A Rebuttal to the Alito Election Insanity
His analysis on SC racial gerrymandering is not only dead wrong, but pathetically stupid and nonsensical for any Supreme Court justice on the bench today.
Feel free to check the entire blog archives from “Political Pulse” & “Salzillo Report” on the 2024 primary cycle, rural outreach, base dynamics, campaign organization, the current media landscape, the issues at stake, America’s political history, the progressive movement, the truth about Gina Raimondo, and much more.
Here is the first post of a double post combo (before I take a brief semi-hiatus):
First, a quick side note: if you want to run a successful campaign, I would not be taking advice from election losers like Hillary Clinton.
Instead, check out this recent take on 2024 from Salzillo’s Two Cents.
Does it feel like the world is on fire? I honestly would not blame you with the crises we see in our nation and the world today. Let’s include for that matter, congressional dysfunction and judicial corruption, a legacy of the Trump era.
Until this past week, the most notable justice under ethics scrutiny was Clarence Thomas. Thomas faced the scrutiny because his wife was involved in the 2020 election denial campaign. Even as he was—and is still—ruling on cases related to the 2020 elections and January 6th.
Sounds pretty bad, right? Well, Justice Samuel Alito is trying to surpass it. Thanks to recent New York Times reporting, we have learned about an upside down American flag flown at one of his houses, and another flag tried to January 6th Christian nationalism flown at another.
He’s certainly an impartial judge by Aileen Cannon standards. Now, maybe insurrectionists should not be allowed on the Supreme Court, but I don’t know. Either way, it seems clear that Alito does not have the temperament or qualifications to serve on the highest court of the land. If the institutions have any legitimacy left.
Speaking of that, I could not help but want to pick apart Alito’s majority opinion on a recent case regarding SC racial gerrymandering, which will unquestionably impact other litigation efforts across the South and our entire nation.
Let’s look at his central argument: Alito says the SC map was not racially gerrymandered, and we have to generally give lawmakers the benefit of the doubt.
Really Alito? How about the North Carolina General Assembly? It was proven in 2019 they knowingly committed racial gerrymanders, and tried again in 2021. Likewise with Pennsylvania in 2018. Likewise with Alabama in 2023 and Louisiana in late 2023 and early 2024. Even Georgia to an extent in 2023. Look at even cases from Shaw v. Reno (1993) and the Hays cases (1993-1995).
Are you serious? Are college students, and high school students, and community advocates from across the political spectrum really that much smarter and in sync with reality and with what takes place in the states than the majority of the US Supreme Court? Are you kidding me?
There is no question direct evidence exists of both racial gerrymandering and partisan gerrymandering all across the country, by both Democrats and Republicans (although Republicans used it much more regularly and to much more extreme ends).
But here is just how stupid and willfully blind this argument is: let’s really try to assume “the benefit of the doubt” of these state lawmakers and especially these Southern Republicans. Should we really allow this type of gerrymandering because it was “just a political calculation”? In other words, because the gerrymanderers want to interfere in elections so that they can stay in power? Rulings should be based on law and reality, not the desire to keep an indefinite hold on Republican political power.
Yet “the benefit of the doubt” argument is even more absurd than that. Should we have given the Klan “the benefit of the doubt” that they were fighting to “preserve the American way of life?” They certainly did try to preserve their vision of the American way of life—one of racism and bigotry and white supremacy. Should we give Neo-Nazis the benefit of the doubt when they say they are only protecting themselves against a supposed “white genocide”? Or should we see them as ruthless murderers who are intent on attacking non-whites of all kinds, eroding our democratic institutions, and undermining civil rights and voting rights?
Should we have assumed the benefit of the doubt when Southern governments enacted Jim Crow to “preserve the purity of races” and group society in “separate but equal” ways? No, we had every reason not to. Otherwise, white and black people would be equal in the same way that Trump and Bloomberg are poor. Or that Justice Thomas and Justice Alito are champions of the working class.
Should we give Alito’s idol Donald Trump the benefit of the doubt that he was concerned about “election integrity” in 2020? No, because we know the facts. We know Trump is a self-interested pathological liar, con artist, and narcissist.
Alito might want to give the benefit of the doubt to his party, but reality will soon slap him straight across the face. The truth is we live in a society that looks at color. America is not and has not been a color-blind society. Now more than ever, we need to keep trying to bend the arc of justice and overcome the hurdles of our political system, including this kangaroo court of radical judicial activists. That is the way we will start to approach that truly color-blind, equal society that we all want to see as Americans (Alito and Thomas being the possible exceptions).