What does a BIDEN Presidency look like?

[Sheilbh]

The answer to watching the GOP dismantle democratic institutions Is not to join them in building the bonfire.

I agree with what Oex says, so I'd disagree with this framing.

My question I suppose is, what is the correct response? Because it looks like the answer here to watching the GOP dismantle democratic institutions is to watch it disapprovingly.

[crazy canuck]

I too have spent my whole professional career thinking deeply about institutions and particularly in my practice of constitutional law. You do not have a monopoly on thinking about these issues. You have also move the goal posts. You were early talking about how the institution of the Supreme Court of the United States and the rulings that come out of it or somehow lessened by the fact that in your view not enough emphasis is put on the political activity that may have brought the cases before the court or helped bring about societal change. Now you are talking about Congress and a notion of respect.  What I am talking about is strengthening the institution so that they are deserving of respect. We start by not denigrating them. Which is really what you were doing. Ask yourself how do you build a stronger democracy by reducing it to politics. The strength of liberal democratic institutions and particularly the court is, when properly functioning,  something which is a restraint on politics which are largely driven from by the majority. The fact that the United States is currently under serious threat and particularly under serious threat to its democratic institutions is not a time to denigrate but a time to explain to others how it should be functioning and how it should be strengthened.

Most of you are far too eager to dive into the same tactics used by the right wing extremists.  Collectively, if you go down that path, you all make whatever it is we end up with something very different from a liberal democracy. That may be what some on the left and certainly some on the right wish to have happen. It is certainly possible that we lose what is left of our democratic institutions and all we have is populist politics on both the left and the right. He wants convinced me that populism on the right is a very different thing from the left. And I still think that's accurate. But when I hear you arguing  for something other than strengthening the institutions of liberal democracy, I don't like the thought of what would replace it.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I honestly don't really know what point you're making. I see a lot of people posting that Democrats need to figure out the politics side of things--things like how do you either counter-message propaganda, which probably means you need liberal equivalents of billionaire funded information sources, how do you counter message manufactured controversies. I don't see anyone advocating that Democrats abandoned any sacred institutions. Propaganda shouldn't be an ugly word, read a little history on how Democrats like FDR and JFK conducted campaigns, they bore far more in common with the low-information, mass-deception marketing that is common in GOP politics of 2022 than anything the Democrats have done in years.

I think you might make a more coherent point if you can identify a specific place where a specific poster has advocated for undermining some established institution in the United States, because I've literally read every post in this thread as it's existed and have not seen that.

[OttoVonBismarck]

It should also be understood that an apolitical Supreme Court is not an established institution in the United States. Basically everything about the way our Supreme Court operates has changed dramatically over time--including how partisan it behaves, how the Senate handles the confirmation process and etc. If there was a strongly established norm of a non-partisan, apolitical Supreme Court, I could see some problem in undermining it. That has never really been the case. There have been ups and downs in terms of how the parties handle the Supreme Court, but it has always been political. The Warren and Burger courts were absolutely politicized courts, as basically were every court we've had. If anything we should undermine that institution by having a strong re-think of how we select justices and how we let the court operate so that it is closer to apolitically, not via norms, but by legislative and constitutional changes. That's a "should do", not a "realistically can do."

I think people confuse the fact that prior to the 2000s the two parties were mostly willing to let the other side veto, to some degree, judges (via blue slips etc) and mostly let the other side appoint who they want within broad boundaries, for the court not being political. That was not the case, the court was political even during that era of "Good Feelings" in judicial confirmations, the way the politics was conducted was just different. There was a strategic shift to make the confirmations more acrimonious, but this wasn't an institutional change in the court itself because the court is an inherently political branch as constructed, and has always operated politically.

[Jacob]

I see your point Crazy Canuck, and I find it persuasive. The question I have is what actions can we take to strengthen the institutions of liberal democracy? In particular, what actions can Americans do to strengthen those institutions in the face of a Republican party that seems to be going all in on - at the very least - Orbanization?

[Oexmelin]

I too have spent my whole professional career thinking deeply about institutions and particularly in my practice of constitutional law. You do not have a monopoly on thinking about these issues.

I never claimed I did, nor did I comment on your analytical abilities. I merely remarked that to assume that what Sheilbh or I posted was equivalent to torching down institution was to give us too little credit.

You have also move the goal posts. (...)

I think you completely misunderstood my point. My point was that Democrats misread the social change brought about through Supreme Court decisions as having been brought about solely through the judiciary process, and that it has historically lead them to disregard the necessity of investing in the political process. If you think that only, or mostly, the courts matter, politics become simply a caretaking business or a cheap show. 

As for Congress, my point is not that we should undermine it (though at this point in the US, it's hard to see how respect for Congress could deep lower than it already is). It is about Democrats recognizing what game their opponents are playing, and shifting gear away from the "politics as usual" that seem doomed to lead them back to failure. Congress grants a lot of power to the representatives and senators. A lot of them are utterly wasting what they already have, and, more importantly, seem utterly incapable of translating procedure into politics.

What I mean by that is that they completely fail at explaining *why* they do what they do; why it's important to hold people accountable for January 6th; why what Matt Goetz or Lindsay Graham say in Congress is actually dangerous. And when they attempt to do so, they get lost in minutiae, or fail at their own attempts at grandstanding - and they don't have Fox to magnify their own cheap stunts.   

You seem to think that I am arguing for a complete overturn of all liberal institutions. I have no idea where this is coming from, or what "tactics of the far-right" I am promoting. I think we actually do a disservice to institutions if a critique of their inner workings is seen as "disparaging them". They are institutions, not totems, and I think this totemization is actually what is currently hurting them.

Where we probably disagree is how we read politics. Because you see the current situation as being threatened *by politics*, you want to reinforce the wall between politics and apolitical institutions, so as to save them. I think that time is unfortunately past, and that such a remedy would, at this juncture, only reinforce mistrust. I suspect the current crisis, like most other populist crisis of the past, emerged out of a sense of political dispossession. Reinforcing that sentiment by insulating institutions that can barely cling to an apolitical status (and are in fact run by people who actively do not run them apolitically) would deprive us of the means to critique them. You can't build a good liberal democracy without institutions. But you can't build one either without political voice, and a sense of political ownership by the people.     

[Berkut]

I love the idea that the radical left is "stifled". 

That is just downright Orwellian.

[Oexmelin]

Twitter isn't the Democratic party, and the fact that every issue that emerges there is driven into absurdity by a whole slew of the commentariat should give you pause.

[Admiral Yi]

Twitter isn't the Democratic party, and the fact that every issue that emerges there is driven into absurdity by a whole slew of the commentariat should give you pause.

Maybe that has something to do with the absurdity of the ideas.

[Jacob]

Twitter isn't the Democratic party, and the fact that every issue that emerges there is driven into absurdity by a whole slew of the commentariat should give you pause.

Maybe that has something to do with the absurdity of the ideas.

Maybe not.

[Admiral Yi]

Maybe not.

Can you name a specific idea from the left that has been unfairly driven into absurdity by the commentariat?

[Jacob]

Maybe not.

Can you name a specific idea from the left that has been unfairly driven into absurdity by the commentariat?

Critical race theory.

[Admiral Yi]

Critical race theory.

The Matt Gaetz' of the world do not constitute the commentariat.

[Razgovory]

Maybe not.

Can you name a specific idea from the left that has been unfairly driven into absurdity by the commentariat?

Critical race theory.

I don't think anyone was actually pushing that.  Hell, nobody on the left knows what it is.

[Eddie Teach]

I'm pretty sure CRT has something to do with old tvs.