indeed trying to “play by the rules”—set up by them to choose who can vote: their voters.
You misread what I said about the independent legislature theory; I had read the Brookings article before posting. It is a brilliant legal analysis. But it is also merely a prediction. And don't think you can rely on that in front of the intellectual dishonesty of a guy like Alito, and the lying and deceptive Kavanaugh and Barrett.
As for your aspersions on Roe: I read Roe when it came out, and despite being a very liberal, (almost) new lawyer, intellectually, I found its reasoning rather unsatisfying. Instead I ascribed the result to an (unstated) practical view by the court majority that the legislative battle had been lost in enough states that any other outcome would have created a national chaos, the very one we are now faced with: what is an ordinary medical procedure on one side of State Line Road is murder when done across the street. On that grounds alone, they should have left well enough alone. Now we are in for a Republican onslaught, where, if they also take the Presidency, will likely result in a nation wide ban on abortion.
For the rest: “Methinks the lady doth protest too loudly.” Sorry for going short; I'm done.
Okay, well, I clearly meant I'll get depressed if we see a stolen election in current times. Of course all those pre-Civil Rights southern elections were stolen. My point was precisely that we've made spectacular progress since then, and to equate, as you do, that horror show with Republican moves today -- they want to "accomplish the same thing" -- rings hollow and only proves my point. They can't possibly accomplish the same thing, nothing close, not in the same universe of the same ballpark. I mean, we have black Democrats winning in Georgia.
On the independent legislature doctrine, yes, I think it's a reasonable prediction. I don't place a lot of trust in Alito or Thomas, but they're two votes. I don't think Kavanaugh, Kennedy disciple, would in the end, gun to the head of liberal democracy, pull the trigger.
Re Roe, you seem to accept my point that it's at least legally questionable. I actually support it, as you do. In the end, I'm more persuaded by the pro-Roe legal arguments. I don't even feel the need to cast aside legal judgment in favor of practicality. But I won't get into all that. My point was only that it's a tough case and that going one way or the other does not signal the end of democracy.
As for protesting too much, I think I made some fair points in response to yours -- they came quite easily! -- and I frankly read you as protesting too little, but okay -- I did throw out quite a lot -- thanks for engaging anyway. Cheers.
Very thorough and well said. Barrett, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch are not slavish sycophants to Trump, despite the constant attempts by progressives to characterise them that way. They’re very honourable jurors who act with integrity, and they would certainly reject any bullshit election challenge that Trump would throw their way the same way that the fifty some or so other judges rejected his bullshit. They’re not remotely close to being illegitimate, they simply hold judicial philosophies that sometimes yield rulings that are not to liberals’ likings.
Maher's assertion "... no one in America can be persuaded of anything anymore anyway" troubles me. Is it that no one remains persuadable, or actual persuasion is even ATTEMPTED less and less?
My children around middle-school age used to declare what they thought were truths, and when I questioned how they knew whatever they had declared, would roll their eyes and dismiss my question with, "Mom!!! EVERYONE KNOWS [whatever]." It took years of patient refusal to accede to what "everyone" knew or did to train them that I could be persuaded to their way of thinking, but only if they presented me with facts and reasoning rather than loud overblown indignation. They did learn, and the thinking skill has served them well.
Of course, substituting noisy emotion for rational debate is to be expected of children. It's frightening when adult citizens of a democracy do likewise and expect that tantrums will cause them to get their way.
I think that part of the problem is the equally childish assumption that everyone is one-dimensional and has picked a side. This makes it much easier to assert that no one is persuadable. And if they are not persuadable on topic A then they must be opposed to everything that is good and right. Of course, there is no room for nuance in disagreement, only 'fer' or 'agin'. I am more optimistic and believe that the 60% of the electorate that consider themselves independent or persuadable is a good indicator that we live in a better community than we see in the media and much political behavior.
Here's why Maher might be / could be made to be wrong: All the conditions of authoritarianism he describes as headed our way, these were the daily conditions of life for [three hundred?] years for Black people in America. But Black people found a thousand ways to resist, to push back, fight back, gain space, win allies, and dilute the power of white supremacy to a very large degree. They fought every day, in every generation. The odds to succeed most of the time were awful. But they, and their allies, and people everywhere of good faith persisted and have so far wrestled white power to a draw. Maher sounds like he's done fighting, but that's a privilege others won't share. Press on!
this was the best grp of PS visual tweets yet! loved 4 of the 5 - but had to vote for the one with the guy climbing the ice wall - i've been telling that one to my kids [now in their 30s] for yrs!
I sort of agree with Eric's opening paragraph. An engaged and knowledgeable electorate are the foundation of a strong democracy. A predominantly uninformed electorate that is driven by short-hand emotional appeals is not a good thing for democracy, regardless of the ideological bent of the herders.
"Of course I would rather you not vote today if you don’t appreciate the gravity of the threat to democracy itself posed by so many Republican candidates, but either way, traditional non-voters should get out there while they still have the chance, as we see in the following item." --Zorn
The false accusation is that republicans are undermining democracy in America with their “extreme” positions, or that as a whole they are extremist characters in themselves; people commonly see this claim on TV or read about it in the papers every day. Another way of saying this is that – especially in an election season -- politically zealous (republican) people holding everyday strict moral beliefs are vying for political power in democratic territory; it seems to me that what is going on is that the Democrats have established a media narrative accusing the Republicans of undermining democracy, augmented by the public narrative claiming that the January 6th insurrection of the United States Capitol was an explicit attack on democracy (the structure and ideology) itself, as if domestically the republicans represent an invading foreign power -- another political ideology – like fascism, totalitarianism, or socialism, for example. The claim assumes truth in esse (in essence). This is deceptive, dishonest, and apathetic as pertains to power and control in America, especially since it is this fictitious narrative that we hear projected in the media every day. Who will save us? Is the republican situation any better? No. They’re like two mad dogs in a ring fighting to the bloody death; and how does this help America? What are our limits on free speech and do they include dogmatic moralism, which it seems is pro et contra (for and against) many everyday issues of life? How are people to conduct themselves with respect to political discussion in America, especially during election season?
“ The false accusation is that republicans are undermining democracy in America”
They are.
“ domestically the republicans represent an invading foreign power -- another political ideology – like fascism, totalitarianism, or socialism, for example.”
They do. They’re domestic, but that just makes them worse.
“ How are people to conduct themselves with respect to political discussion in America, especially during election season?”
They should vote against the hundreds of candidates who irrationally deny the results of the 2020 election.
Wow! No grey area in that response. I tried, but have finally hit the breaking point. Will miss tweets and song of the week. I know you write from the heart and wish you the best, but I’m with Shaun. Both sides are devisive and I feel that I too rarely see a balanced view of that in the Picayune.
Hey Eric, any current reflections on Bill Maher's apoplectic pre-apocalyptical prognostication? I have to admit I shared his worries, although maybe at a slightly lower temperature.