June 19, 2024 - 8:00pm
A glossy spread in the New York Times has profiled the progressive groups preparing for a second Donald Trump administration. Their weapon of choice appears to be lawfare.
The American Civil Liberties Union is reportedly “drafting potential legal filings” in anticipation of Trump policies on issues such as abortion, immigration and protests. The group Democracy Forward is going a step further and preemptively “recruiting sympathetic plaintiffs who would have legal standing in court”, according to the Times.
Beyond the Beltway, blue-state lawyers “have been quietly studying the playbooks of their Republican counterparts in Texas and Florida, whom they view as being most successful at attacking and obstructing the Biden administration”.
It’s true, of course, that conservative groups are fighting Joe Biden in court, and are busy laying the groundwork for a second Trump administration. They tend to be cast in less neutral terms.
If, for example, Trump were to embark on a programme of “mass deportations”, as the ACLU fears, the organisation’s efforts to undermine him would also undermine the will of American voters. Not only would they have elected him president, a new CBS/YouGov poll found a clear majority of registered voters — and a majority of Hispanics — support a national deportation programme aimed at all migrants living in the US illegally.
Whether or not one agrees with Biden, his own administration agrees the surge of border crossings during his presidency is without modern precedent. This is why the Right is arguing on behalf of an unprecedented response. Only the Left, though, dodges accusations of extremism in the press.
When Trump broached the idea of using troops to quell violent protests in 2020, most Americans sided with him. The former president is so irked by the GOP’s anti-abortion streak — conscious of its unpopularity — that he’s proactively pledging to leave the issue to the states.
It would be foolish to dismiss Trump as a hapless centrist with no real designs to target the Left or abuse power. It’s entirely possible we’re treated to another round of conspiracy theories about Hugo Chávez and electronic voting machines if Biden wins in November. After all, the Supreme Court’s bump stock ruling last week highlighted overreach from Trump’s first administration.
But it’s also possible that Trump’s precedent-shattering rhetoric would never have made it to the convention floor in 2016 had his predecessors on both the Left and the Right not themselves shattered so many precedents along the way. Then, even more importantly, acted as though it was all totally normal and that anyone who disagreed was a kook.
So welcome to the doom spiral. As outlets such as the Times continue treating the Right’s lawfare as a dark conspiracy and the Left’s as a campaign to save democracy, political use of the courts will only escalate. This doesn’t absolve partisans of their responsibility to constituents and the Constitution. It does, however, mean they’ll increasingly feel forced to turn to the logic of “desperate times, desperate measures”, perhaps rightfully assuming that the only way out is through.
If the placid Times story is any indication, it’s not clear America’s political elite is prepared for what that unleashes.
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SubscribeIn recent decades the Democrat Left re-oriented itself from its collectivist economics fairytale to its new selective-victimhood /grievance fairytale (and has done immense damage to America’s social and cultural fabric in the process). But if economic policy is back on its agenda then looking to some kind of quasi-socialist command economy as an answer remains the delusional rabbit hole that it ever was. Yes Globalism’s fraying of community bonds is perhaps the greatest threat to all Western societies. But I have my doubts about the ability of ‘economic populism’ to do much about this. I am not a great believer in political solutions….more a believer in unintended political consequences.https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/globalism-vs-national-conservatism
Looking to any kind of quasi-socialist command economy as an answer remains the delusional rabbit hole that it ever was.
Kamala – airhead, all style, no substance. Obama in a pants suit.
A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul. — George Bernard Shaw
Yay Kamela is lying and making lots of empty promises, yay! It’s like when Biden pushed through a student loan forgiveness program right before the midterms. A program he knew wouldn’t work he knew was unconstitutional and that everyone knew was going to get struck down immediately. That’s been consistent with the left recently say ormake whatever promises sound good and promptly forget them as soon as the election cycle is over.
Not to mention she’s already the incumbent right now I mean it’s been clearly demonstrated Joe isn’t running the country so whoever the hell is isn’t going to let cackling Kamela change things too much.
As a final point
> This would be coupled with $25,000 in down-payment assistance to first-time buyers,
This is an absolutely idiotic policy that will do nothing to help costs of housing all it will do is make it more unaffordable as it introduces a ton of new money into the supply but only for one thing. This is the exact same problem we saw with college costs as soon as the government started promising everyone money for college the cost of college skyrocketed.
As evidence of this what are the three things in the US that people complain about the out of control price on healthcare, college and housing. Which three areas does the government subsidize most heavily and does the government give the most money to help people with? Healthcare, through Medicare and Medicade, college with student grants and loans, and housing by offering numerous tax breaks for home owners.
These policies are as idiotic as price controls and taxing unrealized capital gains they will destroy this country. If we really wanted to change things we should be looking to what Argentina is doing as they are one of the only increasing economies in the world, not following in the path of idiotic failing states like Brazil.
It is telling that even a mild migration towards the postwar economy is considered ‘populist’. Back in that age, the 50s and 60s, neoliberal ideas were actually considered extremist and outdated, but they are still largely mainstream now. Despite failing on many occasions.
That is almost a reason to be optimistic since economist have been wrong on so many occasions in the 21st century. And they just keep clinging to their economic dogma’s. That said, the housing crisis is because of asset inflation caused by central banks. Giving first time buyers 25k pumps up the bubble even further. And honestly, it isn’t even enough, many home owners got at least 200k virtual value out of nothing. Something must be done to deflate the bubble.
Although both parties are by and for the oligarchs it is a bigger step for republicans to embrace the economic policies that will actually be beneficial for the working class voters I think. Can they trick them once more with stories like trickle down? On other hand, the democrats have alienated and even betrayed working class voters, that is hard to forget. In Europe some social democrats are starting to figure out that left wing economics combined with a ‘cultural conservatism’ might get them back into power. However, I don’t think the democrats will make that shift any time soon.
In Britain the housing crisis is as much a consequence of mass immigration and over-regulation as it is of central bank action – though I’d agree that QE has played a major part as well. We’ve basically created a system under which productive activity is taxed in order to reward the rent seeking of a parasitic metropolitan class, all the while wondering why our economy remains stagnant.
Well, it’s a bit of a chicken and egg situation as far as I can see. Everywhere in the West we see a housing crisis correlating with the monetary policy. At the same time we usually see that very few new houses are being realized while migration is also high. Could it be connected? If you think about it, scarcity and keeping demand high is basically not a bug but a feature when you have a bubble and you want to engage in rent seeking.
What matters in Presidential elections is not who the candidate is or which policies they tout on the stump, but who is paying for the campaign, because that determines what policies the candidate will pursue once in office. Harris is every bit as much a Wall Street candidate as Biden, Obama and both Clintons before her.
So your vaunted exception is Donald Trump, an actual oligarch?
At least Mitt Romney had an anchoring faith, and an evident decency.