democratic impasse.com

The quote (featured in Peter Baker's analysis, "Trump Signals a ‘Seismic Shift,’ Shocking the Washington Establishment") is from David Marchick, co-author of The Peaceful Transfer of Power. The incoming president's choices for spots in the White House, the cabinet, and the Executive Branch are loyalists all. Several though lack evident qualifications and appear short of the requisite character for positions of leadership. From Baker's report:

He has chosen a bomb-throwing backbench congressman who has spent his career attacking fellow Republicans and fending off sex-and-drugs allegations to run the same Justice Department that investigated him, though it did not charge him, on suspicion of trafficking underage girls. He has chosen a conspiracy theorist with no medical training who disparages the foundations of conventional health care to run the Department of Health and Human Services.
He has chosen a weekend morning television host with a history of defending convicted war criminals while sporting a Christian Crusader tattoo that has been adopted as a symbol by the far right to run the most powerful armed forces in the history of the world. He has chosen a former congresswoman who has defended Middle East dictators and echoed positions favored by Russia to oversee the nation’s intelligence agencies.

(Baker wrote before we learned that Trump chose Dr. Oz to head the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services.)

Remember "We're not going back" -- the campaign pledge of Kamala Harris? Well, now Steve Bannon, fresh out of prison just weeks before the election, is saying it (as quoted by Baker).

Even Republicans in the United States Senate, who have had ample time to take Trump's measure (and who saved him from conviction after two impeachments) are taken aback. As David Graham reports in the Atlantic ("Washington Is Shocked"), "On Capitol Hill, Republican senators say they are shocked by many of Trump’s Cabinet picks."

Wow. Well, these are serious men and women, right? Chosen to oversee the country's business. But we're seen this movie before. These guys and gals of the GOP are likely to vote to confirm every nominee Trump throws at them. Because:

There is never a bridge too far.

Congressional Republicans have been going through a ritual of sorts regarding their leader for nearly a decade. A few might begin by murmuring hints of unease, even criticism. Most will stay silent. Increasingly large numbers will cheer enthusiastically. The conservative media will also cheer. And, when push comes to shove, the unenthusiastic, the initial doubters, will do whatever is required to back their leader.

Not every time, but almost. 'Never a bridge too far' is an extremely reliable rule of thumb regarding Republican acquiescence to Donald Trump. Some senators -- Susan Collins, perhaps -- will vote No occasionally, but not enough to block Trump's choices. The votes will be there to give him his way.

At this stage, two full months before Trump is sworn in, we can't be certain how this will turn out. My suspicion is that Matt Gaetz might not get confirmed. But I wouldn't bet against any of Trump's other picks, no matter how unfit they are. No matter how shocking.

Party over country. Political power over country. Personal ambition over country. That's where the GOP is today. That's why we can count on the Republican majorities in both houses to put aside qualms about national security, law enforcement, public health, fiscal responsibility -- whatever is at stake. They are not going to stand in Trump's way.

This past Friday (on Washington Week with the Atlantic), Jeffrey Goldberg reads a sentence from an article Tim Alberta wrote in 2022 about Latino voters: "The very thing that breathed life into the Democratic Party 20 years ago, the focus on identity and inclusion is making it more popular with white voters and less popular with Hispanic voters." Alberta responds:

You know, Jeff, in that piece, it's really interesting. I characterize a few different conversations I'm having with Latino men who -- in the Rio Grande Valley, in the southwest, in South Florida, and they're all telling me some variation of the same thing, which is that—

Yes, I'm pretty sure that Donald Trump is a racist. I'm pretty sure that Donald Trump doesn't like people like me. But at least he's sort of open and transparent about it, and, in a way, I can almost trust him, whereas Democrats, use us as pawns in their political game. They act like they're our friend. They sort of -- you know, they tell us how important we are to their coalition, but then they never give us a seat at the table.
And furthermore, Democrats seem preoccupied with all of these sort of cultural, social issues and the sort of virtue signaling that can accompany them rather than on the concerns of people like me in our community, namely, the economy, and, yes, illegal immigration.

If you go spend time in the Rio Grande Valley, and I've done a lot of it over the past five, six years, it is remarkable to see these counties that Hillary Clinton won by 70, 80 points, that Donald Trump has now, eight years later, flipped to red.
And what is the common theme through all of those areas when you spend time talking to people there, including Democratic mayors and Democratic sheriffs? They will say the same two things. Democrats stopped focusing on working people and Democrats stopped caring about illegal immigration.
And if you think back to even the Obama era, Barack Obama deported millions of illegal immigrants, more than George W. Bush or Bill Clinton had. On a lot of these sort of core cultural and social touchstones, Obama, even though he was in his heart of hearts a progressive, was willing to at least sort of accommodate the center right in this country in ways that the Democratic Party, since his departure from office, has not been done.

The day after the election, Aaron Blake (in "The most striking and telling stats of the 2024 election: Trump won in a rout. But how he did so might surprise you.") assessed how Democrats lost so decisively, including this statistic (followed by the graph tweeted by Matthew Watkins):

16 points: Trump’s margin of victory in Starr County, Texas, the country’s most heavily Latino county on the U.S.-Mexico border. He lost the same county in 2016 by 60 points. Trump surged in many heavily Latino counties near the border.

Just an absolutely unreal graphic showing Trump's gains in Texas-Mexico border counties since 2016. Starr County, population 65,920 and 97% Latino, shifted 75 PERCENTAGE POINTS in Trump's direction. https://t.co/VqI1MUPmiv pic.twitter.com/ghdu2yoAt8

— Matthew Watkins (@MWatkinsTrib) November 7, 2024

I was surprised by this turn of events. I'm sure most Democratic voters were as much in the dark as I was. Was the Biden White House surprised? Was the Harris campaign? There are Democratic mayors, Democratic sheriffs, and Democratic Members of Congress, among other leaders, in Texas. Perhaps the Biden-Harris administration had figured out what a disaster Biden's border policy earlier in his administration had become but did too little, too late to make up for it.

Overall, a majority of Latinos (with the exception of Cuban Americans) stuck with the Democratic ticket, but in numbers far lower than in presidential elections over the past two decades. I don't think MAGA Republicans are destined to become a rainbow coalition. But Democrats, after losing the white working class, appear to be losing other ethnic groups as well. (This is a sad state of affairs for Democrats of longstanding who have regarded their party as a coalition dedicated to benefit, among others, the working class and folks who don't have college degrees. That's central.)

While I believe that structural factors may have been decisive in the 2024 election, the outcome and the continuing erosion of working class support speaks to a fundamental failure of the Democratic Party. Democrats have their work cut out for them.

I have to say, the Supreme Court has been an embarrassment to our founders, just to have immunity for any president, whoever it might be, and to do so and take forever to do it so that justice could not be addressed one way or another.

Nancy Pelosi, in her interview with the New York Times, finds a colorful way of pointing to the partisan corruption of the Republican majority on the United States Supreme Court. She says nothing more about the Roberts Court. In addition to Trump v. United States, utterly unmoored from the Constitution of the United States, she could have cited a series of other shameful decisions that appear much more tightly bound to partisan loyalty, than to adherence to our country's founding document. A modest handful of these decisions:

These decisions all had this in common: Each of them required overturning precedents going back decades. Every majority opinion appealed to judicial precepts invented without textual support from the Constitution or Congressional legislation by the justices to smooth the way to overturning precedent.

All the cases were decided with majorities composed exclusively of Republican-appointed justices with Democratic-appointed justices in the minority. All of decisions advantaged the policy positions of the Republican Party and disadvantaged the interests of the Democratic Party and its constituents.

I've written about most of these decisions. I won't say more now. But what the former Speaker said about the immunity decision is true as well of each of these decisions (and many others). The Roberts Court is corruptly partisan. The mission of the current majority on the Court, which it has pursued aggressively, is to advance the interests of the contemporary Republican Party. In this effort, it frequently treads a path unrestrained by the Constitution, by past precedent, and by legislation passed my majorities in Congress.

On the occasion of Mitch McConnell's reign as leader of Senate Republicans coming to an end, George Will offers an effusive encomium. There's much to dispute in the column, but I'll focus exclusively on a single claim [which I've emphasized] within this paragraph, wherein Will lists the Kentucky senator's chief accomplishments:

Protecting free speech from attacks from left and right. Using the legislature to make federal courts more judicial and less legislative. And demonstrating that what the Declaration of Independence calls “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind” implies that there can be indecent truckling to opinion.

Nope. Will is mischaracterizing McConnell's accomplishment. First, to give the long serving caucus leader credit: he has been successful by focusing relentlessly on gaining partisan advantage, being willing to warp the spirit of Senate rules, and offering insincere adherence to a series of changing 'principles' as justification. Regarding the courts, McConnell has succeeded in packing the federal bench, and in particular the Supreme Court, with ideologues in service to the interests of the Republican Party.

It has been a grand project, which has taken years to carry out. But making "federal courts more judicial and less legislative" isn't a thing; it's a circumlocution crafted to cover up what has actually taken place. That's a long story, and one I've told in bits and pieces over a number of years. The current status of the Roberts Court illustrates this story:

Through its decisions, the Republican-appointed majority on the Supreme Court has constricted voting rights, encouraged extreme gerrymandering, and opened the floodgates to big money in our elections. In each of these areas the court has trampled on (often decades old) precedent, wrenched Constitutional provisions from history and context, disabled amendments to the Constitution, and overruled decisions of Congress and actions of the Executive Branch. It has amassed power unto itself by aggressively encroaching on the prerogatives of the other two branches of government.

In each of these areas, its decisions have advanced the interests of the Republican Party and disadvantaged the Democratic Party. Incursions to shrink Americans' right to vote and to fair representation have disproportionately affected Democratic constituencies. The court's rulings have also disabled the public policy preferences of the Democratic Party. When Democrats campaign, win elections, and seek to enact promised public policies -- that is to say: legislation has been passed by Congress and signed by the president; the Executive Branch has engaged in rule making and enforcement of that legislation -- the nation's highest court has grasped power to impose its will and enable only policy preferences of the GOP, regardless of the choices of voters, the will of Congress, and actions of the president.

George Will can write clearly if he chooses to do so. In writing "make federal courts more judicial and less legislative," he obscures what has happened during McConnell's tenure in the Senate. As a partisan Republican for decades, Will's policy preferences are clear enough (as are John Roberts' and his majority). His language, however, serves to mislead, so that principle, rather than partisanship appears to rule the day.

Principle? No. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Supreme Court is corruptly partisan. Mitch McConnell, with other partisans, gets credit for that. But let's state it plainly.

What happened? How did Trump dominate in this election cycle? Abha Bhattarai and Jeff Stein in the Washington Post provide an economic perspective ("Americans deliver message to Democratic Party: The economy isn't working"):

“It’s a longer, structural problem than just a few years of inflation,” said Susan Hyde, a political science professor at the University of California at Berkeley who studies elections and democracy. “When people are worried about their own positions in the economy, that can be extremely consequential for voting behavior.”
Exit polls suggest that roughly 70 percent of voters regarded the economy as “poor” or “not good,” creating a clear headwind for Harris. Of the voters who rated the economy negatively, a majority — 68 percent — voted for Trump.

I don't suggest that there wasn't a cultural element in the results. The relentless, unremitting deluge of transgender ads (“Kamala supports taxpayer funded sex changes for prisoners and illegal aliens.”) likely damaged Harris's credibility as a defender of regular folks. Democrats need to recalibrate their stances and messaging regarding culture. Rejecting the Trump majority as bigots who welcome authoritarian solutions is a mistake. And I disagree with Nancy Pelosi's remarks suggesting that "Guns, God, and gays" was a more important factor in the election than the economy.

As I argued in my previous post, I think Democrats should focus on practical policies to increase the financial security of working and middle class Americans. This will be a heavy lift. The structural distortions are deeply embedded in our economy. Not everyone is going to attend college. What viable paths will they have for making lives for themselves and their families?

Whatever Trump does will benefit his family, cronies, and other rich Americans; Elon Musk will be sitting pretty. The returning president won't be delivering any solutions for the folks having a tough time making ends meet. Addressing that issue -- plus pushing back against authoritarian maneuvers by Trump and the MAGA GOP -- must be front and center for Democrats.

[November 8 update: Today, Douglas Massey, a Princeton social scientist, offers his take on the outcome of the election, including these remarks:

Trump’s campaign was openly racist, xenophobic and authoritarian and his supporters appear to be willing to jettison democracy in support of an autocratic demagogue who promises to “fix everything” while pandering to their angers, resentments and prejudices.

Also today, Ezra Klein offers thoughts on how Democrats might respond to the results:

Emotionally, there are two ways Democrats can respond: contempt or curiosity. I’ve seen plenty of contempt already. If Americans are still willing to vote for Trump, given all he’s said and done, then there’s nothing Democrats or Harris could have done to dissuade them. There’ll be a desire to retreat, to hunker down, to draw the boundaries of who is decent and who is deplorable ever more clearly.

Essentially, in my post yesterday (which follows), I sought to push back against a Democratic response that wrote off Trump voters as beyond the pale. While Trump voters "appear to be willing to jettison democracy," in my mind a small, but significant slice of the Trump majority voted for an authoritarian because there was no other way to reject Biden-Harris. I believe many folks who comprise this slice of the electorate will be disappointed with the benefits they receive from Trump's fixes, but they are not racist, xenophobic, or authoritarian. And Democrats should not hunker down and shrug off their concerns. We should figure out how to win back this segment of working and middle class voters who are unhappy with the Biden-Harris administration.

I wasn't pleased with the way I expressed myself yesterday. Instead of revising my remarks, I've offered this introduction to clarify my point of view.]

Original post:
Donald Trump has just won the presidency for a second time. The man is as crooked as a dog's leg. Determined to avoid the Loser label, this prodigious liar with a fragile ego crafted the Big Lie and repeated it for four years. It has become gospel for his followers. Add to this that the Republican chief is a wannabe autocrat. He idolizes strongmen on the world stage and eats up their flattery. Because he can't focus beyond self and is broadly ignorant of policy details and strategic principles, he will sacrifice American interests for nothing of value to the nation.

He hurled authoritarian rhetoric we've never heard before from a president or major party candidate for president. He has threatened his opponents, vilified women who have displeased him (especially black women) and vulnerable minorities (especially immigrants from what he has deemed "shit-hole countries), glorified violence and instigated it. With his invocations of "the enemy from within," directed at political opponents, and threats to employ the national guard and the U.S. military to go after them, he has trod ground singularly damaging to the Constitution and rule of law. He poses a clear danger to our democracy.

How did this man win an election in 2024?

Political scientists and commentators, politicians and Democratic advocates from every ideological corner, among others will be debating this election for years. While most of the hard evidence has yet to be reviewed and analyzed, I'm going to offer a quick and dirty take on things. I'm no authority, but I've followed political campaigns for decades. So ("among others"), I'll offer my view:

The highest inflation in generations and presidential favorability in the high-30s were two headwinds that Kamala Harris could not overcome. She was bound to the unpopular incumbent. This was a change election, as we've seen take place on several continents (as David Dayen notes): "Every incumbent party around the world when the post-pandemic inflation began has lost, regardless of ideology and regardless of where inflation was at the moment of the election."

In 2024 in the United States, Trump was the change candidate.

Let's add a point of context, courtesy of Bernie Sanders, who while outside the Democratic Party is among the advocates trying to push it in a direction that he favors. Set the ideological dispute aside, the senator correctly observes: 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and there has never been a greater chasm between the richest of us and the poorest.

In other words: It's the economy, stupid. The economy was issue number one. Lots of folks are struggling and frustrated.

Consider the universe of voters in the 2024 majority.

A broad range of reasons and passions prompt people, and democratic majorities, to vote as they do.

• Every racist, sexist, misogynist and xenophobe in the country knew which candidate was theirs.
• Every evangelical, who regards white men as being entitled to dominion over all things, and especially those who have succumbed to the idolatry of Trump, felt certain of which candidate to back. So too the white nationalists, whether Christian or heathen.
• Billionaires, including many former Democrats and those who previously backed liberal or even progressive causes, understood which candidate would support policies to make them richer.
• GOP 'leaders' -- Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy, Mike Johnson, et al. ... -- who saw a path to power were certain who to back.
• Scads of traditional Republicans (who may have tut-tutted some of Trump's language) are loyal to the GOP and followed their party leaders to embrace Trump.
• The audience dedicated to Fox News Channel -- which distorts the facts, offers hyperbolic coverage, and (most critically of all) buries inconvenient truths -- identified its candidate.

For few of these folks is democracy top of mind. Some yearn for an undemocratic regime led by a strongman with views that they embrace. They'll happily trade that for democratic rule. Others don't object to democracy, but unhesitatingly opt for party (and power and ambition) over country.

But most Trump voters give scarcely a thought to democratic guardrails. That just doesn't come up. (Or character for that matter.)

The bottom line:

This list (from racists to FNC fans) does not yet constitute a 52-percent majority. There are working class and middle class folks, not caught up in culture wars or bigotry or stuck in an ideological bubble, who mostly don't spend a lot of time reflecting on politics or campaigns or democracy. Those folks pushed Trump over the top.

They're unhappy. They were offered a binary choice -- Trump or not-Trump. And they chose Trump because he was the change candidate.

Trump is contemptible. Not the American electorate.

Majorities change in democracies. The Democratic candidate lost in 2024. Democrats are about to become the loyal opposition. Job number one for Trump will be to extend the 2016 tax hikes, never mind the welfare of the struggling folks who put him over the top. Democrats must offer an alternative vision. Additionally Democrats (as the only small-d democratic party) have a special duty to defend the Constitution, the rule of law, and our freedom and rights as Americans. We have watched MAGA Republicans trample over the guardrails of democracy. Democrats must push back against authoritarianism.

We'll anticipate elections in 2026 and 2028. Majorities change.

It's hard to believe where we are. Not that long ago, contemporary American politics was not quite as twisted as today. The Republican Party and the Democratic Party had competing agendas, but (mostly) agreed about the rules of engagement and the arena where the give and take of politics took place. Small-d democratic norms went unchallenged. Both sides accepted the results of free and fair elections. Republicans and Democrats embraced the rule of law at home and America's leadership abroad.

No longer. Not in 2024. Not with Donald Trump and the MAGA GOP. Consider these headlines and subheads:

Trump compares undocumented migrants to trash at insult-fueled rallies: The Republican presidential nominee compared the United States to “a garbage can for the world” because of illegal border crossings.
Remember when an iconic Republican president praised the USA as a Shining City on a Hill? Four years after his American Carnage inaugural address (courtesy of Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon), Trump has become even more negative, sounding as much like an insult comic as a past president. Speaking of insults, see the item below.

Trump rally speakers lob racist insults, call Puerto Rico ‘island of garbage’: Later, Trump took the stage at Madison Square Garden and called the GOP “the party of inclusion.” His campaign issued a statement disavowing the “garbage” comment.
There was also misogyny galore at MSG. Tucker Carlson on Kamala Harris: “She’s just so impressive as the first Samoan, Malaysian, low-IQ former California prosecutor ever to be elected president.” Ha ha. From Elon Musk's PAC: "Harris is the C-word." Sly.
A sociologist points out on Bluesky the significance of joking in communicating. She notes, "jokes are more effective than serious messaging when it comes to normalizing sexism and misogyny." This is true for both men and women listeners.

Only a third of Trump supporters say they’ll accept a narrow loss: Whatever the outcome of the election, Trump has already deeply damaged democracy.
The Big Lie, that Trump won the 2020 election, is foundational to his campaign. Trump, other GOP leaders, and conservative media trumpet the falsehood. The MAGA base, unsurprisingly, accepts the fabrication. If Trump loses in 2024, he has primed the base to reject the loss. His folks rioted on January 6, 2021. If he loses again, there is likely to be violence this time around as well.

They tried to prove Trump’s fraud claims. They failed — and got in trouble: Trump’s voter-fraud push has led to increasing legal jeopardy, but largely for those who flouted the law as they tried to substantiate it.
From deep inside the bubble the tale looks so real. Each of these attempts to prove the system is rigged, instead demonstrates that it works. Voter fraud is rare. Elections don't turn on it.

Once Top Advisers to Trump, They Now Call Him ‘Liar,’ ‘Fascist’ and ‘Unfit’: Many of those who served in former President Donald J. Trump’s administration — especially his generals, ambassadors and other national security officials — have since turned on Mr. Trump.
A critique such as this one, from among a president's closest advisers, is without precedent. But here we are.

And the scariest thought of all on this Halloween: at this stage it appears that the man whose advisors fear his return to power has even odds of winning next week.

In an earlier post, I suggested that Jeff Bezos and Patrick Soon-Shiong were hedging their bets by prohibiting the editorial staffs at their newspapers from endorsing a candidate for president. Other critics have also weighed in.

Jeff Bezos defends his integrity and his determination to increase the credibility of the Washington Post. Of newspapers, he writes, "We must be accurate, and we must be believed to be accurate. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but we are failing on the second requirement. Most people believe the media is biased."

Bezos believes that declining to endorse a presidential candidate in 2024 is a step in ensuring that the Post is regarded as "a credible, trusted, independent voice." He pledges to "exercise new muscles," with both unspecified new inventions and returns to the past. Uh-huh.

Let's grant this: there is ample evidence that there is much mistrust of the media.

But mostly, overwhelmingly, it is Republican partisans who mistrust mainstream news sources. Whatever "new muscles" Bezos decides to exercise to get FNC-addicted MAGA true-believers to believe whatever the Washington Post has to say, I'll believe it when I see it. We have every reason to doubt that the failure to endorse Kamala Harris in 2024 will boost MAGA acceptance of WaPo as a reliable source. More likely that it generates the smug feeling that the left-leaning Post has capitulated to Donald Trump.

Meanwhile, Patrick Soon-Shiong's daughter, Nika Soon-Shiong, told the New York Times, “Our family made the joint decision not to endorse a Presidential candidate. This was the first and only time I have been involved in the process. As a citizen of a country openly financing genocide, and as a family that experienced South African Apartheid, the endorsement was an opportunity to repudiate justifications for the widespread targeting of journalists and ongoing war on children.”

Mr. Soon-Shiong replied to the Times:

“Nika speaks in her own personal capacity regarding her opinion, as every community member has the right to do,” the owner said, according to a spokeswoman. “She does not have any role at The L.A. Times, nor does she participate in any decision or discussion with the editorial board, as has been made clear many times.”

Well, yeah. She speaks for herself. She has no role at the LA Times. She participated in no discussions with the editorial board. But did the family have a discussion? Did they reach a consensus? Was the war in Gaza a consideration in killing an endorsement of Harris? Mr. Soon-Shiong doesn't deny any aspect of his daughter's explanation of how the decision to scotch a Harris endorsement came about.

It sure looks like he's not being candid, much less transparent. I'll also note that, according to the Los Angeles Times, "Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong said that his decision not to offer readers a recommendation would be less divisive in a tumultuous election year." I guess we can conclude, though the publisher says, “I have no regrets whatsoever. In fact, I think it was exactly the right decision,” that his political instincts are abysmal. A Harris endorsement would have created hardly a ripple of attention, while his decision created a firestorm of controversy, with the Trump campaign chortling about it and thousands of LA Times readers cancelling their subscriptions. What a miscalculation.

In his op-ed, Bezos acknowledges "the appearance of conflict" with his many financial ventures. That would be hard to deny, though he dismisses the view that they are "a web of conflicting interests," because he is a man of principle. I'm sure Soon-Shiong also regards himself as a man of principle. And who's to say they're not?

But the country's billionaires have an awful lot to lose. Another massive tax cut skewed to the richest among us means a lot more to them than to most Americans. That's the carrot. The stick: from Silicon Valley to Wall Street, there are lots of billionaires whose fortunes could be severely impacted by a vindictive president who has boasted of his willingness to go after his enemies.

While a billionaire might have principles and, so, might find grounds for withholding support to Donald Trump -- billionaires are generally pragmatic men (mostly men) where their money is concerned. We can expect them to have a measure of common sense, to be protective of their wealth, and to weigh a number of diverse considerations, beyond disdain for a petty tyrant, in their decision-making.

The more billions, the more likely that disdain for a petty tyrant (or any other factor) is outweighed by financial prudence.

Polarization, division, vilification -- all hallmarks of current American politics. Newt Gingrich, Fox News Channel, and the contemporary Republican Party are among those individuals and institutions we must credit for where we find ourselves. Donald Trump rode a wave going back decades.

But there is a sine qua non mischief-maker we should not overlook: the Republican-appointed majority on the United States Supreme Court. The Roberts Court has inexorably moved, step by corrupt step, to advance the political interests of the Republican Party in several related areas. This lurch has been highly consequential.

Voter suppression: the decisions undermining voting rights, the 14th Amendment, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 hark back as early as Shelby County v. Holder (2013) with a 5-4 divided opinion. There have been many cases since then. Republican-led states have put up obstacles for voters (aimed at voters in Democratic areas), created fraudulent narratives about ineligible immigrants voting, and (a lie going back decades, but amped way up since Trump) alleged voter fraud in Democratic cities without a modicum of evidence.

Gerrymandering: a string of decisions that invite state legislatures (most notoriously Republican-led states, such as Wisconsin) to remain in power, even though clear majorities of the states' voters cast ballots for the opposing party. In Rucho v. Common Cause (2019), decided 5-4, the court's Republicans declared gerrymandering claims "nonjusticiable," forbidding federal courts from resolving such cases. Henceforth, no one could claim (under the Constitution, the Voting Rights Amendments, or federal law) that any gerrymandering (no matter how extreme) had gone too far, never mind the rights of American voters. The mischief continues, such as in Alexander v. South Carolina NAACP (2023), decided 6-3 (with Trump/McConnell's three new justices forming a Republican supermajority).

Campaign finance: another string of decisions that have opened the floodgates for big money into our elections. Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010) is the most notorious example. The 5-4 majority opinion of the court assured us that "independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption."

The Roberts Court can be counted on, in each of these areas, to advance the interests of the Republican Party. Never mind the Constitution, federal legislation enacted by Congress and enforced by the Executive Branch, or the rights of American citizens to vote, to have their votes apportioned fairly, and to expect reasonable limits on the corrupting influence of big money in political campaigns. (Elon Musk can thank SCOTUS for permitting his massive contributions into 2024 campaigns, from Trump to Republican Congressional candidates.)

We could not have arrived where we are, in 2024, without the active engagement of the partisan Republican majority on the U.S. Supreme Court. With a different agenda, focused on conservative judicial principles, adherence to the Constitution, and respect for the rights of American voters, the court would have ruled differently. And then the Republican Party would not have found the same measure of electoral success in peddling division, hatred, anger, and lies. Instead, the party would have had to be responsive to majority opinion. We would still have red states, but the anti-democratic (small-d) cheating would be rarer, and nationally things would look different. The MAGA playbook works best with voter suppression, gerrymandering, and corrupt dollars in place. The Roberts Court has methodically, with malice aforethought crafted the conditions that have sabotaged democratic guardrails and produced our dysfunctional political system.

This morning the Republican supermajority, with an order that revealed the three Democratic-appointed members "would deny the application," overruled a federal court that blocked Virginia Republican Governor Glenn Younkin's purge of the voting rolls -- much more likely to purge eligible voters, than ineligible -- with an election less than a week away. All par for the course with the Roberts Court.

[Photo of the webpage of the Washington Post, which reported on this story.]

This morning the Washington Post, which has endorsed presidential candidates for three and a half decades, announced that the paper will not endorse a candidate for president in 2024 (or in the future). William Lewis, Washington Post publisher and CEO, in a lame defense of the decision, appealed to the "strong reasoning" from Post editorials in 1960 and 1972. Daniel Drezner, who wrote the Spoiler Alerts online column for the Post for eight years, pens a Substack today ("The Cowardice of the Washington Post") criticizing the editor's reasoning:

The most absurd part of Lewis’ explanation is, well all of it — because the Post’s own reporting make it clear that Lewis did not make this decision for high-minded reasons — it was Bezos’ call! And it seems pretty clear that Bezos is fearful that Trump, who exacted vengeance on Bezos-owned firms during his first term, will do the same if he is re-elected. Baron’s condemnation is a tell that there was nothing noble about Bezos’ decision.

Earlier this week, we learned that the Los Angeles Times, at the direction of its billionaire owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong, had axed his paper's endorsement for president. Apart from Soon-Shiong's tweet (which purports to "clarify how this decision came about," but sheds no light on what prompted Soon-Shiong to overrule the editorial staff), the LA Times hasn't offered an authorized explanation. While Soon-Shiong hasn't bumped heads with our vengeful past president, an angry Donald Trump, if victorious, could undoubtedly find a way to do him harm.

In both instances, absent the intervention of the billionaire owners, we could anticipate endorsements of Kamala Harris for president. The editorial pages of both papers have been consistently pro-democratic, and thus anti-Trump ever since he rode down the golden escalator. But less than two weeks from the presidential election, two billionaires have decided to block endorsements by their editorial staffs.

In both instances, unless and until an explanation that no one has offered yet comes to light, these decisions to block Harris endorsements would appear to be what Timothy Snyder has called, "anticipatory obedience." Trump may win in 2024. If he does so, he can do both men (and their business interests) harm. And he has pledged to go after his enemies. The raw calculation is pretty hard to overlook.

The first lesson Snyder offers in On Tyranny is this:

Do not obey in advance.

Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.

Anticipatory obedience is a political tragedy. Perhaps rulers did not initially know that citizens were willing to compromise this value or that principle. Perhaps a new regime did not at first have the direct means of influencing citizens one way or another. After the German elections of 1932, which brought Nazis into government, or the Czechoslovak elections of 1946, where communists were victorious, the next crucial step was anticipatory obedience. Because enough people in both cases voluntarily extended their services to the new leaders, Nazis and communists alike realized that they could move quickly toward a full regime change. The first heedless acts of conformity could not then be reversed.

"Follow the money," which guided two famous investigative journalists at the Washington Post in uncovering political corruption, suggests a reasonable explanation of editorial interference at two prominent newspapers. But whether Bezos and Soon-Shiong were fearful for their fortunes, or their liberty more broadly, or perhaps their families' well-being -- by their highly visible bows to Trump at this stage, they reinforce the evidence of the threat he poses.

If two of the world's richest men can't stand up to an authoritarian Donald Trump and his MAGA Republican Party, what does that mean for the rest of us? An awful lot rides on the November election for folks who value freedom.