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AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
1yr ago
I haven't read the judgement itself yet but my general reaction from commentary about it (including yours) is pretty similar. Barrett's position is the best one. The majority opinion goes too far specifically in disallowing official acts from being used as evidence of intent. Sotomayor's dissent is pretty good.
Quantumfreakonomics
1yr ago
Trump has plot armor. I cannot believe how goddamn lucky the guy is. "'This Will Be The End Of Trump’s Campaign,’ Says Increasingly Nervous Man For Seventh Time", was published eight and a half years ago. Just when it seemed like the walls were finally closing in, he gets bailed-out by a double whammy of the Supreme Court's immunity ruling and his opponent publicly going senile. Losing in 2020 might actually end up in his benefit, because now he gets to control the Republican Party for 12 years instead of just 8.
I keep seeing ads from Democrats that lead with the idea of "protecting democracy". Are they trying to convince independents and Republicans, or are they trying to convince themselves? A Trump victory (especially if he wins the popular vote) would be a democratic ratification of Jan 6. It would be a rejection of the charges against Trump. If Trump wins 2024 bigger than ever before, the entire big-D Democrat philosophy collapses in on itself in a tapestry of self-reference paradoxes. A Trump victory is not only figuratively unthinkable, but literally unthinkable.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1yr ago
Most people are fairly law-abiding and reasonable. Especially when it comes to elections, we aren't in the midst of Gilded age party machine shenanigans. Regular people are fairly likely to give ballots to a trusted family member to drop off, and that's fine. Some ballot harvesting laws make this illegal, which is dumb. They are already less-likely to give these ballots to some partisan (or non-partisan) rando to drop off. That's a strong natural disinclination. I'd argue there's already a strong disincentive for abuse in place due to that alone. And if states pass laws making this kind of non-casual ballot harvesting illegal, as is their right, I think it would be very effective. Really, our model for abuse is that organized groups do organized bad things to ballots. So it's not only unlikely, but also easily preventable. Some states might also want to codify some sort of official or semi-official ballot harvester, and I think that would be a bad idea, but it's not a flagrantly bad idea, depending on implementation.
"Voting should be hard" is, like, maybe fine as an idea, but in practice it's extremely vulnerable to various kinds of unethical voter suppression efforts. It's more fair and more just for everybody to simply keep voting on the easy side. Just like how we have a long history of arguments like "only landowners can vote". Some of those arguments were even half-decent! But at the end of the day, a government is by the people, for the people, and so a person is a person and a person should be able to vote. Social contract, and all that. Governments should represent their people, even if we might not want them to. That's just what's fair and natural. And (IMO) desirable, but that's just a bonus.
popocatepetl
1yr ago
or mildly competent bureaucrats in boring constituencies without major insanity. This last category is a GOOD category that the dems have, but theyre not gonna be winners.
Are you confident of this? I don't think Biden won in 2020 due to personal magnetism. At least until the boomers die, any politician that goes on the stage and says "I will be boring and keep the status quo, I'm not scary, no sirree" can siphon of votes from otherwise culturally conservative aging population — enough to win elections at least.
Even if boomers don't like guatemalans or transkids, the ones I know all have clay feet and spook at any politician seriously threatening to reshuffle the established order. They're winding out the clock on their comfortable retirements, after all. Consider that the democrats are still 40% likely to win according on betting markets, despite the last four years and their presenting an optically horrible candidate.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1yr ago
I still think it's astonishing that headlines went straight to "Labour wins, what's next" rather than taking a second and steeping in the fact that the Conservatives haven't done this poorly since, uh, ever. It's absolute annihilation out there. They even did better back in 1906! 1906. Let that sink in. Are the Conservatives even doing any introspection, or are they just blithely assuming Labour will muck it up and they'll be back in power before too long?
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1yr ago
Oh, oops, duh. That's a pity. Does it work like that in general, though (say one other joined her instead of the majority)?
Yeah, I'm kind of worried that that was a motivation, but I'm not sure. I know the evidence was talked about at the oral arguments, but surely it shouldn't have been enough to get five justices to sign onto it, with that level of reasoning? I imagine there was some cajoling to get what level of agreement they had.
My question about pardons was closer to that if pardons are one of the core powers, over which the executive has conclusive and preclusive authority, as the majority says, wouldn't that mean that he would be absolutely immune from criminal prosecution (but not impeachment) in the exercising of that power? But it's more complicated than that, as Barrett and Roberts have an exchange (page 6 or so for Barrett and maybe 32 or so for Roberts, if memory serves me) over bribery, where he thinks pointing to the record of the official act would be permitted? I really didn't understand what he was saying there. But it seems like he considers bribery distinct from the act itself.
I've also been impressed by Barrett. She's more principled than Kavanaugh and Roberts, is good at statutory interpretation, and I think I also like her approach to originalism and history the best out of the justices.
Joining her opinion: yes, you can join concurrences. In this case, the main effect of that, assuming the sets of things they joined was the same as her, would be that there would not be enough justices for the evidence portion to be an official holding of the court, as it would not have enough justices, but the rest would be.
In some hypothetical where it was joining opinions in such a way that nothing commands a majority, the rule is that they decide the outcome of the case based on what has a majority (e.g. to rule in favor of one party), and whoever has the narrowest position is taken as the precedent to be followed by lower courts. Yes, that's not always the most clear.
One noteworthy example of that happening was in Regents v. Bakke, where four justices were for affirmative action, four justices against it, and one not okay with racial preferences in themselves, but only for the sake of racial diversity. The latter position was followed, later reaffirmed, and is how we eventually ended up with diversity becoming the justification for racial preferences.
Felagund
1yr ago
She joined the majority, except in the one section, so most of it is not an instead, except for the evidence part.
I mean we did have real fraud in 2020. It’s just people ignore the obvious frauds.
The expanse of mass-mail in voting is considered fraud by historical Democratic principals. Trump wins in a landslide without that.
At this point it is beyond proven that the FBI interfered with social media with regards to the Hunter Biden laptop. They knew it was real the entire time. The CIA helped cover that up.
These things aren’t conspiracies. They are proven and changed the election.
I don’t know why we are doing both-sides here.
Now I agree the right has gone too far. I know people who never rational think thru issues anymore and just assume they are being lied to.
jkf
1yr ago
All of this seems to make investigation/prosecution of the Hunter/Big Guy stuff much more difficult -- what are your feelings on that aspect?
Felagund
1yr ago
I think that was regarding while Biden was vice president, which they've made no ruling on.
They also seem to be willing to regulate bribery for presidents, which this would be related to. But really, the actual harm that people are trying to get to with that is to reduce electability, which wouldn't be impacted; it's not like any of this governs what the media is allowed to do.
jkf
1yr ago
120 seats is not much different from 220 seats -- nobody is freaking out because it's not that bad.
They knew that they would lose and they did -- now they will see how it plays out. (yes Labour will probably fuck things up, but either way the next election will be a fresh start)
jkf
1yr ago
Allowing that VP might not be considered similar to the President in this regard (why not?), [i]what we know[/i] about Biden family influence peddling seems to implicate the period where Joe was VP -- but I see no reason to assume that the influence peddling would not tend to [i]intensify[/i] once he was in the driver's seat.
Who would investigate this in the event that there is no possibility of charging him?
Felagund
1yr ago
I have no idea how they'd rule on vice presidents. I assume they'd give some immunity, but I have no idea how much, at least, when not acting as president.
I imagine reporters might still be interested in doing some digging, even if prosecution is impossible.
For italics, I use asterisks on each side; themotte turns them into italics.
sliders1234
1yr ago
Bens a hardcore never Trumper. He seems to have a strong bias against him. So he tries to make these arguments.
curious_straight_ca
1yr ago
What happens if one or both of them don't
Yeah, most Biden-alternative discussion is premised on Biden choosing to back out, since he controls the delegates. There's a general sense there's a solid chance this happens.
Does the Democrat party actually have good options to replace them without their cooperation
Delegates could, in theory, reject Biden, the delegates are only obligated to "in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them". This seems difficult and unlikely though.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
1yr ago
They had party discipline. Party discipline said not to admit to Biden's weakness. What they lacked is the ironclad control over public perception that they thought (not without good reason!) they had.
I do find it interesting that whenever I venture into left-wing spaces, they have a very similar mindset to the right-wing ones re:
- the uniparty is neutering politics, pretending to hold our ideology whilst throwing us under the bus at every opportunity (citing e.g. the lack of long-lasting legal change despite the Floyd riots)
- even when our guys are popular the moderates in our party close ranks to keep them out (Bernie Sanders, attempted with Jeremy Corbyn)
- mainstream media lies to build complacency and takes every opportunity to identify us with the worst of our movement (e.g. the /r/antiwork interview, the UK media's treatment of Corbyn)
- the opposition wants us gone permanently, and any election risks them finally getting enough power to manage it
I think that conservatives have a much stronger leg to stand on here: the illiberal centre is left-wing and actively persecutes right-wingers; the fact that it's not quite left-wing enough for the radicals doesn't fill me with sympathy.
But I think that the paranoia on both sides is basically driven by structural problems:
- An oligarchic form of government that is unaffected by election results (the Deep State, the Civil Service)
- The professionalisation of politics (almost all politicians come from a very similar and unusual background and are beholden to the Overton window amongst people of that background).
- An increasingly weighty cruft of legal systems and regulations that have got ever more tangled and impenetrable over time and prevents movement. This (and the production of 'clients') produces a 'ratchet' model of politics where losses like Brexit are often permanent.
- Genuine ethnic and moral tribalism vastly reducing the space of beliefs that are shared by a supermajority of people.
The result is that
"My ingroup is relentlessly oppressed by the supposedly neutral authorities, who are actually in the pockets of my enemies. The outgroup is highly organized and relentlessly hateful of people like me. If my side loses a battle, that's just further proof that I'm right and the whole thing is rigged. If my side wins a battle, it's also evidence of how right I am because the only way we'd win against such odds is by being twice as correct as the enemies. My side is the victim. It's all a conspiracy rigged against us."
is essentially true for anyone except the most anodyne of the centre-Left. It hasn't escaped my notice that much of recent right-wing thought (conflict theory, the long march through the institutions, the Cathedral, who/whom) is very much from a left-wing critical tradition, because they are used to being political outcasts and have more mental tools for dealing with that. Often it literally comes from (former) communists - people like Brendan O'Neill, Peter Hitchens, Freddie de Boer.
I think horseshoe theory is overrated, but dissident/complacent is often a useful axis to go alongside left/right and authoritarian/liberal when you want to model how groups will behave.
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
1yr ago
This ruling, like the Trump v. Anderson ruling, were not adequately justified. Trump v. Anderson was far worse, failing to consider that states have discretion to choose their own bodies of electors essentially however they wish, per the Constitution (Here's a length complaint about it, though nowhere near as lengthy as his arguments leading up to that point.).
I mean, Trump v. Anderson was very much a pragmatic, "please don't explode the country" ruling; ruling that Colorado's actions were AOK would likely have ended Very Badly. One must give it at least some credit for that.
Corvos
1yr ago
I was trying to make a version of this using LLama v3 (70bn) and a predictive algorithm which learns to predict the user's replies (and therefore implicitly actions, thought processes and needs). It's a work in progress: I turned it on, it told me to get up out of my chair and do something useful, and I turned it off.
But a 'programmable superego' is exactly what I want out of AI.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
1yr ago
A story can be written with roughly the same plot except you have a human to guide you and answer questions. Would that still be a fearsome proposition, the existence of wise mentors and teachers and guides and parents?
If the mentor's first piece of advice is "stop listening to me" and then they proceed to run your life, that would be mighty sus.
Especially since in normal mentorship relationships you eventually get everything you can out of it and/or your mentor fucking dies and you become the mentor. In the story you are just following orders forever.
Felagund
1yr ago
Oh, certainly. I don't disagree that Trump v. Anderson's result had better consequences than the contrary. It just wasn't good legal reasoning.
2D3D
1yr ago
I agree that normies love stability. the problem is a bland democrat is the same is a bland republican. And the worry is that the bland bureaucrat is easily bullied by conviction motivated activists. Youngkin defeated McAuliffe because boring McAuliffe flubbed and made him seem vulnerable to the activist wing of trans advocates overriding parental concerns. It is these, among MANY blind spots in the democrat wing, which is why I believe the bland normie is seen as weak: push comes to shove no one has faith Evers or Whitmer will stand up to AOC. (the enemy to me is Jayapal, but no one seems to care about her)
Hilary is a bad politician, but she's the best the democrats had (have?). No democrat right now is able to convincingly articulate any stance that is amenable to the centre, much less reach across the aisle. Polarization makes the task more difficult but not impossible. I can think of no democrat politician that has any charisma or rally skills. Its all partisan loyalty displays (BLM and Pride support), polemics about how the OTHER GUYS are evil and need to be stopped (everyone anti-maga) or mildly competent bureaucrats in boring constituencies without major insanity. This last category is a GOOD category that the dems have, but theyre not gonna be winners. Perhaps Gretchen Whitmer, Tony Evers or Mark Kelly can impress with quiet competence, but they can't slug it out in an open fight with Jeb Bush, let alone with any Trumper.
Ultimately I blame Obama. He was a charisma supernova that sucked all oxygen for politicking out of the democratic party and wasted an entire generation of politicians who needed to bloody their knuckles in the machines of electioneering.
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