You can thank one liberal pipe dream and one overly cautious Justice Department.
“It’s up to the Supreme Court.” These days the phrase is as much a statement of fact when it comes to a major legal issue that the justices will resolve as it is a cause for concern. After all, in the past two years alone, the conservative supermajority of justices installed by Donald Trump has upended the law on abortion, gun control, voting rights, affirmative action, executive power, and discrimination in public life.
The same group of justices is now poised to consider two major legal questions that will significantly shape — and perhaps even indirectly determine — the outcome of the 2024 presidential election. The Court’s handling of these issues will constitute a roiling, monthslong subplot of the 2024 presidential contest, one that remains, according to recent polling, a statistical dead heat between Trump and President Joe Biden and couldplausibly turn on the progress of Trump’s criminal cases before Election Day.
It is an unsettling, if not outright maddening, situation that should concern anyone who has watched the politicization and deterioration of the Court in recent years or who recalls its intervention in the 2000 election in favor of George W. Bush. The uncertainty before us is the result of two ostensibly different problems that are converging before our eyes: the emergence of a solidly conservative majority on the Supreme Court, whose decisions often align with the partisan political priorities of the Republican Party, and the Justice Department’s needless delay in moving to investigate and prosecute Trump over his effort to steal the 2020 election.
Welcome to 2000…
I turn 39 this year. Growing up in the 90s it seemed like post cold war things might be looking up. Lofuckingl.
It did. Then SCOTUS threw the presidency to Bush and commercial airliners flew into tall buildings in NY.
Imagine the Gore timeline. I know we can agree this is the culmination of Nixon and the Southern Strategy for 60+ years. Or maybe that we let things persist by not cleaning house after the Civil War.
But imagine the restoration of all the good will toward America deteriorated by decades of imperialism btwn WW2 and 9/11… and Gore was at the helm instead of the Neocons.
The climate alone… peace in the middle east instead of oil wars… banking regulations… so many other timelines we’ll never know… Too much power in that court.
Those heady days when it seemed like life after 1996 would be like the turns in Civilization II after you already won… I miss that…
Except Al Gore actually won the vote (probably even in Florida). Biden’s antagonism towards his own electoral base and insistence on running despite NOBODY wanting that is going to deliver the GOP their first non-incumbent general election popular vote win since 1988 (Joe’s first primary run ironically). The Unelected God-Kings are only deciding if it’s Trump or Haley/DeSantis who knowably beats him. I honestly can’t be bothered to care all that much at this point, because I’m tired of pretending the DNC is actually trying. I hope Genocide Joe enjoys Gitmo if the SC lets Trump get his retribution.
Oh, Al Gore DEFINITELY won in Florida, that was figured out in January of '01, but by then the Supreme Court had already installed Bush.
Had they allowed the count to continue, Gore would have been President.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/jan/29/uselections2000.usa
"In each case, if the newly examined votes had been allowed to count in the November election, Mr Gore would have won Florida’s 21 electoral college votes by a narrow majority and he, not Mr Bush, would be the president. Instead, Mr Bush officially carried Florida by 537 votes after recounts were stopped.
In spite of the findings, no legal challenge to the Florida result is possible in the light of the US supreme court’s 5-4 ruling in December to hand the state to Mr Bush."
At any rate, the DNC has decided it doesn’t want to try to win again, like when they just accepted a court appointed almost entirely by HW or Reagan while HW was his VP anointing W president without a fight. Everyone to the left of Joe Lieberman should have abandoned these losers back then, but they fooled most of us into foolishly thinking we could reform them, which Obama stepping in in the 2020 just to spite the actual DNC base proved is impossible. Now it’s 24 years later and our choices are still Fascism and DEI-approved Fascism that won’t bother trying because the DNC’s insiders make their money off percentages of ad runs, win or lose, and it’s honestly better for fundraising when the republicans are burning everything down.