Voter Bias, Voter Gone
America’s right disembowels democracy.
February 29
Grasping the logic behind yesterday’s SCOTUS one page missive is like grasping at straws. Consider SCOTUS listening… that’s right, listening… to a series of claims about “absolute immunity” that have been adjudicated not once but twice. I could stop scratching my scalp but no, it’s another day in the United States of Amnesia.
If you don’t get it, I am your new best friend.
Consider what’s there to get?
What shred of reasoning, questioning, deliberating did Judge Chutkan, a three judge Appeals Court Panel, two impaneled juries miss? Was it the part about, “Heh, me and my peeps were just trying to save ‘democracy,’ or was it the part about, “How can a President do his job, if he can’t be the ONLY ONE who can break the law?” Or maybe the part about, “You know we really do need to fix the Constitution, because it’s bad for the country… everybody knows that.”
What’s an inquiring mind to do?
My dog-eared American history book is sitting on the coffee table staring at me. No, it’s not there. We are on new terrain here. How about Linda Greenhouse’s “The Supreme Court: A Very Short Introduction,” (1) which I ordered but haven’t started to read — I need quiet sanity for that task.
No, it’s from his lips to god’s ears, the ‘lips’ being Jack Smith, America’s dragon slayer:
“The voters need to know.”
Not a book, not a guide, not even Ari Melber and his club of legal eagles (2), but a ‘fifth estate’ — the informed voter — provides clues to this judicial madness. ‘We’ll miss ’em when they are gone,’ … you know, those folk.
In case the Supreme Court missed it, Jack Smith and his team represent the American people. Remember them? Not a fantasized deep dark ‘administrative state,’ not a closeted Republican Party, not a White House usurper, but the American people — those folk.
There is a history here, a precedent, if you will. Bush v. Gore. And also Trump v. Anderson. (3) A ‘special kind of precedent:’ a ‘slow walking’ precedent, something defense attorneys working criminal cases adopt as a strategy to avoid prosecution.
In the “immunity” case, SCOTUS didn’t follow those Supreme Court case trajectories with the same alacrity. Bush v. Gore took the Supreme Court four days to render opinions: Trump v. Anderson, a week.
What’s curious is that in these cases the decision of the Supreme Court was a political decision (Bush v. Gore) and a voting decision (Trump v. Anderson) not a legal nor a constitutional decision. The Supreme Court is intervening in the election process and at the same time dismissing the unpopularity of the Court as originating from a bunch of disingenuous losers. (4)
Judge Chutkan in a decision which sounded more like SCOTUS appeal avoidance than justice, gave Trump’s lawyers 82 days… so considering the new April 22 hearing, assuming a tight schedule for SCOTUS deliberating the scope of “immunity,” (5) the new DC trial date would not start until mid-July or early August, which restores the Trump team’s strategy of delay. Consider that once what was a March 4 trial date start is now postponed until less than 60 days before the 2024 Presidential election — if there are no more delays.
If the trial date begins early September, this would mean a loss of 180 days for the people and over 2 years, 10 months and a handful of days since January 6. Consider that of the 250 days left until November 6, less than 60 days are left for holding Trump accountable before the election — thirty-odd days before early voting begins in multiple states. The odds that Trump’s 2020 interference in the election process would be adjudicated before the election just evaporated.
On another plane the SCOTUS decision to hear the claim of “absolute immunity,” creates a quasi-legal-media circus as jury selection and discovery in the January 6 case move forward post April 22. For 90 days, the most intense weeks of 2024 campaigning, Trump will have the benefit of America’s courtroom as a campaign dais.
Talk about distraction.
Of the multiple constituencies served by the constitution, the voter and vote elector are among the most vulnerable. Their claims of injustice are manifested by an act — has their vote been denied? Considering that voting is a fundamental activity of sustaining democracy, to the observer, voting is remarkably fragile.
And for an politically active court remarkably dismissive of voters. Who represents voters, except the politically inclined? In Bush v. Gore and Trump v. Anderson, state institutions tasked to defend voting were summoned before the high court and challenged on alleged constitutional grounds. The justices’ opinions in these cases have an existential ring — do chads have rights? Do ballots resemble qualified, rule-bound participants?
In the effort to look ‘beyond politics,’ America’s highest court has disguised what is intervening in political processes.
How ‘political’ is that?
That Trump’s accountability for interfering in the electoral process could be decided legally in a courtroom has convincingly been neutered.
March 2
Notes
1-Published September 1, 2023, Oxford University Press
2- “The Beat with Ari Melber,” daily MSNBC news hour.
3- https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/trump-v-anderson/
4- Attributed to Associate Justice, Samuel Alito
5- Alan Feuer and Maggie Haberman, “Trump’s delay strategy seems to be working,” February 29, The New York Times .
“The question of when the trial will ultimately happen has been complicated by Judge Chutkan’s insistence that Trump not lose any time to prepare for the proceeding while the pause in the case remains in effect. She has suggested in court papers that, in the spirit of fairness, the former president should have an extra day to prepare for every one lost to the stay.
Judge Chutkan froze the election case on December 13, 2023. That means, if she sticks to her decision, she owes Trump an additional 82 days of preparation time — equivalent to the period between Dec. 13 and the originally scheduled trial date of March 4. If the Supreme Court renders a ruling on the immunity decision in June and preparations for the trial start up again immediately, the extra 82 days could push a trial date into September.”
See also, Joyce Vance, “We’re Going to Need More Coffee,” March 1, Civil Discourse, for a thorough recount of the delay arguments used in the Mar-a-Lago papers case.
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