@mloxton As much as people think it's that simple: SCOTUS isn't captured that way. Nothing about the philosophy of the new members is particularly anti-state, and their incentives are still to constrain Trump to the law because they outlive him politically (especially Amy Coney Barrett).
The loss of Roe was a shock to a generation because it had been the law of the land for a generation; but it was fundamentally built on a "right to privacy" that is made up by extrapolation by SCOTUS and not enumerated in the Constitution. Since Congress never cemented it in law explicitly, it only took enough judicial shift for the Court to go "Our predecessors were in error; they made up a legal framework that doesn't exist and we're correcting the error."
In contrast, the States control election as per the plain-letter law in the Constitution. There's no ambiguity. "The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators." States and Congress; there's no mention of the President there. And Congress isn't captured enough to force the issue; they lack a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.
Trump is definitely trying, and we haven't seen precisely how the Court will rule yet, but... Essentially, this is an electric fence that they have no incentive to touch.
@mark @mloxton I think there will be an "election," much as Russia still holds "elections." The phrase I came across recently is "competitive authoritarianism": one in which the rulers control the media and mechanisms of election so much that there is no doubt about the outcome, but that still can be packaged as "democracy."
My guess is that the midterms will take place, but only after Act Blue is shut down the same way ACORN was, Mark Elias is in jail for an invented fraud of some sort, voter ID is universally required, vote by mail is banned, etc.
@msbellows @mloxton A universal voter ID requirement is exactly the kind of thing that I don't expect because of how deeply entrenched some states are against it and how little actual authority (theoretical or practical; at the end of the day poll workers outnumber enforcers by several orders of magnitude) the Federal government has to demand it. That's a great textbook example of what I'm talking about.
At the end of the day, the States report the results to Congress but they also report the results to the public. If several states run their elections the way they always do, report the results, and Congress decides they're something else? Pitchforks.
If SCOTUS backs Congress on that? It's much easier to serve out your longer-than-any-President career on the bench if you don't have to worry about how vulnerable your neck is.
The incentives really don't line up, and the power is more centralized than it's ever been, yet still quite decentralized.
@mark @msbellows @mloxton This entire thread is scary as fuck.
@AlliFlowers @msbellows @mloxton I respect that. As much as I wish I could help with that... These are scary-as-fuck times.
(But that's why I push back on this sort of doomism. It's both discouraging and unhelpful-because-it's-wrong).