“But the country’s disintegrating. What’s happening to America, Comedian? What’s happened to the American DREAM?”
“It came true. You’re looking at it.”
-Alan Moore, Watchmen #2
Prior to the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, my next idea for a column was to examine how the Republican Party has reduced itself to appeals to fear and hatred to motivate voters, and whether or not that would actually work. Now I have to talk about what the short-term situation is in regard to Viceroy Trump’s third Supreme Court nominee and what happens to the political system as a result of that. As it turns out, the second situation is simply another facet on the same gem.
First off, now that Mitt Romney has at least announced his willingness to hold a vote, the fix seems to be in. And you know what, that’s just how it goes. Ginsburg didn’t have to die when she did, just as Antonin Scalia didn’t have to die when he did, but they both had to die sometime. And on Trump’s side, there is nothing in the Constitution that says the President cannot fill a Supreme Court vacancy in an election year. Which meant that when Mitch “The Bitch” McConnell stopped President Obama from doing so, he was not in accordance with the Constitution or any legal precedent, even a so-called “Biden rule.” There is nothing in Article I of the Constitution that says “The Senate Majority Leader shall have sole power to veto the judicial nominations of the President.”
Come to think of it, there is nothing in Article I that says anything about a Senate Majority Leader.
Which only plays up the point that so much of what we think of as American laws are merely social agreements arranged for the convenience of the duopoly, and when one side goes back on those agreements, there is nothing binding the other side to hold to them. There is nothing that would stop the Democrats from retaliating (after they won the Senate) by amending the Judiciary Act of 1869 and packing the Court as FDR once threatened to do. There is nothing legally binding against this any more than there is any legal grounding to the Biden Rule, the McConnell Rule, or for that matter, Mitch McConnell’s secondary job.
Now you might say that if the Democrats pack the Court, the Republicans can always do the same thing when they get back in charge, but that requires two things: One, the Democrats have to take over the Senate, and even if they have at least three seats in reach this year, these are the guys who could strike out in a whorehouse. Secondly, if that happens, the Republicans would have to take the Senate back. That would take at least two more years. And the people who took those seats would not have the seniority of McConnell (who seems safe), Lindsey Graham (who does not) and Lamar Alexander (who is retiring).
With regard to Trump, one liberal pointed out that he once again said the quiet part loud by telling Fox & Friends that he wanted a ninth Justice (and sixth conservative Justice) because he was expecting SCOTUS to rule on the “fake ballots” he is already asking to contest. And of course, he’s giving the game away because a, he’s that stupid, and b, he has a Party that will shield him from his stupidity:
“There’s a certain political calculation to the timing of all of this, but Trump and his anxiousness have basically given away his entire strategy.
1) A more confident President would wait until he was reelected and select the next Supreme Court Justice.
2) A somewhat confident President would wait until after the election and use the choice of Supreme Court Justice as a reason to vote for him. He’d basically say, “Vote for me, and I’ll put so-and-so on the Court.” This would be the wisest move because it would solidify behind him those in his evangelical base who may have been wavering because of his handling of the pandemic, or because he grabs “p*ssies,” or because he uses the Bible as a prop for staged photo ops.
3) An insecure, blathering idiot who has no confidence in winning the Presidency whatsoever would nominate a Supreme Court justice as soon as possible and push her through — Senate willing — so he has the votes he believes he needs if there is a contested election, which he fully plans to orchestrate by undermining the mail-in voting process.”
Thing is, even with an absence, the Court is 5-3 conservative. A 5-3 ruling confirming Trump in a contested election would be no less (or more) legally binding than the 5-4 verdict in Bush v. Gore. A 6-3 ruling in Trump’s favor would be no more or less binding than a 5-3 ruling. But putting all the pressure on Republicans to ram a nominee through (maybe because you think John Roberts is ‘squishy’) will most likely increase Democratic turnout and the odds of a Biden victory by a margin that Trump can’t seriously contest.
You combine that with the essential vanity and self-preservation instinct of the average Senator, and it gives credence to the inside opinion that the Party of Trump is going on the closest thing they have to a “long game.” Republicans know that if Biden gets to approve the next Justice that would simply restore the 5-4 tilt that existed with Ginsburg, but desiring complete supremacy in both elected office and the judiciary, and knowing that they are risking both thanks to the events of 2020, it could be that some of the True Believers will actually be willing to sacrifice their political perks and seniority in elected office to lock in the courts for the next generation, which again, they pretty much already have.
The fact that they’ve already achieved one goal but are willing to risk the other indicates that they’ve basically given up on elected office. Which stands to reason, because as much as Republicans love the perks of power and as terrified as they are of losing it, they never actually do much in office.
You will notice, for instance, that while Mitch kept Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid’s initiative to kill the filibuster on judicial nominees (which Reid approved precisely because Banana Republicans kept stonewalling Obama), the Banana Republican Senate has kept the filibuster for everything else, and McConnell has blocked any legislation from the House from reaching his floor the same way he did with Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland.
One might say that this is the sort of thing that a conservative or libertarian should be on board with, but no matter how right-wing Republicans are, most of them assumed that the maintenance of public order was the government’s reason for being. And that includes disaster relief. Bush Junior might not have done a good job with Hurricane Katrina, but at least he did a job. McConnell (and to some extent Trump) have been against even negotiating with the Democrats for further coronavirus relief even though the declining living standards caused by the current situation are an ongoing threat to Republican Senate and Congressional seats in a way that even the Ginsburg replacement is not.
Which gets to the “Law and Order” appeal of the Party of Trump, or as it ought to be called, lawlessness and disorder.
Especially during the Trump National Convention, Republicans kept pushing the paranoid agenda that civil rights protests inevitably led to violence and attacks on police and property. Even now, Trump’s attorney Bill Barr is declaring that Portland and New York are “anarchist” cities, which is a big surprise to anybody who lives in New York or knows what anarchism is.
And yet most of the demands for more government and more “crackdown” on lawless cities either are not within the federal government’s power (yet) or would require actions that have not actually been taken. It’s not unlike the response to coronavirus, where Trump dodges responsibility for the various customs procedures, executive orders and supply distribution that he either had not done or did too late, while also blaming governors for not taking on responsibilities they don’t have, or in the case of mask mandates, asserting responsibilities that the president will not.
To the Republican, Trump is Schrodinger’s President: an incumbent who is simultaneously not responsible for all the calamities in this country and the only man who can save us from all the calamities in this country.
The common thread, if it isn’t clear, is that both the riots and the pandemic (which Trumpniks continue to cast as a horrible curse cast on Our President by wicked witches, Chinese and/or Democrats) are happening in “blue” states either run or populated by Those Other People, whom real Americans obviously don’t have to care about.
It remains to be seen, and I expect that in the fullness of time we will find out, whether the federal coronavirus policy is the result of a deliberate Wannsee Conference type meeting of the Trump Organization, or if this policy was the simple outgrowth of their natural callousness and psuedo-Darwinism. In any event, result can be traced to policy.
It’s a lot more clear in the case of Trump and Bill Barr that they are deliberately stoking fear of violence even as Trump Organization actions either don’t solve our problems or (like the attacks in Lafayette Park) provoke protester response. The goal of course is to keep both friends and enemies in a constant state of uncertainty and fear, so that Our Savior can step in and say again “I alone can fix it” when most of the problems since 2016 are the result of his actions.
The question is whether the uncertainty and fear does more to demoralize the “enemy” (NotRepublicans) or motivate the base. It may be the other way around. A few days ago scientist Neil DeGrasse Tyson was on Seth Meyers’ show, and summed up our coronavirus problem about as well as anyone could: He said that not having a national mask mandate or coronavirus program, or expecting one governor to create mandates while the next state doesn’t, is “like designating a peeing section of a swimming pool.”
That’s not how water works. And it’s not how the virus works.
As I’ve said, just because the pandemic is affecting blue states and people “of color” disproportionately doesn’t mean that white people in “red” states are immune. And while blue New York did severely drop the ball in the initial response to the virus, they since managed to reduce the spread. Meanwhile Trump-friendly states like Florida and Arizona refused to take the crisis seriously and were then obliged to change source as the virus erupted. And even to the extent that Republican governors want to deal with, they’re dealing with a huge Trumpnik contingent that wants to pretend the danger isn’t real, which makes things that much worse for Republicans politically. Because as I’ve also said, it doesn’t matter if you believe in coronavirus or not if you’re dead. And if you’re dead, you can’t vote for Trump.
And it seems that even as fanatical as the Trumpniks are, some of them actually realize that Trump can’t heal the sick or raise the dead, which is why as enthusiastic as his comeback crowd was at Tulsa, it wasn’t nearly as big as it needed to be for political purposes.
And if there aren’t THAT many Trumpniks willing to risk a bullet for him to attend a rally anymore, how many are willing to risk in-person voting?
See, in my last piece, I had said that the Democrats still had a chance of alienating the country and losing this election because the loonies on their side can play into the Banana Republican agenda of making Democrats look worse than them no matter how bad they get. My point here is that none of that may matter because the Banana Republicans may in fact be getting to the point where the public will prefer Democrats no matter how bad they are, because the loonies on the Republican side are the ones in charge of their party, and that party is in charge of the country right now.
Because if there was one advantage Republicans always had, it was motivation and turnout. And that turnout has usually been motivated by fear. But you’ve already got all the “conservatives” convinced that the Apocalypse will happen if Those Other People get elected. Those Other People theoretically outnumbered Republicans, but they were happy and complacent, and they thought Barack Obama had cured racism in America, just like Hillary Clinton was going to cure sexism. They didn’t think they needed to vote like their lives depended on it, like Republicans do.
Now they know better.
Now Those Other People know just how spiteful and fearful some of their neighbors are, and what they will do to impose their will on the country.
So, “conservatives”, what happens when all of Those Other People look at the evidence and conclude that the Apocalypse really will happen if you win? What happens if they think like YOU, and do what you do to win? And what happens if they look at each other and realize they outnumber you?
You’re kinda fucked, aren’t you?
You’ve still got a chance, cause certain states like Pennsylvania are still close and Trump can still try to contest the results if mail-in ballots are the difference. But the odds are not looking good. I mean, what you’re really dealing with here is that you’ve given up. You’ve given up on trying to sell right-wing policy without a salesman who isn’t a sleazy career grifter and demagogue. You’ve given up even the Beltway’s superficial honesty and regard for rules. I mean, back in 1984, Reagan could win every state but Mondale’s cause Republicans actually had good candidates with ideas that people liked, but now, I guess that’s just too hard.
You don’t have law and order. Now all you’ve got is “we can do whatever we want, cause we’re the biggest gang.” And yet everything you do is based on a subconscious realization that if admitted would freeze you in pants-wetting terror: You are NOT the biggest gang, and you never will be again.
And thing is, it is your actions that are making your humiliation more likely, as you alienate the people whose votes you need, and whom you falsely claim to represent.
Yes, you ARE this stupid, yes, you ARE this evil, and you deserve every rotten thing that happens to you from here on out.
I wish I could say that did not include early death, but you guys are the ones pulling masks off of people in a pandemic, because you don’t like being reminded that Trump Virus is a thing.