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Trump grabbed hold of the GOP's 21st-century voting rights agenda and put his own stamp on it, and now these establishment party lawyers are hoping their project by comparison will get sympathetic audiences from otherwise hostile courts https://twitter.com/KlasfeldReports/status/1339673958447259648
But these lawyers also know that SCOTUS isn't hostile to unTrumped election cases: https://twitter.com/stevenmazie/status/1338938987872972800?s=20
Notice the pattern:
-GOP spends some 15 years making voter fraud a thing
-Trump absorbs that thing, supercharges it for personal gain
-GOP lawyers retrofit legal rationales to help Trump win
-Trump loses
-GOP lawyers say retrofitted legal rationales generally endure
-GOP spends some 15 years making voter fraud a thing
-Trump absorbs that thing, supercharges it for personal gain
-GOP lawyers retrofit legal rationales to help Trump win
-Trump loses
-GOP lawyers say retrofitted legal rationales generally endure
Here's how it specifically played out this election cycle vis a vis the Elections Clause arguments against late-arriving ballots:
1) Pandemic hits.
2) Trump denies pandemic's existence.
3) Public-health minded officials try to make voting safer during primary, like mail-ins...
1) Pandemic hits.
2) Trump denies pandemic's existence.
3) Public-health minded officials try to make voting safer during primary, like mail-ins...
4) Trump, following years of GOP efforts to convince the courts and the public that voter fraud is a thing, wages war on mail-in voting, including messing with the USPS.
5) Congressional GOP refuses to help with funding, state-level GOP refuses to pass up suppression opportunity.
5) Congressional GOP refuses to help with funding, state-level GOP refuses to pass up suppression opportunity.
6) Democratic politicians, administrators, affiliated judges see these attempts to suppress votes for political gain at expense of public health and apply/interpret state law to ensure votes get counted despite documented problems and anticipated shenanigans with the USPS.
7) State GOPs seize on those situations in WI/NC/PA/MN to nullify what may be the winning tranche of votes for Biden and lock in a favorable suppressive legal regime.
8) They do so using Rehnquist's Bush v. Gore concurrence - a formalistic plurality opinion driven by rushed and partisan motivated reasoning in a decision that disavowed its own precedential value.
9) Four SCOTUS justices suggest they're into it. Two 8th Circuit judges do, too.
10) Trump loses. But now this retrofitted legal rationale based on its own retrofitted legal rationale, each conjured up in service of pure Presidential will to power, survives as a conservative "principle" deserving of precedential force.
Oh, but you say Democrats were also cynically playing politics by using the pandemic to their partisan advantage?
OK, fine. But https://twitter.com/MikeSacksEsq/status/1238133896950276102?s=20
OK, fine. But https://twitter.com/MikeSacksEsq/status/1238133896950276102?s=20
And Democrats on the US/PA/WI Supreme Courts are just voting for their sides, too?
Sure, but https://twitter.com/MikeSacksEsq/status/1321959040386273280?s=20
Sure, but https://twitter.com/MikeSacksEsq/status/1321959040386273280?s=20
It doesn't have to be this way. These lawsuits weren't compulsory, nor were their legal arguments inevitable. These are choices people are making to beat back democracy so to preserve power rather than adapt their policy preferences to appeal to popular will.
So sure, Trump and his lawyers were ready to nuke American democracy for short-term personalized gain. But don't forget they emerged from those who are now using those cases to continue their project to erode American democracy for long-term political/ideological preservation.
