"Happy Days" (j/k)
Last Friday morning's anti-Dem me is disgusted with this Tuesday evening's pro-Dem me, but sorry dude...SCOTUS just dared us to be responsible citizens and fight for democracy (and thus Dems)
I’m pretty sure Schoolhouse Rock calls the clowns in Congress lying dog-faced pony riders in the first 30 seconds of this classic toon explaining how separation of powers worked in the U.S. from 1787 until, oh, mid-2024 or so.
And now for something completely different. Here’s frequent Supreme Court case lawyer and cable news commentator Neal Katyal explaining how presidents are pretty much above the law now to a rather flummoxed British TV anchor.
READ TIME: A wee short 11 MINUTES!
Earlier this morning I’d been sitting here at my desk in my home office (i.e. bedroom), dressed in shorts and flip-flops (and a shirt and underwear too, don’t get excited), trying to work.
But even more so today than yesterday—when the U.S. Supreme Court ended their term by deciding to give presidents absolute immunity for any official action they take while in office—I’ve found myself mentally and emotionally hog-tied by the events of the last five days in the federal government.
I’m just going to gather the frazzled notes I’ve taken between today (Tuesday, July 2, 2024) and the end of last Thursday night’s presidential debate and paste them to the bottom of this post. Make of them what you will. Read, or read not.
(And SHUT UP, Yoda, yes they can “try” to read these notes, and if they give up in utter disgust—because it’s all TMI, and/or TL;DR, and/or too disjointed, and/or too depressing—so be it. At least we mind-melded for a few glorious moments. Eat your heart out, Lawrence Kasdan.)
😑
After scanning these notes, though, I think the most important opinion to convey is the following.
Even as…
depressing,
demoralizing,
discouraging,
frustrating,
infuriating,
insulting, and
downright alarming…
…as the actions of members of all three branches of government have been lately, we’ve still gotta get swing state voters to vote in November. And particularly for president. More specifically, the guy (gal??) with the (D) next to their name.
I know, I know, if you hear somebody say This is the most consequential election of our lifetimes! one more time—after having said it 70 million times already this year and 70 billion times in 2020 and 2016—you’re gonna strap yourself onto the nearest set of briskly trafficked train tracks.
I’m with ya. Last Friday morning I’d decided that, OK, this is finally it. I’m taking whatever steps I need to take to renounce my status as a Democrat. And I’ll start taking ACTION, dammit, to help find a way to get a younger Democratic candidate on the ballot for president.
Actually, rather than a younger candidate I should say a more capable campaigner with a more youthful perspective on the Democratic ballot for president. Because it’s not that Biden’s too old. It’s that his age has greatly diminished his ability to communicate and quickly process information.
I’m biased, but…Bernie Sanders is older than Biden, and his faculties are as sharp as they were when he first declared for the 2016 presidential campaign.
Like everyone who thinks Trump is an existential threat to the very existence of our republic—If I hear someone call Trump an existential threat to the republic one more time I’m gonna nosedive off the nearest mountain peak or comparable very-tall land mass or manmade structure!!—I was upset after Biden’s withered debate performance last week. More sad-upset than mad-upset, though, y’know? I was sad for him, sad for his family, sad for the country.
But then his campaign, along with Vice President Kamala Harris, and California Governor Gavin Newsom, and other surrogates and Democratic establishment representatives, started spinning the narrative. In fact, we actually didn’t just witness clear confirmation that our almost-82-year-old commander-in-chief has lost far too many steps to campaign for a second presidential term.
No, he had a cold, that’s what caused Joe Biden to end a debate answer with, “We finally beat Medicare.” To voluntarily change the subject from his most winning issue—women’s reproductive rights—to his least winning issue, immigration. He was just a little under the weather, and you should all stop wetting the bed and kindly STFU now, capeesh?
First of all, bull-effin’-ess. The PR people who had the grapes to tell the press Biden had a cold 45 minutes into the debate are the people keeping MAGAns’ hate for “smug liberal elites” alive and well. Grrrrr.
Second of all, a COLD is all it takes for the president to melt down and deliver so many incoherent, rambling answers? And whiff when Trump threw underhanded softball after underhanded softball of the most preposterous lies conceivable?? After a full week of intense Camp David debate prep???
What if he comes down with shingles on the flight to a summit with Xi Jinping, or Vladimir Putin?
My love-hate relationship with Bill Maher is as up-and-down as ever, but I still agree with him on the substance of a bunch of issues. Here is a free link to a New York Times opinion piece he wrote explaining why Biden must step down from the campaign, for the good of the country he’s served so well for the last three and a half years as president (and the 587 years as vice president and senator before that).
Maher uses “jumped the shark” (to the point of actually explaining the Happy Days origin of the term) in describing the state of the Biden campaign. (*sigh* It’s the moment when a TV show or other entity surpasses believability and moves swiftly toward irreversible decline.) And he’s right. They expect us to believe this was merely “one bad debate.” Just like Obama, and W., and Reagan all infamously had bad first debates.
Reagan’s slip-up, shown above, was certainly awkward. But as far as I know it was the single-worst moment of his presidency in terms of pointing to any early-onset Alzheimer’s he may have been experiencing.
I genuinely hate to say it, but five days in and I still remember the lion’s share of Biden’s debate performance coming off that poorly. And he looked weak. And he appeared to need Jill’s help to navigate a single step immediately after the debate ended. (AND I don’t understand why anybody’s surprised since it’s always been this way to some extent and he had trouble communicating and completing sentences going all the way back to the dang 2020 Democratic primary debates GRRRRR!)
I certainly don’t feel confident that Joe could rebound like Reagan did in a second debate, if Trump is even dumb enough to go through with a second debate. And saying that pains me. Not a joke, as Joe might say. The guy’s done a pretty great job despite what I thought would be insurmountable opposition.
But if he doesn’t step down, and he loses? What a crappy way to lose a legacy. And it will be lost. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, in comparison, deeply damaged her legacy by not retiring before she passed away. The decision paved the way for the far-right SCOTUS we have now, obscuring the incredible work she did throughout her life. Biden’s failure to learn from that miscalculation, though, would be much worse.
Donald Trump is going to tear down the institution of government in America and mangle it into his own image if he wins in November. If anyone harbored any hope he’d show at least some restraint during a second term—for fear of being held accountable for his most wicked inklings—SCOTUS obliterated that hope yesterday.
Ugh.
I was only going to write a little bit about the Biden conundrum, and then a little more about the immunity the court has granted presidents to officially skirt the rule of law. But I overshot on the Biden stuff. So here’s a text I sent to my mom yesterday when she asked me to explain why this immunity ruling is so consequential:
As far as I can tell, the 6 conservative SCOTUS judges, including the two with egregious and direct conflicts of interest no other judicial system in America would tolerate, have decided the president must have complete and total immunity for all actions committed in service of his duties as president.
Where to draw the line? Well, they’ll let lower courts figure that out on a case-by-case basis. But anything the president does in the context of speaking with anyone else in the government is protected. And the president’s motives or state of mind cannot be considered when determining whether an act is done in service of the presidency.
Justice Sotomayor said in her dissent that they’ve made the president a king. If I understand the ruling correctly, now Trump really could have shot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue, as long as he comes up with a good enough excuse sayin he was somehow acting in context of his job as president.
My theory: In the aftermath of the debate, a light bulb went off and the far-right conservative justices decided now’s the time to stop pretending to be fair and impartial and just go for broke. The Democrats won’t even ruffle any feathers by replacing Biden, so they’re certainly not going to have the fortitude to stand up to the Supreme Court somehow, at least anytime between now and November. And assuming Biden remains on the ticket Trump will win and the New World Order according to SCOTUS conservatives will begin.
It changes everything as far as I’m concerned, if this isn’t the turning point that gets people to take action then we are truly doomed. Anyway enjoy dinner, have a good night!
I’m sure there’s about 44,000 better explanations of the implications than the above. But put more simply…the institution of the U.S. Supreme Court has now officially jumped the shark itself. And has become far more dangerous to American democracy than Donald Trump is at this precise moment. And they’re certainly more dangerous than a diminished Joe Biden is right now.
Here’s a free link to another New York Times article showing where Trump’s head is after SCOTUS gave him this mandate to do all the crazy shit he’s said he’d like to do to people who have wronged him, like Liz Cheney.
So, yeah. He is going to devote his entire second term to ruining or jailing his enemies—or worse—along with abolishing the two-term limit on the presidency, I’d imagine. And why not? What’s stopping him? Not the rule of law any longer, so long as he acts within the context of the federal government.
For that matter, what’s stopping him from commanding the IRS to audit every citizen who wrote a negative tweet—or perhaps unflattering Substack newsletters?—about him? Sure, we can hope and pray that the government officials he enlists to do his dirty work (people who very much do not enjoy immunity against the rule of law) refrain from carrying out his more vile demands. But you gotta believe that, if not most, then at least some will err on the side of breaking a few laws and keeping their job. Because, really, how likely is it that they’ll get caught? And if they’re caught, how likely is that they’ll be prosecuted? Years and years later, after appeal upon appeal upon appeal upon appeal?
So this is why swing staters simply must vote for Biden…or if something crazy happens, vote for whoever the new Democratic nominee is.
It positively sucks that it’s like this. The two-party system is absolute horseshit. The Democratic establishment, including a stubborn Team Biden, are failing us by insisting on quadrupling down on tired old political norms.
“You don’t turn your back [on the leader of your party] because of one performance,” bellowed Gov. Newsom after the debate. “What kind of party does that?” I agree with journalist/podcaster Ezra Klein’s answer to that question: a party that is serious in its belief that a second Trump term spells the end of America as we know it.
Come to think of it, maybe I shouldn’t have been so hard on ol’ Master Yoda earlier, because here’s what he said right before the “do or do not” part of his famous “There is no try” speech in The Empire Strikes Back:
Yes, we must unlearn what we have learned, at least when it comes to the strategies we’re using to remain the world’s premier democracy, as it has been for almost 250 years. The Supreme Court certainly doesn’t care about upsetting mammoth apple carts like Chevron or Roe. Those decisions had provided 40 and 50 years of legal precedent for thousands and thousands of cases. But Justice Roberts & Co. decided, contrary to their messaging in their confirmation hearings and closed-door meetings with legislators, that the court should expand upon its power.
In 2028—no, in 2026—let’s once and for all find somebody to run as a third-party candidate for president who can actually win. And forevermore we’ll finally have a Clooney Party, a Winfrey Party, an Alright Alright Alright (McConaughey) Party, a Stewart (as in Jon) Party…whatever party it needs to be to compete with the D’s and R’s.
And let’s make ranked-choice voting a reality in the U.S., too, while we’re at it.
But it just doesn’t look like we have any of that kind of healthy disruption in us here in 2024. So in the meantime, hit up your friends and loved ones who live in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada. And send them one of those swimmer’s nose clips like this little baby—lightweight and durable with soft TPR pads and a nylon frame, it’s Speedo’s “Liquid Comfort” clip, now available at a special reduced price for a limited time—for when they have to enter their polling place, hold their nose, and pull the lever for (probably) Joe Biden this November 5th.
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Thanks for reading!
Yours,
~Dean
P.S. If you’re reading this in 2025 or beyond, and Trump is president, and I’m in jail right now for my crimes against Trumpocracy…send me a peanut butter pie or something, would you please?
P.P.S. You don’t need those notes I mentioned, do you? I’m always taking notes on this stuff, for future CeeGees that rarely get never written. Every day I lament not being able to post more. I’m certainly trying to (SHUT UP, Yoda) trying to get back to a place where I can post and podcast regularly. But if you want to read reams and reams of meditations and gripes about all this D.C. insanity, email me and I’ll give ‘em a light edit and send ‘em out…dean@ceegees.org.
P.P.P.S. 🍇🍇🍇🍇🍇🍇🍇🍇🍇🍇🍇