One rarely hears “frivolous lawsuit” and “Supreme Court of the United States” spoken together, yet that is the position we find ourselves in. The President’s lawyers promised to “unleash the Kraken” of proof of widespread electoral fraud. Instead, fruit-bat-like Rudy Giuliani appeared, oozing black from his bat-pores, accusing Democrats of a “widespread conspiracy” (but which is also somehow unseen). The proof of which… we are still waiting for.
The President’s diarrhea of stupid pronouncements and baseless lawsuits does cover over a true Constitutional principle, though. That few are willing to seriously look at the Texas suit, after being made to look at all the other foolishness, is a rod the President made for his own back. That does not mean a look is not necessary. A broken clock is right twice a day. And the Constitution remains important (to some).
The Texas lawsuit was one built on Constitutional bedrock, and was joined by seventeen (!!!!) other states, a first clue the suit was not pure Trumpian foolishness. The one thing the suit certainly has is standing: all disputes between states regarding electoral law are covered by SCOTUS Original Jurisdiction. These questions are only answerable by the Supreme Court. The electoral practices of one state are certainly of interest to other states: what would the Blue states do if Texas law delivered the state if only a third of the voters chose the Republican slate? This seems too obvious to have to address, but for the fact that the most powerful media companies ever in human history have decreed it forbidden to do so, to go along with the SCOTUS decision to refuse to hear it.
As it stands, the accusations of electoral fraud will never be aired in an arena where proofs are subject to the rules of evidence. The accusers will not be made to testify true, under pain of perjury. This is nothing different from what reasonable people wanted through all the other Trump legal/extralegal/intelligence imbroglios. Citizens of Rule-Of Law nations should better see that there is a difference between political gas and provable fact (in what should be a lesson for both sides of our divide, with instructive irony).
It also hardly needs arguing that voting irregularities occurred: they had to in an election held in the midst of the pandemic of the century, where large gatherings in enclosed places will get people killed. But there are miles and miles of distance between “some irregularities” and “stolen election, massive fraud.”
Now, the SCOTUS craven punting plugs easily into the Trump (and Trump acolytes’) narrative:
“Having lost the election, to an outsider, because of the electorate’s loathing of the insiders, those insider Democrats resorted to elevating murky charges into crippling special investigations and impeachable offenses, all amounting to nothing. Except for raising the possibility that the Democrats did precisely what they accused the President of doing: allowing foreign meddling, in this case the fear-mongering of foreign influence, to effect the election (by undoing it). Strong evidence of influence peddling by Hunter Biden vis-a-vis Joe Biden’s power and position, was literally suppressed, as the nation’s oldest newspaper was silenced by Twitter. [Voting irregularities occurred in Pennsylvania][5], but discussion of the matter was silenced on Facebook. Then comes the blithe booting of an appeal of bedrock Constitutional merit. All this is evidence of a state/media nexus growing beyond the power of dissenting citizen’s ability to control.”
This author, for one, sees the Judiciary as the last functional guardrail of our increasingly dysfunctional system. And this is fast eroding: that PA could not craft appropriate law for the circumstances is yet another indictment of our dysfunctional legal system, long my hobby horse on this blog and elsewhere. The SCOTUS turning-away here will cause undue damage. These all add up to more fuel to the anti-establishment engine the Trump phenomenon ran on so successfully (and not without valid complaint).
Far better for SCOTUS to have publicly put down the “Kraken” (and the fruit-bat) pipsqueak, as the substance of the frauds seem, fair and square, in open court, under rigorous rules of evidence.
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