This morning I’ve been listening to SCOTUS arguments (rather than public radio pledge drive pleas) and heard conservative lawyer (and former Solicitor General under the end of the Bush II administration) Paul Clement admit Republicans have a hard time finding voters who want to join Republicans in court to have standing to support Republican complaints about (what in my mind amounts to) voter enfranchisement. This was all as an aside in the arguments being made this morning in Bost v. IL Bd. of Elections.
This jibed for me. Broadly, it seems to me that Republicans tend to disenfranchise voters. It has been both my my personal experience and broader lay-person observation that Democrats tend to disenfranchise candidates.
It is fucked up. Neither argue for actual democracy and pluralism, as party policy at least. You may find exceptional candidates who argue for true pluralism, and many who shallowly deny this corruption, but I don’t find either to be plausible cover for the duopoly.
Rather than the conspiracy theories embodied by various fringes, or the denialism of the so-called center, this to me is one of the core elements of the real corruption of American politics.
My own aside: linking to anything the week of it happening before the Supreme Court is inane if not impossible. (Archival links that can be “permalinks” become available, or are at least more obvious to the user, for proceedings that happened the week prior and further into the past, it seems.) I’d love the job of — well, we used to call it “webmaster” — for supremecourt.gov. The punch list to make it a more accessible and friendly site just with the content available is clear, would be satisfying to improve, and the content itself would be edifying to be exposed to regularly.