Trump's Selection of Amy Coney Barrett for the Supreme Court Is Part of a Larger Antidemocratic Project
By: John Cassidy (The New Yorker)
An unrepresentative Electoral College and Senate continue to exercise a baleful influence that politicians of bad will, such as Trump and Mitch McConnell, can seize upon to further entrench the minority.
Barrett is a member of People of Praise .
An examination of the group's website
leaves a lot of questions - in particular:
Who gives the orders?
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
by a President who initially won the White House while losing the popular vote.
amuel Corum / NYT / Redux
On Friday evening , CNN, the New York Times , and other media outlets reported that Donald Trump had told associates that he has chosen Judge Amy Coney Barrett, a prominent social conservative, to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court. Although Trump's choice of Barrett—whom he appointed to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, in 2017—wasn't unexpected, it's sure to escalate the bitter political conflict surrounding the Republican effort to rush a nomination through the U.S. Senate less than forty days before the election.
Right now, it looks like Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, has the votes to do that. The brazen and unapologetic nature of this G.O.P. power play is fanning perfectly justified outrage, and the selection of Barrett—who has ruled in favor of restrictions on abortion and who once served as a law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia—as a replacement for a liberal icon will further inflame passions. The nominee is expected to appear alongside Trump at the White House on Saturday afternoon. Some Democratic senators have openly considered boycotting the confirmation hearings, which would be unprecedented, at least in the modern era.
With the first Presidential debate, on Tuesday, set to add to the political tension, the next few weeks will be fast-moving and nerve-racking. But it is worth first stepping back and considering the larger context in which all this is taking place. If the aftermath of Ginsburg's untimely death has taught us anything, it's that the antiquated institutions of American democracy are in urgent need of repair—that is, if the country can get through the next couple of months with these institutions still intact, which at times this week hasn't always seemed like a given. The alternative to wholesale reform is almost too ghastly to contemplate: the continuation and intensification of a years-long effort to consolidate minority rule. For, when you strip away all the diversions and disinformation, that is the project that the Republican Party and the forty-fifth President are engaged in.
According to a new poll from ABC News, which was released on Friday, fifty-seven per cent of Americans think that the job of selecting Ginsburg's replacement should be left to the next President; only thirty-eight per cent think Trump should make the pick. Other surveys have found similar results. The data site FiveThirtyEight examined twelve polls and found that, in the aggregate, fifty-two per cent of respondents favored waiting until after the election to fill Ginsburg's seat, while thirty-nine per cent said that Trump should fill it immediately.
This is just the current antidemocratic outrage. When you consider the combined influence of the Electoral College and the Senate, both of which amplify the power of Republican voters living in less densely populated parts of the country, the empowerment of the minority—an overwhelmingly white and conservative minority—goes far beyond this instance, egregious as it is.
If the Senate confirms Trump's nominee, five members of the Court will have been selected by a President who initially won the White House while losing the popular vote. George W. Bush nominated John Roberts, the Chief Justice, and Samuel Alito; Trump picked Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, and will soon nominate Barrett. To be sure, Bush's two picks came during his second term, which followed a handy popular-vote victory over John Kerry, in 2004. But Bush wouldn't have been running in the 2004 election as an incumbent if the 2000 election had been decided on the basis of who received the most support nationally. In the popular vote, Al Gore beat him by more than half a million votes.
Why bring up an event that, to younger readers, may seem like ancient history? Because, in this country, American history isn't something that resides solely in the past. With the nation's early years having bequeathed to posterity an unrepresentative Electoral College and an unrepresentative U.S. Senate, this history is ever present—shaping some outcomes, ruling out others, and exercising a baleful influence that politicians of bad will, such as McConnell and Trump, can seize upon to further entrench the minority of which they are very much part.
After all, McConnell's status as the Dark Lord of Capitol Hill depends on a political system that affords the same number of senators to California (population 39.1 million) as it does to Wyoming (population 0.6 million). According to the Real Clear Politics poll average, Trump is trailing Biden by 6.7 percentage points, and he's been well behind all year. At this stage, his hopes of getting reelected hinge almost entirely on cobbling together another majority in the Electoral College, to negate the expressed will of the majority. In trying to do this, he has amply demonstrated his willingness to rely on voter suppression, challenge legitimate mail-in ballots, and even possibly call upon Republican legislatures to set aside their states' election results and appoint slates of loyalist electors to the Electoral College. (In the magazine this week, my colleague Jeffrey Toobin wrote about all these possibilities.)
When points like these are put to Republicans, some of them reply that this is a republic rather than a democracy, which is conceding the point. A somewhat more sophisticated argument is that the United States is a representative democracy rather than a direct democracy, and that the Founders expressly designed the seemingly antidemocratic elements of the political system to protect minorities and prevent mob rule. The proper response to this argument is to invoke actual history rather than fables.
The Founders were men of property and eighteenth-century views. In his book,"The Framers' Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution," from 2016, Michael J. Klarman, a professor at Harvard Law School, explains that they "had interests, prejudices, and moral blind spots. They could not foresee the future, and they made mistakes." Largely drawn from the landed class, they had little interest in empowering the common man, and no interest at all in empowering women and Black people. But, unlike many latter-day "constitutionalists," they were aware of their own shortcomings. Although they tussled long and hard over the system they created, they didn't consider it a perfect solution or something that couldn't be altered in the future, depending on the circumstances and exigencies of the time. "As Jefferson would have recognized," Klarman writes, "those who wish to sanctify the Constitution are often using it to defend some particular interest that, in their own day, cannot be adequately justified on its own merits."
In the nearly two centuries since Jefferson's death, some of the more objectionable aspects of the system that he helped to create have been reformed and updated. It is our misfortune to be living through a period in which Trump and his allies are busy exploiting the system's remaining weaknesses for their own iniquitous and antidemocratic ends. Disturbing as it is, the rushed nomination of Amy Coney Barrett is but one part of a bigger and even more alarming story.
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I continue to think that the Dems must pack the Court. Worrying about the consequences is foolish - the Republicans will do their worst, regardless of what precedents the Dems do or do not set.
Haven’t Democrat’s been snake bit enough for Reid’s tampering with Senate traditions during Obama’s Presidency for short term gain? Everything the GOP has done since regarding the courts was due to those changes and the GOP regaining senate control. What McConnell did in both 2016 and is doing now fit well with tradition and history. If democrats do win the senate and presidency next year and pack the court they better hope that they don’t lose control of both at the same time ever again because the court will simply be packed again.
Yeah, that's the problem with that solution. (I mean besides the childish impulse to change the rules of a game so you can win) If you start adding justices, there's no end to it. We could end up with a Supreme Court of 400 people, but it will never solve the problem. The problem being sometimes the Court makes decisions we don't like. You can live with it, or you can work with Congress and the states to change the Constitution, or you can keep packing the court.
Right now, the GOP is attacking democratic institutions across the whole front. Vote:suppression, gerrymandering, and politicized courts.
Fundamentally, the Republican Party is a minority, and demographics will make it more so. So the GOP must act fast to install their one-party rule.
Packing the Court would slow the Republican coup d'état. Perhaps provide enough time to preserve the republic.
They are operating according to the requirements of the Constitution. How do you get "coup d'etat" from that?
You speak of preserving the Republic, but you have a problem with legally valid constitutional procedures. Do you not see a problem with that?
The policies I cited - voter suppression, gerrymandering, and politicized courts - are not Constitutional. On the contrary.
How do you figure? The voting process is regulated legally everywhere there is voting. If simple, legal regulations suppress your vote, you should maybe look in the mirror for basic competency. Gerrymandering is already done by both parties and controlled through legislation and judicial oversight. Politicians naming and approving judges to the courts is in the Constitution. Everything you mentioned is controlled by law.
It seems very clear that the Republican Party is going to be legal limits, and sometimes over, in order to ensure permanent control of the government.
The number of Republicans in state legislatures, compared to population, is blatantly unrepresentative.
The US was meant to be a democracy. The GOP wants one-party rule. If you believe that the Republican Party is in favor of equal voting rights for all Americans, I don't think we have enough common ground to support a serious conversation.
If you actually care about law, justice, and fairness, you can't complain about people who are operating within the law as if they are doing something illegal.
You still have not specified where they are breaking the law. There's good news, though: Generally, even when politicians break the law, there is some legal response available.
Are you suggesting that the Democrats would not like permanent control of the government? Aren't both parties constantly trying to grab control at every level of government?
Is it? I won't claim to be an expert on all 50 state legislatures, but I'd be interested in hearing why you think they are unrepresentative. I live in California and the Democrats have had pretty much an iron grip on the legislature for most of my life. Right now, they have such a big majority that they can even pass laws requiring a 2/3 vote (like taxes) and there is nothing Republicans can say about it. I suspect there are a few million conservative Californians who might feel unrepresented.
Not really. Where do you get that idea? The word "democracy" doesn't even appear in the Constitution. People don't even have an explicit right to vote. What the Constitution says is that where voting exists, the right shall not be denied or abridged based on race or sex or age (if 18 or older).
And surely you know that the president is not elected by a popular vote of the people. He never has been.
Before the 17th Amendment, people didn't get to vote for senators, either.
So, "meant to be a democracy?" I don't think so.
All Americans? No, definitely not. They don't generally support the right of felons to vote, and they would like the voting age to remain at a minimum of 18 years, so no kid-voting. Also (and we're obviously not speaking of Americans, here) they generally oppose letting illegal aliens vote.
I am trying to have a serious conversation with you, but you seem to think that means I should agree with you. You should be prepared to be challenged on your allegation that Republicans are seizing power in violation of the law. So far, you have not supported the claim, and you appear to be closed to looking at the actual law to see if your claim is true.
Please do not tell me - or anyone else - what they may or may not do.
Perhaps I was not clear enough. My thesis does not depend on the "legality" of anyone's actions. Good deeds may be illegal and evil may be legal.
My thesis (and more importantly: the thesis of the seed) is that Republicans are working to transform the US into a one-party plutocratic patriarchy. The GOP's behavior - legal or not - goes very largely in that direction.
You apparently approve of that orientation, since you are apparently not upset by the idea of suppressing democracy. I very much doubt that anything I could say would change your thinking, so I see no point in our wasting any more time.
I am trying to have a serious conversation with you...
Then you should read more carefully:
I have made no such allegation. IMHO, it's much worse than that. The GOP is (mis-)using the law to bring down the republic... "legally".
That's how most democracies have died.
My statement was meant to describe the process of logic. I wasn't trying to tell you what to do. If you want to make illogical statements or take illogical positions, be my guest.
LOL. They've got a looooong way to go for that to happen. I don't honestly see them trying to seize power any harder than Democrats do. And to their credit, they are generally trying to do it within the existing rule structure.
Democrats are the ones who keep trying to change the rules. It was they who gutted the filibuster because they were sick of Republicans using it. Now they can't. They want to get rid of the Electoral College because they have lost two elections over it. They want to deny a Republican president and Republican controlled Senate their constitutional right to confirm a Supreme Court justice. To get more votes, they want more people voting who can't vote now: i.e. felons, 16 year-olds, illegal aliens.
No, I just don't see democracy being suppressed - at least not improperly. If I thought it were, that would bother me, yes.
I will take that as an admission that you can't actually support your position because I have given you no reason to assume that I am closed-minded.
Yes, you have. You referred to a:
A coup d'etat, by definition, is illegal and usually violent. Perhaps you didn't mean that? Part of the problem I see with political discussions is a willingness to make absurd exaggerations about what someone in the other party is doing.
This selection is simply another white male on the court in disguise of a woman. The democrats should demand to vet the husband, not her. She isn't permitted to have an individual thought without a man approving it. She's a conduit to her husband's decisions. Trump is not nominating a woman, he's nominating her husband.
Additionally, the democrats have allowed past standards and principles to cloud how they approach legislating. The republicans are not honorable and should never be trusted so I wish the democratic legislators would stop playing by an alternate set of rules. They need to understand that they cannot shame the republicans into doing the right thing. They simply do not care what is right. They only care about power and greed.
It's utterly embarrassing to watch democrats go on television and whine about what the republicans are doing. They need to stop crying about shite and start doing something about it. It's time to destroy the republicans anyway possible.
Finally, I'll end with saying that religion ruins EVERYTHING. Any good that may come from religion is destroyed by all the bad it encourages and promotes by 10 fold. Good people can no longer live in harmony with these religious nuts and cults.
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