Your examples do absolutely nothing to disprove a one-sided lawfare hypothesis so why should I grant you that point?
calling state officials to pull votes for you out of thin air
This is an extremely motivated reading of that phone call, especially with more recent revelations on the election in Georgia. Gotta be honest, it’s making me doubt your commitment to even-handed lawfare.
it's the same sort of thing that regularly happens in third world countries. Hell it's happening in Venezuela right now.
Prosecuting your political opponents? You’re right! The political valence is even the same!
ETA: I’ll grant you Al Franken in the sense that the democrats definitely did not have to get rid of him. My opinion is that they only did because it was peak #MeToo and their hand was forced by the appearance of hypocrisy and their extreme left faction. (It doesn’t hurt that MN is relatively safely blue.) Note that in the years since many people involved in his resignation have publicly come to regret it. Regardless, it definitionally wasn’t lawfare since he faced no charges.
Barron2024
10mo ago
I don't have near as much a problem with it as you seem to.
Exactly! Because you know your side will never actually face consequences!
Surely you can see there is an enormous qualitative difference between democrats ejecting an unpopular democrat in a safe-D state and democrats digging through the couch cushions and charging the opposing presidential candidate with whatever novel legal theories they can find?
Barron2024
10mo ago
Warships are launching SSM interceptors to strike threats 20 to 40NM away, not 1-5NM. At closer ranges EW nukes all command guidance
They’ll happily launch million dollar ESSMs, RAMs, and Nulkas at closer ranges, see the USS Mason. The US Navy is pretty far behind the Air Force in operational EW, I suspect it will be a long while before any captain entrusts EW with incoming threats over lobbing $10M in physical ordnance.
Barron2024
10mo ago
"No lawfare" is just corruption, because every public figure is partisan. Was Bob Menendez (D-NJ) a victim of lawfare when he was convicted of 16 counts of bribery? He has a D next to his name! George Santos? Michael Flynn? "Lawfare" absent any hard evidence of the motives of the prosecutors is little more than the idea that anyone you like can't be accused of a crime.
You’re right. It is corruption. One-sided lawfare is also corruption, and of a more dangerous kind.
Bob Menendez will be replaced by another guy with a D next to his name so absolutely nothing was lost by the democrats. The occasional no-stakes sacrifice isn’t fooling anyone, especially when it took two decades for consequences.
I'd also argue the right does know what lawfare is. What do you think all those people chanting "Lock her up!" were calling for?
They wanted lawfare. Your rules applied fairly and all that.
Barron2024
10mo ago
I’d just like you to not act as though your personal desire for fairness in lawfare means anything to those of us on the right. No lawfare is much preferred over one-sided lawfare.
Barron2024
10mo ago
If Republicans want to engage in "lawfare" against Democrats by punishing them for things they are guilty of, great!
This is so easy to say when you know it will never come to pass.
My rules fairly > your rules fairly > my rules unfairly > your rules unfairly.
We are currently in “your rules unfairly”, and you’re right that I would prefer my rules unfairly over your rules unfairly.
I don’t necessarily want to call you a liar, because I believe that you would prefer yours rules fairly over your rules unfairly. But given that you won’t acknowledge that we are in the your rules unfairly stage we are at an impasse.
Engaging in lawfare against your presidential opponent is simply a significantly larger break in norms than any example you or anyone else can muster. And while you can say “it’s all good, come after my candidate too!” until you’re blue in the face, we both know that it will never happen due to many structural reasons cited elsewhere in this thread, so it rings incredibly hollow.
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