New Supreme Court case will make overturning Roe look like a joke.
As we all know, each US state has both Senate & House of Representatives districts in them, and each district controls a Senate seat and a House seat, respectively. If you win the popular vote in a district, you win that congressional seat. Congressional districts are drawn up by the state's Congress, but the state's judiciary can challenge districts if they're overly gerrymandered. This system is heavily flawed, but it divides power relatively evenly between the state legislature and the state judiciary.
Sometime soon -- probably in September -- the Supreme Court will hear a case which challenges this doctrine, Moore v. Harper. North Carolina's judiciary struck down a legislative district map for being extremely gerrymandered. The state's House Speaker sued the judiciary, under a minority interpretation of the Constitution where the legislature has sole authority to draw districts, and the judiciary can do nothing about it.
Let me show you a map of state legislatures by party:
If Republicans rule to allow the state legislatures full control of state legislatures, then the maps above will be every Congressional election from now until the end of time. Game over.
Here are the state governor affiliations, if you're curious. Republicans have much more trouble taking those over, since they're elected by popular vote and are therefore impervious to gerrymandering.
A further Supreme Court will further weaken protections against racial gerrymandering, probably to the point of nearly vanishing. The mechanics of it are a touch complicated, but you can read about them here:
These rulings, to be clear, will not impact the 2022 midterm elections; they're too late for that. But they will make it impossible for Democrats to win any election in 2024, or any time thereafter. At that point, Republicans will control all three branches of government, a triad which cannot be countered through the administrative state.
There is no long-term solution to this problem through the established systems of government.
The Democrats have a handful of possible legal responses to this crisis, and nearly all of them end in defeat somewhere down the line. They could appoint two moderate Supreme Court Justices to overturn these rulings before 2024. Problem is, this wouldn't give the Democrats a systemic advantage; Republicans would eventually win Congress & the White House back, and then they'd immediate open the floodgates back up. They could adopt the strategy of judicial stripping (essentially, take away judicial review/limit it to a supermajority of the court), but while sexy, this wouldn't solve the problem because by the time they could actually do that, the ruling would've already been made.
I can only think of one possible strategy, and it's a long shot. If Democrats could appoint four ruthlessly partisan Supreme Court Justices, they might be able to concoct a ruling which gives sole power of redistricting to the state judiciary and/or executive. The states then gerrymander the shit out of themselves in favor of the Democrats, preventing the Republicans from taking back the national legislature or Presidency. Thus, we have a chance at staving off the rising tide of fascism without explicitly breaking the law.
And by the way, I know what some of y'all are thinking. Hollowing out an institution as crucial as the Supreme Court may cause democracy to fall and even trigger a civil war. That's an astute observation, but I must point out that a democracy cannot survive anyway, when one of the two parties simply does not follow the rules. Democracy can only function by the good faith of those involved, and that good faith is already gone. We only have three options at this point:
1) Wait for the Republicans to destroy our democracy from the inside and become an autocratic state. 2) Wait until we lose power and then start a civil war. 3) Wrest control from the Republicans while we still can and dare them to start a civil war.
Even if we assume they will invariably take us up on that dare -- which is fair given the psychological profile -- option #3 is by far the best. If we're destined for war anyway, then it's best that we goad them to start it so that the military will most likely side with us. It's no guarantee, but the military values obedience to legitimate authority above all else, and we can only maximize our legitimacy at this point by having power acquired through technically legal means when things heat up.
Whatever you do, don't fall for the liberal brain rot where any conflict is a legitimate difference of opinion. We are in a power struggle whether we like it or not.
If we fail -- or if we fail to act -- we will all die in unholy fire.
@BlueVeins Also I think the notion of like, a hostile US invasion of Canada is not something we'll see in our generation. Canada is effectively a US client state anyways like what do they get from taking us over we already exist to just make money for the US.
The more likeyl outcome is the US goes full state capitalist theocracy and Canada slips into our own brand of authoritarianism as things get broadly shittier in the world. We'll remain closely allied and awful in distinct ways. Canada is a lot more police-statey than the US (our national symbol is a fucking police force) but I don't think the religious conservatism stuff is at the same risk level. The US had literal decades of installing religious maniacs in positions of power starting under Reagan. We just don't have that.
But yeah, we can also seize the assets of a protest movement like that with almost no legislative fuckery.
@BlueVeins It's a huge and frustrating contradiction being on the 'left' of the political spectrum.
The Marxist analysis of power (I'm sorry for invoking it but fuk anyone this annoys) sees liberals and conservatives as two sides of the capitalist class: two factions of elite interest. This is just flat-out true. I particularly despise that working-class conservatives use the culture-war class analysis of the 'woke elite' because it's an abstraction of reality and it leads to even worse outcomes. Hypocritical and a gift though it may be, its critique is made somewhat true by the actions of liberals who fight the culture war from the 'left' but have precisely zero concern for working-class people.
It takes sense for socialists to attach themselves to the progressive label for political strategy when it's the only game in town. Nonetheless, the liberal capitalists would rather the right win than lose control of 'their side' to a genuine alternative that actually gave a shit about working-class interests.
@MistyCee This is effectively the same strategy as the expanding the supreme court thing except shittier. All that needs to happen for the republicans to take power after this is for them to win one more federal election under the current rules and then enforce the SCOTUS ruling once for the next election. This is a guaranteed defeat scenario.
@BlueVeins Maybe so, but do you think it's possible to get the votes to appoint 4 new Justices before the midterms, including ending the filibuster to do it, and then getting them all confirmed?
It's times like these, I'm glad I'm just armchair quarterbacking.
@MistyCee Filibuster's already over for supreme court justices, that part's off the table. I don't think we can do it with the current senate makeup, only option is to win another Senate seat in the midterms & try it in 2023. If that fails, we try your strategy bc there's nothing left to lose at that point anyway.
@TurtleEclipseOfTheHeart In all likelihood, we can't. The Democratic Party leadership, however, might be able to do it if they take the senate this november & then use their control to force through 4 ruthlessy partisan supreme court justices. if that's what they intend to do, we can help them out by driving turnout for the midterms, convince the moderates that the dems are doing the right thing by expanding the court, and then take up arms in the ensuing civil war, which may or may not arise as a result.
@MalteseFalconPunch Scroffs told me a while back that the transition to fascism is creepily comfortable for the average person. I didn't believe him at the time, but now I'm beginning to see it.
