The conclusion of your penultimate paragraph, Noah--"the complaint [of the conservative majority on the Supreme Court] is not that democracy requires such immunity, but that democracy itself is the problem, and what we need to do is empower the president to be the true sovereign"--leads directly into your comment to Damon which he quotes in his latest substack post: "[C]ourts are extremely valuable umpires in a normal political context. They could even potentially mediate between mutually-hostile organs of government—between Congress and the presidency, between the states and the federal government—and thereby defuse constitutional crises. But if the rest of the political system turns to them to prevent a dictatorship, they’ll be sorely disappointed." I couldn't agree more...except that, critic that I am of our Court's I-think-much-too-expansive claims in regards to their own role in making constitutionalism operable, I can't help but wonder: to what degree has our contented acceptance of the "valuable empires" model of the Court (John Roberts! Balls and strikes! Non-partisan!) actually made the positions of Alito, et al, assume must be considered that much more likely? Significantly, I would say.
The conclusion of your penultimate paragraph, Noah--"the complaint [of the conservative majority on the Supreme Court] is not that democracy requires such immunity, but that democracy itself is the problem, and what we need to do is empower the president to be the true sovereign"--leads directly into your comment to Damon which he quotes in his latest substack post: "[C]ourts are extremely valuable umpires in a normal political context. They could even potentially mediate between mutually-hostile organs of government—between Congress and the presidency, between the states and the federal government—and thereby defuse constitutional crises. But if the rest of the political system turns to them to prevent a dictatorship, they’ll be sorely disappointed." I couldn't agree more...except that, critic that I am of our Court's I-think-much-too-expansive claims in regards to their own role in making constitutionalism operable, I can't help but wonder: to what degree has our contented acceptance of the "valuable empires" model of the Court (John Roberts! Balls and strikes! Non-partisan!) actually made the positions of Alito, et al, assume must be considered that much more likely? Significantly, I would say.