Supreme Joke
Imagine Russian or North Korean citizens going to court and complaining that the election system wasn’t fair. The court rules that they (the Court) have no standing, as there are elections, and that is where citizens can change things. We would all laugh at that as a bad joke.
But that is exactly what the Supreme Court just ruled in the gerrymandering case. So in North Carolina, for example, where 50% of the vote has given the GOP 75% of the seats in the last 4 elections, the SC says that citizens should vote to break that. Exactly, just like in Moscow or Pyongyang. Just keep voting and hope that Putin and Kim go away, or that the GOP gets less seats thru some prayer to Jesus.
Poor John Roberts. He knows that the legitimacy of his court is going down by the day, and he hates that, but his innate conservative blood prevents him from doing anything about it. Yes, he did temporarily vote to block the citizenship question on the census forms for now, probably hoping to show how impartial he is. But I will believe that after the final decision - all he has said was the reason was not good wnough, and Trump needs to come up with a better reason.
As it happens, the SC has already given him a better reason. He can say they want the question so that Republicans can win future elections even with a minority of the vote. In the gerrymandering case, the SC has just said that that’s okay, so why shouldn’t it be okay for the census question?
A couple of years ago, in their yearly Democracy Index, the Economist demoted the US from a Full Democracy to a Flawed Democracy. The US score has continued to drift lower, now being behind Chile, Uruguay and Mauritius among others. A few more such rulings, coupled with brutal exercise of power by GOP state govts, and it probably will be only a few years before the US falls below the Flawed Democracy category as well, to join many of Trump’s shxthole countries as a democratic shxthole as well.
But that is exactly what the Supreme Court just ruled in the gerrymandering case. So in North Carolina, for example, where 50% of the vote has given the GOP 75% of the seats in the last 4 elections, the SC says that citizens should vote to break that. Exactly, just like in Moscow or Pyongyang. Just keep voting and hope that Putin and Kim go away, or that the GOP gets less seats thru some prayer to Jesus.
Poor John Roberts. He knows that the legitimacy of his court is going down by the day, and he hates that, but his innate conservative blood prevents him from doing anything about it. Yes, he did temporarily vote to block the citizenship question on the census forms for now, probably hoping to show how impartial he is. But I will believe that after the final decision - all he has said was the reason was not good wnough, and Trump needs to come up with a better reason.
As it happens, the SC has already given him a better reason. He can say they want the question so that Republicans can win future elections even with a minority of the vote. In the gerrymandering case, the SC has just said that that’s okay, so why shouldn’t it be okay for the census question?
A couple of years ago, in their yearly Democracy Index, the Economist demoted the US from a Full Democracy to a Flawed Democracy. The US score has continued to drift lower, now being behind Chile, Uruguay and Mauritius among others. A few more such rulings, coupled with brutal exercise of power by GOP state govts, and it probably will be only a few years before the US falls below the Flawed Democracy category as well, to join many of Trump’s shxthole countries as a democratic shxthole as well.
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