A Comment on the Supreme Court

 I know it is not a popular thing to say on my side of the aisle, but I am okay with the recent rulings coming out of the Supreme Court.  If you believe (and I do) that a strong democratic conservative party is essential to the health of democracy, then it is important to give some thought to what a democratic conservative party means.

And let's face facts.  A democratic conservative party won't always agree with us on all the issues.  Disagreements of this kind are normal  Democracy does not always mean that we will get our way.  A democratic conservative party is not a liberal party or even liberal-lite.

So what is a democratic conservative party?  I would say that it is a party that agrees on certain democratic structures, rules of the game, and individual rights and contests power within those structures and rules. First and foremost, that means accepting defeat and living to fight another day.  It means not trying to overturn election outcomes one doesn't like.  It means applying the rules of the game in an even-handed way. And yes, there is room to challenge the rules, to change them and contest them.  And yes, there is a certain amount of hypocrisy by all players on procedural matters.

But clearly, for instance, it is not compatible with being a true democratic conservative party to concentrate all power in the hands of state legislatures gerrymandered to ensure one-party rule regardless of the vote.  It is not compatible with stripping away all power from any actor who might challenge gerrymandered state legislatures -- whether statewide elected executive officials, judges, local authorities, initiative and referendum, or the federal government. It is not compatible with changing the rules every time you lose an election.  It is not compatible with using the power of the state to punish disfavored views.  And so forth.

But it is compatible with a wide range of opinions on appropriate levels of spending or government services, or on crime, or abortion, or affirmative action, and so forth.

And so it was with the Supreme Court.  the Supreme Court rejected the Independent State Legislature theory -- that state legislatures have the power to set (federal) election rules, unrestrained by governors, state courts, or even state constitutions.  It rejected the idea that states can sue to force the President to deport more immigrants, saying that government has limited resources and cannot possibly catch everyone who is in violation of our laws, and therefore has to have authority to set priorities. And it upheld our libel law making it difficult but not impossible for public figures to recover.  And all of these uphold the overall structure of democracy and democratic rules of the road.

But it rejected affirmative action.  And allowed website designers to refuse to publish certain messages. And it limited the President's ability to forgive student loan debt without an act of Congress. All of which simply means that the the Supreme Court is taking the conservative view on matters of policy. And really, affirmative action, the scope of religious exemptions, and loan forgiveness are the sorts of policy issues that we can in good faith disagree on, so long as the disagreement take place in the proper democratic framework.