#Bush Gore

[californiaroadtoad]

Rule of law.

While everyone continues to argue about whether or not Donald Trump belongs on the ballot, or if he should be elected whether or not he should be allowed to serve, permit me to offer another view of this.

Back in 2000, we had one of the most contentious elections in recent history, that of George W. Bush and Al Gore. (Disclosure: in 2000, I lightly held my nose and went with Bush, thinking at the time, he was the better candidate. History, of course, will judge people like me harshly, as it should. Or do I need to remind anyone of the statement that we had Saddam Hussein dead to rights, that he had WMDs? How’d that turn out?) Gore campaigned on a number of issues, critical among them was that when Social Security was first established, all funds were supposed to be held in trust, a “lock box” as he phrased it. It wasn’t supposed to have gone into the General Fund as is presently the case, with promises of payment when people came of age. (And don’t give me this nonsensical argument that the Democrats are solely responsible for this. That’s an outright lie, since it’s been rare for either party in power to have an absolute lock on Congress. Enough Republicans went along with it to make it happen.) Had Gore’s plan gone into effect, it might not have put Social Security in solvency, but it would have pressed matters closer to that goal. (Today, Republicans want to eliminate Social Security.)

Just a reminder that the state which served as the linchpin in this was Florida, with just under 600 votes separating the two candidates. While Gore originally conceded, when it became clear that the margin between the two candidates was closer than expected, Gore did what he should have done and rescinded the concession until an accurate and fair recount could be completed.

There have been some serious questions whether it was an accurate or fair recount. Granted, Bush’s brother, Jeb, was Governor, and the campaign director in Florida for Gore was Bob Butterworth, the Attorney General. But the real concern for someone like me was Secretary of State Katherine Harris, who was later recorded as saying she saw it as a duty from God to ensure Bush got elected.

That’s not a red flag. That’s a Mayday Parade.

First and foremost, Harris’ job as Secretary of State was to ensure fair and lawful elections. That was it. If she wanted to serve her God, then her first responsibility was to make damned sure elections were honest, and not to favor one candidate over another. (The media, for some reason, seemed to focus on how much makeup Harris wore, particularly before the cameras. I guess it’s just me, but I seem to think that something like that is a matter best settled between the Secretary of State and her dermatologist, some talking head on CNN.)

Florida had more than a few criticisms leveled at it, particularly from the U. S. Commission on Civil Rights. These included efforts to freeze out voters of color, especially those in predominantly Black communities, which right there should have prompted a Congressional investigation into what happened. (It might have redeemed Congress for its idiocy in trying to figure out if President Clinton benefited from being hoovered while Yasser Arafat waited outside the Oval Office for a discussion of Peace Talks in the Middle East.) This was far more important than any “pregnant” or “hanging” chads during the recount, and even if Bush had won after an investigation, it would have bolstered the integrity of American elections. (See the USCCR report here: https://www.usccr.gov/files/pubs/vote2000/report/exesum.htm .)

Still with all of the irregularities, with the fight over whether or not absentee ballots should have been counted, (yes, they should have, regardless of the margins), with questions of the role of Katherine Harris, Gore did something that should have been a message to everyone in political life in America.

He said, “It’s time for me to go.”

Time has shown us that Gore and Lieberman did the right thing in vigorously defending the Constitutionality of their case. They did the right thing in discussing and arguing about the vote and voter irregularities in Florida. You might not like it, but they didn’t simply have a right to argue the matter, it was their Constitutional responsibility as American citizens and as leaders in American politics. Most of us accepted this, because the Constitution says it’s our right.

Trump, the “stable genius,” should have learned from this. Had he said, “I concede,” and left the stage, he could have laid claim to higher ground. Since he made it clear he intended to run again, people would have been hard pressed to argue the point: he’d conceded the loss to his opponent, Joe Biden, and like Grover Cleveland, he’d have returned to face the voters again. I wouldn’t have voted for him, (I’ve never supported him, and never will), but at least those who did could in some way be considered loyal, at least to the nation.

Instead, we had a mob of “Chairborne Rangers,” many of whom were armed, attacking the United States Capitol, resulting in the death of Brian Sicknick on the 6th, and the suicides of four other responding officers. (Claims that the mob was unarmed don’t hold water after law enforcement officials found caches of weapons on the Capitol’s grounds.) Ashli Babbitt and three other attackers died as a result of the attack. 174 officers were injured, with 15 being hospitalized, according to Wikipedia.

While this was characterized as a “mob attack,” the reality is that for the most part, it was planned. The goal was to overthrow the lawful and duly established government of the United States.

The number of injuries and deaths as a result of Gore’s loss in 2000: 0.

Gore insisted on the peaceful transfer of power. Trump did not.

There are multiple parties who are responsible for this: Newt Gingrich with his “win at all costs” strategy did much to inflame this. In spite of his statesmanlike book’s thesis, To Renew America, his goal was not negotiated, discussed, or even rationally argued. Rather, Gingrich outside of the bookshops advocated that Republicans brawl their way to the top. It was a view that was preceded by Pat Buchanan, (who famously told an aide that he never wanted to hear how someone in the media was a friend: Buchanan asserted they were always the enemy, according to Leslie Stahl of 60 Minutes.) I can go on, including Lee Atwater, and a number of others, but I think the point’s been made. The very idea of a peaceful transfer of power became Anathema to a great many of Trump’s supporters, as they made baseless claims regarding Qanon, (proven false, and the “Q” in question had a dubious background himself), Pizzagate, and “stopping the steal,” which all went along with the continued racist and false claims that Barack Obama hadn’t been born in the US, long ago disproved by his Birth Certificate.

(A friend had lived in Hawaii at the time, and she took the time to go to the State Records office in Honolulu. She paid her dollar, took her chances, and posted online Obama’s Birth Certificate. I learned two things: first, he was born in Hawaii. Citizen. Second, DAMN, that was one big kid! No wonder he’s an only child!)

Just on this point alone, Trump does not belong in office. He never should have been elected in the first place, and he shouldn’t be returned to office now. EVERYONE who participated in the riot on January 6th, 2021 should be in prison, and those who have been convicted so far should be doing far more time than most of them have been sentenced to. The right to keep and bear arms, critical to the nation’s defense, did NOT give these people to attack our nation’s capital, ever. Supporting Trump is a more passive attack on the nation, but it’s still an attack. To support a man who called our nation’s veterans “Suckers and Losers” is shameful, and those who would support that will ultimately owe everyone they’ve slandered with that sobriquet a genuine apology, regardless of their own status status regarding the nation’s service.

You don’t have to like Biden. You should be questioning his policies and proposals as a citizen of the nation. But Biden has at the very least subscribed to the Rule of Law. Trump denounces this, claims no one can hold him to account for his actions under the law, and is doing all he can to undermine the rule of law. The man is a demonstrated acolyte of Roy Cohn, who amplified the actions of Senator Joseph McCarthy, and ultimately destroyed the lives of American citizens whose sole crime was disagreeing with those in authority, which was their Constitutional right. (I don’t believe there were anywhere near as many Marxists in American Government as Tailgunner Joe claimed, which right there should have cemented his position, and the positions of those who backed him, as being far more Unamerican than Gus Hall.)

Trump should not serve, never should have served, and is not qualified to serve. He recited his oath of office with his fingers crossed behind his back. Al Gore, when it was clear there were irregularities in the 2000 election, acted in a lawful manner, and upheld the Constitution. Trump has already declared that once he’s elected again, he will shred the Constitution. Biden’s demonstrated he will uphold it.

That the Senate did not convict is due to Senator Mitch McConnell, not the facts. McConnell should have been expelled for his actions, and Trump convicted. We cannot change history, but we can at least acknowledge the former – and never should have been – President is not fit to serve.

[navree]

genuinely would love for some of the "both parties are the same" people to name me a single election in the entirety of the twenty first century where the outcome for the country wouldn't have been better if a democrat had won

[oldshowbiz]

[ofthirtynine]

Why did you have to make me feel that?

[decolonize-the-everything]

Hi :3

So someone said Kamala is the female Obama and I've been thinking about it....

And then did some internet sleuthing about it.

Hear me out

Didn't Dems use Obama to win Black voters after losing the previous election to Bush cuz Al Gore (like Clinton) lost?

And didn't they blame the 3rd party candidate Ralph Nader for Al Gore's loss?? Much like they blamed Bernie Bros?? Even tho the truth was that al Gore was hardly better and lacked the charisma Bush had? (Again, like Trump?)

So are we sure this is actually democrats conceding anything at all?? Are we not sure they put Kamala in the WH just to adjust voters to the idea of her being president anyway? That maybe they do realize the need for change but have chosen to err on the side of token progress that keeps them in power...again?

Article from Dec 2010:

At first glance, the president and Harris have much in common: Both are mixed-race children of immigrants raised by a single mother; both are eloquent, telegenic big-city lawyers with strong liberal credentials who catapulted from relative obscurity to the national stage. And like the first African-American president, Harris has broken a long-standing barrier — she’s California’s first African-American attorney general and the first woman to hold the office.

[...]“She’s a rare talent who will be a national figure shortly,” said Chris Lehane, a former Clinton aide who is now a consultant in California. “People call her the female Obama. It’s more apt to say she is the female Obama that progressives thought they were voting for.”

Are we absolutely positive that we have been learning lessons from history; like even recent history even? Because she isn't actually much different from Obama at all and this was Obama's legacy:

People were then reassured by Obama and rather than voting for 3rd parties in 2012 like they said, they elected Obama again. Just like y'all tried to do with Biden. And definitely like what will happen under Kamala.

He even got people to vote for him cuz of his promise to secure abortion rights and he did this right:

But tell me how that stopped the supreme court from stripping it???

Don't fall for this again

Cuz people were fucking pissed after Obama weren't they. Progressives wouldn't put up with a moderate like Clinton even compared to Trump. And that was unexpected wasn't it, progress that they couldn't come back from. So they lost to Trump, but what a convenient reset! Suddenly settling wasn't so bad for the American people, huh? And y'all elected Biden.

Who, outside the homoerotic Biden/Obama memes, people didn't like (and I'd argue those memes are what made him likeable to the younger generations to begin with).

But things have been tense, haven't they? The displeasure of voters didn't completely go away when Biden remained a centrist. It wasn't enough, especially when he supported genocide. And now they give us Kamala after we wanted Biden to step down for supporting Israel?

....But she still supports Israel?

Nobody knows how/if progressives will show up for Kamala because we can all feel how much Kamala isn't pleasing anyone. The tension is still palpable. Democrats have made an awful bet.

And I am DONE.

Dems have been manipulating voters away from 3rd parties every single election while making promises they never keep good on, while doing NOTHING to actually protect any of us or make anything better. While killing people, deporting them, and justifying war crimes! While liberals promise to push them left and never do and ALSO tell everyone not to vote 3rd party "right now"

All they do is perpetuate the systems that serve each other. I mean we're in 2000 & 2008 again, politically. Already.

They will never ever systematically support progress the way that 3rd parties do. And they don't care to listen or change cuz they know they can Force you to vote for less by making sure that a centrist Democrat is always on the ticket with ballot access in every state and nobody else is.

They make sure if it in fact

If progress is what you want it's time to Genuinely start listening to people who tell you a vote for democrats is worthless for your goals.

I'm just fed up mexi-ojibwe american adult who grew up with shitty presidents and grew up with full access of the internet to educate myself about what led to this mess.

So are a LOT of other adults who feel this way!!!

And what we know led to this situation is the two party system. And how the system has been enabled by scared liberals who listen to fear-mongerering Democrats every election.

Democrats want history to repeat because it keeps them in power. Because what they do and how they treat you keeps them in power.

Is that what you want? To be treated like this in perpetuity for almost nothing in return?

Me neither.

So unless you have a better idea or plan to start burning shit down yourself then your most realistic option to break out of this abusive cycle is to vote 3rd party.

"vote blue in the primary, it's our only realistic option!" -> "if you don't vote blue you deserve trump" -> "can't you just be happy republican/trump lost?" -> quietly not doing much between elections-> "vote blue in the-" etc

Cycles don't end on their own, that's the thing about cycles in fact.

So vote 3rd party. Yeah it's scary. Yeah it might not work. But again, do you have a better idea? Because what we're doing and have been doing for the last 30 years, this "lesser evil" & "vbnmw" thing was the liberals' idea and that isn't working for any of us At All. Its keeping us here in this cycle where nothing gets better but it can Always get worse.

If you can't vote 3rd party in your state ask yourself why that is then do something about it.

Quit expecting democrats to give a shit about the equality you need when you've been protesting genocide for nearly a year and they still welcomed the war criminal for a conversation in the white house.

Any right you've won under democrats is as superficial as Obama's executive order and that's been proven.

⭐ Tldr ⭐

According to all available history: FUCK DEMOCRATS; You NEED to be supporting 3rd parties if you support progress and you need to do the work of getting their names out. Democrats DO fight and suppress 3rd parties. So its more work to support a 3rd party than a democrat, yeah.

But if progress is worth anything at all it should be worth at least trying to do the work it takes to get a viable 3rd party on the ballot.

DO THAT PLEASE.

Thank you

[deadpresidents]

Interesting that there's tension between Obama and Biden since leaving office. Did any other recent presidents have issues with their vice president?

Ummm....Trump legitimately almost got his Vice President killed on January 6th, so let's not forget that. Especially since Mike Pence was one of the most subservient, ass-kissingest (I made that word up, it's okay) Vice Presidents in American history up until the last two weeks of their Administration.

Pretty much all of the POTUS/VP partnerships this century ended kinda badly. Bill Clinton and Al Gore were barely on speaking terms for a few years. Gore felt that Clinton cost him dearly with the whole Lewinsky scandal right before Gore made his own bid for the Presidency in 2000. Clinton felt that Gore should have sucked it up and used him more as a surrogate on the campaign trail because even with the scandals, Clinton was still a wildly popular President in his last few years in office, and a top-notch campaigner. Gore tried to put as much distance as possible between him an Clinton during the 2000 campaign and considering how razor-thin the margin was in 2000, Clinton's presence on the campaign trail probably would have sealed the deal and made Gore the President.

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were growing apart in Bush's second term. Bush started to bristle at all the talk that he was an empty suit and that Cheney was the power behind the throne, and he sidelined Cheney in the second term compared to Cheney's aggressive role in the first term, particularly during the run-up to the Iraq War. The breaking point was when Bush refused to pardon Scooter Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, who was indicted and ultimately convicted for leaking information about Valerie Plame's role as a CIA agent. Cheney thought President Bush should give Libby a full and clear pardon, but although Bush commuted Libby's prison sentence, he refused to give him a full pardon and it infuriated Cheney. They've reconciled over the years, but it's still a sore spot whenever Cheney talks about it. Of course, Donald Trump eventually pardoned Libby.

I think we'll learn more about the relationship between President Biden and Vice President Harris after the election, but it doesn't seem like they were particularly close, although there wasn't the outright tension as in the other partnerships I've mentioned. Biden has always had an extremely tight circle of close advisers, and I don't think Kamala ever was a part of that insular world around Biden. It seems that, instead of tension between the principals, there were issues from the beginning between the two staffs. I'm not sure they were ever completely on the same page, but those stories won't fully come to light until after November.

[ronaldreaganfan]

absolute banger from president twitter

[wardsutton]

My new cartoon for today's Boston Globe:

[sylvain-scribbles]

[idiopathicsmile]

there is a level where i'm delighted that Fall Out Boy wrote a continuation of We Didn't Start the Fire. both because it exists, and because more songs should have sequels.

the meanest thing i can say about it is that the nicest thing i can say about it is that it exists.

[blueberry-bubbles130]

Okay people you know the drill by now. Showing historical figures fanfiction of them:

American Politician edition. Round two!

I never once in my years of existence that I would ever read a fanfiction that had Jimmy Carter and Abby Lee Miller in it. But here we are.

[juniestar]

I’m curious

[threecirclingbuzzards]

There is one way the Dems can recover from last night, but it will require an odd choice in candidate

WHAT'S THIS?! IT'S AL GORE WITH THE STEEL CHAIR! both die 2024 by shock alone.

Unfortunately, this leads to the prophesied timeline,

[anotherpapercut]

claiming that third party voters are the reason Bush won the 2000 election is not only ahistorical and untrue but is like the exact opposite of a radical and progressive analysis of what happened in that election and its insanely counter productive. I have no idea why anyone would seek to take responsibility away from the people who actually caused Bush to win and place it on individual citizens. stop letting the supreme court off the hook for what was one of the most blatant displays of outright fascism from them in the past century

[lazyscience]

so there's something I feel like young leftists are not getting at all when they rail furiously about how "we keep voting for Democrats but they keep just pandering to the right, what are we supposed to DO to get them to change OTHER than not vote for them?"

It has to do with fundamental assumptions about what "governing" is supposed to mean in the modern era, and this is a conversation that has to happen culturally in and around what is happening at the ballot box in a lot larger sense than it is. putting in a readmore because this gonna get long and also ranty.

It also means I'm taking another Tumblr break because I can not, I CAN NOT with the current political discussion any more and even with terms blocked I'm seeing it, and I don't want to spend my evenings alternating between rage and depression, I get enough of that from the news.

This conversation was happening even earlier than this, but the timepoint at which it was first coming to a head and when I became familiar with it was 1994 and Newt Gingrich's "Contract with America". Prior to this point, the ethos on both sides of the aisle (in public) was that in general, a congressperson's job (especially in the House, a little less so in the Senate maybe) was while you were under the umbrella of one of the two parties, you were mostly looking out for the particular agenda of your state and only secondarily working towards a national agenda. And secondary to this idea, most of them agreed on basic principles that gridlock was bad (wouldn't produce anything useful/re-electable for your state), civil service employees and appointees weren't supposed to be blatant political operatives (there were, of course, but that was considered more sleazy and corrupt than "elections have consequences, hurr hurr") and that for the stability of the country, things like the debt ceiling were best mutually avoided.

So for the better part of the 20th century, the Democrats were more the party of regulation, the social safety net and the reality and use of powers on a federal level; the Republicans were the party of "leave these decisions to the individual states" (this is obviously a grotesque oversimplification, people have literally written dozens, probably hundreds, of scholarly books about this shit). And Newt Gingrich, ambitious little shit from an at the time deep red Republican state, said "you know what, we need to embrace a national party and federal control the way the Democrats have--because until then, WE can't control it." So the Contract With America was born - and the goal became instead of "well, whatever, as long as I can weasel out concessions for my state/special interests that hired me" the game ALSO became "demonstrate that federal government doesn't work by MAKING it not work." By using all the procedural stupid dirty tricks that a reactionary old bunch of white dudes that had just been through a war put into place to make any point of settled law that had happened basically as hard to change as fucking possible.

Now, the Democrats couldn't/didn't WANT to play by those rules, because their biggest and most popular successes (qualified, imperfect, but still) - Social Security, Medicaid, the civil rights movement, antitrust, worker protections, environmental protections - are all contingent on a federal government apparatus that actually fucking works. And now that the Republicans can win either by getting what they want OR by yelling "look, this process is clearly broken and doesn't work!", the only way Democrats can make sweeping changes without having to fight tooth and nail every step of the way is to have a majority in both houses of Congress, control the Presidency, and the Supreme Court.

Because again, the reactionary old white men who had just lived through a butt ton of social upheaval wanted to make it hard for one group of (rich white, male enfranchised) people to control another - and they literally at that time could not have envisioned the way the country would grow into both a far more unified AND polarized place that would take these safety rails and exploit them to block every achievement their opponent might make, whether or not it was actually in the best interests of the people they're representing.

(I mean, they should have, political parties and all that toxicity were not new to the British Empire before the colonies even existed, but well, I think we all know by now there's a lot of things they couldn't have imagined. See also: the second amendment)

So here's the deal - if you punish Joe Biden for being a confused corporate-friendly war-hawkish atrocity-enabling weenus - which he totally is sometimes! - you are kneecapping any actually progressive congressional candidates you elect unless you can also deliver 67+ solidly Democrat/Green/whatever the fuck Angus King is votes in the Senate, and 290+ equally staunch Democratic representatives. Because otherwise, that Republican President's just gonna veto everything they legislate that isn't what he wants. And yes, the Senate has to approve any federal judges or Supreme Court justices he wants to appoint - but again, the Republican party sees the federal court system being slow, backed up and impossible to use as a totally acceptable compromise in return for being able to block any significant Democratic legislation from going forward.

Since 1789, do you know how many vetoes have been overridden by supermajority? 109, out of 1,484.

Now, if you could GET that supermajority in the Senate and the House? You could amend the Constitution! You could make mail-in votes mandatory, and/or mandated paid time off for voting. You could mandate ranked-choice voting, so that leftists could vote for the candidate they actually want without splitting up the bloc to the advantage of the fash/fash-adjacent. You could do things like mandate that a Presidential election isn't valid until a minimum threshold number of votes has been achieved that's actual a majority of eligible voters, not just whatever fanatical minority shows up that day, so some asshole who won with 20 percent of eligible voters can't claim to have "a mandate from The People."

BUT WITHOUT THAT SUPERMAJORITY, VOTING TO PUNISH ELECTED OFFICIALS FOR NOT DOING THINGS THEY CANNOT FUCKING DOOOOOO MEANS NOTHING BUT LOSING FOR ALL OF US!

Especially when the other fucking asshole candidate wants to make it legal for the National Guard to LIVE FIRE WITH ACTUAL MILITARY BULLETS ON PROTESTORS, and the Supreme Court has just made it possible for him if elected to order that and have it not be illegal! If he wants to start deporting all Muslim immigrants like he was trying to push for last time he was elected, or round up LGBTQ people and put them in re-education camps, if he gets elected, he could do that now! Because crimes committed as "official acts" are no longer crimes!

So you want to not have to regularly make shitty compromises in the voting booth any more? Great, neither do I. Here are the only ways I see this going forward:

Get 2/3rd of the states of the union to call for an Article V constitutional convention - and be willing to have the process potentially hijacked by fash nutjobs at the state level if those 2/3rds aren't all Democratic-controlled. It's possible - I mean, the system was specifically designed to work that way - but the fact that a) an Article V convention has not successfully been called in the history of the US, and b) the only people advocating for that in the year 2024 are the actual fucking Heritage Foundation of the infamous Project 2025, Ben Shapiro of "but pussy doesn't get wet" fame, Greg "the solution to Uvalde is arming teachers" Abbott and similar nutjobs make me think that's not the safest way to get the outcome we want here.

Hold your noses and get 67 Senators and 290 Representatives elected that are either Democrats or who will reliably caucus with them like Socialists or Greens and have them pass a law to require ranked choice voting for the presidency - there's a chance it'll get a constitutional challenge from the Supreme Court, but there's not a solid precedent either forbidding or encouraging, and by the time it's an issue hopefully we're back in 5/4 liberal court territory if Alito and Thomas either retire or get canned. That will mean a lot of mid corporatist conservative Dems who will make decisions you don't like and don't want to support, but with an endgame of someday getting to stop doing that. This is honestly probably the most achievable, so it is also the one Republicans are fighting against hardest with gerrymandering and voter suppression, and they have banned it on the state level in Florida, Montana, South Dakota, Tennessee and Idaho.

Let Republicans get elected to prove a point. This will result in an unknown but presumably acceptable to you number of deportations, convictions, legal abuse and deaths among people the Trump administration declares undesirable, including Muslims, Palestinians, trans people, anyone working in gender studies or race studies, the unhoused, potential child labor, and people of childbearing potential among others. This is not a threat to get you to fall in line. It is a prediction based on the previous behaviorand stated policy positions of Mr. Trump, the Republican National Convention, and the decision of the Supreme Court allowing his administration to carry out what would otherwise be crimes but for a president are "official actions" now apparently. It will also at the very least make easier the capture of the Supreme Court for another two or three decades during which no effective challenges can be brought for voter suppression, gerrymandering, and violent suppression of protest.

honest question: how, exactly, if it becomes an illegal act to talk about racism, queer liberation or police reform, are you proposing to get your better, more leftist candidates elected? I am so serious right now, why do you think after another four years of Trump provided he doesn't just immediately declare martial law like he already almost did once, do you think people would be willing to stick their necks out to identify themselves as enemies of the state? Think about the stranglehold Joseph McCarthy had on this country from 1947-1957.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Stephen Wolf at Daily Kos Elections:

On Monday, the Supreme Court’s far-right supermajority dealt a critical blow to democracy by granting presidents far-reaching immunity from criminal prosecution for "official" acts, eviscerating the rule of law in a country that was founded to end the rule of kings. The 6-3 decision clears the way for Donald Trump to escape justice in his ongoing federal trials and to become a dictator on "day one" should he return to office in 2025.

Trump won the presidency in 2016 by prevailing in the Electoral College despite losing the popular vote to his Democratic opponent, and he could do so again in 2024. Like Trump, the court's far-right majority itself was built on another undemocratic institution: minority rule in the U.S. Senate. Daily Kos Elections calculations found that Senate Republicans last won more votes or represented more Americans than Democrats in 1998, but the GOP has controlled the upper chamber nearly half the time since then. This was the case from 2000 through 2006, and again from 2014 through 2020, covering six of the last 12 federal elections. This minority rule let Republican presidents appoint five Supreme Court justices—a majority of the bench. Trump appointed three—Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett—while George W. Bush, who lost the popular vote for his first term, appointed the other two—John Roberts and Samuel Alito. Although a Democratic-held Senate in 1991 confirmed the sixth far-right justice, George H.W. Bush appointee Clarence Thomas, the senators voting to approve Thomas represented fewer people than those opposed.

Monday's ruling is one of the most egregious decisions in the history of a court that has repeatedly undermined democracy to help Republicans in recent decades. Since 2000, the conservative-controlled court helped hand Bush the presidency, gutted the Voting Rights Act, blocked federal courts from overturning partisan gerrymandering, and ushered in a flood of money in politics. But while these past rulings helped bring us to our current moment, Monday's decision escalated the GOP's assault on the constitutional order to an unprecedented level.

Ever since the Supreme Court handed down the infamous Bush v. Gore decision in 2000 that awarded George W. Bush the Presidency, the conservative majority of the court has given Republicans an unearned advantage over the years by breaking the court and our democracy to enact GOP minority rule by court fiat.

Monday’s despicable and insulting Trump v. United States decision continues the long line of anti-democracy actions by the MAGA majority.