For the left, ‘democracy’ is no longer just a euphemism for ‘policies I want,’ it’s a belief in a system that exists outside the Constitution.
Those who seek to destroy or delegitimize the Supreme Court for upholding the Constitution are no better than those who desire to overturn or delegitimize presidential elections. In fact, they probably pose a greater long-term threat to American “democracy.”
Now, if you believe the above contention is hyperbole, consider that many leftists aren’t merely advocating for court-packing or nullification of the Dobbs decision; they justify those attacks with a litany of other grievances about the constitutional order.
Even as the Supreme Court relinquished its power, and threw the abortion issue–unmentioned anywhere in the Constitution–back to the voters, a horde of j-school graduates and politicians, either ignorant of basic civics or contemptuous of them, descended with panic-stricken warnings about the demise of “democracy.” Almost none of their objections were grounded in any sort of legal arguments about the alleged constitutionality of terminating unwanted human beings. Instead, their case centered around the specious idea that the court had undermined the will of voters by no longer dictating abortion policy by judicial fiat.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who, at this point, sounds virtually indistinguishable from Senate leadership or the authoritarians writing at The Washington Post, points out that seven of the nine justices on the court “were appointed by a party that hasn’t won a popular vote more than once in 30 years,” that one of their seats “was stolen,” and that “several lied to Congress to secure their appointment…”
None of those contentions are true. Every single justice on the court, including the ones Democrats preemptively smeared as deviants to undermine the legitimacy of the court, was nominated using the prescribed constitutional method that is used by every party. And every senator who voted to confirm those justices did so using the only legal process available to them. The “popular vote” is not a real thing.
When Democrats win both the Senate and the White House, they have the power to nominate and confirm any justice they desire. But they also seem to be under the impression that when they win only the White House, they’re still authorized to dictate whom Republicans are allowed to confirm (as was the case with Merrick Garland). And when they are completely out of national power, they simply reject the legitimacy of justices who do not meet their invented, evolving, extraconstitutional standards. Democrats treat every victory of the opposition as dubiously attained.
“The Founding Fathers wrote a constitution designed to prevent a tyranny of the majority,” says former Barack Obama adviser David Axelrod. “But what happens when you have a tyranny of the minority, gaming the system to promote a radical agenda that flouts the will of the majority under the guise of constitutionalism?” Similar assertions were repeated across the left-wing punditsphere this weekend.
Axelrod, in true Obama fashion, begs the question. But the fact that the Electoral College doesn’t align with the “popular vote” isn’t a disqualifying aspect of American politics, it is the very point. If the Electoral College always synchronized with the outcome of the nonexistent direct democratic national tallies, it wouldn’t need to exist. It isn’t a loophole; it is a deliberately created mechanism that stops a handful of states from...
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