Is the third wave hurting Trump?
Yes, there’s a third wave now (for all you people who insist we are technically still in the first wave.) But will it affect the election?
Wisconsin has recently been hit harder than any other electorally important state. Until September 30th, it had never seen more that 22 deaths in one day. Yesterday my home state had 64 deaths.
Is this affecting the race? A week ago, Biden had a 6.3% lead in the Wisconsin poll average (using 538). Now it’s 8.4%. Biden’s lead is also widening slightly in nearby Minnesota, Michigan and Iowa.
Wisconsin is just one state, but if you believe the third wave is hurting Trump, the most dramatic effects should be in states where it’s only recently become a big problem. But in that case, the smaller Covid surges in other states might be having a smaller but still meaningful impact on their races.
On the other hand, and this is important, the national polls are tightening somewhat as we approach election day, just as I expected. Pennsylvania is also getting tighter. So there presumably are other factors pushing in Trump’s favor. Nonetheless, if Trump were to lose a close race, the Covid third wave could be decisive, at the margin.
PS. After reading Kavanaugh’s disgraceful comments on whether late votes might “flip” the election, I am so done with conservative claims that, “At least Trump put good people on the Supreme Court”. No, he put immature GOP party hacks on the Supreme Court. I wish Merrick Garland were there instead.
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28. October 2020 at 13:40
Scott said Biden is much nicer than the deplorable Trump. Scott does not know anyone in the biden family including Joe I presume. Joe Bodulinski actually got screwed over by the Biden family including the Big Guy, Joe, and other business partners. There are audio of Bodulinski chatting with partner and emails and legal docs to back up his claim. If I have chose between Scott’s opinion of nice Biden and Bodulinski’s , I chose Bodulinski. Trump may be a skunk , but Biden is too. Vote trump the deplorable.
28. October 2020 at 14:49
Scott,
I am not American so please don’t see me as your culture war enemy. I usually have better things to do than defend Republicans. In this case, however I happened to have read Kavanaugh’s opinion, and am kind of disappointed to see that obviously you haven’t. It is available at https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/20a66_b07d.pdf, and starts with “For three alternative and independent reasons, I conclude that the District Court’s injunction was unwarranted”.
If you had read it, you would realize that there is nothing “disgraceful” about the comments. The main argument is that there must be a clear electoral process, and that changing the rules at the last minute by a court for vague reasons makes things unclear. Or, to use your terminology – it is a feature of banana republics, not democracies, that the electoral process is unclear. In this case, the government had clear rules, but a lower court decided it didn’t like them and should change something. The supreme court then ruled that the lower court should not make changes like this.
Notable sentences of Kavanaugh’s opinion are “But the Wisconsin State Legislature’s decision not to modify its election rules in light of the pandemic is itself a policy judgment worthy of the same judicial deference that this Court afforded the South Carolina legislature” or “But the States requiring that absentee ballots be received by election day do so for weighty reasons that warrant judicial respect. Federal courts have no business disregarding those state interests simply because the fed-eral courts believe that later deadlines would be better”. The point isn’t that ballots coming in after election day “flip” the election, but that there needs to be a day after which the result is set and a state has the right to make this day election day. The “potentially flip an election” read in context is “Those States want to avoid the chaos and suspicions of impropriety that can ensue if thou-sands of absentee ballots flow in after election day and potentially flip the results of an election”, which is in itself a reasonable thing to say. The sentence can be found in a section saying why States *might* legitimately want to announce results on election day, not that they should – a few sentences later we read that “One may disagree with a State’s policy choice to require that absentee ballots be received by election day”.
So this is really not disgraceful at all. Given thathe writes, “The disssent’s de facto green light to federal courts to rewrite dozens of state election laws around the country over the next two weeks seems to be rooted in a belief that federal judges know better than state legislators about how to run elections during a pandemic” makes sense to me.
28. October 2020 at 15:33
There is not a single argument to be taken from your erratic comment. Only name-calling.
Just a few days ago you wrote a critical comment that the current voting system in the US is quite ridiculous. And it is. It’s not even the 3rd of November anymore, the elections now start 45 days earlier. And the practical joke is yet to come: One party now wants the elections not even to end on November 3rd, no, you just keep accepting “votes”, even days later, I guess until the “right” result comes out, right?
I have often said that the obvious solution in the vast majority of European states would have been to postpone the elections. But the “good side” in the US did not want that either. How phony and how ironic.
Sorry, in every constitutional state with a reasonable absentee ballot system, such as Germany, the election day is of course the very last deadline. Mail that has not arrived by then is of course invalid.
It should be called election day for a reason.
It is called election day and not election-day-proposal-with-delivery-suggestion.
In what kind of weird world are we living in these days? Unbelievable.
28. October 2020 at 16:07
Matty, You said:
“and suspicions of impropriety that can ensue if thou-sands of absentee ballots flow in after election day and potentially flip the results of an election”, which is in itself a reasonable thing to say.”
No it isn’t reasonable. It’s perfectly normal for results to come in after the election, and doing so doesn’t “flip” the results. That’s the language used by demagogues like Trump, who are trying to make the public distrust the entire process. Don’t think Kavanaugh doesn’t know this.
You said:
“I am not American so please don’t see me as your culture war enemy.”
In that case, you may not be aware that one side of the fight is dominated by authoritarian nationalists who engage in nonstop lying to muddy the waters. The election is being fought on the issue of whether we are going to let them continue to do so. I don’t know where you live, but think about the governments in Hungary and Poland as being comparable.
If Kavanaugh had just made his decision and cited states rights, etc., I obviously would not have complained. Trump is trying to suppress the vote by suggesting that late ballots (due to a postal system he himself screwed up) are fraudulent. That’s not true, and it’s a disgrace for Kavanaugh to adopt his talking points.
Christian, See my reply to Matty.
28. October 2020 at 17:23
I also think Kavanaugh’s comments were perfectly fair and reasonable. You might not like him but he was well qualified for the court. The particular question, not very important to the outcome of the case, was whether the state had any legitimate interest in not accepting votes arriving after election day. One among many is that late arriving votes may be viewed with skepticism and doubt, which seems true enough regardless of whether this doubt is encouraged by Trump. You might think it’s an illegitimate concern but even if you disagree on that one, there are plenty of others.
28. October 2020 at 18:40
Scott,
So, do you favor packing the Court yet?
Also, how did you like Amy Coney Barrett’s celebration of her confirmation at the White House?
What most Republicans mean when they say they want “good judges” is not only that they want hacks. They want fascists who are also relgious kooks and gun nuts. Their true beliefs are revealed most clearly by their attacks on John Roberts, as they want judges who will simply rule the way they want them to rule on cases involving specific issues.
I disagree with many of Robert’s rulings, layperson though I am, but do get the impression that he’s a real judge, so it doesn’t enrage me that he’s on the Court. He seems to actually rule based on his interpretation of the Constitution and the law.
29. October 2020 at 03:12
Sumner; “Yes, there’s a third wave now (for all you people who insist we are technically still in the first wave.)”
Epidemiologists do not say we are in a second wave. There is an outside chance that they know more than Scott as hard as that is to believe. After all, he *is* a macroeconomist.
John Hopkins’ web site on August 14:
Is the first wave of coronavirus over?
No, we’re still in the first wave.
New York Times, October 8:
“Has the second wave arrived? It’s hard to know without more time, epidemiologists said, but the data, so far, does not show a broad spread. “
29. October 2020 at 03:31
Scott, you wrote “It’s perfectly normal for results to come in after the election, and doing so doesn’t “flip” the results.” I fully agree that this is perfectly normal. Even Kavanaugh agrees, which you would know if you had read his opinion, the crux of which is that elections need clear rules, determined be the states, which should not be overturned on the whims of judges just before the election. Note that he also speaks only about “suspicion of impropriety”, not of “reasonable suspicion of impropriety” or anything similar. You are fixating on a fairly minor sentence of a very lucid several page opinion. But I don’t think there is any point arguing about this if your source is just an article about the opinion and not the opinion itself.
You also wrote “In that case, you may not be aware that one side of the fight is dominated by authoritarian nationalists who engage in nonstop lying to muddy the waters. The election is being fought on the issue of whether we are going to let them continue to do so” – I am aware of this, I follow US politics for entertainment more or less. My impression is that muddying the waters is a bipartisan endeavour – mostly when I read something “shocking” about someone who isn’t Trump, it ends up being vastly overblown by a media hungry for a scandal. This is especially true when it comes to various courts.
It’s a little sad to watch the US sometimes. It’s hard to articulate this, but it seems sometimes like you’ve replaced “hate the outgroup of people of different skin colour” with “hate the outgroup of people in a different tribe” which is ironic as effectively they are the same thing.
29. October 2020 at 03:43
In addendum to my last comment:
Scott: you wrote “If Kavanaugh had just made his decision and cited states rights, etc., I obviously would not have complained.” which is ironic because that is *exactly* what he does. Contrary to your opinion, Kavanaugh is not adopting Trump’s talking points. Acknowledging that Trump’s talking points exist and that states might want to mitigate against them (and therefore should have a right to set deadlines) is not adopting them.
To pick a more nonpartisan example: say a politician decides that religious services be stopped during the current pandemic. If a judge rules that this is not permissible “because one should avoid the chaos associated with the suspicion that the shutdown was a pretext for discrimination against religion” nobody would claim that the judge was saying that those wanting to stop religious services are trying to discriminate against religion. Just that there is a “suspicion”, which clearly there is.
29. October 2020 at 05:43
Wisconsin is getting clobbered because they were much more successful than neighboring states in the spring. This is not a third wave. Hard hit places (NY/NJ especially) never even had a second wave.
The “second wave” was the first wave sweeping through the South during the summer air conditioning season. Now it’s moved north again, but only taking off in places that never got hit in the first place (Wisconsin, the US West).
Illinois is a microcosm. Chicagoland get hit hard in the first wave, downstate joined the southern states this summer, and now it’s limping along without a lot of teeth. Awful death rate of course, but not so much dry tinder here any more.
The states that has avoided ANY wave to speak of yet are Vermont, Maine, and Alaska.
29. October 2020 at 05:47
But yeah, Covid probably costs Trump the election.
Amazing that Kamala Harris, who mustered as much as 1% support in the Democratic primaries, will be the first female President of the USA. Funny funny world.
29. October 2020 at 06:30
Call it the 3rd phase of the first wave or the 3rd wave… don’t care because it’s a distinction without difference. Just look at the aggregate new daily case data for the USA. What you see are 3 distinct “take-off” phases; it’s clear as day. The third one is still in the “take-off” exponential phase.
When we look at aggregate total case data (particularly on a logarithmic scale) it indeed looks like we are still in the first wave.
Perhaps we call it the 3rd phase of the first wave… I just don’t think it much matters practically speaking.
29. October 2020 at 07:07
Just observation. Correct me if I am wrong. Thoughtful, intelligent people very competent in creating real value with their work, increasingly gravitate to see Republicans as enemies and Democrats as traitors. Destroying traitors is more urgent than dealing with enemy. We may see a new phenomenon: voting against both Trump and Biden but also against giving Democrats any chance of having majority in the House and Senate. Myself, I refuse to be a hostage of voting for lesser evil. There is no lesser this time.
29. October 2020 at 09:17
“Wisconsin is getting clobbered because they were much more successful than neighboring states in the spring. This is not a third wave.”
It might be the start of a second wave but too soon to tell. Wisconsin still has 0.0003 Covid-19 deaths per capita; Iowa is at 0.0005 and Minnesota is at 0.0004 and doubt Wisconsin will catch those states but maybe by next summer.
Wisconsin wasn’t “successful” in the spring. It had a somewhat different demographic and city density profile than bordering states including Illinois which has a very large city.
29. October 2020 at 09:58
I have to agree with Matty, but I would go even further and say the criticisms of Kavanaugh are a pretty egregious display of intentionally misstating his opinion, so egregious that I think they are intentionally lying. Yes, Kavanuagh said flip the “results,” which was certainly imprecise word choice, but the criticisms clearly miss his point. I’ll quote some slate “journalism,” which says Kavanaugh made a “mistake” saying:
“States declare the winner of an election on election night.
In one shocking passage, Kavanaugh baselessly cast doubt on the validity of mail ballots that arrive after Election Day in language echoing Trump’s. Noting that some states throw out these ballots, he wrote:
These States want to avoid the chaos and suspicions of impropriety that can ensue if thousands of absentee ballots flow in after election day and potentially flip the results of an election. And those States also want to be able to definitively announce the results of the election on election night, or as soon as possible thereafter.
Obviously, in the words this slate “journalist” CITED, Kavanaugh explains that final results may not be known until after. What does the author think “OR AS SOON AS POSSIBLE THEREAFTER” meant? The article deliberately LIES about what he actually said.
The article further quotes Kagan’s dissent, which also makes elementary errors misstating what Kavanaugh said. “Nothing could be more suspicious or improper than refusing to tally votes once the clock strikes 12 on election night.” Kavanaugh said nothing about refusing to TALLY votes, it was about the laws the state set up in advance about the RECEIPT of votes. How do you become a supreme court justice and get these basics so wrong? We know from the context of his quote that Kavanaugh doesn’t mean that the election is finalized on election night, because HE EXPLICITLY SAYS SO. Of course it can’t flip the “final results,” rather the expected results based on what we have so far.
These clear examples should be enough to discredit the criticisms as pure partisan garbage, so I won’t go into further detail of all the other failed criticisms.
I say this as someone who thinks Trump is the worst president ever, but I hate when people decide it is perfectly fine to lie in support of their partisan cause. Unfortunately it taints all their arguments and hurts the cause.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/10/brett-kavanaugh-voter-suppression-wisconsin-mistakes.html
29. October 2020 at 10:06
@marty Wacksen
For a supposed libertarian, Scott manages to read evil into anthing a Trump related person has to say. I am glad you wrote what you did—-so I would not have to—-but Scott loves to hate everything Trump—which would be okay if he told us why he loves Jorgenson. He really does not like the left–at least I think so—but his TDS on Trump blinds him to everything else—including why we should like his candidate—who he never talks about–maybe he could add value if he did. Instead, he assumes a guy like Kavanaugh could say what Scott wanted him to say.
29. October 2020 at 10:09
Michael, Stop asking me, I won’t change my mind on court packing. I didn’t see the “celebration”.
Todd, LOL, what a pedant.
Matty, As far as “suspicion of impropriety” Trump’s entire campaign is now focused on suppressing as many votes as possible. It’s his only chance of winning. Giving Trump a win in the courts does not remove “suspicion of impropriety” it enhances it.
You said:
“My impression is that muddying the waters is a bipartisan endeavour –”
No offense, but in the past I’ve found that when people are this misinformed about what’s going on in America, there’s no point in even trying to have a conversation. Right now, the GOP is 100 times worse than the Dems, even if historically they are about equal.
Brian, This is a pointless debate over semantics. At the national level there are three clear waves, even if they hit different regions at different times.
Student, A rare voice of reason.
Stanislaw, Trump is far more of a traitor than Biden, but yes, both parties are disappointing.
29. October 2020 at 11:38
“Todd, LOL, what a pedant.”
Scott, I’m not sure why you keep boasting about your lack of knowledge about pandemics nine months into this one.
29. October 2020 at 11:52
Student: “Just look at the aggregate new daily case data for the USA. What you see are 3 distinct “take-off” phases; it’s clear as day. The third one is still in the “take-off” exponential phase.”
Case increase is meaningless at this point since so many are positives for the past few months have been asymptomatic and would not have been considered to be a “case” in April or the past years for the flu. Look at ICU and ER Covid-19 cases.
When the pandemic hit the U.S. in March, the percentage increase in Covid-19 deaths per day from the 15th to the 31st was about 30%. This potential second wave that presumably started three weeks ago has had an increase in deaths a day of 0.4%.
29. October 2020 at 11:58
Scott,
I almost entirely agree with you on the importance of process, but when one side is completely unconcerned about process and is, in fact, either fascist or willing to facilitate fascism, which is authoritarian by definition, when do you make exceptions? How far does the fascist side have to go in undermining democracy before you agree we need to do whatever is necessary to try to restore some balance, or at least offer resistance? If the Supreme Court clearly rules in a fashion that benefits Trump with regard to election controversies, and does so clearly in a way that violates the Constitution and rule of law in your opinion, does your opinion change? How much do Republicans have to try to rig elections before you accept the idea that we can no longer be concerned about becoming a banana republic, because we are a banana republic, or are at least in serious danger of falling off that cliff?
Most Republicans in Congress are not fascists, but they’ve been more than willing to ride the fascist wave within the Republican base. They are Machiavellian, and I have no doubt most of them would throw the democratic republican form of government overboard to extend their careers. Do you disagree?
I draw a parallel here between your comments on torture and position on court packing. As I understand your position on torture, torture should be illegal, but should not 100% be off the table for specific individuals within the government, given extraordinary circumstances. I guess you don’t think the same applies to court packing, which ordinarily is certainly a banana republic sort of behavior.
I oppose extremism on both the left and right. I don’t want the far left taking over our government either, and I certainly don’t think Democrats have good economic policies, on balance. In fact, I think the economic policies are relatively awful, though often well-intentioned.
These are not ordinary times. I hope Biden wins and nominates a significant number of reasonable Republicans to high level roles within the excutive branch. I want to try to bring the country back together. But, Democrats rolling over isn’t going to make that happen.
29. October 2020 at 12:06
Scott,
Here’s some very brief AP footage of the celebration at the White House for the Amy Coney Barrett confirmation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deMotMa2QQw
I see your concerns about drawing lines to avoid becoming a banana republic akin to the defensive lines drawn by the old French generals during World War 2, which shortly after being drawn, were redrawn, because the Nazis had already advanced beyond their proposed defensive positions.
29. October 2020 at 13:41
Scott, you wrote “Matty, As far as “suspicion of impropriety” Trump’s entire campaign is now focused on suppressing as many votes as possible. It’s his only chance of winning. Giving Trump a win in the courts does not remove “suspicion of impropriety” it enhances it.”
– but I disagree that this is even relevant because you have not understood Kavanaugh’s argument. The argument is *not* “I rule this way to reduce the suspicion of impropriety”. The argument is “States are have a legitimate right to make the rules this way as they may feel this reduces the suspicion of impropriety”. It’s a very partisan way to see abstract reasoning a court makes as “giving Trump a win”. Indeed, I would be shocked if a court decided it should rule a certain way to give/deny Trump a “win”.
you also said “No offense, but in the past I’ve found that when people are this misinformed about what’s going on in America, there’s no point in even trying to have a conversation. Right now, the GOP is 100 times worse than the Dems, even if historically they are about equal.” and I take no offense to this, why should I – the criticism lacks substance. No offense (well, maybe just a little 🙂 ), but your criticism boils down to than suggesting that the person who has actually read the document we are talking about (Kavanaugh’s opinion) is less informed than the person who has simply read a news article with some selective quotations. I’m not even sure what I am allegedly misinformed about – The fact that both parties muddy the waters is self-evidently true. Of us, you are the only one trying to measure which one is “worse”.
@Michael Rulle: you agree with me and seem to think we are on the same “side”, and then make fun of Scott. You are wrong, I am on not on your “side” here.
29. October 2020 at 16:43
Scott,
I can only give the view of a non-American, an outsider. We all think of Bush vs. Gore, where counting was done over and over again. The elections were really flipped back and forth. Half the world laughed their heads off or was shocked.
It is shocking that 20 years later, the US still did nothing to prevent such a crisis, no, oh my god, they made it even worse.
Kavanaugh is perfectly reasonable in my ears, the US, in this regard, is considered a joke since 2000, where hordes of lawyers can file lawsuit after lawsuit to change and flip election results.
As I said, for a European, for a foreigner, it is an absurd thought to accept votes that arrive after election day. And it’s not “results” coming in, as you imply, no, that was 2000, now it’s votes coming in, Scott.
This is a recipe for complete disaster, and Kavanaugh’s wording regarding this is mild.
Sure, he has connections to one of the two parties, like all judges at the court, but that doesn’t mean that he can’t get it right now and then.
29. October 2020 at 17:20
Michael Sandifer,
A few days ago, there was this guy, who has written something very similar: There was a party in the US, he said, that would only nominate partisan hardcore ideologues, who never leave their party line. He meant the GOP. You write very similar things.
Scott laughed his head off and asked: One party?!
Because, the funny thing is, if you took off your partisan glasses once and looked at the hard facts: Then it is always GOP candidates who change their positions, but never Democratic candidates.
There are quite some GOP candidates in the last decades that have moved very much to the center. Is this true for Democratic candidates? I don’t think so.
If you add it all up, it is easy to see that the GOP candidates are moving strongly towards the center, towards the Democrats, away from their ideological line, while the Democrats do not change their minds at all, their overall ideological line is cast in concrete, it changes not one bit, the Democratic judges are ideologically much more rigid than their GOP counterparts.
This can be scientifically proven, studied by scientists who most likely are not GOP voters:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/roeder-scoutusaging.png
This, by the way, is another reason why your court packing is such an absurdly stupid idea: GOP candidates tend to move to the center. The court is adapting.
P.S. As far as I’ve read, the verdicts of Kavanough and Roberts are usually not really evaluated so far apart from an ideological perspective, so most likely the big differences you invent here between those two judges do not exist.
30. October 2020 at 03:55
Christian List,
Even if both conservative and liberal judges each become more liberal over time, with conservative judges changing more quickly, it doesn’t indicate the ideological composition of the court doesn’t matter. It still means the court is more conservative for decades than it would be if the balance shifts to conservatives versus liberals. There’s a reason Republicans and Democrats engage in pitched battles over these Court appointments.
What I’m concerned about isn’t ideological anyway. If the court were full of justices with truly strict constructionist interpretations of the Constitution, for example, I might actually prefer it to one full of liberal judges. It could make for a much more libertarian society with clearer expectations concerning rulings, which would be better in most respects. However, “strict constructionist” is not as simple as it may seem, and I’m not a legal theorist, so I can’t claim to have a sophisticated view on how to interpret the Constitution.
Before stooping to insult my views based on a graph you dug up somewhere, you might want to realize that you probably don’t understand the American Constitution, legal system, or system of government and that your comments are likely worthless.
My comments are also likely worthless, intellectually, as are Scott’s.
30. October 2020 at 04:13
About Kavanaugh again: I just become aware that he ruled ‘against Trump’ with the “liberal” justices + Roberts (and against the other “conservative” justices) a few days ago on a similar North Carolina case to *extend* the mail ballot deadlines. I believe that this is relevant – were he just an unprincipled and “immature” judge wanting to support Trump, he could have ruled with the “conservatives” leading to a 4-4 split. We’d have to see how the lower court ruled to see whether or not this would have changed the result.
See e.g. here: https://www.boston.com/news/politics/2020/10/28/supreme-court-nc-absentee-ballot-deadline
30. October 2020 at 04:15
When Scott expresses his opposition to the Democrats packing the court, he hasn’t even specified his concerns. He just claims is a banana republican policy and opposes it, but what’s the actual danger? Is it that we fall into a pattern of court packing each time one party has sufficient control? Is it that it will further politicize the Court in the eyes of the public, undermining it’s legitimacy and weakening an important check on executive and Congressional power? Does this assume that if the Democrats simply accept the Court as is that Republicans will stop violating norms to gain advantage in filling Court vacancies?
He’s already indicated he has no proposed solutions to the current conflict, other than to throw out words like “elections” and that people should stop being assholes. What if the “assholes” on the Republican side are trying to rig elections? What if their goal is to rig the judiciary? What if they succeed politically in the longer run?
I want the Democrats to pack the Court to neutralize recent Republican tactics and then seek a deal to return us to recognizing previous norms. The strategy may not work, but in lieu of an alternative, I support this strategy.
Even if it doesn’t lead to a deal, packing the court might take a lot of the tension out of Supreme Court appointments, as advantages will be shorter-lived, which might be a better situation in this era of extreme polarization.
30. October 2020 at 04:26
There is also a political reality that those who oppose court packing ignore. The Democrats have a base that their leaders must at least minimally satisfy. The idea that the Democratic leadership can just roll over for Republicans is what is truly absurd. Democrats have mostly not gained politically from trying to be better people, refusing to “go low” as Michelle Obama says. Importantly, this means they’ve not succeeded in stopping the slide toward a banana republic. They have to get tough.
30. October 2020 at 05:11
@Michael Sandifer: I read your argument as “there’s a race to the bottom, why aren’t we winning?” The danger of ‘packing the court’ is that it is an undemocratic power grab. It is on the level of holding a military coup. Note that most military coups similarly claim to be “for the people” and “a return to democracy”. It is an old moral principle that you do not have a right to do bad things, just because bad things have been done to you.
>Even if it doesn’t lead to a deal, packing the court might take a lot of the tension out of Supreme Court appointments, as advantages will be shorter-lived, which might be a better situation in this era of extreme polarization.
Yes, it “might”. But it “might” also lead to one side not recognizing the authority of the supreme court. Rulings are only worth something if they are enforced.
>Does this assume that if the Democrats simply accept the Court as is that Republicans will stop violating norms to gain advantage in filling Court vacancies?
It was the Democrats who in 2013 took the nuclear option of eliminating the filibuster for federal judges. The Republicans then did so for supreme court judges. Violating norms seems to have been done by both sides, the question of “who did it more” is not really meaningful to me as it depends on how you weight things, etc.. However, I predict that the claim that “Democrats have mostly not gained politically from trying to be better people” will age poorly in about a week, with a landslide Biden victory. Perhaps Democrats have also not always been clearly “better people”: their behaviour at the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings – in which a grown man was asked to explain his highschool yearbook comments – certainly did not inspire confidence.
I’ve talked to a number of people from various places over the years. Arabs and Israelis. Serbians and Kosovans. Russians and Ukrainians. Northern Irish and Irish. 5 year old children and other 5 year old children. I think you get the point. The pattern you *always* see is ‘yes our side got our hands dirty but it was justified because the other side started it’. The more I read various American opinions online these days, the more I am reminded of these kinds of conversations. People like Scott suggest that if I knew all of the facts, I would not be so quick to make the comparison. However, in all of the previous cases I have seen *exactly* the same claim from both sides. Typically people are much more aware of the bad things the other side has done than the bad things of their own side.
30. October 2020 at 06:23
Matty Wacksen,
You replied:
“The danger of ‘packing the court’ is that it is an undemocratic power grab. It is on the level of holding a military coup. Note that most military coups similarly claim to be “for the people” and “a return to democracy”. It is an old moral principle that you do not have a right to do bad things, just because bad things have been done to you.”
You’re exactly wrong. Packing the Court would be a democratic power grab, as voters would elect the government understanding they might pack the Court. I think it’s unfortunate that we even need to contemplate such action, but here we are. The whole purpose of having a republic, as opposed to direct democracy, is to put limits on democracy to protect minorities from tyrannical majorities. Independent or quasi-independent courts help protect minority interests, even while they’re supposed to also provide a check against authoritarianism. Democrats should continue to respect the results of elections without trying to rig them, but should begin packing the courts to offset any advantage in Republicans violating norms.
You also said:
“Yes, it “might”. But it “might” also lead to one side not recognizing the authority of the supreme court. Rulings are only worth something if they are enforced.”
This doesn’t make a lot of sense. First, with Democratically-controlled executive and legislative branches, the Supreme Court’s rulings will be federally enforced. Democrats will also control the Justice Department. Second, when and if Republicans later gain such control, they will also control the Justice Department.
Many Republicans already see Roe versus Wade as illegitimate, along with the Roberts led ruling on the ACA, and the ruling on gay marriage. And Republicans generally don’t see Democratic office holders as legitimate, which is obvious when they say Obama or Kamala Harris weren’t born in the US, or that they’re secret Muslims, for example. Republicans cheer on Trump when he denies aid to California to help them fight fires, or aid to other blue states for help fighting the pandemic, on purely partisan grounds, saying that people in blue states aren’t even real Americans. Spare me your clutched pearls.
You also said:
“It was the Democrats who in 2013 took the nuclear option of eliminating the filibuster for federal judges.”
Yes, so what? Republicans became nothing, but a crazy obstructionist minority. They were just trying to deprive Democrats of judgeship appointments. Many of us never supported the filibuster anyway, left, right, or center. Scott has argued for eliminating the filibuster, for example.
This is the same group of Senators who openly stated they were going to oppose essentially everything Obama tried to do in his first term to make sure he was s one term President. They don’t have the best interests of the country at heart, obviously. Look at what they’ve done vis-a-vis Trump.
And I will not listen to both-sides-ism, or whataboutism. Republicans are fascists and fascists enablers and Democrats are not, period.
30. October 2020 at 09:36
Matty, But voter suppression does not reduce the appearance of impropriety, it increases it.
My other comment related to your “both parties do it” comment, which I thought missed the elephant in the room. I don’t doubt that you know more than I do about the technical aspects of Kavanaugh’s ruling.
Christian, If you want to avoid another Florida 2000, get rid of the EC.
Michael, Yes I have explained my concern. It a blatant way for the president to get the Supreme Court to do his bidding. That’s exactly why FDR tried to do it in 1937. It has no other purpose.
30. October 2020 at 09:38
Todd, I suppose that soaring hospitalizations are also “meaningless”.
30. October 2020 at 09:55
Scott,
Declaring that packing the Court has no other purpose than to have the Court do the President’s bidding doesn’t make it so.
If Democrats pack the Court such that there is a balance of Republican and Democratic selections, or one more Democratic selection than Republican selections, that certainly doesn’t guarantee the Court will rule the way a President would want.
This would be particularly true if Democrats cut a deal with Republicans to return to norms, which would help shape the way the Court is packed. That’s what I actually favor. I only favor packing the Court in the context of attempting to cut a deal that ensures all nominees get fair hearings and up or down votes.
30. October 2020 at 09:57
@Michael: you wrote “And I will not listen to both-sides-ism, or whataboutism. Republicans are fascists and fascists enablers and Democrats are not, period.”
I have better things to do than argue with an argument on this level if you’re going to argue that non-Trump Republicans are literally fascists. On the other hand, your argument “Yes, so what? Republicans became nothing, but a crazy obstructionist minority. They were just trying to deprive Democrats of judgeship appointments.” is so bad that I feel like I must reply. There are countries, like Belgium, in which a government doesn’t form for years because nobody can get a majority. In those countries, the opposing party doesn’t ram through a government anyways.
@Scott: I agree. But at the same time, it is *not* neccessarily voter suppression to have a deadline, fixed in advanced, by which time mail ballots must arrive. But again, you are still missing the point by trading-off difference sources of “appearance of impropriety” to decine which one is worse. There can be many source of “appearance of impropriety”. One of them could be a large of amount of late-arriving ballots. I personally don’t think this is a big problem – just don’t announce a “final” result until a few days later – but some (not necessarily reasonable) people do, including your president. Calling Kavanaugh an “immature GOP party hack” because he points out that some state governments may want to avoid this as a minor point in a long review is really not justifiable.
I wouldn’t call reading the (short) source material that a news article almost of the same length comments on as knowing “technical aspects” of Kavanaugh’s ruling.
30. October 2020 at 09:58
*the same length as the article it comments on
30. October 2020 at 10:55
Matty Wacksen,
I have no problem with non-Trump, or non-McConnell Republicans. We should recognize that even the non-fascists like McConnell are a tremdendous problem, which is one reason people like him completely lost control of the Republican Party. The McConnell types are grifting, religious kooks, who cyncically winked at an ever crazier base over the years, using whatever conspiracy theories were popular to help sap the money and votes from that base, while never really delivering on their many bold promises.
The perfect example is holding over 50 show votes to repeal Obamacare while Obama was President, but then being unwilling to actually repeal it when controlling all branches of the government during the very next administration. And over all of these years of crazy opposition and lying about the ACA, Republicans still don’t have a plan to replace it, though they’ve continuosly promised one.
And how many times do Republicans have to try to make the national debt and deficits an issue when they’re out of power, but run them both up without concern when in power, before people understand that the whole party is nothing but a scam, the leaders of which only exist to serve specific special interest groups and enrich themselves?
A whole library of books could be written about problems that the Democratic Party has, but there’s no equivalence here. Democrats always govern in a way that makes it clear they care more about the country than the Republicans.
30. October 2020 at 16:05
@Michael: I’m shocked, shocked, that a politican would not deliver on bold promises. (in case you’re not familiar with the casablaca reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjbPi00k_ME)
>A whole library of books could be written about problems that the Democratic Party has, but there’s no equivalence here. Democrats always govern in a way that makes it clear they care more about the country than the Republicans.
Yes of course, the other party is always worse I know. We could argue all day, but unless you make a point to follow and understand media that isn’t sympathetic to your side, you probably won’t “get it”.
Note that “Claiming to oppose good policies from the opposing party and not following through when in power” or “not caring about the national debt”(also: we’re just going to ignore the green new deal here I guess..) are both extremely mild, especially as we are talking about politicians here.
>before people understand that the whole party is nothing but a scam, the leaders of which only exist to serve specific special interest groups and enrich themselves
That’s quite a jump from “not caring about the deficit”.
30. October 2020 at 17:21
Matty Wackson,
You don’t seem informed or logically coherent enough to hold this conversation. Anyone who holds to both sides-ism has no idea what’s going on.
And in support of my claim, you bring up the Green New Deal, which is an extraordinarily stupid set of policy ideas, and one that I’ve condemned as such in these comment sections here many times. It’s also not an official policy of the Democratic Party. If I’m wrong, show me where the Green New Deal is in the Democratic Party platform, or in any communication offered by Biden or his campaign. In practice, Democrats have been much more responsible with deficit spending over the past 40 years.
If you want to talk about fringe ideas, we can talk about QAnon, the growing conspiracy theory now even held by many Republican Congressional candidates, the idea that Obama was a secret Muslim from Kenya, the Benghazi sham investigations, etc.
Very small deficits were run under Carter and a Democractic Congress.
A surplus was achieved when Clinton was President, and Obama sought and achieved deals to greatly reduce deficits during his presidency, which were largely related to the Great Recession and slow recovery, and Bush tax cuts and spending increases, such as those related to two extraordinarily expensive and poorly managed wars. There was also Medicare Part D under Bush, which was financed entirely with deficit spending.
The fact is, the deficit exploded under Reagan, Bush 41, Bush 43, and now Trump. The deficit became a surplus under Clinton and was cut by roughly 50% under Obama. Yet, Republicans have claimed to be the party of fiscal responsibility for 40 years. For a combined 10 years, under Bush 43 and Trump, they have run massive deficits, with Republicans controlling every branch of the federal government.
It is a fact that Republicans held more than 50 show votes to repeal Obamacare while Obama was President, but then refused to repeal it when taking control of all 3 branches of government immediately thereafter.
It is a fact Republican leaders have adopted a strategy of attracting the votes of racists since Nixon, while supporting legislation to offer amnesty to millions of undocumented immigrants. See comments by Lee Atwater, Stuart Stevens, and Ed Rollins, for example. This is one of many issues upon which the Republican base feels betrayed.
A big reason Republican voters are okay with Trump insulting any Republican establishment figure he wants is that they hate the Republican establishment. It took them a long time, but they finally figured out they were scammed for years.
So, I’m not going to waste anymore time trading comments with you. I’m a Democrat who favors total deregulation of the financial sector, including banking and the investment sector more broadly. That even means no more Fed and true free banking. I favor elimination of all taxes on business income and investment. In fact, I favor elimination of all taxes on investment. I favor eliminating the income tax for most, and replacing it with taxes on externalities first, and then consumption and underdeveloped land. I favor a neo-realist foreign policy, that sees the world in terms of hard and soft power equilibria in the context of developing transnational institutions. I favor deregulation of healthcare, including eliminating the FDAs ability to keep drugs off the market and the total elimination of the need for prescriptions to get non-antibiotic drugs. I favor the elimination of current welfare programs, and instiution of a negative income tax.
In short, I’m a supply- and demand-side liberal, in step with the ends of the Democratic Party, but out of step with many of the means. You can make your little assumptions about ideological biases, but they won’t hold up. And I barely consume any popular media.
30. October 2020 at 22:57
Scott,
The problem is not the EC, the problem are oversized battleground states such as Florida. So far your proposal is basically creating one huge super-uber-Florida. But the US needs the opposite: We need a lot of small pieces. When I remember correctly The Upshot from the NYT agreed with me here once.
Simply abolishing the EC would not change much, the US would still have a presidential system and would therefore be just like all other banana republics on the American continent, which all have presidential systems, it seems to be an American phenomenon.
Michael,
You are really touchy for someone who calls the other side fascist all the time. You behave like a touchy guy with Tourette’s syndrome, only with the difference that you mean your insults seriously and are confusing them with actual arguments. After all, I at least try to bring up graphs, facts, neutral scientists here. 358 isn’t so bad. You bring nothing but your partisan opinion, which is worth exactly that: nothing. You should bring some graphs from a neutral source or something.
As Matty said, you are just extremely partisan. On neutral sites like reason.com one could read articles until a few weeks ago that listed how both sides broke the norms, maybe the GOP slightly more than the Democrats, but it’s basically a wash.
Packing the courts would be something really new though, it would be a whole new ball game, most likely even a different sport. If Biden is wise, he won’t do that, at least he will wait and see how the judges actually decide. The theoretical option of court packing alone will make the judges act cautiously, there is no reason to actually implement it so far.
This is all just fear mongering, I’ve been following this story for decades now, with every new GOP judge the media tells this story, but nothing has really happened yet. It was the same with Judge Roberts, who is now being praised from all sides, and before that, it was the same, pay attention now and then.
As I said, the GOP candidates are surprisingly not as rigid as the Democratic candidates. I don’t want to blame the Democrats here, there behavior most likely has multiple, complex, maybe even plausible reasons, but for now and first of all it’s just a fact.
31. October 2020 at 03:26
@Michael Sandifer: you misunderstand me, I never argued that the green new deal were “official Democratic policy”, just that it’s an example of Democrats not caring about deficits. That said, the “Official Campaign Website” of Joe Biden, contains at https://joebiden.com/climate-plan/ has the sentence “Biden believes the Green New Deal is a crucial framework for meeting the climate challenges we face”. So you are indeed even wrong by your standards.
>Anyone who holds to both sides-ism has no idea what’s going on.
On an economics blog of all places, I’m suprised to see this attitude. After all, the idea that a large segment of the population acts a certain way “because they’re just bad people” should be seen as being suspect.
>we can talk about QAnon, the growing conspiracy theory now even held by many Republican Congressional candidates
I’m sorry but the *candidates* is crucial here. Yes, I know one of them made it into congress.
Your discussion of the deficits is interesting, but would need further analysis. That Trump shouldn’t be running a deficit right now is common knowledge amongst economists/finance people.
>It is a fact that Republicans held more than 50 show votes to repeal Obamacare while Obama was President, but then refused to repeal it when taking control of all 3 branches of government immediately thereafter.
Yes, we do not disagree about the facts. Just about the fact that something like this is a big deal. Politicans lie.
>In short, I’m a supply- and demand-side liberal, in step with the ends of the Democratic Party, but out of step with many of the means. You can make your little assumptions about ideological biases, but they won’t hold up. And I barely consume any popular media.
Ideological biases are more prevasive than just the “popular media”.
31. October 2020 at 06:25
On late arriving votes:
First, Florida in 2000 was a recount. We are talking about counting the votes the first time. Second, yes, the concept of late arriving votes may look ridiculous to a non-American. But do you know what is a lot worse than ridiculous? It is have election laws that permit vote-by-mail and then having the president’s appointed head of the post office sabotage the mail process to insure many more of those ballots will be late arriving and then using the power of presidential appointees on SCOTUS to determine after the fact whether those ballots will be late arriving or not.
And if you can’t see the enormously asymmetric difference between changing a rule to allow ballots to come in later versus setting the deadline earlier (after many are already in flight)… I would start to question a person’s intelligence, except that by now I am pretty sure it is just motivated reasoning.
I can understand why a person would not favor court-packing. It definitely raises some concerns. But calling it an undemocratic power grab is simply inaccurate. Is it a power grab? Without a doubt. But if the Dems win P, H and S with an 8-10 point national vote edge and decide they need to add justices to the court to pass basic legislation related to health care policy or update the voting rights act to help insure people are able to vote using a 100% clear constitutional method, it is certainly not an undemocratic act. Let’s stop pretending that there is any kind of symmetry in the Democrats attempt to insure the franchise is available on equitable terms to all eligible citizens in this country in contrast to Republicans attempt to suppress, or substantially burden the franchise with likely Democratic voters, under the bogus guise of vote fraud.
31. October 2020 at 08:55
Matty, You said:
“I agree. But at the same time, it is *not* neccessarily voter suppression to have a deadline, fixed in advanced, by which time mail ballots must arrive.”
Not necessarily, but what if the incumbent is intentionally trying to sabotage the Postal Service, know that most of the people who vote by mail are in the opposing party? And no, that’s not just a hypothetical.
31. October 2020 at 15:55
Scott: that’s a good question. I would say that the sabotage by the incumbent is voter suppression, but the deadline (fixed before the incumbent was trying to sabotage the vote) is not. That said, this is really moving the goalposts here, given that (and please correct me if I’m wrong, I might be) the incumbent’s behaviour was not part of the court case.