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Certainly the corporate news media has been spinning wildly in hopes of a Trump defeat.
I have a number of criticisms of Harris, but historically, the most consequential impact of most Presidents has been through Supreme Court nominations. And Harris has always been a "no friends to the right of me, no enemies to the left of me" sort of politician. The independents/undecideds are rarely sufficiently dialed in to understand or care about the intricacies of law and its long-term impact on culture. Justice Jackson has already shown herself to be an unsophisticated jurist who simply votes for whatever seems Wokest, and Harris would appoint more of the same.
The fact that we've reached a point in our political history where every cultural disagreement turns into a Constitutional Question does not really bode well, I think. We are supposed to have a federal system; not every question of importance is supposed to be answered the same way for the entire nation. To the contrary--questions of importance are precisely the questions that states should be free to disagree about. Trump's nominees have moved the needle in the right direction, albeit only slightly. Harris would move us more toward totalitarianism and ruin than Trump could ever hope to manage, assuming she gets an even slightly sympathetic Congress (and I do expect her to win in November, as a direct result of the corporate news media being the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party--the fix is clearly in).
I don't like Trump, I've never liked Trump, and he has been a disaster for the Republican Party. But he was genuinely a kind of bland president who made okay SCOTUS picks. I would expect Harris to be essentially his equal-but-opposite--actually a much more boring President than one might expect from her public buffoonery, but something of a jurisprudential catastrophe in the long run.
I don't think this is true. The only time I genuinely couldn't comprehend where she was trying to go in terms of jurisprudence was her questioning in Murthy v Missouri. Aside from that case, she seems fine to me in oral arguments and writes opinions that I just disagree with. She's not stupid or unsophisticated, she's just wrong. Do you have an example of what you're referring to?
This was certainly my top example, but I don't think it was hard to comprehend. I think it was stupid.
Like, seriously? "The Constitution limits government power, but sometimes we don't like that. What are we supposed to do when the Constitution limits government power in ways we don't like?" This is almost as straightforwardly embarrassing as her inability to answer the question "what is a woman?"
She is similarly stupid in her engagement with issues on race (though Sotomayor has similar problems).
This is not a person who is sophisticated but merely wrong. She's probably smarter than, say, Kamala Harris. But she's definitely bottom-of-the-barrel for SCOTUS, maybe even for the Circuits.
If you read the rest of her comments she says "“I’m interested in your view that the context doesn’t change the First Amendment principles,” Jackson said. “I understood our First Amendment jurisprudence to require heightened scrutiny of government restrictions of speech, but not necessarily a total prohibition when you’re talking about a compelling interest of the government to ensure, for example, that the public has accurate information in the context of a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic.”"
So she is obviously aware that the Constitution limits government power, but she is talking about there not being a total prohibition when there is a compelling interest.
Now you may of course disagree with the fact whether Covid or whatever is such a compelling interest, but I think positing that one question, means she is an idiot, about not understanding what the Constitution does is just cherry picking. The rest of her questioning clearly shows she does know that.
Her question shouldn't paraphrased as
"The Constitution limits government power, but sometimes we don't like that. What are we supposed to do when the Constitution limits government power in ways we don't like?"
but rather as
"The Constitution limits government power, but that limit is not all encompassing. In your view what should the government do when and if it does have such a compelling interest?"
Remembering her question here is in the context of a hypothetical about a viral social media stunt that is causing suicides among teenagers. So she is asking even if people are dying is your position that the government cannot encourage the media companies to suppress these posts. Is that not a compelling interest? And the advocate understands where she is going because he answers, no, the government can use positive speech to condemn the posts but it cannot ask the companies to take them down. So they both understand that government power is limited by the Constitution, what they are going back and forth about is what counts as a compelling interest and where those limits end.
Again, you may think she is wrong about where those limits are, but it is clear she isn't a moron who doesn't understand that the Constitution is there to put limits on government action. She clearly understands that.
I think it's clear that she is kind of a moron (see: "I'm not a biologist"). That aside, there is understanding, and then there is understanding. I'm sure she knows what enumerated powers means. I'm also sure she doesn't give a shit about enumerated powers if the principle happens to get in the way of the result she wants, which constitutes a failure to genuinely grasp the principle and her responsibility to it. That's the problem with results oriented jurisprudence. It's a naked exercise of power; it's illegible and thus illegitimate as a jurisprudence.
That isn't being a moron, that's her toeing the line on the current culture war. And similarly if she does understand it, but is choosing to ignore it, that doesn't make her stupid. I am sure she grasps the principle, she just disagrees over what her responsibility is to it. Which is a good reason to be against her as a justice to be clear! But it isn't the same as not understanding.
People who make themselves deliberately stupid, are still stupid. People who consistently act as if they are stupid, just are stupid. The kind of person who answers "what is a woman" with "I'm not a biologist" is being a stupid person, even if they could in theory generate a wall of text explaining to me why in context it was better to pretend to be an idiot than to give an intelligent answer--that is, even if they have the ability to not be a stupid person.
This is what it means, to be a mistake theorist: I genuinely believe that the people who disagree with me, are making a mistake, and that if they were smarter, it is not a mistake they would make.
For if she is not stupid, well, what remains is for her to be actually evil.
As a mistake theorist, I'm open to the possibility that it's a mistake to be a mistake theorist! But that's where I am right now.
She could still be smart, and be making a mistake though. Right now, I think you are both very intelligent and wrong. If she is deliberately playing her part, because she knows that doing the opposite would be a huge mistake for her career then she isn't being a stupid person. Nor is she being evil. There are other options in between!
She could just be being a standard relatively self-interested person who both believes in her causes, has internalized what she needs to say to fit in in her social group and would quite like to have an important job.
You know who I think that describes? The vast majority of people. Mistake theory doesn't mean that people can only be stupid or evil. They can be smart but wrong, dumb but wrong, or perfectly average but wrong. They can be subject to social forces and so on.
I also consider myself a mistake theorist for context here. Most people are decent people. There are very few evil people in the world. The difference is i think, that I believe that because we are not rational beings, being smart doesn't get you much closer to being correct. So having reached the wrong belief does not mean you are stupid, or being a stupid person. It is simply very very difficult to ignore the whole social edifice of your society. So that being persuaded by it, tells you almost nothing about the individual in question except that they are a person.
She doesn't have a career to care about. She could be super based on trans issues and there's no way she'd be impeached. She could become a freaking Grand Wizard and probably stay in her position.
The other explanations you are talking about basically boil down to "dumb or evil" as far as I can tell.
Edit: For context, I think a lot of people are super dumb. KB and SS are SCOTUS appointees I think are dumb. They are poor writers even with extremely smart Harvard clerks helping them. I wrote a better draft opinion as a 2L for the judge I clerked for.
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