How Republicans — Even If Not Trump — Win Anyway
Let’s take just a moment at the start today to review what happened at the Supreme Court.
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A case brought by a Pennsylvania Republican legislator was dismissed by the Court, without comment, and without any Justices noting dissensions. This is not unusual. And it wasn’t unexpected. Except that it’s the first case related to the election that made it to the Court, and you never know about anything for sure in court until it happens.
When the Supreme Court is asked to intervene on an expedited basis, as it was here, the application for an injunction is assigned to a single Justice, on a rotating basis, based on the region in the country from which it originates. In this case, Justice Alito, to whom the motion was automatically assigned, decided to share it with the rest of the court. And he and the rest of the court, decided it was not worthy of further action. It is also not unusual that none of the Justices gave any reason and none publicly dissented.
It is very important though. Because even if the Court had turned the Pennsylvania motion down, had one or two Justices jumped on board, a very different message might’ve been sent. Now, there are still other cases pending before the Supreme Court. So technically this part of it still isn’t over. At the same time, this is also a particularly significant milestone.
So here’s how we think this all wraps in:
This election really drove something home for the Republican party: if you make it easier for people to vote, more people will vote. Especially if you let them vote by mail. So now they will work hard to make that less easy.
And the election result, and even the Supreme Court’s ruling are going to be taken as signals by Republican legislatures across the country to use Trump’s manufactured voting controversy to implement some very real changes to voting processes, which won’t make things easier for voters. And they’ll probably even find a lot of excuses to roll a lot of things back. Cheered on by the Trump faithful. This could, in fact, ultimately help enable future candidates challenge Republicans currently in office, whom they feel are insufficiently loyal to Trump, but we’ll have to see how strongly that…
