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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   30024 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 1, 2024

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The French elections ended in a vast underperformance for Marine Le Pen's Rassemblement National. They won more seats than previously, but nowhere close to their hoped majority, with the big winner being the leftist NFP coalition and Macron's supporter parties also performing reasonably well compared to expectations.

This seems to show that the right-wing populist parties still have a major hurdle to pass on their path to power; they have a lot of fervent supporters, sure, but even more fervent opponents of the sort that would vote for a fence post or a dead dog to keep them out of power. In France this was made easier by leftist and centrist candidates dropping out from three-person races to concentrate votes against RN, but vote concentration might have happened to a lesser degree even before the dropouts.

The right-wing populists are predictably blaming elite machinations, migrant voters etc. but the true reason is genuinely that a lot of their agenda is unpopular, such as their opposition to EU (usually moderated in recent years but still in the background), past or present favorability towards Russia, or simply the fact that their rows of candidates are often full of perceived extremists (fundamentalists, supporters of historical movements of the goosestep variety, antivaxxers and conspiracy theorists, monarchists in countries with a strong republican tradition etc.) or people who just come off as plainly too incompletent for people to vote for them.

These things could of course be solved, and the leaderships of the parties usually want to solve them, but such parties are also affected with a heavy bunker mentality where any accusation of extremism or stupidity aimed at a genuinely extreme or stupid candidate is just taken as more leftist lies that everybody in the party will face, and if the party leadership goes too heavily againt such candidates or touches some pet causes, there might be a revolt amongst party membership who are always looking for signs of their leadership betraying them and going over the side of the establishment.

The French government will probably be formed by some combination of centrist parties, ie. everyone expect RN and LFI, the most left-wing party in the leftist coalition, but if such a coalition is unstable or gets other parties tarred with Macron's current unpopularity, it might create opportunities for RN to do better in 2027.

I'd say this is about a 30th percentile from expectations. They were about 12% to win straight up this time last week. People assuming a majority didn't actually do any research on the matter, but I think it'll actually provide a good foothold for the next Presidential elections as it's a not a particularly consequential election to lose but it should lead to 2-3 years of minority government dithering by the powers that be.

I also feel if there was a grand rally in turnout to 'stave off fascism' that it's unlikely to come a second time in a few years.

I don't see how the 'moderate' left could or would turn their back on the popular front that got them elected, and tie their fate to an extremely impopular central bloc, headed by Macron. IMO this would guarantee electoral annihilation in the next polls. Similarly, I don't see why the traditional right (LR) would do this. There may be very informal and punctual agreements on specific issues, but I don't expect there to be any formal coalition.

That being said, I have no idea how or when a new government will come into office. The current PM offered his resignation, but Macron refused to accept. The left request that the next PM be one of them.

IMO this would guarantee electoral annihilation in the next polls.

At some point a political party that wins elections, or even has a chance, will also have to exercise that power, and exercising power always risks electoral annihilation (and usually leads to at least some setbacks).

The NFP sorta won the election. You suggest to subtract LFI from that, and for the rest to govern in the center. This is what destroyed the socialist party when Hollande was president, and I would assume the memory is still fresh enough among those who did not go over to Macron to not repeat this manouver.

But you are right, Hollande has risen from the dead, so maybe they'll finish off the non-LFI left for good this time.

The problem is that the AfD, Sweden Democrats, RN etc have a lot of respectable voters, because of the secret ballot, but a dearth of respectable candidates, because that invites public humiliation, career blacklisting, insult and pariah status - particularly in higher-status circles.

If you’re a competent and successful lawyer or business owner you can vote for the RN without any opprobrium, because of course nobody knows. If you stand for them, everybody knows.

One problem specific to the RN is that it is a family business, and not a normal political party. If you are an ambitious young politician, and your name is not Le Pen and you are not dating a Le Pen, the RN is not a good place for you, if you don't agree totally and all the time with the current head of the Le Pen clan.

Mégret and Phillipot tried, but nothing came of that.

or simply the fact that their rows of candidates are often full of perceived extremists (fundamentalists, supporters of historical movements of the goosestep variety, antivaxxers and conspiracy theorists, monarchists in countries with a strong republican tradition etc.) or people who just come off as plainly too incompletent for people to vote for them.

also, higher density of clowns, idiots and weird people, and weird people of different variety than weird people promoted as fine

(left to reader how much it is "you needed to be more weird to go to far-right party and far-left is as weird but got more normalized" and "it is actually direct result of far-right ideas" and "overreaction to currently promoted ideas, both terrible and fine ones")

Having been active in a (far-)left party, I have personal experience with party being dragged down with weirdos and people with outlandish views. In a local punk forum (ie. place where you'd expect the far left to have a reliable base of support) there have been more than one post to the tune of "I was thinking of voting for the Left, but I met one of their guys in a bar and he was drunk and shouting that Soviet Union should still exist, so fuck this, I'm voting for the SocDems."

I talked to some french relatives and they said that plenty of the RN candidates just are embarrassingly incompetent and that plenty of them were publicly humiliated in debates and such in the run-up to the election by the candidates of the more established parties.

I don't speak french or paid much attention to the election so I don't know how true this is but similar things are true in Sweden where SD has reasonably competent top leadership but many of their candidates (especially on the local level) are abject clowns who survive electorally not in small part due to not being directly elected.

In Poland actual far-right also has share of extremists (actual monarchists, supporters of theocracy, Russia and people who want to ban woman from voting).

And clowns. And people unusually incompetent, even by standard of politics.

And people who prefer to produce Tik-Tok materials over achieving anything, see Braun with fire extinguisher.

plenty of thr RN candidate just are embarrassingly incompetent

I wonder how much is boosting them and hiding the same from other parties and how much RN having much smaller pool of candidates and how much is RN being structurally stupid.

There's a genuine structural factor. For example, in the European Elections, Finns Party refused to accept one of their MEPs, Teuvo Hakkarainen, as a candidate again, because he was a pitiful drunken failure and a national joke. The said MEP went on to be a candidate for a minor fringe party and got absolutely nowhere, but there was also a fair amount of comments around social medias from Finns Party supporters going "They didn't take Teuvo so I don't trust them any more, they've become too elitist and not for normal men of the people any more". Clearly the party's supporters pay close attention to stuff like this and this limits the party's opportunities to clear away chaff, even if they had to do it in this instance.

and a national joke who views

what does it mean?

This was intended to continue with other stuff that was probably inessential. Fixed.

The winds seems to be shifting

Joe Biden's twitter account posted

https://x.com/JoeBiden/status/1809310761933525304

Let me say this as clearly as I can: I’m the sitting President of the United States. I’m the nominee of the Democratic party. I’m staying in the race.

To which the official sopranos account pinned this gem of a tweet

https://x.com/TheSopranosX/status/1809560815952867476

a picture of tony soprano saying "If You Gotta Keep Saying You're the Boss, You're Not the Boss"

First - whoever did this - this is real sniper shot aimed at Biden's biggest vulnerability. Not that he is senile, but that it is not in charge.

Second - the disarray in the bluish part of the purple blob is public - so in the last few days - Trump campaign can make literal clips of prominent democrats and left leaning people explaining why Biden is not fit for president. And other big part of the blue blob is busy suppling the Trump campaign with hot takes why Kamala Harris is not fit to be president. All in all clusterfuck.

One of the historical dangers of coups is that if the forces are evenly matched they could turn into nasty civil wars - seems the direction the dems are going.

Edit: Another point not about lately is Kamala Harris best shot to be president is just to be elected vice and then wait for him to die in office which is not that implausible. And she gets no negatives if the election is lost and is in a strong position for 2028.

https://nypost.com/2024/07/04/us-news/bidens-inner-circle-has-shrunk-to-these-two-men-sources-say-with-one-liked-to-rasputin/

I don’t know if this is true or just gossip. But this gay Mexican from no where college might be the one running our country now.

In a strange twist of fate it appears as though we all need to hope Hunter is the one in charge. Whose a manageable alcoholic degenerate rich kid likely with well above average IQ.

Now I think the deep state exists but there is obviously no puppet master, Tywin Lannister, behind it. But a form of psychic history where a million members of the blob attempt to maintain their seat in it.

Hunter Biden having any influence is hilarious and horrifying. I’m not sure why no one is talking about this. His past drug use isn’t the issue. The issue is that he’s the most blackmailable person in America. His texts talk about Russian prostitutes, he did god knows what in Ukraine in his free time, he did god knows what when he met with the spy chief on China. He demonstrates poor impulse control and poor ethics (selling access to his father to sensitive foreign countries). And now he’s the one influencing the President. He has been so immunized by the media that, like, what the fuck can the media do to even take him down at this point? We’ve all seen the sex tapes, crack pipes and strange messages, we know he was illegally possessing a firearm, we know he took money from China and oligarchs banned from entering the US. I guess you reap what you sow — if Democrats go down because Hunter influenced Joe to stay in the race, that’s beautiful justice.

When the Hunter conviction came out there was a popular quip along the lines of "That settles it, I'm not voting for Hunter for president". What a fun reversal that now Hunter sits in on meetings with his dad and is his dad's top advisor along with Jill.

Yes that was all over Reddit as the response that had to filtered down as what your suppose to say.

I forgot about that, but he is literally like 20-30% in charge right now. Jill a similar percent. Gay Mexican? Blinken?

What would you blackmail him over? Almost any accusation you make, everyone on the right would believe but it wouldn't shift their opinion, everyone on the left would pretend not to (and it still wouldn't shift their opinion), and Joe's still got the pardon pen. Maybe if you had photos of him in flagrante delicto with an obvious child, but so far as I've heard, Hunter Biden doesn't swing that way.

I've been around long enough to remember when, pre-election, the attempt to focus on the Hunter Biden laptop was dismissed with the blithe response along the lines of 'We're not electing Hunter to office', roughly paraphrased. Amoung others, yes, but that's one that stuck in my mental craw.

And yet, here we are.

There's a lesson to be learned here, but the people whom need to learn it will never listen.

Edit: Another point not about lately is Kamala Harris best shot to be president is just to be elected vice and then wait for him to die in office which is not that implausible. And she gets no negatives if the election is lost and is in a strong position for 2028.

No it's not. Joe Biden will very assuredly lose and Kamala Harris would only very probably lose.

Excepting extremely popular incumbent Presidents (which Trump obviously isn’t) a red/blue party nominee likely has at least 20-25% chance of winning even if polling makes it unlikely.

Yeah. Even Biden in his corpse arc still isn't below 30-40%

Edit: Another point not about lately is Kamala Harris best shot to be president is just to be elected vice and then wait for him to die in office which is not that implausible. And she gets no negatives if the election is lost and is in a strong position for 2028.

Very much not, I would think. It's looking very much like she will not be elected vice-president again, barring some immense turnaround in the polls. If she goes into a primary in 2028 I would not think she is going to finish among the five top vote-getters. Her unique advantage and only asset is that at this point she is the candidate the Dems can pivot to without risking fragmentation, especially if Biden gives her the Official Blessing.

So her best play to be President at this point is to sit back and let others push Biden out, and then gracefully (if mock-regrettingly!) accept the scepter.

Hey, you called it.

This felt less like a prediction and more like a lay-up. I couldn't see any other course of action for the Democrats.

As in not be nominated for the upcoming cycle? I don't really see any reason for Biden to turf her out, nor is there really a heir apparent. Her best shot to be President is either Biden resignation after winning, or getting essentially handed the nom by an exiting Biden now. It'd be very surprising if she won the nomination in a 2028 primary.

As in not be nominated for the upcoming cycle?

I think @johnfabian's claim is that Biden will very probably lose if retained, which would mean Harris would not become VP and would not be able to become President upon Biden's death.

He might step down immediately in which case she would be President for 2 months, I guess.

The sitcom Veep had this exact arc. One of the great lines was 'thanks to you this country will never have a female president again, because we had one and she SUCKED'.

Or something to that effect. The VP is cut out of the loop, playing petty power games in her own isolated world and desperately seeking the Presidents attention which is never given.

The Harris vice presidency is basically Veep, but Harris is somewhat less consequential.

I think Selina is much smarter and more calculating than Kamala, though.

And she gets no negatives if the election is lost and is in a strong position for 2028.

Eh next nomination will be a contested field. I think this is why Newsom's gotten behind the Biden run since he'd be way more handicapped by Harris running-and-winning than anything else. Practically all the other non-Harris challengers are better off with Biden running and losing than potentially getting sidelined behind somebody who actually wins and has a second term of eligibility.

Biden win means it's pretty open slather next cycle.

Issue at the moment for the replacement enthusiasts is that they need Biden to resign.

Yes, Harris is best served by Biden winning 2024 and handing the presidency to her after an agreed-upon period (six months, a year, it doesn’t really matter) OR, if it has to happen, by him dropping out at the very last minute such that she has to be the nominee. Newsom is best served by Trump winning in 2024, which would both give momentum to the Dem candidate in ‘28 and mean a longer open primary.

Thoughts on Trump v. United States:

There were five opinions. The Conservatives joined Roberts' opinion, except for Barrett regarding one section. He set out the following:

Presidents have absolute immunity for core constitutional powers.

For official acts more generally, he at least has presumptive immunity, but maybe absolute immunity.

They have no immunity for unofficial acts.

This judgment was based on large part on structural considerations of the constitution. For one, if the Constitution says that the President shall have some power, like the veto or the pardon, Congress cannot, by regulation, limit that or take it away. That would counter the separation of powers and intent of the Constitution. On the other hand, some things have authority from both, so maybe Congress could regulate those.

Additionally, this was based in large part on extensions of precedent from several prior cases, especially Nixon v. Fitzgerald. There, they ruled that presidents could not have civil suits leveled against them for official acts in Congress. While there is a greater interest, there is also a greater danger to the president, as jail is more serious than a financial burden.

The concern is that not having any immunity would allow frivolous criminal cases to proceed, which would seriously limit the bold action that the founders would have wanted a president to take. In such things, the dangers of intrusion on the executive branch must be considered: subpoenas were ruled to be fine in Burr. Executive privilege has long been held to exist. In all such cases, the risk of intrusion is weighed against the interest of the people, and so in this case, because criminal proceedings are a serious matter, they are allowing them, but they are permissible, but cannot pose any danger of intrusion upon the authority of the Executive branch.

Roberts applies this to the particular cases. The conversations with the DOJ officials, including threatening to remove the Attorney General are held to be absolutely immune, as they have past held that deciding who to prosecute, as well as removing officers, are within the exclusive authority of the President. Conversations with Pence are official, but the government may attempt to rebut that it will not impose dangers, as Pence arguably was carrying out a ceremonial role, and as a member not of the executive. Conversations with state officials to form alternate slates of legislatures, they do not rule on whether they are official or not. Public speeches and tweets, they do not rule whether they are official or not, as it is tricky to discern whether he is acting in the capacity of a candidate or of a president. All these they remand to lower courts to work out.

They also rule that official acts may not be used as evidence in courts, especially since it could be prejudicial. Barrett did not join this.

Roberts then rebuts the various arguments of the dissents, points out that they are giving Trump less than they asked, and are still leaving room for most of the charges, and argues that this is not the "chilling doom" that they are making it out to be. And that it is needed to prevent an executive cannibalized by itself, with each administration prosecuting the last, and so in fear of acting itself.

Barrett joins in large part, except the note on evidence. She would prefer to frame it differently: "immunity" is shorthand for saying that the President may challenge whether criminal statutes are constitutional as applied to him, and he can do that in interlocutory review, before the trial. All agree on the first point in some form, at least, even the dissent. And interlocutory review is "necessary to safeguard important constitutional interests." She would prefer to resolve some things the court left open: most importantly, that the president is not absolutely immune from all official conduct, as Congress has concurrent authority over many government functions, and so they should be able to regulate those, including criminally. Barrett would assess whether charges on official acts are valid in two steps: first, by looking at whether the statute reaches his conduct (e.g. maybe the murder statute prohibiting "unlawful" killings doesn't apply), and second by looking whether it poses danger of intrusion on the authority and functions of the executive branch. For example, the electors case would not intrude. This is the usual case in criminal law. The difference is interlocutory review, and this is necessary because even the mere existence of the trial itself threatens constitutional interests, and so they must be addressed at the outset. She disagrees on whether immune official acts can be evidence, though—it may be necessary in some scenarios, and they can follow the ordinary route of instructing juries only to consider them in specific capacities.

Thomas writes, in something of a sideshow, on the whole office of "Special Counsel." The appointments clause requires the President to appoint some listed offices, and other offices to be under Congress' jurisdiction, but by require it to be done by law. The President may not merely produce offices; some of the motivation for this was due to the history under England, where the King could create new offices and fill them. Congress often explicitly created offices. But there does not seem to be any statute authorizing the appointment of the Special Counsel. He doesn't think the ones cited work. Further, if he is an inferior officer, such a statute would require that the statute give the Attorney General the authority to fill it.

Sotomayor dissents, joined by the other liberals. She sees this as putting the president above the law. Sotomayor thinks that the majority expanded the core immunity beyond any reasonable bounds, baselessly created immunity for official acts, and nonsensically ruled that immune acts cannot be used as evidence.

Starting with text, the Constitution makes no provision for immunity, whereas it did in the Speech and Debate clause for Congress, and some states did for their governors. Additionally, the impeachment clause contemplates prosecution. Turning to history, Hamilton, in Federalist 69, thought the president could be prosecuted, (he says that he was no more secure than the governors of certain states). Pinckney said there was no privilege, and Madison proposed the convention consider privileges of the executive. It was generally agreed that Presidents could be prosecuted. "It seems history matters to this Court only when it is convenient" (citing Bruen and Dobbs). Third, Presidents past understood themselves to be liable, looking especially at Watergate: Ford pardoned Nixon.

Sotomayor thinks the majority's opinion is too broad, when it says no dangers of intrusion, as practically everything has some danger of intrusion. And so their not deciding whether it is absolute hardly matters. Further, they read official acts too broadly. And their basis for it is solely based on Nixon v. Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald considered weight of interest vs. dangers of intrusion. A criminal prosecution is an interest on behalf of the public, and is much greater than the private interest from a civil suit. And she thinks that criminal suits are going to be less serious with regard to the executive: in civil suits he's an easy target from anyone, where as there can only be one criminal suit per act, and further, there are all the ordinary protections in the process of bringing to trial and the trial itself. She does not think bare allegations of malice would suffice. Further, every executive to date has long thought they were vulnerable to such, and it hasn't stopped them from acting boldly, so the Court shouldn't worry as much about that. Sotomayor also rejects that it is a narrower immunity, as Trump's case thought that those impeached could be convicted on those acts, whereas here they are immune.

Sotomayor grants that core immunity would make sense, but that it should not have been at issue here, should not have been addressed, and was made too broad. She does not think he should be immune regarding conversations with the DOJ. She also thinks that the evidence is rule is unprecedented. It is strange to bar official conduct: e.g. barring using speeches to establish mens rea. Nor is the majority's justification any good. And she thinks this case is also bad in its application to the case: they did not conclusively say anything was private, or anything that anything was prosecutable. The follows the passage you may have seen online, where she says that this sets up a law-free zone, and that he would be immune for coups or assassinating rivals with Seal Team 6, or bribes for pardons. And finishes with, instead of "respectfully," "with fear for our democracy."

Jackson agrees with "every word of [Sotomayor's] powerful dissent" and writes to go through "the theoretical nuts and bolts" of how this changes how presidents are accountable. No one should be above the law, and immunity is an exemption from the law. She calls her preferred model and "individual accountability" model: the legislature makes crimes, when someone violates them, a grand jury is convinced there's cause to indict, they gather evidence, go through a trial, with a jury, where he may make various defensive arguments concerning that trial, even some before trial (including that the law would be unconstitutional as applied to him, or that his conduct, if proved, still would not violate the law). He may also present defenses that excuse otherwise punishable offenses, including that which Government officials sometimes invoke when carrying out duties.

She thinks the majority's opinion is worse. For every allegation, they must go through and parse whether it violates core constitutional powers, is an official act, and if so, whether the immunity is there rebutted. And this must be run through even in extreme cases, such as assassinations or coups. Under her preferred paradigm, there are no exemptions from criminal law, but they can still use legal arguments of its inapplicability, and defenses. The majority's opinion can give immunity "even for unquestionably and intentionally egregious criminal behavior." And she reminds that under her preferred model, the president could still present affirmative defenses that it was justified, whereas the majority's allows crimes even when no one thinks there is any excuse.

This opinion increases the power in the judiciary and executive, and lessens the power of Congress. The court, in this immunity decision, has taken from Congress the ability to bind the President to its mandates, and so increased the power of the Executive. The president may take care that the laws be faithfully executed, but is under no obligation to follow them himself. The court also gives itself power, as it does not give a clear enough definition of the extent of any of the things: what is core vs. not, what is official vs. unofficial. (She thinks, unlike Barrett, it seems, that it is challenging to apply the reasoning to the slates of electors.) And so the Court has arrogated to itself the ability to draw lines regulating the President, rather than Congress.

This decision also reduces deterrence, by the threat of criminal liability being largely gone. Presidents are far less accountable. She sees the majority as mainly motivated by what would be good and bad, not law. But she does not think that they consider adequately the need for restraint upon the executive.

This plants the seeds of absolute power. She cannot stand their discarding the rule of law. It is now rule of judges, instead. She thinks that they do not adequately appreciate the risks, and so dissents.

You can tell that she has a background in criminal law.

Thoughts on this, then:

This case is striking in how it differs from other constitutional cases the court has taken: it hardly considers founding-era context, turning rather to structural concerns and precedent. And much of the motivation for individual concerns is closer to "this seems like it would be needed to get the results the founders wanted" rather than "the Constitution says this." On the other hand, Sotomayor's argument is significantly more originalist than the majority, which is an unusual turn.

I found this piece, by Baude, to be pretty good. This ruling, like the Trump v. Anderson ruling, were not adequately justified. Trump v. Anderson was far worse, failing to consider that states have discretion to choose their own bodies of electors essentially however they wish, per the Constitution (Here's a length complaint about it, though nowhere near as lengthy as his arguments leading up to that point.). But this too was different from the principled way that they more often act, turning in large part to precedent. The part that was most egregious, in my judgment, was the evidentiary rule (pages 30-32)—they hardly bother to justify that, I think. Unless, is this previous immunity caselaw? I guess if there are any lawyers who know about that, that would be helpful if you could weigh in.

While I agree overall that having some level of immunity is sensible, I would have appreciated it if they had, for example, tried to show what exactly could be done to founding-era Governors of states, if there exists any history to that effect. But the Burr cases were practically the only founding-era history they cited, and they were not relied on very much.

Their arguments for core constitutional powers being absolutely immune, and for unofficial acts being not immune, seem rather compelling. What is not clear is the central holding, about presumptive immunity for official acts. It must be noted that they left a lot of ground here open: they left it open that it could be absolute immunity (I imagine there was at least one justice who thought it should be?), and left a lot of room as to what exactly is official, and made no attempt to assert what would involve infringing on executive powers. They make clear that this deals with things that are not under Congress' control, but I do not think they argue for why this is needed aside from that this is necessary to bring about a bold executive. Actually, I'm now wondering, after seeing the word "chilled" on page 13, how this compares to first amendment cases—the reasoning being that such things in effect strip of constitutional powers. I don't know that I'm all that happy with that, and it feels a little like judicial legislation ("balancing tests"), but alright, fair enough, I suppose.

I would also be interested in looking at whether, for example, at founding era times, it would make sense for Presidents to be able to be bribed for pardons or vetoes in the founding era, and that be pursued by avenues other than impeachment. Can presidents, after being impeached, be convicted of treason or bribery in their official acts, for example?

Now, finally, I'll turn to the differences between the Roberts' opinion and Sotomayor's dissent, and try to examine which I find more compelling. I'll organize this around claims from Sotomayor's dissent.

Text: Sotomayor: There is no immunity in the text. (Page 5)

Roberts: A specific textual basis is not needed (citing Fitzgerald). (Page 37)

Sotomayor: I didn't say that it was, but there are three reasons it's relevant: First, the framers knew how to provide immunity, looking at the speech or debate clause. Second, state constitutions applied some immunities, but Congress does not. Third, the impeachment clause allows for liability for former presidents. (Page 5-6)

Roberts: Regarding the first, it's implicit; there's no separation of powers clause. Roberts does not address the second argument. For the third, Roberts notes that it does not say whether the clause thinks that official conduct may be prosecuted. (page 38)

My thoughts: I think Roberts largely addresses the arguments successfully, but he could have looked a lot further regarding state constitutions. Both sides are reasonable.

History: Sotomayor: Hamilton thought that Presidents would be "liable to prosecution and punishment in the ordinary course of law," unlike the king of Great Britain. He would stand "upon no better ground than a governor of New York, and upon worse ground than the governors of Maryland and Delaware."

Roberts: These do not specify whether they are talking about official conduct, or private crimes.

Sotomayor: Madison proposed the Constitution consider privileges to be allowed to the Executive, but there is no record of it. Pinckney, a delegate, said that no privilege was intended for the executive.

Roberts: This is the best of your historical arguments, but they only represent the claim that no mentioned immunity exists, don't mention that whether it's official, and Pinckney isn't reliable on separation of powers, anyway. (page 39)

Sotomayor: James Wilson and Justice Story recognized that federal officials may be tried. (pages 7-8)

Roberts: This doesn't specify whether it's official, and further, they don't even say whether the President is also in mind here. (page 38)

Roberts:Further, Nixon v. Fitzgerald recognized that all this evidence is fragmentary.

Sotomayor: Nixon v. Fitzgerald was only talking about history for civil cases, and in any case, it still looked to them and showed that it was best, where as you merely try to show it permissible. It seems this court only cares about history when it suits them.

My thoughts: Roberts generally successfully rebuts on most of this, but the Hamilton quote needs to be examined, because of the reference to state constitutions. Let's take a look. He references New York, Maryland, and Delaware. But Virginia was afterwards substituted for Maryland.

New York: The representatives can impeach, and the party convicted shall nevertheless by liable and subject to indictment, etc.

Delaware: The president is impeachable when out of office, and within 18 months after. If guilty, then subject to such pains and penalties as the laws direct.

Virginia: The Governour. when out of office, and others offending, whether by maladministration, corruption, or other means, is impeachable. And subject to laws of the land, including under pain and penalty of the law.

So Hamilton seems to be talking mainly about when they may be impeached: New York doesn't specify, but Delaware and Virginia are later.

But I think it might need to be noted that Virginia seems to be including official conduct as under judgment. Sotomayor's case would have been stronger if she's looked into that.

Aside from my own Virginia question, and Sotomayor's point that the court seems selective in when it wants to use history, Roberts seems to come out on top.

Established Understanding:

Roberts: That's only an understanding, not any evidence of it showing up in actual practice, because no one's been prosecuted. (page 39)

Sotomayor: "Settled understandings of the Constitution are of little use to the majority in this case, and so it ignores them." (page 10)

My thoughts: A consensus, it seems.

Overall result of the judgment:

Sotomayor: No dangers of intrusion? Everything seems to have dangers of intrusion. That's practically absolute. (page 11)

Barrett: The setting up slates of electors, even if official (which, by the way, it's not) would not pose intrusion. (pages 3-4)

Roberts: The vice president things would maybe not pose any dangers of intrusion, we're sending it back down to lower courts to decide. (pages 21-24)

Sotomayor: But that shouldn't be the standard. What about needs to promote objectives within the constitutional authority of Congress, or of the Judicial branch to do justice in criminal prosecutions? (page 11)

Silence, so far as I can see.

Sotomayor: The majority reads official too broadly, including whatever is not palpably beyond his authority. And motive may not be considered, which would mean that even action for corrupt purposes would then remain immune. (page 12)

Barrett: The elector stuff is clearly unofficial. (page 3)

Roberts: The elector stuff might be unofficial, and maybe the speech stuff, we're sending it back down to decide. (pages 25-30). Anyway, motive shouldn't be considered, as then merely alleging improper purpose would open everything up to liability, which would be crippling, as Fitzgerald says. (page 18)

Sotomayor: This makes the president above the law. (page 12)

Roberts: No, this just preserves executive authority. He can still certainly be subject to prosecution in his unofficial capacity (pages 39-40.)

Sotomayor: Of course he can, that's not in dispute. (Page 11.)

My thoughts: Sotomayor's concerns are valid, but I don't think they'd be applied that way in practice. Barrett's made it quite clear that she reads this narrowly, and I imagine that that would apply to at least one of the others, which would put a five-member majority including the liberals, if it ever makes it back to the Supreme Court in the near future.

How Fitzgerald applies:

Sotomayor: Criminal cases can't just be brought by anyone, so there'll be fewer of them. (page 15)

Roberts: Yes, but it's still a bigger threat, because the punishment is a far stronger deterrent. (page 13)

Sotomayor: There are procedural safeguards, before a criminal case is brought. "Bare allegations of malice" would not suffice to bring about a trial. (page 15-16)

Roberts: These are important. Nevertheless, regarding the claim that grand juries, etc. will prevent the bringing of baseless prosecutions, "we do not ordinarily decline to decide significant constitutional questions based on the Government's promises of good faith." (page 37)

Sotomayor: The President can argue that it's unconstitutional as applied to him at trial, as a protection. (page 16)

Barrett: Glad to note that you agree that there are some unconstitutional prosecutions. (page 1)

Roberts: These fail to address that there are some things that can't apply in the first place, so all this has to be addressed at the outset. And a trial is itself a negative. (page 36)

Sotomayor: Presidents have long considered themselves open to such a threat, but that didn't hurt them. And some caution is necessary.

Roberts gave no response that I could see.

Sotomayor: The majority seems concerned not by truly criminal acts, nor are they concerned about the President thinking for a second, but rather it must be baseless accusations. But this would be doomed to fail. They should trust the President's to be bold despite that. (page 18)

Roberts: Section 371 covers conspiracy to impair the lawful function of any department of government. Practically every president is criticized for not enforcing enough in some zone or another (e.g. drugs, guns, immigration, environment). There you go, open to prosecution. It'd be easy to fall into a norm of always prosecuting your predecessor. (page 40)

Sotomayor: On the other hand, the public interest in prosecuting presidents is greater than the private interest in a civil suit. (Page 19)

Roberts: Yes. (Page 13)

Sotomayor: This is especially true in cases where there is civil liability, as that's the only avenue. Further, he represents the people, so all the people have an interest. Additionally, the Executive Branch has an interest in bringing about prosecutions of criminal law, so you're preventing that.

Roberts: says nothing.

Roberts: The immunity Trump requested is larger than that recognized: he wanted immunity from anything that he was not impeached over (32).

Sotomayor: No, Trump only asked for immunity for the unimpeached. You want immunity regardless. (page 22)

My thoughts: Overall, I think Roberts wins on the criminal liability being worse, but I'm not sure. The second point, that the interest is greater, he concedes, and that is one reason the immunity might not be absolute. The third, as to which is stronger, I mean, both have a case?

Conduct within his exclusive sphere:

Sotomayor: This has some sense, if it were relevant. But that doesn't involve the actions in question. But the majority reads it too broadly, including "take care that the laws be faithfully executed," which includes all sorts of conduct. (23-24)

Barrett: I don't read the majority opinion that way. (page 2)

Sotomayor: The majority holds him absolutely immune from prosecution involving conversations with the justice department. That expands the category beyond recognition. (page 24)

Barrett: It being part of the core executive power fits with our separation of powers precedent. (page 2)

Roberts: The Executive Branch has exclusive authority and absolute discretion involving these matters, per precedent (page 20).

Sotomayor: You can't pretend that the Government agrees with you on that; its vision of it was smaller.

My thoughts: I think Barrett reads what's going on here better than Sotomayor.

Evidence:

Sotomayor: This deprives prosecutions of any teeth. And it's strange to say that a speech couldn't be used as evidence of a mens rea. (page 26)

Barrett: Yeah, I agree this makes it too hard (page 6).

Sotomayor: This has no basis in law. The first amendment allows use of it as evidentiary, but not criminal. (page 26)

Roberts: This would eviscerate the immunity, inviting the jury to consider acts for which the president is immune. (page 31)

Sotomayor: But you could just instruct the jury? (page 26, Barrett agrees, page 6)

Roberts: But people have strong feelings, this would still bias things. (page 31)

Barrett: But it's already the case that evidence can be excluded when prejudicial or confusing? Why not just stick to the usual thing (pages 6-7) (Sotomayor says the same on page 26.)

My thoughts: The majority seems wrong here? The other approach just obviously seems better?

Concerns about the majority's approach:

Sotomayor: The majority, declared some things official, but refuses to declare things unofficial. Likewise, they declare some things immune, but refuse to recognize anything as prosecutable. (pages 27-29)

Jackson: Yeah, this leaves it in the court's hands, an arrogation of power to the judiciary. (Pages 13-16)

Barrett: I think the elector things were unofficial. (page 3). I also think the Court should have said that they had presumptive immunity, not left it undecided between that and absolute (pages 1-2).

Roberts, scathingly: We've had no briefing, and it's been expedited. One of you (Sotomayor) wants us to declare everything unofficial, and the other (Jackson) wants us to "exhaustively define every application of presidential immunity." Stop pretending that we're infallible. We decide what is needed, and remand, as per time-tested practices. (page 41)

Sotomayor: That's what you claim, but you still wrote more than lower courts even considered, or any parties briefed, regarding what is official. It's judicial activism in designating some conduct as official, but saying nothing about the rest.

My thoughts: The majority decision looks like a compromise between some justice who wanted absolute immunity, and others who wanted more moderate things. They said what they could agree on, and remanded the rest, reproducing the reasoning available to each side. So Roberts is probably not really being fully honest as to the motivations here (though some of the questions are genuinely tricky, like whether a speech is official), but neither is Sotomayor in representing this as plainly being that they're biased towards the one side.

Fears:

Sotomayor: The President will be immune for ordering assassinations, coups, bribes for pardons, etc. (pages 29-30)

Roberts: Your chilling doom is disproportionate to what was decided (page 37). You are just fearmongering with extreme hypotheticals and a future where the President feels free to violate criminal law. (page 40) You need to be more concerned about an executive branch that cannibalizes itself with prosecution.

My thoughts: Disrespect is a legitimate concern. I'd imagine, though, that assassinating rivals, or attempting a coup would be something that the court would rule as beyond the President's authority. This would probably defuse a lot of the online complaints about this opinion. The bribes for pardons thing is weird, because it deals with something agreed to be within the exclusive powers, even by the government.

And that's the end of Sotomayor's opinion.

Some closing thoughts:

I think overall the responses to Sotomayor were mostly sufficient (excepting the evidence part). That said, this particular opinion of hers was actually not bad (except the last page or so); far more compelling than the Grants Pass one.

Barrett's opinion definitely was the most compelling to me.

Thoughts? Did any of your assessments differ?

I'll probably get around to reading and writing on the two remaining cases from Monday at some point, and maybe I'll write something on any insights I've gleaned overall about how the justices operate, if I can think up enough to make a post about.

The concern is that not having any immunity would allow frivolous criminal cases to proceed, which would seriously limit the bold action that the founders would have wanted a president to take. In such things, the dangers of intrusion on the executive branch must be considered

Right, and this is why the whole thing is so weird. The CW aspect has always been "deep state blob trying to charge Trump on whatever" and yet the decision (as you point out) has nothing about that whatsoever.

For that reason, I think the decision is fairly sensible. If the President gets to appoint ambassadors, Congress cannot say "it's a felony not to appoint So-and-So as ambassador to France before August 1". How that ended up as a CW lightening rod is totally beyond me.

For that reason, I think the decision is fairly sensible. If the President gets to appoint ambassadors, Congress cannot say "it's a felony not to appoint So-and-So as ambassador to France before August 1".

Is it okay for Congress to say "It is a felony to appoint an ambassador in exchange for a bribe"?

Given that the vast majority of prosecutions of elected office-holders for official acts after leaving office have been for bribery, and that the Court claimed they were making a rule for the ages, I think this point deserved more attention than it got. My read is that the majority opinion makes it effectively impossible to prosecute the President for bribery if the bribe-service falls within the express Constitutional powers (a pardon, an appointment, the surrender of a fort to the enemy etc.) and extremely difficult if the bribe-service is some other official act, such as the award of a federal contract.

Is it okay for Congress to say "It is a felony to appoint an ambassador in exchange for a bribe"?

At this point, after the Americans spent the better part of the last century and more doing just that for campaign donors? It'd be rather weird and imply a good deal of criminalizing bipartisan normal behavior, which itself would imply an intent for arbitrary and selective enforcement.

That is an interesting question, but I think it's clear that before we do interesting questions we should strive to get the uninteresting ones correct.

And truth be told, I'm not sure if Congress can regulate that criminally or must do so via the impeachment process. I could be convinced that it's proper to prosecute that criminally after he leaves office, but I could also be convinced that saying "you can't appoint an ambassador in exchange for a bribe" is not too far from saying "you must appoint an ambassador based only on X,Y,Z criteria".

Certainly I think the surrender of a fort to the enemy was already beyond the reach of the courts on a number of other grounds.

Well the president’s power does not include the power to receive a bribe. Therefore there would be no immunity. The harder part is the evidentiary burden. But I think getting say bank records would be permissible. By the way cushy ambassadorships are already sold off for donors. There is just no explicit quid pro quo.

Well the president’s power does not include the power to receive a bribe.

No, but if the bribe-service isn't admissible in evidence, then there is no way to distinguish a bribe from a gift.

By the way cushy ambassadorships are already sold off for donors.

Legally, there is an important distinction beween a donation to a politician's campaign, and a cash payment to the politician. We can argue about how relevant this is, but it is the law and it does reflect the way the American political elite behaves. I don't think the existence of unofficial quid pro quos for campaign donations is a good argument for legalising direct bribery.

I noted the evidentiary problem.

And yes there is a difference between today’s unofficial quid pro quo and literal quid pro quo. I’m just making the point there is already a degree of corruption going on.

Memorably, Trump appointed as Ambassador to the EU in 2018 a hotel businessman named Gordon Sondland who had donated $1 Million to Trump’s Inaugural Committee

Sondland ended up being a key figure in the Ukraine impeachment imbroglio, which is the only reason this was considered notable. I remember thinking at the time that i) $1M is not all that much money and becoming an ambassador seems readily achievable; and ii) that absolutely nobody seemed to care about this obvious bribe (again, the payment was to the Inaugural Committee, not even the campaign)

Dan Rooney became the ambassador to Ireland for supporting Obama and fundraising for him. Similar deal.

It's worth noting that what you list would seem to fall within the core powers portion, whereas immunity for official acts more broadly is where there is more disagreement.

Arguably, things not core powers would have authority shared between Congress and the Executive, and so it might be more plausible that Congress could have some forms of regulation of the actions of the President there.

It doesn’t fall within the core powers. First, receiving bribes is not with the core power. Second, it is clear that Congress has the constitutional power to punish the president for receiving bribes so at best it falls within the second category.

This ruling, like the Trump v. Anderson ruling, were not adequately justified. Trump v. Anderson was far worse, failing to consider that states have discretion to choose their own bodies of electors essentially however they wish, per the Constitution (Here's a length complaint about it, though nowhere near as lengthy as his arguments leading up to that point.).

I mean, Trump v. Anderson was very much a pragmatic, "please don't explode the country" ruling; ruling that Colorado's actions were AOK would likely have ended Very Badly. One must give it at least some credit for that.

Oh, certainly. I don't disagree that Trump v. Anderson's result had better consequences than the contrary. It just wasn't good legal reasoning.

Well, hmm. I guess I misspoke. Finding that states could disqualify candidates on their own initiative wouldn't directly blow things up, but it almost certainly indirectly would via the inevitable tit-for-tat and the resulting non-popular-vote-based election eating legitimacy. Finding that Trump was disqualified but states couldn't disqualify candidates would probably only have blown up everything if there was a relevant vote-split between the Republican candidate and a Trump-Anyway write-in, which the Republican Party could probably have avoided by nominating Donald Trump junior (though who knows if they'd have done that). Finding that Trump was definitely not disqualified, per curiam, wouldn't have blown everything up, but presumably Jackson and Sotomayor would have dissented and if one of them had written a "please defy this ruling" dissent then Megumin casts Explosion.

All of this seems to make investigation/prosecution of the Hunter/Big Guy stuff much more difficult -- what are your feelings on that aspect?

I think that was regarding while Biden was vice president, which they've made no ruling on.

They also seem to be willing to regulate bribery for presidents, which this would be related to. But really, the actual harm that people are trying to get to with that is to reduce electability, which wouldn't be impacted; it's not like any of this governs what the media is allowed to do.

Allowing that VP might not be considered similar to the President in this regard (why not?), [i]what we know[/i] about Biden family influence peddling seems to implicate the period where Joe was VP -- but I see no reason to assume that the influence peddling would not tend to [i]intensify[/i] once he was in the driver's seat.

Who would investigate this in the event that there is no possibility of charging him?

[i]what we know[/i]

Markdown formatting.

Enclose in single asterisks for italics. Double asterisks for bold.

  • Space asterisk Space for bulleted lists.
    • More leading spaces = deeper bullet level.

I have no idea how they'd rule on vice presidents. I assume they'd give some immunity, but I have no idea how much, at least, when not acting as president.

I imagine reporters might still be interested in doing some digging, even if prosecution is impossible.

For italics, I use asterisks on each side; themotte turns them into italics.

They would give zero immunity. Read the first line of article II. The power is vested in the president; not the vice president. The latter does not implicate separation of powers.

This is weak; reporters don't have subpoena power or anything like that; don't you think that corruption is a thing that should be investigated by some legal authority?

I haven't read the judgement itself yet but my general reaction from commentary about it (including yours) is pretty similar. Barrett's position is the best one. The majority opinion goes too far specifically in disallowing official acts from being used as evidence of intent. Sotomayor's dissent is pretty good.

Great thoughts and great read. A lot of work! My initial two reactions to the decision were basically, 1) the whole thing about official acts not being able to be used as evidence just seems so... flagrantly stupid? Despite the rest seeming reasonable. I viewed this as an explicit help-Trump flag rather than a genuine desire to get at the law. And after thinking about it a little more and reading the arguments, 2) yeah, under this majority arrangement, bribes for pardons is... almost bulletproof legal, or de facto absolutely non-prosecutable, which is absolutely batshit crazy. I mean, I'm sure they felt that pardons were enough of a 'different topic' that maybe they didn't want to touch that hot potato, but it seems strange to discuss the whole issue of presidential criminality without talking about it. And it's even more aggravating that bribes for pardons is most likely to occur at the end of a President's term, when impeachment basically is not on the table anymore, at least according to a number of arguments we heard back around Trump's impeachment.

I'm impressed by Barrett in her time on the court so far. Not knowing how the Court decisions work exactly, are judges allowed to hew directly to Barrett's view, since without her there is no majority opinion?

  1. the whole thing about official acts not being able to be used as evidence just seems so... flagrantly stupid?

It's not flagrantly stupid. It's the Court reacting to factors that this particular Court usually pretends does not exist -- that lower courts and prosecutors will simply ignore, deliberately misinterpret, and work around its decisions, and that juries may be politically biased:

That proposal threatens to eviscerate the immunity we have recognized. It would permit a prosecutor to do indirectly what he cannot do directly—invite the jury to examine acts for which a President is immune from prosecution to nonetheless prove his liability on any charge

Allowing prosecutors to ask or suggest that the jury probe official acts for which the President is immune would thus raise a unique risk that the jurors’ deliberations will be prejudiced by their views of the President’s policies and performance while in office. The prosaic tools on which the Government would have courts rely are an inadequate safeguard against the peculiar constitutional concerns implicated in the prosecution of a former President.

Yeah, I'm kind of worried that that was a motivation, but I'm not sure. I know the evidence was talked about at the oral arguments, but surely it shouldn't have been enough to get five justices to sign onto it, with that level of reasoning? I imagine there was some cajoling to get what level of agreement they had.

My question about pardons was closer to that if pardons are one of the core powers, over which the executive has conclusive and preclusive authority, as the majority says, wouldn't that mean that he would be absolutely immune from criminal prosecution (but not impeachment) in the exercising of that power? But it's more complicated than that, as Barrett and Roberts have an exchange (page 6 or so for Barrett and maybe 32 or so for Roberts, if memory serves me) over bribery, where he thinks pointing to the record of the official act would be permitted? I really didn't understand what he was saying there. But it seems like he considers bribery distinct from the act itself.

I've also been impressed by Barrett. She's more principled than Kavanaugh and Roberts, is good at statutory interpretation, and I think I also like her approach to originalism and history the best out of the justices.

Joining her opinion: yes, you can join concurrences. In this case, the main effect of that, assuming the sets of things they joined was the same as her, would be that there would not be enough justices for the evidence portion to be an official holding of the court, as it would not have enough justices, but the rest would be.

In some hypothetical where it was joining opinions in such a way that nothing commands a majority, the rule is that they decide the outcome of the case based on what has a majority (e.g. to rule in favor of one party), and whoever has the narrowest position is taken as the precedent to be followed by lower courts. Yes, that's not always the most clear.

One noteworthy example of that happening was in Regents v. Bakke, where four justices were for affirmative action, four justices against it, and one not okay with racial preferences in themselves, but only for the sake of racial diversity. The latter position was followed, later reaffirmed, and is how we eventually ended up with diversity becoming the justification for racial preferences.

Are judges allowed to hew directly to Barrett's view, since without her there is no majority opinion?

Roberts's opinion is endorsed by six justices except for section III-C, and by five justices in section III-C. Five is a majority of nine.

Oh, oops, duh. That's a pity. Does it work like that in general, though (say one other joined her instead of the majority)?

She joined the majority, except in the one section, so most of it is not an instead, except for the evidence part.

"My ingroup is relentlessly oppressed by the supposedly neutral authorities, who are actually in the pockets of my enemies. The outgroup is highly organized and relentlessly hateful of people like me. If my side loses a battle, that's just further proof that I'm right and the whole thing is rigged. If my side wins a battle, it's also evidence of how right I am because the only way we'd win against such odds is by being twice as correct as the enemies. My side is the victim. It's all a conspiracy rigged against us."

Freddie De Boer recently posted an article on "The Political Era of Paranoid Delusion". It details how both sides have converged on mirroring ideas of victimization and oppression. The names each side uses might be different, but the conclusions are largely similar. It's only 4 paragraphs long, so I'll post the entire thing here:

President Joe Biden was interviewed last night, his first since his much-discussed debate performance. If you check around online, you will find two simultaneous narratives about this interview, passionately held: that the interviewer George Stephanopoulos and his employer ABC News were bent on embarrassing and attacking Biden, and that the interviewer George Stephanopoulos and his employer ABC News were bent on lionizing Biden and papering over his flaws. It was a hit job; it was a puff piece. The questions were unduly harsh; the questions were softballs. They avoided the hardest topics for Biden to discuss, unless they steered directly towards those questions over and over again. Stephanopoulos was too combative, or was he not combative enough? They taped the piece so that they could surreptitiously edit out Biden’s gaffes and stumbles; they designed the lighting so that it would make Biden look sickly and old. And now The Media™ is reacting to the interview by fixating on Biden’s weaknesses, or maybe they’re treating those weaknesses with kid gloves. What both sides are sure of is that, however the fallout from the interview breaks, it breaks because of dirty tricks, because of chicanery, because of a conspiracy against their side. There is no other option, no alternative. If my side loses, ever, the game was rigged. It’s a conspiracy, and they’re all in on it.

If I had to choose between these two tendencies I would obviously have to choose the blue MAGA over the red. Doing so would protect abortion and environmental regulations and the NLRB, among many other things. It’s not a contest, for me. But of course I’d prefer to choose neither. Blue MAGA is very, very real; the paranoid style has spread like a coronavirus from Republicans to Democrats. Put “The New York Times” into the Twitter search bar on any given day and you’ll find relentless, enraged invective coming from Democratic loyalists who insist that the paper of record is on a mission to reelect Donald Trump. They used to laugh at Republicans when they groused about “skewed polls,” but now they do the exact same thing - any poll that emerges that suggests Biden is losing is a conservative op, run by a firm with a well-known Republican bias. Hacks! That Nate Silver, you know, he’s on the Trump payroll. And while this phenomenon is most pronounced on the streets, Democratic elites have embraced it too. Look at Bruce Bartlett, look at Joy Ann Reid, look at Aaron Rupar, look at Josh Marshall, look at Rachel Maddow. They’re all sure: the narrative that we shouldn’t give another four and a half years to Joe Biden, an octogenarian who looks and acts like the 81-year-old he is, can only be the product of corruption. No sincere heart could look at that man on the debate stage with anything but awe and admiration.

Of course, conservatism is now built on a foundation not of Christianity or free markets but on the belief that elites are screwing you, that it’s all a conspiracy against you and your way of life. That is the bedrock. That is the new covenant - paranoia, obsession, revenge. “They’re all out to get you,” says Trumpism, “and I will destroy your enemies.” You don’t even need me to tell you that.

This, it seems, is where we are: two warring political tribes who share the foundational principle that anything that goes wrong for them is the product of a rigged system. Two angry players, too busy working the refs to concentrate on the game, looking for some higher authority to declare that the other side broke the rules. This isn’t fair. They’re breaking the rules. I’m telling the teacher. They’re denying us what we’re owed. Today the parties are united only in their belief that, on a neutral field and playing a clean game, they cannot lose. If a single voter endorses the opposition, their opponents must be cheating. How could it be otherwise? Surely only conspiracy could defeat us. Surely only The Man could pull the wool over the eyes of millions. This was much more of a Republican thing, and I know that people hate any argument that sounds like “both sides.” But both sides, in fact, are now operating this way. The notion that Democrats cannot fail in a clean election, cannot stumble but through illegitimate outside force, is now fully enculturated into the party. They hate Trump so much they’ve adopted his signature contribution to American politics. And I don’t know how you get out of this without violence, at this point. I really don’t.

The article, in an effort to analyze their outgroups pathologies, manages to highlight a different pathology. It's noteworthy in this case since I think it's very much shared by a lot of people around these parts.

Today the parties are united only in their belief that, on a neutral field and playing a clean game, they cannot lose.

The presupposition of a "neutral field" or a "clean game" is pretty much the default hypothesis for every 'centrist' minded person. Just like the 'radicals' seem to chase the unfairness that keeps them from power, the 'moderate' chases the notion of fairness that keeps the 'radicals' out of power.

I don't think there's any sense in trying to gleam some object level truth from these expressions. There are surely plenty of cases where the system was rigged and where the system was not. But these pathological expressions exist all the same. The only folly is presuming that your particular pathology is the cause whenever things matter to you.

Any person who supports persecuting people likes to portray his outgroup as paranoid delusionals while dong so.

I don't buy in the self description of liberals who hostile the right and claim to be moderate neutrals.

De Boer is not an outside participant neither, but like many people saying that stuff, someone who dislike right wingers and openly says he agrees with 90% of the woke.

Fundamentally leftists who dislike right wingers and have some heterodoxies, are both denying and supporting the persecution of the right by an establishment that they are much more friendly towards than the neutral observers they try to portray themselves as.

I wouldn't consider leftists who support the left persecuting the right and oppose right wingers opposing thier persecution, or even acknowledging it, as sufficiently distinct with other leftists who claim that the right is actually persecuting the left.

Both the claim that the left and its tribes are persecuted, and that the right, and whites, conservatives aren't persecuted are wrong.

I understand it is convenient for the left to dismiss through claimed both sidesism, the persecution of the right, but it lacks intellectual merit, and is an example of the problems of how partisanship can breed extremism and denial of reality.

I also highly dislike on any faction, the postmodernist irrationalist dismissal of valid ways of discourse. In general this is lacking intellectual merit and promotes sophistry and postmodernist irrationality. Of course, it is presumptuous to assume that any groups claims are false, or true by default. Which can include complaints of mistreatment.

People who have valid reasons to distrust others because they are out to get them, and people who don't but have a continuous culture of doing just that because such culture has given them gains can get things wrong too. The later far more than a first. Plus, in an election, you are going to get people who interpret things through bias.

There is a journolist. There is both coordination, owners of media who fire employees who don't push the line, and journalists, and a lot of groupthink and conformism and people in the hivemind going along with their bias. Not to mention any influence of intelligence services and intelligence agents including of Israeli intelligence officers. There are networks, donors, and a lot more where the direction is comprehensible.

The bias and influence moves in certain directions, and it isn't a direction that is only for the Democrats. It is possible influential zionists might want Trump to win, for example.

It is more messy than just everything being an anti-right wing plot, but on the general sense, the rightist claim is correct based on the facts and that is dismissed by people who are against the right wingers and motivated by such opposition like De Boer. Significant credit must be given to right wing skepticism and opposition towards those who genuinely are hostile to them. While treating them as paranoid and delusional, and demanding they accept that it isn't happening, is a demand that is actually indecent.

I do find it interesting that whenever I venture into left-wing spaces, they have a very similar mindset to the right-wing ones re:

  • the uniparty is neutering politics, pretending to hold our ideology whilst throwing us under the bus at every opportunity (citing e.g. the lack of long-lasting legal change despite the Floyd riots)
  • even when our guys are popular the moderates in our party close ranks to keep them out (Bernie Sanders, attempted with Jeremy Corbyn)
  • mainstream media lies to build complacency and takes every opportunity to identify us with the worst of our movement (e.g. the /r/antiwork interview, the UK media's treatment of Corbyn)
  • the opposition wants us gone permanently, and any election risks them finally getting enough power to manage it

I think that conservatives have a much stronger leg to stand on here: the illiberal centre is left-wing and actively persecutes right-wingers; the fact that it's not quite left-wing enough for the radicals doesn't fill me with sympathy.

But I think that the paranoia on both sides is basically driven by structural problems:

  1. An oligarchic form of government that is unaffected by election results (the Deep State, the Civil Service)
  2. The professionalisation of politics (almost all politicians come from a very similar and unusual background and are beholden to the Overton window amongst people of that background).
  3. An increasingly weighty cruft of legal systems and regulations that have got ever more tangled and impenetrable over time and prevents movement. This (and the production of 'clients') produces a 'ratchet' model of politics where losses like Brexit are often permanent.
  4. Genuine ethnic and moral tribalism vastly reducing the space of beliefs that are shared by a supermajority of people.

The result is that

"My ingroup is relentlessly oppressed by the supposedly neutral authorities, who are actually in the pockets of my enemies. The outgroup is highly organized and relentlessly hateful of people like me. If my side loses a battle, that's just further proof that I'm right and the whole thing is rigged. If my side wins a battle, it's also evidence of how right I am because the only way we'd win against such odds is by being twice as correct as the enemies. My side is the victim. It's all a conspiracy rigged against us."

is essentially true for anyone except the most anodyne of the centre-Left. It hasn't escaped my notice that much of recent right-wing thought (conflict theory, the long march through the institutions, the Cathedral, who/whom) is very much from a left-wing critical tradition, because they are used to being political outcasts and have more mental tools for dealing with that. Often it literally comes from (former) communists - people like Brendan O'Neill, Peter Hitchens, Freddie de Boer.

I think horseshoe theory is overrated, but dissident/complacent is often a useful axis to go alongside left/right and authoritarian/liberal when you want to model how groups will behave.

I kind of agree with their points, but I feel the overton window is sufficiently skewed towards the Left (along with the Left not really being able to understand the sheer breadth of the political spectrum) that these discussions are being had by like 95th percentile Left people and 40th percentile Right People in the grand scheme of things.

I mean, what are the broadly popular left-aligned ideas which are outside the overton window? Marijuana legalization is the only example I can think of in recent history, but I'm sure there must be other examples.

True. Cultural victory to the point that even the most frothingly-left stuff will be treated more as 'awww that's impractical but we understand the dream'

But I think that the paranoia on both sides is basically driven by structural problems:

It's not driven by structural problems, it's driven by the fact that radical wings are ... radical wings. They are weirdos and of course, to them, everything looks like "the uniparty is keeping us down".

Bernie bros were genuinely the worst about this.

We have seen radical wings not do these things. Anti-abortion people don’t do this. They just win thru institutions. Milton Friedman is as much of a weirdo as any of those people. Even today the very libertarian people are the weirdos. And he crushed his competition over decades which is completely provable because you can go on Reddit and stop in neoliberal and see that his enemies adopted his labels (before undermining).

I'm saying that the uniparty is keeping them down. Combine that with the fact that radical wings are growing rapidly in America and Europe for the structural reasons I give and it's no surprise that the amount of paranoia is also growing.

If someone is agitating for fringe views, and the country is even roughly representational, then keeping them down is the expected behavior.

You're right that they are growing though, but even a growing fringe can still be anathema to ~2/3 of the population -- that was more or less what the French election just showed.

If the country is roughly representational, and someone is requesting unpopular actions, then not necessarily giving them what they want is natural and appropriate. The charge - increasingly true, I think - is that active methods are being taken to discredit and weaken those broadcasting non-majority views along the lines I described in reply to OP.

Which I can understand but it's somewhat distasteful at best and causing the very problem it's meant to prevent at worst.

I'm not sure I get the distinction between you're drawing here about "active methods".

Sticking with left wing examples for now, let's say there's a movement advocating for a wealth tax.

Saying, "no, only 10% of people want that," is appropriate.

Saying, "no, only 10% of people want that," and then going through that movement to find the one member who said something stupid ten years ago and bringing it up incessantly whenever people talk about wealth taxes is what I would call "active methods". An active attempt to damage and (further) discredit movements that are not popular in order to prevent that movement from ever becoming more popular.

That kind of seems like regular politics. Possibly unpleasant, but not some kind of illegitimate thing. Parties do it to each other all the times -- the left wing broadcasts MTG in their fundraisers all the time. Right wing blasts the squad.

What's more relevant to me is the question: if a movement never becomes popular, how do we distinguish between "we were discredited" from "our ideas were never palatable to more than 10% of voters"? Because I feel that many losing movements declare that, and it can't be universally the case.

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There is something I uniquely hate about using “radical wing” as a term. It’s just feels like you are implying they are crazy people.

In Europe the right is rising. But I don’t like calling them “radical”, they would be normies for most of history. Today’s neoliberal establishment of “open borders” were the radicals until about 1980. I feel like labeling something radical is just means to lazily call a side as not worth considering their ideas.

At some point all the political groups have been the establishment and in power. Even the Pride and a lesser extent the pedophiles found themselves in the establishment since 2020 but were far outside of it in 2000.

Especially when the "radical fringe" are actually the majority: https://www.themotte.org/post/900/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/192912?context=8#context

For me, it's "extreme/ist/ism." It's the dumbest and most obvious boo-light ever ("anti-abortion extremists! open borders extremists! Tea Party extremism! Extreme political views!"). Extreme relative to what, exactly? I think its use could have been slightly (but only slightly) more excusable a century or so ago when there was a broader social and political consensus, but now those words are just used to exploit the lingering but fast fading memory of Normal and Decent Times in the minds of inattentive readers.

I also hate the term centrists which some people like to claim. It comes off as people who want to claim they are moderate, but I guess I think it can only be has no opinion. The Overton window moves so if you are a centrists I guess you are a npc. Wherever the window is at the moment you’re in the middle. I don’t think it would be a popular political philosophy if you explained it like that.

De Boer might be the only one who actually fits the radical label. But only in the American context. That is the establishment in a few places. I’d probably label him a failed ideology over radical (might even be a maximizing ideology in an AI world since the price system might be replaceable).

If America didn’t have black people Bernie Sanders would probably be the dead center of American politics. And that might actual be the short term utility maximizing position (I think bad for growth, but homogenous tribes like sharing much more with each other).

To me it's encouraging that, I think, most regular people don't feel either of these ways. They mostly call it like they see it.

Several months ago, I decided not to renew my paid subscription for deBoer's Substack, having grown frustrated with how thin-skinned and unnecessarily combative he is, and his evasiveness and hypocrisy on specific issues.

Nonetheless, I agree with him here. Election night, November 2016. Trump wins. Almost immediately, there's liberal caterwauling and rending of hair. "There's no way this election result can be legit - it must be Russian interference!" Followed by 3+ years of investigations and vague gestures towards "evidence" ultimately amounting to a whole lot of nothing. Me and everyone else here correctly recognised this for the pathetic cope it was.

Then, November 2020 rolls around. Biden wins. Almost immediately, there's conservative caterwauling and rending of hair. "There's no way this election result can be legit - the Democrats must have hacked the voting devices!" Followed by 3+ years of investigations and vague gestures towards "evidence" ultimately amounting to a whole lot of nothing (as exhaustively catalogued by @ymeskhout).

There were many people who correctly identified "Russiagate" as a cope, but think that the 2020 election was fraudulent. They would surely have rubbished any similar claims about a fraudulent election had the boot been on the other foot. No, it's worse than that - many if not most of these people did rubbish similar claims when the boot was on the other foot four years earlier. If you somehow still think Russiagate was legit, but the 2020 fraudulent election claims were bullshit, you are the person deBoer is talking about in this post. If you still think the 2020 fraudulent election claims are legit, but that Russiagate was bullshit, you are the person deBoer is talking about in this post.

I agree, and when you actually ask ‘2020 was fraud’ proponents here about the arguments, the smarter ones will typically concede the practical points but then argue that there was just a general air of illegitimacy, a kind of stench of it, perhaps due to mail-in ballots or some shenanigans in a few counties, or maybe ‘the media propaganda manipulated people’ into voting a certain way (if that made a vote illegitimate, then no democratic election in history has been legitimate). Of course voter fraud occurred, as it has in every election since 1789. But the evidence that it was much more fraudulent than 1968 or 2000 or 1932 or whatever is very thin and largely self-serving. I’m also curious whether the claims will be retracted if Trump wins this year, since presumably that would be the deep state choosing to allow him to become president again, right?

I’m also curious whether the claims will be retracted if Trump wins this year, since presumably that would be the deep state choosing to allow him to become president again, right?

Why would a sincerely curious person have reason to believe a 2024 Trump victory would negate or disprove beliefs of deep state opposition to Trump?

The core argument on the idea of a deep state is that it exists and is organized and has power that it utilizes for a cause, not that it is all-powerful and all-determining. There is no requirement for some Nybbler-level nihilism that the deep state determines all and resistance is futile because the deep state determines all. The premise of a deep state is that it is still a state, and while people frequently have unclear ideas of the limits of states they are also very aware that there are limitations of a state and their ability to fail if key actors are opposed (the basis of politically organizing against a vague group of interests) or fall out (divisions within the private coordination mechanisms causing visible turmoil). Even the most famous examples of deep states of contemporary history, including some of the ones that popularized the term like the Pakistani deep state, can have both clear power and clear limits and failures to their attempts to influence. For a somewhat more public version, the current fallout over Biden that is breaking the Democratic coalition apart is a failure of system, not evidence of that Biden's new critics are secretly pro-Trump. The non-public Democratic coordination mechanisms are still anti-Trump, they just are in disagreement as to how.

Organizations- public or secretive- can simply try and fail. Their failure does not imply they were secretly for the other side the entire time. This is particularly true when the reasons for their failures are the over-use of increasingly ineffective/discredited tools that have become less effective with time and over-use.

From the smarter deep conservatives I know IRL, there's either margin of fraud issues('Trump only won by five points but republicans need ten') which might not happen this time, or the political machines that are actually rigging the elections aren't as onboard with Biden as they were, or 2020 was exceptional and the deep state dropped the ball on faking a global pandemic this time, etc.

You can have as many epicycles about history as you want. What matters is epicycles about the future. You can believe that the the JFK assassination never happened, that the moon got where it is as an alien death star to wipe out an advanced ancient civilization, stonehenge was built by aliens, there was an ancient nuclear war that destroyed Mohenjo-Daro, the Nazis built pyramids in Antarctica before their base was destroyed by American nuclear weapons disguised as a test, cats were domesticated by the Annunaki to implant cameras in and spy on the progress of civilization, the earth is 6,000 years old, the printing press was invented in 800 AD but suppressed by the inquisition until Gutenberg, the last prince of Wales reached north America and that's why the Cherokee are white-looking, the Incas were regularly in contact with China, Atlantis had a Mars colony, the Olmecs were the original black people who colonized west Africa, Eleanor Roosevelt was transgender, whatever, and still be a smart, well functioning person who accurately predicts what's going to happen in the future, even on related subjects. And the guy who told me the cats theory was a physics professor. Why? Because those are matters of fact, not function. Kind of like scientific theories- it's a term to describe processes. Denying whats doesn't matter. You're simply factually wrong about something that happened once, and it probably doesn't affect your day to day life if black people originated in Mexico instead of Africa, nor does it really affect anything in the future. Denying hows does. If you believe elves built your car you can still fix it. If you believe elves power your car by running in hamster wheels inside of it in exchange for gasoline, you can't.

Elections are a lot like that. It's not hard to come up with a just-so story as for why the deep state can rig the election in 2020 but not 2024. It doesn't even have to make sense. What's important is that it doesn't impinge on future processes.

Honestly I am beginning to drift towards the position you described in your last paragraph. Deep State rigging for Biden in 2020, Deep State rigging for Trump in 2024. I think the Deep State might have decided it’s better to get Trump in the Oval Office to get middle America on board for World War III. They would have to undertake some maneuvers to get Trump personally on board for a war, and to contain his domestic political impulses, but I think they believe they can do that. That might be easier for them to manage than the French Revolution nightmare scenario of a simultaneous existential foreign war plus a hot civil war at home.

I always thought the insinuation that the federal civil service was near-uniformly Democrat was unlikely. Academia? Sure. Journalism? Definitely. But DC is filled with ex-military and other middle aged straight white guys in senior positions in the federal government who live in the suburbs and who, statistically, are at least substantially (say, 50%) Republican. Especially in the CIA, full of Mormons anyway, and in the Pentagon. These people aren’t revolutionaries, probably consider Trump vulgar, but that doesn’t make them Democrats.

https://www.fedsmith.com/2021/02/12/political-donations-and-federal-employees/

Sure, I don’t dispute that, but even that article suggests that in many of the most important departments like State, 30-35%+ of employees are Republicans. Also, since Dems in the federal government are likely more committed than Republicans it doesn’t tell us everything about the ratio of employees.

Also, since Dems in the federal government are likely more committed than Republicans

what makes you think that they are more commited?

I mean we did have real fraud in 2020. It’s just people ignore the obvious frauds.

The expanse of mass-mail in voting is considered fraud by historical Democratic principals. Trump wins in a landslide without that.

At this point it is beyond proven that the FBI interfered with social media with regards to the Hunter Biden laptop. They knew it was real the entire time. The CIA helped cover that up.

These things aren’t conspiracies. They are proven and changed the election.

I don’t know why we are doing both-sides here.

Now I agree the right has gone too far. I know people who never rational think thru issues anymore and just assume they are being lied to.

mass mail-in voting is considered fraud by historic democratic principles

I disagree. At worst, by weakening the secret ballot, it makes more opportunities for fraud. That’s different.

Regardless, to get from there to “Trump wins in a landslide,” you have to have a chain of beliefs.

  1. MMIV allowed more fraud.
  2. More fraud gave an advantage to Democrats.
  3. Such an advantage was needed to overcome Trump’s natural lead.

Sure, #1 seems obviously true. But proponents have consistently failed to bring evidence for #2 or #3. Where are the legions of dead or duplicate voters? The confessions of Democrat strongmen who went door to door coercing Biden votes? The sob stories from would-have-been Trump voters?

If the Democrats successfully weaponized MMIV, there should be more evidence. Same goes for Trump’s hypothetical lead. Polling (then or now) doesn’t suggest that he has massive support. Either there is a powerful conspiracy hiding and weakening the evidence, or it doesn’t really exist.

The average voter hasn’t committed fraud. He also knows that his neighbors and teammates haven’t committed fraud, haven’t talked about the option, haven’t been visited by team officials in the dead of night. He correctly concludes that his team is not benefiting from fraud. He fails to extend this conclusion to everyone else.

The expanse of mass-mail in voting is considered fraud by historical Democratic principals. Trump wins in a landslide without that.

And if the expanse of mass mail-in voting had caused him to win in a landslide, you'd be saying the election was illegitimate and stolen from Biden, yes?

At this point it is beyond proven that the FBI interfered with social media with regards to the Hunter Biden laptop. They knew it was real the entire time. The CIA helped cover that up.

I agree, and this was an outrage, and I said so repeatedly at the time and since. But this doesn't prove that the election was fraudulent - as pointed out by @2rafa, if media propaganda manipulating people to vote a particular way makes an election illegitimate, then every election since the invention of democracy was illegitimate. We'll never know the counterfactual where the Hunter Biden laptop story is allowed to freely circulate on social media - it might have swung the election, it might not. There are obvious parallels with Russiagate truthers constantly asserting that Trump only won because of sketchy Facebook ads from Russian accounts!!! targeting swing voters, something something Cambridge Analytica.

But this doesn't prove that the election was fraudulent -

What's this un-fraud of the gaps(analogous to god of the gaps)?

I don't get it

“And if the expanse of mass mail-in voting had caused him to win in a landslide, you'd be saying the election was illegitimate and stolen from Biden, yes”

  • yes. I’m autistic. I’ve flipped on positions before when the data points in that direction. Which does include flipping from Trump is a bad clown show POTUS only doing decent because McConnell is good to believing Trump has great judgement.

“There are obvious parallels with Russiagate truthers constantly asserting that Trump only won because of sketchy Facebook ads from Russian accounts!!! targeting swing voters, something something Cambridge Analytica.“

  • Perhaps I am wrong on this but when I looked at the data the Russian troll farms did not reach a lot of people and the people they did reach were mostly core MAGA. I don’t believe the quant argument is strong that it could flip the election.

This is also different because it’s external versus internal. It’s different when Russia plays some games we don’t have the tools to prevent and our own CIA decides to back candidate X. The CIA interfering in an election is bad. Especially when they are spreading known false information. They have done this during war times but during an election is different.

The expanse of mass-mail in voting is considered fraud by historical Democratic principals. Trump wins in a landslide without that.

In what possible sense? Oregon has had vote-by-mail for a while now, I think it's hardly sensible to claim that all elections in Oregon are fraudulent by any sensible principle.

Now sure, maybe mail-in voting could induce or enable fraud. But you seem to be suggesting that the means of voting is itself fraudulent, even if the result is generally reflective of the indicated preference of valid and eligible voters.

The expanse of mass-mail in voting is considered fraud by historical Democratic principals

Oregon has had vote-by-mail for a while now, I think it's hardly sensible to claim that all elections in Oregon are fraudulent by any sensible principle.

Oregon didn't expand mail-in voting. The fact that they've done it for years doesn't mean every other state in the union can implement the same voting methods in months.

At least address what's being said before accusing people of a gish gallop.

It's not (inherently) fraudulent in Oregon -- it was fraudulent in 2020 in the states where it was banned by statute and 'worked around' by various illegal policies implemented by Democrat-aligned administrators without going through the proper legislative process. (eg. Wisconsin (IIRC?) with their expansion of 'indefinitely confined')

Jesus, the Gish Gallop distributed Motte & Bailey of rotating arguments. First it was inherently fraudulent[1]. Then it was fraudulent-by-method-of-adoption[2]. Then it there-exists-fraud-in-fact via stuffed ballots or water leaks[3].

In any event, do you think the result in Wisconsin numerically reflect the intended desire of the eligible voters?

I'm not responsible for whatever other arguments people are making -- mine is true.

If by 'eligible voters' you mean 'the ones that voted in accordance with State law', then no, probably not. If you mean something else, you should be working towards legislative reform to make it easier for people to (legally) vote -- as in Oregon I suppose.

For the sake of reducing confusion, if you’re replying to their thread, it helps to distinguish.

And by eligible voters, I mean those which are entitled and not otherwise forbidden to vote.

For the sake of reducing confusion, if you’re replying to their thread, it helps to distinguish.

I think it's quite obvious that opinions I state in a thread are mine and not somebody else's -- do I need to add a disclaimer?

And by eligible voters, I mean those which are entitled and not otherwise forbidden to vote.

If an otherwise eligible voter submits his ballot in the form of a homemade crayon-drawing, it is not a legal ballot and should not be counted. Same goes for mailins, in jurisdictions where the legislature has not passed a law allowing them and defining the procedures for their acceptance.

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That’s not a Gish gallop.

At worst, jkf is defending a different position than sliders. Call it sanewashing, or maybe distributed motte-and-bailey?

Also, I'll add, that JKF is defending a different position that sliders, but he could also clarify it because he's responding to a thread of comments relating to sliders.

For example, if he is advancing fraudulent-by-method-of-adoption[2] then he could also write "VBM is legitimate when properly adopted but not when adopted via procedurally-invalid means, hence I believe in Wisconsin it is illegitimate because ".

That would probably elicit a very different response. It would also clarify what is the crux of JKFs argument.

[ And if JKF believes that VBM is illegitimate even when adopted via procedurally-proper means, then clarify that would also be helpful! I don't mean to say he can only adopt the position above. ]

Yeah, I think your question about Wisconsin is a good way to clarify.

I put my own objection to sliders here. “Fraud was plausible” is very easy to defend. “Fraud changed the result,” not so much.

That is fair. I accept the correction and have edited it.

I live in Washington; we've had universal vote-by-mail for a while now too.

I don't know if all our elections are fraudulent. They're doing a lot of good things to secure them, but there're still inherent gaps. And I'm very uncomfortable about that.

Secret ballot principles are violated. It’s been when discussed here. Every organization that defines what makes a good Democracy before 2020 said mail-in ballots had issues. After 2020 it’s all good.

We probably do have the technology today to make mail-in voting fine. You could have an IPhone do facial ID and watch you vote in secret.

That is a tendentious appeal to consensus that doesn't exist. Oregon has been doing vote-by-mail since 1996.

FYI, I think my comment is what @sliders1234 is referring to when he says that it's been discussed here before. In that comment, I survey international pro-democracy organizations which set out what it means for an election to be fair and free. It is clear that a consensus did exist across these organizations. That some locations have been bucking that consensus and that some groups have now turned entirely against that consensus does not mean that the consensus did not exist.

The consensus that you point to is for a different topic than the one you are claiming.

You are trying to manufacture a consensus against VBM by pointing to universal support for the notion of secret ballots. The core of the disagreement is whether VBM (especially optional-VBM where anyone that wishes can go in person if they choose!) is sufficiently protective of the right to a secret ballot.

If anything, the point that one can derive from this is that mandating VBM is not good policy. On that, sure, we can easily agree.

The core of the disagreement is whether VBM (especially optional-VBM where anyone that wishes can go in person if they choose!) is sufficiently protective of the right to a secret ballot.

Those cites were pretty clear that the only consistent way to ensure the secret ballot and voter faith in such is in-person voting, with only one person being allowed in the voter booth at a time. They explicitly call out weaknesses of VBM in these terms. I am manufacturing nothing. It's there, in black and white, preserved by the beauty of the internet.

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Ok then I assume you don’t believe the secret ballot is important to free and fair elections.

No issue if spouses pressure their partners or children fill out ballots for grandparents with dementia.

Sure perhaps saying it was considered the standard pre-2020 is an appeal to consensus, but I agree with the logic the experts were using in before 2020.

Sometimes I think it’s fine to reference prior work and assume people have familiarity with it. You don’t need to rewrite every argument.

Bruh, this idiotic “so I guess (a bunch of crazy shit I don’t believe)” is tiresome.

Yes I believe in the secret ballot. I do not believe that the option to do mail in seriously erodes that.

Less antagonism. You've been warned about this repeatedly. Next time is going to catch you a ban.

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And if we defund the police. Crime won’t skyrocket. If we get rid of the SEC - no one will insider trade. If the MLB isn’t enforcing bans on steroids then even those who don’t want to do steroids will (like Barry Bonds a later user) because the players getting ahead are cheating. Maybe I just know more people who are willing to cheat that if you remove the enforcement preventing cheating that people will cheat.

If you remove the enforcement even if society is 99.5% trustworthy those who abuse the commons are going to rise in power.

I do not believe that the option to do mail in seriously erodes that.

I’m going to jump in to ask, why?

I agree that VBM by itself doesn’t really enable classic vote-buying: if someone offers you money to vote a certain way, sure the buyer can verify your ballot before it goes in the envelope prior to handing over the “wages”, but you can easily get another ballot (unbeknownst to the vote-buyer), vote however you want, and invalidate the previous ballot.

But the examples given above (spouse pressuring spouse, filling out ballots for non compos mentis elderly relatives) seem to be much easier to pull off when mass VBM is the norm. To belabor the point re: the spouse example, if you live with someone, you presumably have access to their mail and can see whether they have received another VBM ballot with which to try and evade your spousal pressure to vote a certain way.

Not to mention, “ballot harvesting” seems vulnerable to unscrupulous harvesters steaming open the envelopes, changing the ballots that don’t vote for the right candidate (e.g. by filling in all the bubbles, so the ballot gets rejected) and then re-sealing the envelope.

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Freddie's not wrong, but I find him endlessly tiresome and miserable. He constantly gropes for the truth and almost seems to grasp it, and then hastily backs away as if it burned his fingers. Every time I read one of his essays, I think "You've almost got it" and then he swerves and ostentatiously clears his throat to make sure no one thinks he's suggesting non-leftists might ever be right about something.

This is not particularly charitable to Freddie.

The worst case was him deleting his most popular substacks, "Please Just Fucking Tell Me What Term I Am Allowed to Use for the Sweeping Social and Political Changes You Demand" and "Of Course You Know What 'Woke' Means", because conservatives found his arguments good and started linking them. He seems afraid to be seen building bridges with non-fellow travelers, even when their interests and beliefs align with the old-style left perfectly.

Doesn't one need to keep in mind that he's legitimately a crazy person? He might fear getting too much attention from the wrong people when he looks at the results.

What were the actual sharings-in-bad-faith or misrepresentations that he was worried about?

Was it only that right-wing people shared them as well, or did right-wingers understand the meanings of those posts in a different way to deBoer?

Pretty sure it was basically that right wingers were sharing it around as a good anti-woke rant, and Freddie was dismayed that his enemies were using his words as ammunition against leftists (even leftists he himself was attacking).

What were the actual sharings-in-bad-faith or misrepresentations that he was worried about?

He never offered any explanation to my best research. About a year ago he updated the first essay with "I beg you to read anything else I've written other than this piece. I beg you", followed by deletion in December.

Are those Archive links he links to in his Substack faithful to his original postings or have they been selectively editor prior to archival?

You can see every version captured by IA. Scott used to neuter pieces with edits before removing them entirely, so it's worth checking out the earliest archived version and comparing it to the latest

This is Freddie deBoer.

But yes, I've noticed Scott editing old posts to remove the best parts. He speaks some truth that conservatives appreciate. Then edits it out because he thinks they are icky or correctly determines that his social group won't appreciate him handing ammo to the other side.

Also he edited out the Ben Carson brain surgery question. About how Ben Carson pioneered a new procedure to separate the two halves of the brain in children with extreme seizures. But then left the other half still alive in their head unconnected to their senses and frontal lobe. Is that a (part of a) person suffering in dark silence for a lifetime? I thought that was a good question and am disappointed that he edited it out.

I know, I mean Scott used to do it too. They have very similar temporary failures of their Crimestop brain implants, followed by repentance and attempts to hide the evidence.

Also he edited out the Ben Carson brain surgery question.

Huh? https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/11/16/hardball-questions-for-the-next-debate/

Maybe he did edit it out and then restored it, but it doesn't seem like the kind of thing that he'd be worried could get him in trouble.

He edited out the follow-up question about the kaballistic implications.

Yes, he's not going to get in trouble for that. I thought he removed it because it is disturbing.

TBH it is disturbing and I think the answer would be yes.

Are those Archive links he links to in his Substack faithful to his original postings?

Unless he's in cahoots with archive.org, they must be. And the content doesn't seem different from what I remember.

I guess he should be applauded for giving a link, at least, even if he refuses to put the arguments under his own name for some reason.

I find this sort of false equivalency incredibly obnoxious. We have institutions that are 99.5% leftist, run by Democrat apparatchiks, and every leak or FOI document reveals quotes like today's "I don't want to hire white men for sure."
Is there any equivalent evidence from the other side? Any CNN execs caught emailing Trump: "jawol mein fuhrer, I have leaked the debate questions to Biden to throw him off his guard, your victory is assured!"
Or just insane conspiracy theories about how JournoList members conspiring with the DNC were actually Republican triple-agents all along? Literal stalinist levels of frenzied deflection against randomly chosen "wreckers"?

Just the act of labeling leftist zealots "blue maga" shows it's a tactic to hurt your enemies while making excuses for the now-revealed misdeeds of your own side.
The weirdness of qanon boomers is extremely different from the weirdness of the left, and conflating them is just a trick to criticize individual leftists without ever admitting the problems of leftism: "They're bad because they're just like the enemy!", rather than "woah our revolutionary ideology goes absolutely off the wall retarded at the slightest inconvenience, why is that?"

The more I read from deboer the more I dislike him intensely. A pretty intelligent mind capable of truth-seeking that's been deliberately turned to producing demeaning propaganda.

I guess the thing to understand is that hardcore leftists don’t really think minor stuff like the civil service or Google implementing hardcore quota-driven affirmative action is what they want. They don’t not want it, but they also want to overthrow capitalism, tax billionaires at 99%, nationalize the banks, that kind of thing, so even though the left has cultural ascendancy they still feel powerless and ‘betrayed’.

Bens a hardcore never Trumper. He seems to have a strong bias against him. So he tries to make these arguments.

Just the act of labeling leftist zealots "blue maga" shows it's a tactic to hurt your enemies while making excuses for the now-revealed misdeeds of your own side.

Stalin was actually a "state capitalist" isn't an unheard of washing of hands in the DeBoer's part of the political spectrum, so he is probably just employing a trope familiar to him.

I think it might be more a long the lines of communists declaring social democrat parties social fascists. It's hard to place DeBoer, he just seems to lash out at everyone and seems like a rather awful person to be around, even when he isn't going through a manic episode.

Deboer is an actual literal OG Marxist, nearly everyone in the US is his outgroup politically. Yes, including self described Marxist socialists, who are usually more Zizek than Engels.

This makes him crystal clear about some things, and the ability to call out blue delusions is one of them. Which is mostly what he’s doing- he’s not MAGA, he’s not a Republican or a conservative. He’s using it as an insult, sure, but he’s insulting people who are definitely not republicans. He’s highlighting basically the same thing you are- that blue beliefs of institutions being aligned against them are by and large delusional paranoia.

Yep it’s bizarre. For example, we now are getting tons of leak about how people knew about Biden’s problems (eg Bernstein said he heard it from about fifteen sources; yet nothing was published). The most galling was the NYT that ran with the cheap fake claim. Then when that blew up they then went back to those same cheap fakes, did a little journalism, and it turned out they weren’t cheap fakes.

Or take George S himself. He was happy to give fake information re Bill Clinton and sex because he thought it was for the greater good. Thirty years later and hiding sexual liaisons is the gravest of sins. Which one is it George?

I'm not swayed by Biden saying, "I'm fine," nor am I swayed by Trump saying, "I'm fine". Would Kamala be a better nominee? Guess it depends on who you ask.

It is rather interesting to me that the DNC is having an internal meltdown over something they should have forecasted when Biden's campaign started.

I'm so apathetic about the presidential election that at this point, it may be better to "suffer" another four years with Trump at the helm and let 2028 be an open field.

If you are a Democrat, you would probably be better off sitting this one out and letting Biden lose. If he wins, it just sends the message to the Democratic Party that they can run more and more brazen and unqualified neoliberal establishment ghouls that won’t give you anything close to the policies you actually want. You need to show them that you will draw the line somewhere, and that they actually need to give you something to win your vote. Even if you find Trump distasteful and scary I think you can look back at the four years of his last term and see that a lot of the fretted-about nightmare scenarios your side was concerned about never actually happened.

An American Cincinnatus, he ain't.

The Democratic party's post-debate woes continue. In the last few days, talking heads seemed to be converging on a new consensus: Kamala Harris is the only way to beat Trump. First of all, she is the only candidate that can be hot-swapped in without having to build a whole new campaign infrastructure. More importantly, the intersectional implications of passing over a woman of color in 2024 are beyond the Democratic party's ability to contemplate. And, finally, Kamala is not polling worse than Biden.

Though the details of her career are cringe-worthy, and insults like "cackle" and "word salad" seem to attach themselves easily, Kamala is still mostly an unknown to the American people. A well-managed media campaign, which limits unscripted appearances, will be able to put her in the best light. It's only 4 months to the election. "I'm With Her 2.0". It just... might... work.

There's one problem: The dinosaur won't die.

At a rally in Wisconsin today, Biden said unequivocably that he won't be stepping aside

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2024/07/05/president_biden_theyre_trying_to_push_me_out_of_the_race_im_staying.html

In 2020, you came through for me. I am the nominee of the Democratic Party. I'm the nominee of this party because millions of Democrats like you voted for me in primaries all across America. You voted for me to be your nominee, no one else. You, the votes -- the voters, did that.

Despite that, some folks don't seem to care who they voted for, well guess what? They're trying to push me out of the race.

Let me say this as clearly as I can -- I am staying in the race! I will beat Donald Trump! I will beat him again in 2020! By the way, we will do it again in 2024.

Yes, he did have another senior moment at the end there. But overall it was a forceful demonstration that he isn't going anywhere.

This complicates things considerably. The Democrats have about 4 weeks until state ballot deadlines force them to nominate a candidate. I do think Biden is right. Most Democrats want him gone. They voted for him in the primaries but now he's a liability. But how will they get rid of him? It's not so easy, especially without blackening the reputation of the party. Will the long-buried Biden hair-sniffing stories finally see the light of day? Or will the media come back to Biden's corner now that he's fighting back?

Trump has plot armor. I cannot believe how goddamn lucky the guy is. "'This Will Be The End Of Trump’s Campaign,’ Says Increasingly Nervous Man For Seventh Time", was published eight and a half years ago. Just when it seemed like the walls were finally closing in, he gets bailed-out by a double whammy of the Supreme Court's immunity ruling and his opponent publicly going senile. Losing in 2020 might actually end up in his benefit, because now he gets to control the Republican Party for 12 years instead of just 8.

I keep seeing ads from Democrats that lead with the idea of "protecting democracy". Are they trying to convince independents and Republicans, or are they trying to convince themselves? A Trump victory (especially if he wins the popular vote) would be a democratic ratification of Jan 6. It would be a rejection of the charges against Trump. If Trump wins 2024 bigger than ever before, the entire big-D Democrat philosophy collapses in on itself in a tapestry of self-reference paradoxes. A Trump victory is not only figuratively unthinkable, but literally unthinkable.

I think democrats have no one to blame but themselves. They absolutely lack party discipline of any sort. They could have told Biden he was done at any point between January and now and they knew that he was slipping mentally, and for whatever reasons they decided not to do it much earlier. So now they’re stuck.

Alternatively, this is the failure state of too much party discipline.

Biden is the leader of the Democratic Party, not the other way around. The American system is not a European parliamentary system, and there is no 'They' to tell Biden he was done: there is no list-control element that could keep him from running again, and he's the one whose allies and loyalists are in the positions of control of the national party infrastructure. That's why the primary season was reorganized to the benefit of state (state politicians that backed Biden in 2020), and why the national convention was being converted to a dial-in convention even before the debate- Biden is the leader of the party. Party discipline is discipline to him.

What's occurring now is the breakdown in discipline because discipline was used to drive into a crisis against misgivings. It was precisely the discipline that previously suppressed doubt and kept alignment, but discipline then breaks when respect and trust break.

I don't think it's "lack of discipline" so much as the DNC leadership hasn't really adjusted to the new normal. They're acting like they still have the capability to manufacture consent/consensus that they did 10 - 15 years ago, but the thing about burning trust for near tearm gains is that it inevitably screws you in the long term.

Like, @pigeonburger says below, they thought they could Jedi Mind-trick the public into seeing what they wanted them to see only for the public to pull a Watto.

A 2012 DNC wouldn’t have been able to cover up that debate performance, I don’t think. Biden looked like a dead rat for two hours on live TV.

Instead I think they were some combination of 1) lying to themselves(‘Biden’s not a good public speaker’ ‘He’s slowing down but not senile’) 2) thought it wasn’t as obvious(maybe stimulants before the debate? Maybe didn’t think to check him after 4 pm?) 3) didn’t think too hard about it 4) caught between a rock and a hard place and trying to rationalize.

I feel like 2008 - 2010 was the tipping point. The one-two punch of the Iraq War and TARP broke the dam. The coverage of the tea-party and Trump eroded it further, and Covid became the final nail in the coffin.

Edit: to clarify a bit, i dont think Biden did as bad as he has been portrayed in some circles, but after months of the official narrative being that "Joe's sharper than ever, anyone suggesting otherwise is a russian troll" his debate performance might've well been a public execution.

Edit: to clarify a bit, i dont think Biden did as bad as he has been portrayed in some circles, but after months of the official narrative being that "Joe's sharper than ever, anyone suggesting otherwise is a russian troll" his debate performance might've well been a public execution.

I agree with this and I think you gesture at an important point - a lot of credibility was put on the line and invested in the claim that Biden is doing just fine and any claims of mental health decline are just misinformation, and now that credibility is going up in smoke. Sure, a lot of people will just not care or forget, but some will remember this the next time the party needs them to believe something that doesn't quite seem true.

They had party discipline. Party discipline said not to admit to Biden's weakness. What they lacked is the ironclad control over public perception that they thought (not without good reason!) they had.

Basically, they thought they could Jedi Mind Trick the entire world into thinking they did not just see a clearly, obviously senile POTUS.

I don’t know why they didn’t just refuse to participate in the debates. Say Biden already debated Trump many times, and that Trump’s ‘a clown whose ungentlemanly conduct makes respectful debate impossible’. Obviously still looks weak, but most of the public would ignore it, on the day they’re not thinking “I haven’t heard from Joe in a while”.

Because they were the ones who wanted the debates. You're after-the-fact rationalizing that participating in the debates was an obviously wrong decision that everyone could see in advance, when two weeks ago before the debate everyone could 'clearly' see that Biden could expect to do reasonably.

Biden didn't just refuse to participate in the debates because he was the one who needed them to shake up a contest he was gradually losing. Trump approached from the position of having a consistent and enduring lead he could stand to lose; Biden was the one approaching from a position of having a consistent and enduring trail that would lead to loss if not changed.

To bring a card game metaphor: Biden had to make a bigger gamble because he was behind and couldn't count on average scoring to pull him ahead. The fact that the gamble failed, doesn't mean the game wasn't appropriate.

I don't know why we're discounting the possibility that the decision was made by Biden personally, and Biden is either in denial about his condition or otherwise not a rational actor.

I think they tried to do it in a way that saved face, by demanding a bunch of conditions that they didn't think Trump would agree to. But he called their bluff, and they were stuck.

They miscalculated. Either they thought the terms they offered for debate (e.g. cutting off mics) would get Trump to refuse, or they thought their candidate would make it through, either because they were mistaken/fooling themselves as to how bad off he was, or because he wasn't as bad when they made the agreeement.

The simplest answer is that Biden's the one making that decision and he thinks he's as sharp as he's ever been. Im sure he also thinks he won the debate and the current panic is all down to a hostile media environment.

After watching his post-debate interview with Stephanopoulos, I think you're right. Biden genuinely believes all his bad poll numbers are wrong/biased and his true level of public support is much higher.

Idle tongue-in-cheek thinking: if the Democrats really want Biden out - for they can't make him give up the candidacy - perhaps they could disqualify him from the presidency by impeaching, convicting, and removing him from office. I first thought that sounded like a path they might be able to expect full support from the Republicans on-

-But what kind of opposition would they be if they weren't reflexively contrary? Which in turn brought to mind, well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbados_4–2_Grenada

In the 1994 Caribbean Cup, the tournament organisers implemented a variant of the golden goal rule: the first goal scored in extra-time not only won the match, but was also worth two goals. Barbados needed to win the match by a margin of at least two goals to qualify for the final over Grenada. Barbados led the game 2–0 until Grenada scored in the 83rd minute, bringing the score to 2–1. Barbados then deliberately scored an own goal, tying the game at 2–2, to force extra-time so that they could take advantage of the golden goal rule to achieve their needed two-goal margin.[1] This resulted in an unusual situation: for the last three minutes of the match, Grenada tried to score in both goals. Either outcome (3–2 on points, or 2–3 via goal difference) would have advanced them to the finals, while Barbados had to defend both goals. Ultimately, Barbados was able to prevent Grenada from scoring, forcing extra-time. Barbados then scored the golden goal to win the match.

It's funny to think about, but I expect it wouldn't be nearly as fun to live through.

“Et tu, Brute?”

Biden got shivved last night. It was less of an interview and more a desperate attempt by George Stephanopoulos to convince Biden to step down. The narrative is moving from “Biden is senile” to “Biden is desperately clinging to power and is refusing to do what is best for the country.”

The critical moment was when Stephanopolous asked Biden if, “like Trump,” he was just running to pursue his own self-interest.

Biden’s choice is to “die” a hero or live long enough to see himself to become a villain. It seems like Dark Brandon has made his choice. It’s looking he is going to try to run out the clock to the convention. The Dem’s last play at that point would be to invoke the 25th. Or maybe they’ll slip something into his drink. Nobody would be surprised given his age.

In any case, we are living through a throughly dramatic and exciting piece of history. This will be a fun trivia question in 200 years (but not really—the robots won’t play trivia and if they do, the questions will be a lot harder).

I hope Biden survives long enough to see himself become disgraced and cursed by Democrats if he actually hangs on long enough to lose.

I've thought that Biden is Ruth Bader Ginsburging himself. He could have quit at his peak and been fondly remembered. Or stick around just a few years more and spoil it all.

I know there was a sense of, "wtf..." when she died, but surely her legacy wasn't tarnished to the extent Biden's might be. At worst, her legacy has only been significantly diminished in degree what with the whole abortion thing.

Or maybe they’ll slip something into his drink. Nobody would be surprised given his age.

Someone else suggested a false-flagging MAGA assassination. I'm prone to despairing that "Nothing ever happens," but if this were carried out convincingly it would be devastating for discourse. And yet I can't predict whether or not it would even lead to a D victory in November.

but not really—the robots won’t play trivia and if they do, the questions will be a lot harder

Two robots can play chess with each other right now, but humans still do it because it's fun and challenging for us. I walk in the park even though jets can outpace me.

but not really—the robots won’t play trivia and if they do, the questions will be a lot harder

Two robots can play chess with each other right now, but humans still do it because it's fun and challenging for us. I walk in the park even though jets can outpace me.

I think the implication - possibly tongue-in-cheek - was that robots will replace humans within 200 years.

If someone with a MAGA hat somehow managed to kill Joe Biden, there would immediately be conspiracy theories that it was a false flag. Probably most Americans would believe him- he's the friggin' president! Anyone well functioning enough to be capable of killing him is well functioning enough to know that the best move for MAGA is to have slow joe at the top of the ticket against Trump! This isn't a small town mayor where a sufficiently dedicated homeless schizo could assassinate him- he's one of the best defended figures on the planet. Tell me, what's more likely- an organized conspiracy by people who regard him as nonthreatening due to senility and incompetence which is capable of penetrating the secret service and yet so clownish as to betray their motivations or an organized conspiracy by people who really want him to stop kicking own goals which they try to pin on the other side?

After Covid you simply cannot convince me that we can assume the most likely explanation for anything will even be mentionable in polite company. I know you like to explain to us how the real blue-collars are talking to each other, but man, the people with nice houses and nice jobs are really, really careful about observing what they're allowed to say.

This is a fair point, but most people do not have nice houses and high status jobs, and voting is a game of, well, the masses.

...And even amongst the people with nice jobs and nice houses there are plenty who live in "Red" areas.

I feel like there's a tendency here to forget that there are tech jobs outside of FAANG and Silicon Valley startups, and that there is serious engineering work being done in states like Tennessee and Texas.

But as you say, voting is a game for the masses, and perhaps this is why the democrats suddenly seem so keen to "protect" democracy from bad outcomes. Ie things the masses might vote for.

Well yeah, that’s definitely not everyone with nice houses and important jobs. Actually nice houses being what they are(much more affordable in red areas), nice house owners probably tilt red. You can be a petroleum engineer and have, fairly openly, whatever opinion you want.

Out of curiosity, am I the only one will never get over Kamala Harris's insane questioning of Brett Kavanaugh, asking him over and over again about whether he has discussed "Bob Mueller or his investigation" with anyone? She may actually be the most unpleasant person to listen to in all of politics.

Kamala Harris's insane questioning of Brett Kavanaugh

Wow that's a bad clip. For those without 8:00 to spare, the summary is:

  • Harris: Have you discussed Bob Mueller and his investigation with anyone?

  • Kavanaugh: Yes, with fellow judges.

  • H: Have you discussed Bob Mueller and his investigation with anyone at [this specific law firm]?

  • K: I don't remember, but if you have something you want...

  • H: Are you certain you haven't?

  • K: Is there a person you're talking about?

  • H: It's a very direct question. [repeats it]

  • Committee Member(?): Objection, you can't expect him to know everyone who works at a specific law firm.

  • Harris: Have you ever discussed Bob Mueller or his investigation with anyone?

  • K: Of course, he was a coworker.

  • H: Have you discussed Bob Mueller or his investigation with anyone at [this specific law firm]?

  • K: I need to know who works there.

  • H: I don't think you do. You can answer it without a roster of the employees.

  • K: No, I can't, particularly when you switched from "and" to "or" after the objection.

  • H: Have you discussed Bob Mueller and his investigation with anyone at [this specific law firm]?

  • K: I don't remember.

  • H: So you're denying it? I'll move on, clearly you won't answer the question.

If anything, I'm being charitable to Harris. I cut out a bunch of repetitions, insinuations, and opportunities to clarify. (I also cut out some misconduct from the crowd and quibbling by one of her allies(?) because that's not her fault.)

Not everyone wants to follow some random link to watch a video, but it's hard for a transcript to convey her smug, condescending tone as she asked that ridiculous question over and over, acting as if it was Kavanaugh that was making things difficult by being evasive. Making matters worse is the fact that she never offered a post-questioning follow-up to let people know what the hell she was talking about.

Making matters worse is the fact that she never offered a post-questioning follow-up to let people know what the hell she was talking about.

I'm not sure what would lead her to do that.

My guess throughout was that she knew Kavanaugh had spoken to a specific person at that law firm, and was looking for either a denial (which she would confront with evidence to the contrary) or else confirmation (which she would use to question its propriety). She even set up her (presumptive, but not actual) followup with "So you're denying it?" at the end.

If she didn't even do a press release detailing what Kavanaugh should have answered and why the facts are damaging to him, then I don't know what her game was. Maybe Kavanaugh was on to something with "Are you thinking of a specific person?": maybe she wasn't.

EDIT: a better theory is that she was fishing for "I don't know who I spoke to about it", but Kavanaugh never gave that answer. He only said that he spoke to fellow judges, and that he didn't know who worked at the law firm. When asked if there was another way to know if he had spoken to someone at that law firm (fishing for "I spoke with some people I don't know well", maybe) he deflected back to the roster of employees.

Maybe she just thought she would show the country her prosecutor skills by making someone squirm on the stand, but forgot that the someone was one of the top judges in the land.

It'd be understandable for even a top judge to squirm on the stand in such a situation, where the "prosecution" is playing Calvinball as Calvin. That makes it all the more impressive Kavanaugh was able to make the "'and' to 'or'" catch, as @sarker pointed out.

Unfortunately, only dorks like us Mottizens are impressed by stuff like this. For most of everyone else it's a "and the crowd goes mild" type of a reaction.

K: No, I can't, particularly when you switched from "and" to "or" after the objection.

Pretty impressive to notice something like this in the stress of hostile questioning.

It was more obvious in the real one than my summary, but yes. I was quite impressed with Kavanaugh's responses.

This is a guy who kept a journal of his daily activities while in high school. And when I say kept, I mean he still had it when appointed to the Supreme Court. "Detail-oriented" doesn't cover the half of it.

You weren't supposed to notice that. ;-)

"I'd like to raise an objection here. This town is full of law firms...Law firms are full of people. Law firms have a lot of names, there are a lot of people who work at law firms. [Protestor interrupting]. Law firms abound in this town, and there are a lot of them. They're constantly metastasizing, they break off, they form new firms, they're like rabbits, they spawn new firms [guy behind him loses composure]."

Lmao. I suspect Mr. Lee is hilarious in person. It reminds me of some factoid I read one time, which was that the most reliable way to convince someone to vote for a politician was to have him meet the politician in person.

Politicians are, almost by definition, generally likeable and good at convincing others to support them.

That's why Hilary was such a bad candidate. It's not that she's unlikeable compared to an average person, it's that she's unlikeable compared to an average politician.

Having never campaigned for anything, she was thrust into the highest levels of politics without any skill development. It would be like going right from Little League to the Majors. No matter how much coaching she got, she just didn't have the skills.

Parties should lean into the primary process in order to find the best talent.

Hilary is a bad politician, but she's the best the democrats had (have?). No democrat right now is able to convincingly articulate any stance that is amenable to the centre, much less reach across the aisle. Polarization makes the task more difficult but not impossible. I can think of no democrat politician that has any charisma or rally skills. Its all partisan loyalty displays (BLM and Pride support), polemics about how the OTHER GUYS are evil and need to be stopped (everyone anti-maga) or mildly competent bureaucrats in boring constituencies without major insanity. This last category is a GOOD category that the dems have, but theyre not gonna be winners. Perhaps Gretchen Whitmer, Tony Evers or Mark Kelly can impress with quiet competence, but they can't slug it out in an open fight with Jeb Bush, let alone with any Trumper.

Ultimately I blame Obama. He was a charisma supernova that sucked all oxygen for politicking out of the democratic party and wasted an entire generation of politicians who needed to bloody their knuckles in the machines of electioneering.

or mildly competent bureaucrats in boring constituencies without major insanity. This last category is a GOOD category that the dems have, but theyre not gonna be winners.

Are you confident of this? I don't think Biden won in 2020 due to personal magnetism. At least until the boomers die, any politician that goes on the stage and says "I will be boring and keep the status quo, I'm not scary, no sirree" can siphon of votes from otherwise culturally conservative aging population — enough to win elections at least.

Even if boomers don't like guatemalans or transkids, the ones I know all have clay feet and spook at any politician seriously threatening to reshuffle the established order. They're winding out the clock on their comfortable retirements, after all. Consider that the democrats are still 40% likely to win according on betting markets, despite the last four years and their presenting an optically horrible candidate.

I agree that normies love stability. the problem is a bland democrat is the same is a bland republican. And the worry is that the bland bureaucrat is easily bullied by conviction motivated activists. Youngkin defeated McAuliffe because boring McAuliffe flubbed and made him seem vulnerable to the activist wing of trans advocates overriding parental concerns. It is these, among MANY blind spots in the democrat wing, which is why I believe the bland normie is seen as weak: push comes to shove no one has faith Evers or Whitmer will stand up to AOC. (the enemy to me is Jayapal, but no one seems to care about her)

I agree that normies love stability. the problem is a bland democrat is the same is a bland republican.

Can the GOP front a bland republican? It seems to me the Democrats are fairly successful at channeling their radical wing's energy into bland-seeming manager politicians. By contrast, the MAGA wing will veto non-MAGA candidates, who in turn spook the normies; this is to my eyes what happened in 2022 with the red wave that never materialized.

The core difference is that, for all of BLM and antifa's blustering about the revolution, the American red tribe is a whole lot angrier about the state of politics. Psmith is only somewhat exaggerating here when he says 100% of the revolutionary energy in our own society is on the right today. Blue tribe meanwhile knows it's playing defense.

Just this week in the UK, the MAGA equivalent in Britain blew up 14 years of Conservative rule to vote for the radical populist Reform, allowing Labour to waltz into power with a laughable third of the vote. This is what I expect in the US if 2028 Republicans try to field a Nikki Haley or Mitt Romney-like.

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was thrust into the highest levels of politics without any skill development

How would you explain Trump stepping directly into the major leagues and winning in 2016?

I think people, on the left, right, and center vastly underestimate the fact Donald Trump was the most famous person since Dwight D. Eisenhower to run for POTUS.

Which is partly, as a left-wing social democrat, I'm not worried about MAGA, post-Trump. Tucker Carlson or J.D. Vance or whomever is famous to political weirdos, but they're not showing up in guest spots in major motion pictures or being on network TV for a decade or referenced by rappers.

I should have phrased that differently. Political skills are mostly innate, not learned. To paraphrase Wooden, primaries don't build political ability, they reveal it.

The candidate who emerges from a cutthroat primary will, statistically, be a superior political animal to one who is simply gifted the top spot.

He’s been people schmoozing for several decades prior.

Trump did over a decade of reality TV, which is plenty of time to experiment with what people like to see broadcast, anyway.

Well that and she was full of scandals and made idiotic and preventable decisions like barking on live TV and declaring herself ‘just like your abuela’.

But yeah, a coronated politician who hasn’t been through the selection process for politicians is probably going to be less likable than one who rose through the ranks. And that’s what Hillary was.

I complained about the same thing just the other day.

Nice to know there are at least two of us for whom the memories of that time are indelible in the hippocampus. What's notable about the clip I linked is that it occurred before the Blasey Ford allegations. I can almost forgive the Democrats for pushing the Blasey Ford story because they really had a chance to take down Kavanaugh, and the Supreme Court is worth a lot of dirty tactics. But Harris's questioning of Kavanaugh about Bob Mueller stood out to me because it was so pointless (and because she was so incredibly annoying).

Though the details of her career are cringe-worthy, and insults like "cackle" and "word salad" seem to attach themselves easily, Kamala is still mostly an unknown to the American people. A well-managed media campaign, which limits unscripted appearances, will be able to put her in the best light. It's only 4 months to the election. "I'm With Her 2.0". It just... might... work.

I agree that people here discount the possibility of her winning if she becomes the nominee. It’s not above or even close to 50%, but she probably has a 20-30% chance of winning. A lot of people dislike Trump and will be willing to come out to vote against him, just like last time.

I mean, the other thing we have to add is that if Kamala were put on top the of the ticket, she would be free. She could run however she wanted. That wasn't even something she had the liberty of doing back in the primaries. I think people should never underestimate what a freed politician is capable of. Look at Trump, after all! He didn't give a damn about most politicians and it worked out. Harris could do the same.

Oh, for sure Kamala has a chance. Trump is himself, unpopular and difficult to like, and if not as far gone as Biden clearly is is definitely slowing down.

I agree that people here discount the possibility of her winning if she becomes the nominee. It’s not above or even close to 50%, but she probably has a 20-30% chance of winning. A lot of people dislike Trump and will be willing to come out to vote against him, just like last time.

Yeah, while I don't think she would be ideal, people forget that Biden in 2020 had only two arguments in his favor:

  1. He wasn't Trump
  2. He was "safe"

Now that he's apparently mentally unfit, and therefore unsafe, the only argument for him is one he shares with literally every other Democrat, including Harris.

There's little Democrats love more than a historic DEI accomplishment and if Harris becomes the nominee we won't hear the end of all of the exciting potential "firsts" she represents and the enthusiasm for smashing that glass ceiling will become deafening.

I think this is a different America compared to 2008. DEI has become more prominent and is becoming more unpopular — especially affirmative action. I’m not sure “DEI candidate” will be a net positive.

Perhaps so, it's hard to tell for sure. But to the extent that's true, it'll be true for normies - not the Democrat elites who are making these decisions. Among the elites DEI is just as popular as ever.

I agree — my point was a general election point.

Most Democrats want him gone. They voted for him in the primaries but now he's a liability.

Did they? He ran (virtually) unopposed and only got something like 15 million primary votes. They didn't need to vote for him, and they mostly didn't.

Will the long-buried Biden hair-sniffing stories finally see the light of day? Or will the media come back to Biden's corner now that he's fighting back?

It's interesting how my Reddit in the last week has been overrun with "Trump's Best Buddy Jeffrey Epstein" and "Trump accused of raping a 13-year-old" posts across a variety of subs. The anti-Trump bots are out in force and aiming low. If "Biden's Top 10 Underage Gropes" doesn't get equal roll-out, someone is shirking their solemn responsibility.

I mean don't you know Reddit is a combination of willing echo-chamber and strong top-down ideological control by partisan mods? Expecting even-handedness in this case would be like expecting /r/europe or something to be balanced about the Ukraine war.

It's not just bots from team A fighting bots from team B. Team B doesn't even get to play.

Kamala Harris is a little bit wasted as veep, when she would be better suited to a more significant role like daytime talk show host or fun aunt. As President? She seems clueless. She's never won anything like a competitive campaign, she has California cooties, and though being Black And A Woman impresses Democrats, it doesn't impress anyone else. She will also need to own the unpopularity of the Biden administration. I would rate her chances as better than Biden's, but worse than Trump's.

She's not even all that black. She's one quarter black Jamaican, one quarter Irish, and half high-caste Indian. Zero ADOS heritage in there at all.

If you simply expand the A in ADOS to include the Americas...

No, black Caribbean immigrants have notably different (usually better) outcomes in the U.S. than ADOS.

I’d say black Caribbean people should count as ADOS for obvious reasons, but according to Wikipedia they don’t consider them to. In any case, it didn’t matter for Obama and I doubt it would matter here; hostility toward rich African and Caribbean people ‘taking the slots’ for ADOS is limited to a tiny subset of wealthy African Americans in elite institutions, and their white peers don’t seem to care about the debate at all.

Funnily enough the African slaves who were sent to the US had it good in their new countries compared to the fates of those who were unlucky enough to be sent to the Caribbean or Brazil to break their backs on sugar plantations. If anything the Caribbean descendants should be eligible for first class tickets on the US racial gravy train.

On the "hereditary oppression" theory of what is wrong with Black America, ADOS experienced slavery until the 1860's, Jim Crow until the 1960's, and life under hostile white majority rule ever since. The British Caribbean abolished slavery in 1833 (de jure) or 1838-1840 (de facto) - by which point they had already repealed Jim Crow-style restrictions on free blacks, stopped trying to maintain a plantation economy by the 1860's, and brought in near-universal suffrage (and therefore black majority rule within the powers of the local elected assemblies) in 1944. Most Jamaicans in America emigrated after independence in 1962. So although sugar plantation slavery was more lethal than cotton plantation slavery, there is a pretty easy case that the descendants of the survivors suffered more hereditary oppression in the US.

ever since

So, Clinton Obama now??

If anything the Caribbean descendants should be eligible for first class tickets on the US racial gravy train.

Except their case to blaming white Americans for their plight is much weaker, and the US descendants of slaves aren't about to let them forget that.

For what it’s worth, I don’t think Kamala would be too bad. I don’t think she’s especially smart or talented, but a lot of her most cringe appearances have been a consequence of her pretending to be someone she’s not, namely a mystic person of colour speaking truth to power. Ultimately I think she’s on the side of order and capital, and is probably a fair bit smarter than she’s been allowed to express on the campaign trail. I was mostly convinced of the above points by hard leftist friends who considered them disqualifying points, whereas to my mind they make her more plausible.

Of course, whether she’s able to run as a wonk and a cop is a different story. Democratic campaign incentives probably require her to play-act the role of mystic minority. But once in power, I think she could be pretty decent, and potentially far more autonomous than Biden.

She's a total unknown, IMO. What does she even believe? I haven't the slightest.

Assuming that she's a lightweight like everyone says, her presidency would be Biden 2.0 – a weak leader who just follows the consensus of their staff members, most of whom come from the wokest corners of society.

But maybe I'm wrong. Chester A. Arthur was also supposed to be a mere catspaw and he was apparently a pretty decent President.

I wonder how much of this is self-protection? Biden opened Pandora's box (or was seen to) with prosecutions of Trump. That '10% for the big man' avenue could be investigated, not to mention the hair-sniffing and showering-with-teen diary entry. I'm sure a creative judicial approach could find ways to make his life miserable until death. Hunter certainly wants Biden to retain power and protect him, that much is clear.

Biden can just pardon himself and hunter on the way out.

I’m not entirely sure if he can, based on the Supreme courts ruling on presidential immunity (which in effect says that a president cannot be prosecuted for official acts), I’m not sure what the outcome of a sel pardon would be (at a minimum it would end up in court and cost a lot of money).

The Supreme Court's immunity ruling did not rule either way on self-pardons (because they weren't at issue).

I don’t think Trump will go after Biden, he isn’t really a central enemy the way that various prosecutors and perhaps some media figures are. He might go after Hillary but he seems mostly over her too.

showering-with-teen diary entry

I know it's fun to assume maximally salacious details, but the diary entry gave absolutely no indication as to how old Ashley was at the time.

Hunter certainly wants Biden to retain power and protect him, that much is clear.

With what endgame? It seems unlikely at the moment that the big guy will survive his son.

I don't think we should make any assumptions based on Hunter 'Drugs and Hookers' Biden having strong long-term planning skills.

Hunter has another trial coming up.

What trial?

Tax fraud.

I don't actually think that Joe winning improves the situation for Hunter with his legal troubles though. If Joe loses he can pardon Hunter on the way out.

"25A time" is a logical consequence of "too senile to run again" at this point though -- so best case for Hunter is probably "runs and loses" -- then Biden can write a January pardon along the lines of "I hereby pardon my whole damn family for anything and everything we ever did or didn't do; I am a pretty Big Guy lol"

Biden can pardon Hunter whether he wins or loses; it's not like there's takebacks on November 20th.

That's my point. I don't dispute that Hunter wants Joe to retain power, but I don't see his personal legal issues as being a motivating factor.

With what endgame?

What happens to unspent campaign cash after an election? Let's say Biden is tanking but has healthy coffers. Would it benefit a candidate to quietly accept an early loss and become thrifty in the final months, setting aside a surplus of funds as a nice consolation prize?

You can spend it on more political campaigns. Pocketing it is a federal crime that everyone who does it gets prosecuted for.

Everyone? This list looks very short considering how much cash is involved and the kind of person attracted to a career in politics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:American_people_convicted_of_campaign_finance_violations

It looks like campaign money can also go into charities/foundations and PACs. You seem more confident in the sanctity of these funds than I am, especially when it's in the hands of a family associated with over 20 shell companies. Maybe the Clintons can tutor them on how to run a completely above-board Foundation.

It looks like campaign money can also go into charities/foundations and PACs.

I wondered if this was the case and looked it up just before reading your comment. I'm now also wondering if this is more common than we know. The analogy I have in mind is Wikipedia. At some point, someone was the first person to publicly point out that Wikipedia takes in vastly more donations than they need to actually run the site, and oh by the way, much of the extra money seems to get funneled into leftist causes. I don't know how widely spread that piece of information is (and frankly, I haven't checked into it, so I'm hoping I'm not falling into Scott's "too good to check"). But has anyone done a broad look at what percentage of campaign funds actually get spent on the campaigns, themselves? What, in practice, often happens with the leftovers? I imagine plenty of it gets recycled into future campaigns, but how much? How much gets rolled into 'charitable organizations'? How many of those are, like, actually spending the money on real charitable things, rather than being a hiring/holding location for party operatives, as a way to keep a bench of folks on some sort of payroll? Do the different parties have different mixes of how their funds get used? Etc.

Yeah at a minimum the campaign funds could go to some sort of Biden PAC which pays a healthy salary and expenses to the family.

It’s not like Biden is going to be drawing hefty speaking fees post presidency like Obama.

I doubt that money is Biden’s motivation but saying this can never happen is silly.

That's... Not how it works. You can't pocket unspent campaign money.

I keep going back to what Rob Costa said a week ago and retweeted this afternoon:

https://x.com/costareports/status/1807080990067576943

"Spoke this morning to a couple people close to President Biden. Hard to overstate how much he dismisses the political class and media in private. Believes many of them haven’t understood him for decades, don’t get his appeal. Cares what elected Ds with real power and voters say."

There is a decent chance that Biden is just stubbornly going to hold on at this point. The pundit class is certainly going to try to manifest Biden withdrawling, but it seems to me that the average person on the street is not there yet and remains unphased by the debate.

I think it also reveals just how weak the biden campaign infrastructure is. Even if biden doesnt have the ability to get out there and prove it was just a bad night, you'd think they would be able to bootstrap or astroturf a social media campaign to get a counter message out there. Even if its transparently fake, the fact that I havent seen a trending hashtag for #RidinWithBiden is pretty pathetic. I thought they had $90 million in the bank and just bought a $50 million ad campaign? They couldnt afford some fake follers and an influencer campaign? Of course they could. They just have no vision.

but it seems to me that the average person on the street is not there yet and remains unphased by the debate.

Oh no. The average person known Biden is fully senile and thinks it's extremely concerning.

Correct.

I'd wager about 47% of the vote (so, about 94% of the Blue tribe vote) is simply "Blue Tribe good. Orange man bad." The average voter looks at Biden and goes, "Oh, yeah, that guy isn't even on this planet. But...fuck Trump." They will vote for whatever blue option is there. This is why Harris (should the hot swap happen) will end up with "A historic share of the vote for the first BIPOC womyn candidate for President" .... even though most of her voters will (again) simply be smashing that Blue Like Button.

The obvious thing that I think is being missed is that the polling data for Biden is really, really, really bad:

Again, my back of the envelope math is that about 94% of the vote is already set in stone. If all you have to work with is about ~6%, the polls can't ever do a truly wild 10+ point swing. Most of all of it is already hard locked in.

This is why it's so on-its-face hilarious that you have some (not all, maybe not even many, but some) media outlets trying to spin the post debate polls as "hey, the polls have only moved against Biden 2 or 3 points maybe" when that's something like 30-40% of all moveable (I.e. not hard set) votes. It's a huge deal, especially because debates are mostly viewed as nothing burgers in recent campaign histories.

Lies, damn lies, and statistics. Presidential race polling is one of the most potent forms of copium with an overlayer of confirmation-bias rohrshach test. See also: the UK elections wherein "polls" had Labor absolutely "crushing" everyone and actual results showing ... 34% of the national vote (this is a little apples-to-oranges as the structure of British Parliament means you can win even though you don't win a big vote share, and I acknowledge that).

I mean it depends on who you're listening to. AFAIK virtually all of the actual pollsters, rather than politicians (or anchors) who make use of polls, have said that the polling is absolutely dreadful for Biden, and that was true to some extent even before the debate. Second-hand poll users are free to make arguments about how weak the polling is, but that does not make it what the primary sources are saying, so to speak.

The danger to the DNC is mostly not that regular dem voters will vote for Trump. That's probably not happening, except for however much racial realignment is going on.

The danger for democrats is that those voters will stay home instead of voting for Biden and throw downballot races.

Granted VBM has reduced this risk somewhat as it reduces the cost of voting.

They just paid a bunch of podcasters and votebots to push #DownWithCNN, so they're actively working on what it is certainly possible to describe as a strategy.

It's shocking how badly they perform the first time they have to face a hostile media. Without Voxspainer Graphics they can't get out any kind of coordinated messaging.

Still they're in a position where unless Biden resigns or otherwise has a severe medical downgrade they've already given him the nomination.


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