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🧵 's pro-Trump ruling to dismiss his document theft case highlights one of the biggest mistakes made by the American left: They thought that the legal system was inherently favorable to them, not realizing that judicial rulings are just legislating by other means.

Not realizing how political is, they utterly failed to stop Republicans from stacking the courts with automatons.

I'll never forget a conversation I had with a senior associate attorney one day when we were discussing a case.

She scoffed at me when I said that the judge would rule in accordance with his political worldview. She was appalled that I could even suggest such a thing.

Having failed to realize that judges are just legislators in black dresses, Democrats did nothing to shore up the legal system, even as the Federalist Society was raking in hundreds of millions of dollars creating a conveyor belt factory of Christianist nut jobs like Aileen Cannon.

Matthew Sheffield

They actually thought that unelected judges with life appointments were going to be a force for democracy, not realizing that the Warren and Burger courts were historic anomalies.

They didn't realize that religious fundamentalist whack jobs like Clarence Thomas will 𝐧𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 "grow in office."

It's incredible, but they actually believed being a judge was inherently liberalizing. I kid you not.

Left elites paid so little attention to the right that they didn't understand that the people who ran the legal rigging operation were just as insane as Pat Robertson.

They didn't realize that fundamentalists don't believe in evidence, logic, or fairness. And that they want to destroy modernity. flux.community/matthew-sheffie

Flux · Liz Cheney won’t be the last casualty of conservatism’s epistemic collapse - FluxThe intellectual destruction of Christian fundamentalism has caused the American right to believe that truth is entirely the product of social power

All of this was public information for decades. But instead of realizing that the Senate had to be protected, Democratic elites under Obama deliberately abandoned the idea of competing in every state.

We're living in the hell these mistakes created.

And no one has been held accountable. /end

PS: The left's temporary dominance of SCOTUS in the mid-20th century was exclusively the product of Democrats having the presidency for decades beginning with FDR. That was it.

There is no "objective truth" in legal cases that are about political disputes. There never has been.

PPS: The coincidental liberal majorities that ruled when law schools became an industry made most left-leaning law professors develop a cultish faith in judges.

The profs really thought they were making a science together.

This attitude was painfully naive and actually dangerous. nytimes.com/2024/02/26/opinion

@mattsheffield TBH I would still be clinging to the fantasy if the SCOTUS had not offered conclusive, repeated proofs of its falsity over the last decade...

RIP American innocence...

@mattsheffield

For a long time I would have been one of those down playing the situation, but there really is no other adequate explanation for the full scope of decisions in the last 2 to 3 years. It's a naked exercise of political power, with the added benefit of further delegitimizing and eroding confidence in institutions that would be resistant to their desires

@mattsheffield and even worse, they are just giving up in states that dems once held solidly, like Maryland. Dems will lose that safe senate seat to Larry Hogan, a tried and true conservative who may not like trump, but will do what he says.
they knew cardin would retire, and they had no one whose name anyone recognized. for a senate seat. they are just handing it over.

@rustoleumlove

it's this kind of crap that infuriates me how the dem party treats its own voters. I don't like republicans any more than other normal people but at least they understand the concept of taking care of their own. dems have never done that. they'll properly support the whole country (sometimes) but when it comes to supporting their own over the other party, apparently they don't know —or care— how to do that.

@mattsheffield

@IAmDannyBoling @mattsheffield after a lifetime of voting dem, and feeling utterly abandoned and let down, i totally agree.

biden and so many dems want to be a leader 'to all americans' while the GOP wants to destroy half of americans. and somehow, the dems seem to want to ignore that, even after everything we have lost.

@rustoleumlove

Pelosi not having made sure she had a suitable successor to her Speaker position is another prime example of this. Likewise for RBG, who should have retired for a younger, hopefully more progressive, replacement for her SCOTUS seat.

@mattsheffield

@IAmDannyBoling @rustoleumlove I think Pelosi should've quit earlier, but Hakeem Jeffries has been very successful since he took her spot.

I fully agree with you about Ginsburg though. Her disgusting vanity and selfishness has endangered the country.