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Notes -
Scott Alexander endorses basically anyone but Trump
The main points:
I went back and read Scott's 2016 anyone but Trump election endorsement.
The main points:
I would maybe suggest in the future that these posts are counter-productive. The most recent one moved my needle more in favor of Trump. I can't believe I'm considering voting for a major party candidate (I've voted libertarian the few times I've bothered to actually show up). Going back and reading the old anti-endorsement was even worse. With hindsight answering the criticisms:
I really feel like there is some gell-mann amnesia going on with Scott. He reads these horrid stories about Trump. With the details sensationalized in the worst possible way. And he accepts them as fact. Meanwhile the New York Times threatens to dox him so they can run a hit piece article on him that they sourced from a weirdo on wikipedia with a knack for rules-lawyering.
He talks about how Trumps norms violations are loud and unsubtle. While the democrats only subtly and slowly violate norms. But this is a framing that has been shoved down our throats by the media. Every minor violation of Trump's is blown out of proportion, and every major violation of the democrats is minimized and not talked about. How is it not a massive norms violation to spend 3 years investigating and accusing a sitting president of Treason based on a campaign dosier that was almost entirely made up by his opposition? And the people doing this knew it all along. I don't think democrats or liberal leaning people seem to realize how much the Russia Hoax thing has utterly fucked their credibility on everything. Especially after the Hunter Biden laptop story came out, and it turned out that the intelligence agencies helped them cover up exactly what they had been accusing Trump of doing.
This is supposed to be a government system where one side wins, implements their things, becomes a little too unpopular for going too far, and then the other side wins and get to do their thing for a little while. They switch back and forth. We all learned in 2016 that no, this is not actually how it operates. There is actually a hidden veto by the bureaucracy and the deep state. If they don't like the president they can decide not to let him do his thing. People are righteously pissed off about that, and many of them would happily see that bureaucracy and deep state dismantled if it meant they never get to use their veto again. And one way to test if they still have the veto power, and one way to give someone an incentive to fix it, is to keep electing presidents that we know they will "veto".
Trump is a vote for restoring norms. For restoring the ability of democracy and the vote to actually pick a direction for the country, rather than have that direction dictated by unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats. I dislike Trump on most of his policies, but it wouldn't be a vote for his policies. Its a vote for voting on policies.
To say nothing of using the Supreme Court to impose abortion and same-sex marriage on every single state. Or "not my president"--there was even a 2016 campaign to recruit faithless electors. The idea that Trump is the blatant norm-violator requires an awfully selective memory. I don't like Trump, but thanks to him I have been mostly satisfied with what's coming out of the Supreme Court for the first time in my adult life. The idea of returning to an activist Court, but with fresh Wokist judges instead of merely Liberal ones, is in my mind the most realistic bad-and-lasting effect of a Harris victory.
(Which, by the way, I do think is inevitable at this point, if not necessarily without some of what Time once called "fortification" from a "shadow campaign.")
That said, I think Scott's endorsement is 100% in-character for him, and it's probably worth noting that the reasoning he provides is in response to a case he has first worked to steelman. I suspect it is not a steelman he actually buys--just the best he was able to come up with. Rather, think of what the New York Times put Scott through the last time Trump won a presidential election. I don't know that it was this way for everyone, but in 2016 and 2017 I personally lost about 25% of my social media connections after Clinton's loss, and I didn't even support Trump--I just expressed clear criticism of Clinton. So I suspect that a lot of what we're seeing from Scott here is a kind of rhetorical, anticipatory flinch. Particularly given his somewhat defiant direct link back to "You Are Still Crying Wolf." (Insert Straussian reading here?)
So my biggest concern for this election is not really to do with either candidate, but with my suspicion that either way, the country comes further apart. The one thing I have appreciated from Harris is her bumbling attempts to appeal to the garbage deplorables. Even she (or at least her campaign) realizes that the culture wars are moving the nation in a potentially disastrous direction (not that this seems to have inspired the Left to pump the brakes--yet). But I have to wonder, climate-change-style, if we're not already past the point of no return.
Obergefell was/is a very plausible extension of previous fourteenth amendment jurisprudence. Roe has obviously been done to death, but suffice it to say conservative courts have been just as willing to impose on the states - 2nd amendment cases most obviously, but also trade union law, campaign finance &c. There doesn't seem to be a notable political valence to legislating from the bench.
Yeah, no, not even remotely. Obergefell was an unusually vapid decision even for Kennedy. He should have retired to write poetry, because he was apparently so tired of doing jurisprudence he forgot to include any in Obergefell. At best, it raises the idea that because marriage is rooted in history and tradition (which is what makes it a cognizable right), same sex marriage must also be rooted in history and tradition. This is absurd on its face.
It's okay for the federal government to impose on the states, when the Constitution clearly authorizes it. But it's probably only fair to note that I also hate stuff like Commerce Clause jurisprudence; my concerns about Constitutional Law are admittedly far out of step with the legal profession and the practical reality that substantial portions of the Constitution are functionally dead letter.
But there is a noticeable political valence to respecting precedent and history. Less today than in the past, I'll grant, but when the precedent is really bad (and Roe was really bad, even Ginsberg regarded it a poor decision despite supporting its result), what else can you do?
This is a rather unfair reading. He freely admits that same-sex marriage is not itself rooted in tradition, but it doesn't need to be, as given that in many (even if not all) of the respects we do consider marriage to be an important liberty those rationales apply just as readily to same-sex marriages as traditional ones, such that preventing the former would be an abrogation of an important right, irrespective of whether the history and tradition that justifies that right was in fact exclusive of such marriages. Was marriage between prison inmates specifically rooted in history and tradition? If not, does that undermine Turner v. Safley?
Well that's sort of the nub. I defend clearly Constitutionally authorised rights/practices, you legislate from the bench, he tramples over states' rights.
Is there? I haven't been able to find any quantification of this question, but eyeballing some supposedly comprehensive lists it seems like except for a spate in the late 60s (most of which aren't particularly famous/significant) the overturning of precedents has happened at a relatively constant rate in the post-war period. Plus this is kind of another Russell conjugation - I rectify disastrous precedents, you have contempt for tradition. In any case, some of the most strongly conservative justices have the least regard for precedent. Thomas, most famously.
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