First: Where's the limiting principle in your argument that we can't use the courts to save the people from their own wickedness or folly in this case? In practice, we already have lots of ways in which courts can and do restrain the will of popular majorities. Why doesn't your argument imply that those are all bad too?
Bouie I think would bite this bullet. He has long argued that SCOTUS, for example, is not actually on net a friend to the freedoms he most values, and that the country would be better off if its power to declare laws unconstitutional were just stripped entirely. Would you take his side on that? If not, where is the distinction? Is it just that the right to choose which candidate gets to be President is somehow more fundamental to popular sovereignty than, say, the right to choose which speech can be censored, or what protections criminal defendants must have, or even what the decision procedures for future elections will be?
Second: if indeed the endurance of the republic depends on a majority of voters rejecting the authoritarian temptation this November... well, the prediction markets say we have on the order of a 40% chance that the republic will not in fact endure. For those of us who highly value living in a liberal-democratic polity, this seems like a contingency worth planning for. What might that contingency planning look like?
The "move to Canada or someplace similar" strategy, so often bandied about, seems inadequate for several reasons:
1. ructions elsewhere have demonstrated that there is no truly safe place anymore;
2. that will become even more true if US democracy fails, given its historic role as an anchor of democracy elsewhere in the developed world;
3. most of all, the thought of flight feels dishonorable for one privileged enough to seriously consider it. Someone has to stay and fight, and who will/should it be if not us?
But then you have to try and lay out what staying and fighting concretely looks like. IMO one plausible mechanism is going to be supporting legal actions against the possible future Trump administration: that is, using the courts to restrain popularly-elected authoritarian officials. Does your belief in popular sovereignty mean you'd abjure that strategy? If so, what to do instead? I don't have a clear answer yet, but I do think this is worth considering carefully while we have the leisure and temporary security to do so with somewhat cool heads, rather than in a despairing panic on November 6th or January 21st.
Two questions, one theoretical, one practical.
First: Where's the limiting principle in your argument that we can't use the courts to save the people from their own wickedness or folly in this case? In practice, we already have lots of ways in which courts can and do restrain the will of popular majorities. Why doesn't your argument imply that those are all bad too?
Bouie I think would bite this bullet. He has long argued that SCOTUS, for example, is not actually on net a friend to the freedoms he most values, and that the country would be better off if its power to declare laws unconstitutional were just stripped entirely. Would you take his side on that? If not, where is the distinction? Is it just that the right to choose which candidate gets to be President is somehow more fundamental to popular sovereignty than, say, the right to choose which speech can be censored, or what protections criminal defendants must have, or even what the decision procedures for future elections will be?
Second: if indeed the endurance of the republic depends on a majority of voters rejecting the authoritarian temptation this November... well, the prediction markets say we have on the order of a 40% chance that the republic will not in fact endure. For those of us who highly value living in a liberal-democratic polity, this seems like a contingency worth planning for. What might that contingency planning look like?
The "move to Canada or someplace similar" strategy, so often bandied about, seems inadequate for several reasons:
1. ructions elsewhere have demonstrated that there is no truly safe place anymore;
2. that will become even more true if US democracy fails, given its historic role as an anchor of democracy elsewhere in the developed world;
3. most of all, the thought of flight feels dishonorable for one privileged enough to seriously consider it. Someone has to stay and fight, and who will/should it be if not us?
But then you have to try and lay out what staying and fighting concretely looks like. IMO one plausible mechanism is going to be supporting legal actions against the possible future Trump administration: that is, using the courts to restrain popularly-elected authoritarian officials. Does your belief in popular sovereignty mean you'd abjure that strategy? If so, what to do instead? I don't have a clear answer yet, but I do think this is worth considering carefully while we have the leisure and temporary security to do so with somewhat cool heads, rather than in a despairing panic on November 6th or January 21st.