Elections in the United States: a reactionary majority

Because there were none time to waste. There is less than a week until the elections next Tuesday. And in the worst case, it may be the Supreme Court that decides the presidential election, if there is a legal dispute over the validity of votes in decisive states. The narrow Republican majority in the Senate knew this well when they voted for Barrett.

Because of what happened 20 years ago, when the entire presidential election was tipped by a few hundred votes in Florida? And a conservative majority on the Supreme Court ruled that vote counting in Florida was unconstitutional, giving Republican George W. Bush victory over Democrat Al Gore, who received a total of half a million more votes than Bush.

It’s about power. At least while it lasts. And that’s the other side of Judge Barrett’s urgency. Because after the elections in a week, we can have a completely different political reality in the United States. We can have Joe Biden as the winner in the presidential election. But we can also have a democratic victory in the Senate elections, where one in three senators stands for election. In that case, the Democrats would control both the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives, and we would have a liberal justice on the Supreme Court instead of a reactionary.

Now conspiracy theories are dangerous

It will be a great blow in the referendum on Donald Trump, or a small blow for Trump. With Barrett now appointed as judge, only a solid conservative majority on the Supreme Court can stop the implementation of democratic reforms. Hence the urgent insertion. And now there is a conservative majority on the Supreme Court of six to three votes.

The most immediate And the dramatic consequence of Justice Barrett taking a seat on the Supreme Court is if there was a legal dispute over the validity of, say, mail-in ballots in tipped states. President Donald Trump has, in fact, campaigned against postal ballots to undermine its validity. Contrary to the assurances of other authorities, he has repeatedly claimed that votes sent by mail are very easy to forge.

The role model from hell

He has like this prepared the ideological and propaganda reason to reject these votes, if in a state it is perfectly even, and these votes can decide the election. Many more Democrats than Republicans are believed to take the opportunity to vote by mail. In the Senate questioning of Barrett last week, she did not answer what she thought about postal votes. So you have your hands free to disapprove of them.

But Judge Barretts The importance goes far beyond that it can possibly be weighed in the balance in a uniform agreement in elections in a week. She is an active believer, strongly conservative Catholic. She opposes abortion and is probably religiously motivated to be skeptical of liberal gay politics and, for example, same-sex marriage.

Now it is speculated that the liberal American federal abortion legislation of the 1970s will be repealed, and one of the candidates to become this year’s Democratic presidential candidate, Pete Buttigieg, says, fears that her legal marriage to her husband Chasten can be declared invalid. Judge Barrett will likely also pave the way for an even more relaxed gun policy.

But there are limits for how much the Supreme Court can reverse liberal legislation. There is a majority for both women’s right to have an abortion and liberal gay politics in the United States. And a literally reactionary majority in court will have trouble openly challenging a majority on such matters, is the experts’ assessment.

To open the Supreme Court for Judge Barrett it may be one of Donald Trump’s most recent and important office acts. It was then that he led the way to the highest court, with the lowest instincts.