A big unspoken subplot is how many of the alternative options to Biden look dicey because of bad faith conservative legal shenanigans and in-progress attempts to steal the 2024 election. Challenges to putting a replacement on ballots or leaving VP office vacant could result in stolen election
The fact that no electeds last time were punished for trying to steal the election predictably lead to out-in-the-open maneuvering to do the same thing in 2024. It's bad
Back in late 2020 I advocated for expelling all the members of Congress who voted against certifying, then using the rump majorities you'd gain after to pass court reform (who'd ratify the legality of this maneuver). Radical proposal! but the alternatives of doing nothing were more radical
Ah I see. Ok yes that’s a different kettle of fish. Sadly an administration that won’t even consider Court expansion would never go for that, and the Democrats in Congress would very much need the executive branch’s backing to make that stick
Well the alternative wasn't "and everything is chill and normal" the alternative is "the supreme court unwrites the constitution" and that turns out to be much more radical and unpleasant
Democrats are overwhelmingly procedurally conservative/institutionalist and substantively liberal.
Most of them, inc. Biden, believed that most SCOTUS republicans were procedurally conservative/institutionalist even if they’re substantively conservative, and hence a return to normalcy was possible
As it turns out, that was wildly wrong. Roberts’s vaunted institutionalism was all an act, an instrumental means of protecting the court’s power for when he thought it was important enough to let the mask slip
“Expel those fuckers and fix the court” is institutionally radical but substantively conservative in the sense of preventing a slow-moving coup destroying the constitution
If you recognized that Roberts et al were all fucking Nazis and that the institutionalism and all their opinions purporting to state general principles of law applicable in future cases was a game of pretend that they would drop when the chance presented itself, you’d see Mike was right
