The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg is an historic moment during an historic time. It's remarkable how one person's life can be so consequential for the well-being of Americans. Remarkable, too, how her death reveals the institutional rot within our rapidly diminishing Constitutional Democracy.
What we now live with is a Federal Government that is a blend of Kakistocracy, Autocracy, Kleptocracy, emerging Theocracy and just Bad Kabuki Theatre. And it's RBG, in life, in death, who shines the spotlight on it all.
Her Supreme Court seat vacancy demonstrates the high-level hypocrisy and amoral ruthlessness of the GOP. As we all know, when Antonin Scalia went away, President Obama nominated Merrick Garland. This jurist languished without any Senate hearings, no nothing, for 293 days until his nomination expired.
Senate Majority Leader McConnell put the kibosh on it, declaring that the March vacancy was too close to the November election. The American people - not the Senate - needed to make the decision, he said. RBG's seat vacancy came at 45 days before the election. But McConnell now will fast-track the President's nominee for a pre-election confirmation vote. Nothing says Autocracy like a disregard for your own precedents and rules, as long as you keep your power intact. Whatever it takes...
Also: our election is already underway. Early voting is happening in 10 states, with a dozen more set to start within a couple of weeks. McConnell's new argument that the seat must be confirmed before the election is clearly fallacious. But no matter, it's the way it is when a minority party has tyrannical control over the majority.
Yep, that's our Supreme Court at night following RBG's death. Mrs. Daily Kibitz and I went to pay our respects. Several thousand like-minded and masked folk were already there, singing and praying for a turn away from the madness in our country. Getting there, we needed to walk past the Senate, and that's where the Minority Rules rot really resides.
The Senate is a curiously undemocratic piece of government. Each state gets two senators, regardless of its population. The purpose, I think, is to protect smaller, less populous states from being swamped by larger, more populated ones. But the result is a Wyoming (population 550,000) having the same Senate representation as a California (population 39,700,000). More to the point, the Red States of Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Idaho, Alaska, Utah, West Virginia, Iowa, Mississippi, Louisiana, Kentucky and Arkansas have a combined population of 37,377,282, slightly below California's amount. Those 16 Red States total 32 GOP Senators, versus California's 2 Democratic Senators.
https://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/1031639944551378944
Another demographics guru, Nate Silver, provides a fantastic analysis of how the Senate skews to rural, white Americans. He pegs the GOP Senate advantage at 6 - 7% above and beyond what the GOP enjoys throughout the country as a whole because of how the Senate is constructed. He sees the current 47-53 Senate split for Dems/GOP as representing 167 million vs. 160 million citizens. Disadvantage: Democrats.
Further evidence of Minority Rule comes from Govtrackinsider. "In 2017, for the first time, the Senate's decisions were often made by a coalition of states representing less than half of the U.S. population." It's a fascinating look at how the sausage is made. Their post-2018 midterms take was that the House would prevent a total Minority Rule takeover of legislation, but the Senate would ram through judicial and agency nominations all the live-long day. This is exactly what has happened:
"Over the last month nearly every Senate roll-call vote has related to a judicial appointment - not one addressed mounting hunger, school closures, financial desperation or American deaths," writes stellar scribe Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post. Election security funds? COVID relief measures for small businesses and individuals? Anything to strengthen Voting Rights and reduce voter suppression? Ha haha ha ha ha. Never before has there been such an assembly-line of young, ideological zealots moving through to receive lifetime judicial appointments. Read it and weep:
The structural flaw of the Senate is not limited to that institution. The Electoral College totals are constructed from each state's two senators and however many members of Congress each has. For example, Wyoming has 3 electoral votes. California has 53 electoral votes. This works out to Wyoming getting one electoral vote per 195,000 residents, and California getting one vote per 723,000 residents. It's not designed to be fair.
The Electoral College's rural skew keeps the GOP in control. George Bush lost the popular vote by a half million. Trump lost it, too, by nearly 3 million votes. He'll lose it again this time, probably by more. But he may still win, because of the EC. Here are the calculated odds according to our friend, Nate Silver:
Chances of a Biden win in Electoral College if he wins the popular vote by X points
Yeeeessshh, that is a really bad look for a supposed democracy.
So a minority-controlled Senate works with a minority-elected President to appoint minority-party lifetime Federal judges, including Supreme Court justices, creating a minority-controlled Judiciary branch of the government. This minority-ruled government, along with Bill Barr's use of the Department of Justice as a tool for his ongoing religious crusade, makes for a disturbing night's sleep.
"Oh, Daily Kibitz, come off it. How bad can it really get, honestly?" OK, you want to know? Pretty F-ing bad. Like End of America bad. I happened to come across this thread from a tweeter I occasionally read, and it is SPOT ON. Her scenario is completely believable, knowing what we know about the President, the Senate and the Supreme Court:
What will happen when Trump disputes the election
This is disturbing as AF, because it is entirely plausible. And it's all the tyrannical consequence of Minority Rule. If you think she's off, check out the Washington Post's top political reporter, Phillip Bump. He says the same, in slightly more comforting language:
The concern in November is that, should voters decide to send a further message to Trump about his and his party’s leadership, there may be other tools, including judicial ones, that he and his allies might use to hold that power. Trump himself has repeatedly suggested that mail-in ballots shouldn’t be counted, hyping phony claims that they will necessarily be riddled with fraud. But the rationale is clear: He’s trailing in the national popular vote and will do everything he can to hold his position.
Here's the whole great article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/09/21/supreme-court-fight-highlights-new-political-reality-america-under-minority-rule/#comments-wrapper
Finally, here's the chestnut I often use from George Bush staffer/speechwriter and smart conservative writer David Frum. It remains true yesterday, today and tomorrow:
“Maybe you do not care much about the future of the Republican Party. You should. Conservatives will always be with us. If conservatives become convinced that they can not win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.”
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