gattsuru
1yr ago
It depends a lot on the specific state and situation.
Colorado, specifically is one of the few states with a tested faithless elector statute that not only prohibits an elector from submitting a vote against the state's popular vote count, but swaps them for someone else who will. In Colorado, this selection is made by the other electors: the question of what happens if every elector defies state law is so-far untested. Not all states have such statutes, or their statutes may only fine (rather than replace) faithless electors.
Electors are transmitted to the Senate by the executive branch of their states: for Colorado, they literally meet in the Governor's office, and the Governor sends the notice out. There's some (afaik) untested space for fuckery here.
The US Senate then receives and certifies the electoral vote. Historically, Senators could object to these individual, but as of 2022 it requires 20% of the Senate, and the Vice President has no serious authority... by statute. There's some !!fun!! questions about how much the statute actually binds Senators, given matters like nuclear option, but it's a schilling point and if they had 50% of the Senate they'd probably just use the rules as-is.
gattsuru
1yr ago
At least in theory, it was also supposed to promote the more serious write-in candidates, and to provide a method to enforce Colorado's sore loser law (although that law probably can't be applied to Presidential candidates).
gattsuru
1yr ago
Newsweek reports that we have more volunteers:
Republican lawmakers in three swing states have announced their plan to remove President Joe Biden from their state ballots.
Aaron Bernstine of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, Cory McGarr of the Arizona House of Representatives and Charlice Byrd of the Georgia House of Representatives released a joint statement on Thursday announcing their plan to remove Biden from the 2024 general election ballots in those three states.
While their letter says that they plan to or are in the process to "introduce legislation", it's not clear from a quick search if they've done so, or even what that legislation would look like, nor how it would, in their words, "allow ALL candidates to be on the ballot in all states". It's far from obvious that they could get legislation through their respective legislatures within the necessary time period before the general election, or even at all: of the three states, only Georgia has a Republican governor, and it's unlikely Kemp will jump onto this particular grenade. The trio don't even have a particularly coherent theory for why and what disqualifying specific act applies.
So this is grift, and a publicity stunt, and dumber.
On the other hand, unlike Colorado or California, all three are states that matter: there are election models that treat them as swing states, not background temperature and a joke. It's a good thing that a lot of people talking about fucking with ballots hasn't caused problems in recent years, and that there aren't far-more-dangerous attacks that these games make more prominent.
gattsuru
1yr ago
Scott Pilgrim was a chillingly accurate documentary.
gattsuru
1yr ago
gattsuru
1yr ago
I'm not confident on it, but I think Davis-as-President would have been subject to Section 14 and 15 of the Enforcement Act of 1870, during his lifetime, if a bit of a clusterfuck given the attorney general component (and judicial) making it a bit of a race.
gattsuru
1yr ago
Two decades would be 2003. There are some difficulties in predictions and retrospectives, especially ones that didn't come to pass, but I think not.
I'm happy that's the case -- we'd be talking around or immediately after Lawrence v. Texas, for example -- but it makes a very awkward example.
gattsuru
1yr ago
SBF also (commit to) spend a hundred million dollars on a sportsball stadium endorsement deal for a game he didn't care about. It's like the hours spent being awful at League of Legends that probably pad that workweek, or being vegan except for a shrimp accident, or not caring how hotel rooms or schedules worked. He banged a bunch of not-supermodel-tier women because he didn't need (and probably wouldn't have benefited from) a supermodel to get what he needed.
I'd like to think it was the same problem as Ayn Rand going from long speeches about honesty and fidelity through relationship to having an abusive affair: both were simply corked out of their gourd on the finest medicinal accellerants available, with corresponding monofocus on whatever was in front of them, augmented by the feeling and demand that this task was the right one.
But most people on these drugs don't do that, and there's no small number of teetotalers who do. It could well just be an addictive personality to a particularly boring sort of addiction, and I'll admit it's something I've seen as a temptation myself. It's the sort of thing that makes Expert Roulette in FFXIV not-boring, or arguing on the internet irresistible, and it's not always bad on the margins. Emphasis on that last bit.
[I'm answering this a little out of order, as I think the more critical stuff was wedge into the center.]
If conservatives were being literally marched into concentration camps it would absolutely change the conversation, and I would say "Goddamn, gattsuru, you were right and I was wrong!" How are you concluding from anything I wrote that I would be unmoved by conservatives being marched into concentration camps?
I am neither describing concentration camps as a current or plausible near-future problem, to be very explicit. If they happen, I will be wrong, too. Beyond that:
... where do you put concentration camps on a scale of novelty? They literally happened, more than once, as particularly shameful periods in American history. One memorable and significant set in living memory. They certainly weren't anywhere near what you'd have to dive to the Literal Civil War, to use the term I applied for A(4).
Novel means new. Not mean worse, or a different color, or upside down: it means different from what has come before.
I'm not sure where this confusion is coming from, but looking for something that has already happened in the United States and been meaningful is precisely what A(3) and A(4) are trying to exclude, where A(1) is about whether the specific examples I've presented being true, and A(2) is the Chinese Cardiology option.
but I would summarize it as "I still think the evidence does not say we are as far along down the slippery slope as you think we are" - do you think that is a fair summary, or not? Is it that there are specific examples whose litigation you are unsatisfied about/you think I dodged, or that you think I should have been convinced by the volume of your examples and I am not?
Ok, that's not A at all, which was about whether "Things I'm citing are "specious arguments, half-truths, misrepresentations, and outright lies". It sounds more like something along one of B ("The things I'm citing real and meaningful, but not justification for retaliation"), or C ("These things real, and meaningful, and justification for retaliation, but not cause for escalation").
Is that closer? Or is there something on "meaningful" that you're trying to dig into?
We could debate the specifics of each one of those examples... but I would summarize it as "I still think the evidence does not say we are as far along down the slippery slope as you think we are" - do you think that is a fair summary, or not?
... I don't think this helps expand the problem. You've said countless times that our situation -- if not "greater free speech than has existed in almost any period of history " -- at least not bad enough to do some greater action over, beyond complain or persuade, and even for complaining you have little patience for people thinking they're oppressed.
That does not explain if the examples I bring up "mostly isn't happening", or if they're happening but they can't justify any retaliation, or if they're happening but can't justify any escalation. I did the whole Wittgenstein format question, trying to break this down, and instead I'm asking a second time.
Even this exact quote doesn't deliminate between whether you disagree with my evidence, or with my assessment of the tactical or strategic or moral sphere. And it's infuriating, because you keep bringing examples of specific acts as if they mattered, and it's really not clear that any but the most extreme, unlikely, and irrecoverable ones do. And I can't even tell if that's because there's something you don't like about the examples I bring of those specific acts, or because they don't matter to the extent they did happen.
Is it that there are specific examples whose litigation you are unsatisfied about/you think I dodged, or that you think I should have been convinced by the volume of your examples and I am not?
See above. I'm not going to, and can't, and don't want to, demand anything, but I can't see this being productive without at least trying to:
-
Pick one-to-three claims that I presented as a present-day encroachment of conservative civil rights and freedoms, and argue that it did not happen or mostly did not happen (in the sense it never occurred to start with, rather than in the sense it was overturned or punished in some form by the state).
-
Give as low-severity an example of a thing as you can think of, that would justify retaliation, which you believe has not happened, which if I can show has happened would persuade you retaliation on that matter were acceptable.
-
Give an example of a thing progressives have done, which is acceptable for conservatives to retaliate on, but not to escalate, and what that escalation would look like.
[edit: Yes, these do leave remaining options unavailable: you could, for example, disagree out of a general moral principle toward deescalation, with an exception for the absolute last-second of some extreme and irrevocable all-consuming abuse by a fascist government; or need some sort of statistically-validated incidence rate for discrimination or civil rights violation; or perhaps some certain classes of injury set aside for special pleading. There are some interesting conversations to be had under each aegis. Two or three years ago, I would even be interested in having that conversation with you. But you've made bets about things that don't make sense in any of those frameworks. If they're your real objection, state it and we'll at least have closure, but I'm not getting into those debates with you given the communication problems we've already had.]
I reread those links and do not see where I am arguing that "turnabout is fair play so conservatives need to sit down and take it."
The actual words I wrote were that "your evidence that conservatives need sit down and take it..." "in response to" "...matters as simple as turnabout being fair play."
"My heart does not bleed much when "liability" is being kicked off of Twitter" is literally the comment I linked to in those words you (mis)quoted, as was "I'm on your side if you want to push back against the anti-free speech, authoritarian ideology that is increasingly popular on the left. I am not on your side if that "push back" is defection and civil war." This was in response to a series of conversations not about civil war, or succession, or street warfare, or Minecraft LARP, but about some stupid speech restrictions (in Hungary!) or (a strawman of) "surely, we must burn THIS book?".
There are good arguments against making that particular choice! But instead of an argument against such an action, you simply jump to acting as though people were plotting "defection and civil war" rather than fairly trite regulations.
Now, this was before it was demonstrably proven that Twitter's moderation schema was often government employees naming individual posters to take down; it was merely blindingly obvious that these groups were at least reacting to government threats. Now, I don't particularly agree with FCFromSSC's position on free speech, and I at least try to be (if not always successfully) a true believer in free speech.
But come on. You're "on [my] side if you want to push back", somewhere... so long as that's limited to complaining about it, or trying to persuade people who don't care or actively want to punish conservative positions. Absolutely your prerogative to hold that position; I'd like to hold it as well. But instead of arguing why it is morally or pragmatically correct, instead you leap to people not being sent to a gulag.
Who was talking about gulags, when FCFromSSC in your exact quote was comparing a thousand-dollar fine against the social cost of his online identity being attached to his real one? Doesn't matter, it's the new standard!
((I mean, you do touch on the turnabout is fair play when progressives do it gimmick, with literally "you guys started it" sometimes, but it's rare enough that I try not to focus on it, and it wasn't among my links above.))
It doesn't help that we told you once to lay off the big collection of "links to every argument you've ever made" every time you argue with someone, because it's antagonistic and obnoxious, and to this day you claim that we told you you "aren't allowed to refute people with evidence."
And also asked me not to joust with old posts and ZorbaTHut said "I'm kinda not okay with digging through people's Reddit history using search tools to catch them in contradictions."
Fine. It's your shop, it's your rules. It's just this one class of evidence, and only when antagonistic, and it's only evidence of past claims, why would that matter?
(Apropos of nothing, did you know Darwin's back? Maybe he'll engage more seriously these days.)
I'll be more specific about what I'm not allowed to dig for in the future.
gattsuru
1yr ago
And that’s not even the worst part! There’s implications to the Baude argument that even today I’m totally unwilling to post in public clear text, even past what’s already happened and is being discussed.
gattsuru
1yr ago
It just kicks the can down the road til the (deadlines for the) general election. Which is kinda a joke, but it's also kinda not.
There's one extent where the decision doesn't matter, because the Colorado primary and even general vote doesn't matter, and steps made here on the primary ballot will be swamped by actions taken for the general ballot here and elsewhere.
But there is absolutely an army of progressive twitterati champing at the bit, from Whitehouse or the White House on down, to take the acceptance or even delayed denial of an appeal -- which is discretionary! -- as evidence that the conservative side of the court -- did you know that Gorsuch is the justice assigned to the 10th Circuit, which includes Colorado? -- has been utterly compromised and is willing to sell out the Constitution to defend and promote the unlawful and doomed campaign of a monster, an insurrectionist, and a Republican. Punting at least avoids attacks on the 'shadow docket'; having months rather than weeks buys a lot of opportunity to have genuine arguments or, in the best case, to produce a per curiam opinion.
((Unfortunately, I think a lot of legal eagles are only considering it in these frameworks, while worse risks bubble under the surface. And there are probably a good many more tactics going on that I am not aware of or able to consider with five minutes of a novice's thought.))
gattsuru
1yr ago
It's funny, but I'm... not as optimistic about that portion of that dissent.
gattsuru
1yr ago
Presuming but not concluding that's true, it might make things more sympathetic, but it doesn't make it any less of a circus. And this stuff is too important to say "sorry you got outmaneuvered, we'll give you a mulligan and a handicap on the next one".
gattsuru
1yr ago
... I think this is insufficiently cynical/paranoid/worried.
As you say, the point is to do things perceived as hurting the outgroup without predicted cost of getting in too much trouble. But the people doing the perception and prediction are vast, and not all are wise or farseeing.
This doesn't matter! Trump didn't win Colorado in 2016, he didn't win the primary in Colorado in 2016. Even if it continues to the general election, there's no path to the White House that turns on Colorado. The standing and jurisdiction issues make this specific sort of challenge restricted to Colorado and a couple other (similarly unimportant) states, and the timeline means that even if someone started today to try to reflect the same processes backward, it wouldn't be able to hit for 2026, nevermind 2024.
But that's the sort of analysis that's somewhere between spherical-cow and infinite frictionless plane, assuming that one's enemies and even own side have not animating factor of their own. But the pebbles vote is the avalanche.
I linked to the past discussion on Baude and Pualsen's paper, not just because it's relevant, but because the court here endorsed its logic in the context of judicial review. But Baude did not limit to judicial review. Instead, their paper holds that every officer of the United States or state government with any power to review ballots has not just a power but a responsibility to unilaterally reject a Section-Three disqualified candidate. And that's the explicit text!
So to avoid further escalation, we do not merely need that every court and judge eventually deny or reverse this one ruling, but that everyone with the power to act on this chooses to put down particularly tempting and shiny weapon. Indeed, by the plain text of this decision, even if SCOTUS stays matters explicitly, the Colorado Secretary of State retains the power to reject ineligible candidates, as simple as can be. It's just the Secretary of State's determination, then, rather than being explicitly prohibited by court mandate from including Trump on the ballot. Unless and until a court issues an order explicitly requiring otherwise, there's only the often-broad limits of their powers under state law -- in the hands of people who can now, quite accurately, argue in the face of future lawsuits that they were not violating clearly established law. And that will remain the case after the primary, after the general election, and even after the election has been counted. In every state.
There's reason I compare this to the independent state legislature theory.
I was hesitant to talk about this publicly, for the same reason that I've been hesitant to talk about some of your drone stuff privately, even though it's a very interesting and important topic. But where there was a minor risk that public conversation might at least go different directions than Baude and Paulsen's papers, if not larger ones, a court case going to SCOTUS overwhelms any risk I or we could present.
I don't think people are stupid enough to try this, even with 50 Secretaries of State and a few thousand relevant electoral officials. It doesn't take many snake eyes, and I've been wrong before, though.
Why is the citation to Schenck a low point? It is cited only for the principle of "the importance of context in holding that “the character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done.”
It's exceptionally unclear if that principle remains good law, not just in the awkward question of what extent Schenck was overruled (technically Brandenburg only explicitly overruled Whitney v. California), but in the sense that exact and literal text is part of the central holding of Schenck. It might get read out less often, but it's as core the famous line:
We admit that in many places and in ordinary times the defendants in saying all that was said in the circular would have been within their constitutional rights. But the character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done. The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic. It does not even protect a man from an injunction against uttering words that may have all the effect of force.
More recent cases have been highly limited in the extent they have accepted such expansive reads, but even in the specific context of Brandenburg and Davis that cry for Circumstances was recognized as permitting widely restrictive limits on speech based on whatever Current Thing was, given the extent WWI and WWII and anti-communism had twisted past precedent.
But more deeply than that, if you're trying to write an opinion on a controversial subject, and you've got a claim you think blindingly obvious, you should be able to pick a precedent that isn't a byword for bad and motivated law, whose central holding applied broadly to speech we generally permit, and who you don't have to worry about (and fail to!) note as overruled on other grounds.
This is very much not my recollection of that election, what are you talking about?
The current sitting President of the United States, then VP campaigned against Romney by claiming he would put African-Americans back "in chains". Romney was campaigning against hormonal birth control, somehow. Romney's VP pick faced attack ads that had him wheeling grandma off a cliff. Ann Romney was a repeated target of pretty shitty media coverage that conveniently intersected with her multiple sclerosis. People were absolutely sure Romney-Ryan were going to ban gay sex, somehow! The IRS leaked NOM donation records that just conveniently happened to have his donations included, and just so happened to get delivered to the HRC.
Harry Reid famously and falsely claimed that Romney'd paid zero taxes on the floor of Congress, and after it had been widely distributed, widely believed, and at cost proven wrong, then years later said he had no regrets because "he lost, didn't he"!
gattsuru
1yr ago
I'd have preferred if they'd showed some spine instead, but Carlson in particular is a weathervane, not a keel.
gattsuru
1yr ago
I just reread all those posts of mine you linked to. I can see how you might disagree with some of the things I said. I can see how I might have worded some things better, or might even walk back a line or two if I were re-editing myself now. I cannot see where you get (what I perceive to be) an accusation that I am lying or arguing in bad faith or ignoring your counteraguments. For the most part, I stand by what I said and have not changed my opinions.
Because none of these things would break from the standards you demand, now!
Time, after time, after time, after time, you propose horribles or parades of horribles of things that are Worse that are your evidence that conservatives need sit down and take it, not just in response to civil war rhetoric but even to matters as simple as turnabout being fair play.
And then I provide examples that those parades of horribles are happening, or being attempted, or in rare cases have been room temperature for a decade or been applied to me personally. In some cases, you explicitly say that "mostly, it's not happening" and a "gish gallop", even after I provide explicit evidence, without even the slightest effort to point to a single one that I'm actually wrong on. Other times, you just ipse dixit, or simply duck out because my claims "doesn't impress", none of the examples I bring were persuasive enough for you to even bother responding to.
And now it turns out it doesn't matter! It wouldn't change the conversation even if conservatives were being literally marched into concentration camps -- which, to be extremely explicit so you don't deflect down that rabbit hole again, I'm not claiming is the current state. If A(3) or A(4) are what we're trying to talk about, we've had concentration camps before! Why the hell were you asking me about shit like voicing conservative opinions in public or struggle sessions? You, in this thread, brought up "(Or even, say, the level of a fringe political or religious minority in previous eras in US history.)" as what you were arguing against, and by definition even if I could have demonstrated this to your requirements, it'd still not have been novel at all!
Well, okay, maybe the conversation topic just drifted in the last handful of posts. You've said our real disagreement was about whether the severity and novelty of the gish gallops examples I provided weren't serious enough to justify defection. That's something we could discuss seriously, and I spent a thousand words doing it: why evaluations of novelty are vulnerable to giving you whatever answer you came in wanting, and why defection is both necessary and laudable before the more extreme degrees of marginalization and exclusion from the public sphere hit.
Did your response here engage with any of that, either? You literally can't see how you're ignoring my counterarguments or arguing in bad faith, with all that?
gattsuru
1yr ago
The Colorado GOP was already threatening to go to a caucus system before this; there's near certainty that they'll try to do so now. The federal GOP's rules normally hold that :
And that his choice must be made before October 1st of 2023:
No material changes to the manner of electing, selecting, allocating, or binding delegates or alternate delegates or the date upon which such state Republican Party elects, selects, allocates, or binds delegates to the national convention shall be effective if made or adopted after October 1 of the year before the year in which the national convention is to be held. Where it is not possible for a state Republican Party to certify the manner and date upon which it holds a presidential primary, caucus, convention, or meeting for the purpose of voting for a presidential candidate and/or electing, selecting, allocating, or binding delegates to the national convention in effect in that state on the date and in the manner provided in paragraph (f) of this rule, the process for holding the presidential primary, caucus, convention, or meeting for the purpose of voting for a presidential candidate and/or electing, selecting, allocating, or binding delegates to the national convention shall be conducted in the same manner and held upon the same date as was used for the immediately preceding national convention. If it is not possible to hold a presidential primary, caucus, convention, or meeting for the purpose of voting for a presidential candidate and/or electing, selecting, allocating, or binding delegates to the national convention upon the same date as was used for the immediately preceding national convention, then delegates or alternate delegates shall be elected or selected by congressional district or state conventions pursuant to paragraph (e) of this rule.
But there's a few very broad exceptions, and even before touching the exceptions there's going to be serious arguments that the Colorado primary system no longer is a "vote that permits a choice among candidates".
Whether they can functionally assemble it, and whether some new principle will apply after they have done so, are exercises for the terrified viewer.
gattsuru
1yr ago
... and... separately, I made a bunch of predictions, here and here.
I didn't get all of them correct -- Rittenhouse hasn't faced federal prosecution (yet), and Dominick Black ended up with a suspended sentence for the Kenosha gun stuff and only ended up in jail for unrelated reasons (cocaine motorcycle chase was not on my bingo card). Demokovich was overturned, if on limited grounds, and Gustafson is in a weird place that I didn't even know was possible when I wrote it.
Others, it hasn't been long enough to check: the NRA's New York DFS lawsuit isn't likely to be resolved for months at best, and we don't know that the next Republican President is one who's had tactical leaks against him yet.
But I don't look back at that and think "well, we're on a lot better a trajectory now" or "well, I need to toss a ton of disclaimers and caveats for each of these". In many cases, the extent these attacks have reduced conservative access to the public sphere has remained constant or accelerated. Given the news from today, if anything, I am feeling a little like I was insufficiently pessimistic.
There are 14th Amendment due process arguments, as noted at length in the dissents, though in turn there's been serious efforts to promote the view that there is no liberty interest in a ballot slot. Somin at Volokh argues this sort of perspective -- I don't know how much to trust him given his refusal to interact with the First Amendment component of this whole debate, but it's not plainly laughable.
Another argument would be US Term Limits, which holds that the Constitutional requirements for other offices (Senators and Representatives) are exclusive. That said, US Term Limits was limited to Senators and Representatives, and Thomas' dissent was both legendary and pretty well-recognized; I don't think it'd be likely to be successful.
I think the most plausible appeal would be to focus the self-executing theory. It's an incredibly expansive and aggressive read -- not as bad as the independent state legislature theory, but closer than I'd like. That's a matter of law (so SCOTUS can review it, unlike the 'facts' of what exactly Trump was alleged to have done, or the squishy interpretation of insurrection), it's a federal Constitutional question, and it punts on the ugly questions around due process.
Of course, Trump's lawyers are clowns, so we've got that as an additional problem.
gattsuru
1yr ago
116-132, but it's also over 2100 words, and nearly 13,000 characters. I quoted from the end of it.
I can give more examples -- the reference to Schneck is another low-point -- but I didn't think I needed to fisk the entire thing lest people think Colorado judges are short-tongued.
In addition to the culture war itself being more subdued, Australia's geographics and economics make give the different factions a lot more inertia, and make disruption a good deal less direct to those impacted. Forget COVID: the recent fishing restrictions would have been gotten a Bundy-like in the United States.
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