Cromwell

Assume that Biden wins the election, but that his legislative initiatives are consistently frustrated by the Trump Supreme Court. Nothing positive has emerged from his court commission. As a result, court packing is his only viable option if he wants to get anything done. How many new positions should be created?

The objective would be to pick the minimum number required to prevent judicial obstruction, while providing a rationale that will seem fair to the general public and will discourage GOP attempts at retaliation in the future.

The number is four. That represents the two seats which were stolen from the Democrats and given to the Republicans. It would give the left a 7-6 majority on issues relating to voting rights. It would protect us from a Supreme Court which may well be determined to ignore the will of the majority and throw elections to Republicans on frivolous legal grounds.

The elderly were among Trump’s most reliable supporters in 2016, and have consistently voted for the GOP for the last two decades. It appears that Trump is about to lose a large percentage of them, and with them, the election. Why?

For these reasons:

1. The Democrats nominated an old white guy, so Trump wasn’t able to play the identity card the way he did in 2016. His obnoxious attacks on Biden’s acuity only made things worse.
2. The elderly, by and large, prefer to keep things on an even keel; they have less ability to react to change than younger people. Trump brings drama and danger every day.
3. And, of course, there was the virus. It wasn’t just that the government had no answers for the pandemic; it threatened the lives of the elderly by telling people to get on with their lives regardless of the medical consequences. Trump’s clear message was that the deaths of old people would be acceptable collateral damage in the process of opening up the economy and boosting the stock market. Is it any wonder many older voters don’t appreciate that?

Much attention has been given recently to the structural advantages the GOP enjoys in our political system as a result of the overrepresentation of rural areas in Washington. It has been estimated that the Democrats have to win the national popular vote by 2-3 percent to have any chance of winning the presidency, and 5-6 percent to win the Senate. How can this be addressed?

Recent history tells us the Electoral College problem is far from insuperable. The issue with the Senate, however, is far harder to deal with. Only a massive failure on the part of the GOP in government leads to effective Democratic control of both houses of Congress.

There are two ways to resolve the problem. The first is to create more states; the second is for the Democrats to show more tolerance for people who lean right in the culture wars. Rural residents don’t necessarily have an issue with a government that intervenes heavily in the economy (think farm subsidies here); they do, however, insist on legal safe spaces for Christians.

Which of these two solutions do you think is more plausible?

Most commentators have viewed Biden’s proposal for a bipartisan commission as a fairly lame attempt to avoid talking about court packing before the election. There is probably an element of that, but I think there is a much larger purpose that is being missed–a welcome effort to depoliticize the Supreme Court nomination and confirmation process.

The process is horribly broken right now. Control of the Court, from a partisan perspective, turns on age and luck rather than any expression of popular will. Nominees refuse to answer perfectly legitimate questions about their judicial philosophy. Senators respond to the lack of information by engaging in personal attacks. Plenty of heat is generated, but almost no light.

Biden doesn’t need a commission to address court packing, but he does need one to discuss broader remedies to the problem, most of which would involve constitutional amendments. There are perfectly viable solutions, most notably getting rid of life tenure and staggering terms, that can be on the table if both parties agree. Since the Republicans currently have an advantage in appointments, why would they consent? Because the court packing option is available as leverage.

Life in the time of Trump.

The election is next week.

The polls all say that Trump’s behind.

He’s swimming up the creek.

He’s trying to suppress the votes

It’s his only path.

For if the vote is free and fair

We’ll see a blue bloodbath.

Are white Christians the only true Americans, and thus entitled to rule even if they don’t constitute the majority of the American people?

Does the winner of the presidential election have the right to behave as an autocrat, accountable to no one, for four years, or is he constrained by the law and the rest of our political institutions, as contemplated by the Constitution?

Assume that Trump loses the election by a decisive margin. What does he do between early November and Inauguration Day?

It won’t be pretty. He will be sulking at Mar-a-Lago and tweeting furiously. His interest in governing, always limited at best, will be restricted to finding ways to reward his friends and punish his enemies. He will pardon people who suck up to him and consider pardoning himself. He may direct people around him to destroy records that would make him look bad. His cooperation in making the transition should not be assumed.

The best case scenario is that he plays golf and watches lots of TV. Sad!

Some right-wing commentators are arguing that Barrett is not required to recuse herself from any litigation arising from the election because the argument in favor of recusal applies equally to Gorsuch and Kavanaugh. Are they right?

No. Gorsuch and Kavanaugh were confirmed well before the election was pending. There was no suggestion that their nomination was any kind of a quid pro quo for keeping Trump in office. Barrett is in a completely different position; the inference of undue influence will be drawn by hundreds of millions of Americans if she casts a deciding vote in favor of Trump in an election case.

For the good of the country, she should recuse herself. Period.

Muhammad Ali beat George Foreman in the “Rumble in the Jungle” by remaining passive during the first several rounds and letting Foreman punch himself fruitlessly into exhaustion. Ali called this tactic the “rope-a-dope,” and, like many of his more memorable lines, it stuck.

Biden is doing something very similar with Trump. He’s making the election a referendum on the incumbent, rather than a choice between two visions of America, by saying and doing only the minimum that is required. Every day that Trump is out shooting himself in the foot is a victory for him. The fruits of it will be seen on November 3.

This is not a very inspiring approach, and it would only work against someone as narcissistic and erratic as Trump. It does, however, require great discipline, which has not been a hallmark of Biden’s campaigns in the past. The old dog has learned a new trick.

The point of the debates, in the final analysis, is to provide information to undecided voters. With such a polarizing president, who are these people in 2020? I answered that question in a post a month ago; they either wanted to see if the condition of the country would improve before the election, or they had unanswered questions about Biden’s strength and acuity.

Trump clearly agreed with my analysis, because his strategy for the first debate was to try to shake Biden and thus win over the second kind of undecided voter. It was a high risk, high reward approach, and it failed miserably. He came across as an obnoxious lunatic, and it cost him votes.

Instead of doubling down, he switched tactics last night in an apparent effort to win back the ground he lost at the first debate. While there was plenty of obvious untruth, ludicrous grandiosity and narcissism, and laughable absurdity in his presentation, he did not sound insane. As a result, he cleared the ridiculously low bar he created for himself, and he may have clawed back a few of the wavering supporters who had fallen off his bandwagon after the first debate.

But in the end, he accomplished nothing. Biden is still standing. He didn’t sound like a feeble, senile old man to the undecideds. Trump is far behind; he needed to do far more than prove to his supporters that he is still on his rocker. The election is still a referendum on him and his response to the pandemic. He can’t win that argument.

At least not in a fair fight. It’s all about vote suppression and the law now. If Biden wins Florida on November 3, it’s over. If he doesn’t, the nightmare scenario is upon us, and the question will be whether all of the lawful votes in the swing states will be counted.

The election is twelve days away.

We fear it more than we can say.

We have feelings of dread

Occupying our heads

But Trump wins if we give in that way.

The leaves are spectacular in the mountains of North Carolina at this time of year. You cling to them desperately, and try to savor every moment, because you know they’re doomed. They’ll be gone in a week or so. Winter is coming.

It’s hard to avoid seeing this as a metaphor for the election and our political system. If Trump somehow leverages vote suppression and the support of “his” Supreme Court into an unlikely victory, he will (probably correctly) view it as a successful referendum on autocracy, and behave accordingly. The next four years will be about the Orban Option, and whether it can be stopped. If Biden–the most inoffensive Democrat available–wins, he will have to deal with the fact that 30-40 percent of the voters consider his presidency illegitimate, because the bulk of his supporters aren’t straight white Christians. That, not the innumerable shortcomings of Trump’s personality, is the central problem of American politics today.

The only hope for our system is a successful Biden presidency that moves America to the left on economic issues and accommodates the right on cultural issues. It will be an exercise in threading the needle. The odds are against it. But it’s all we’ve got.

Trump is clearly convinced that he’s losing, which is bad news for us and the integrity of our liberal democratic system. The more threatened he feels, the more the craziness quotient goes up. With less than two weeks to go and the polls looking really bad, the sky’s the limit.

What will he try at the debate? Trevor Noah is apparently making jokes about him screaming or trying to grab Biden’s microphone when his is muted; I don’t think that is implausible at all. Will he run over to Biden and try to make a citizen’s arrest? Will he and his entourage show up without masks and try to make everyone sick? Who knows?

It’s not physically possible to hold your breath for twelve days, but that’s really what’s required here.

Superman, of course, can fly. The Flash can move at something like the speed of light. The Incredible Hulk is amazingly strong. If Donald Trump is a superhero, what are his superpowers?

They’re in his thumbs. He owns the libs on Twitter.

As I understand it, the Pennsylvania official in charge of running the election issued an order, based on the pandemic and problems with the Post Office, permitting the counting of votes that are postmarked, but not received, by November 3. Local GOP luminaries sued in state court. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court applied state law and upheld the order. The US Supreme Court subsequently considered the issue and deadlocked 4-4 on staying the Pennsylvania court’s order, with Roberts joining the three liberals. The order consequently remains in place, at least for now.

This sounds positive, but it isn’t. The Supreme Court did not issue an opinion on the matter, so we don’t know what the reasoning of the majority and the minority was, but we do know that one of the appellants’ arguments was that vote counting has to stop on the day of the election as a matter of federal law. In other words, all of us have a constitutional right to vote, but not to have that vote counted, even if it was cast in complete accordance with the law. Barrett will be on the Court on November 4. If Biden doesn’t win a clear victory on November 3, therefore, it is now certain that we will have the toxic cocktail of Trump “orders” to stop the counts, litigation in state courts, multiple Brooks Brothers riots, and an ultimate decision by a Supreme Court beholden to the man on golf cart.