An Argument Against Voting for the “Electable” Guy

Texas held its congressional primaries on Tuesday, and the good news is that turnout was really high for a primary. I have been harping on the idea that voters who do not want to choose between “a lesser of two evils” in November need to show up to vote in the primaries process. I hope to see record engagement all throughout the spring and summer, building toward the November midterm elections.

I am, however, a little disappointed with the results of the primary on the Senate Democratic side. James Talarico defeated Jasmine Crockett, and while I know there are a lot of people who are excited about the prospect of a current seminarian and soon-to-be minister appealing to the racists who clothe themselves in the church, I can’t help feeling very “Beto O’Rourke II” about the whole thing. Talarico can throw down, verse for verse, against the most Bible-humping Republicans Texas has to offer, but getting excited about that presupposes that there are a significant number of Republicans who are guided by their faith and not their bigotry and misogyny.

I don’t believe that. I believe these people vote for white supremacy and the oppression of others. They’re not followers of Jesus; they’re followers of white privilege and whatever version of religion they can manipulate to support it. I do not have faith that Talarico will lead them to the light.

On the other side of the aisle, Senator John Cornyn and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton ended up in a runoff to see who will be the Republican candidate this fall. I’ve seen a lot of liberals hoping that Paxton pulls it off, because Paxton is one of the most odious public figures around and Democrats think that he can be more easily beaten in the general election than the stuffed suit that is Cornyn.

I have a problem with that analysis because… Paxton is one of the most odious public figures around. Supporting a worse candidate because you think you can beat him is not something I will ever fall for again. Not after the 2016 presidential election. I’m telling you, if I could go back, I would clap for Jeb Bush. This feels especially true in the case of a person like Paxton in a state like Texas, where Democrats haven’t won a statewide election since 1994. If Paxton wins the primary, Paxton is going to be a US senator, and that is the worst possible outcome.

Writing for The Nation, Ana Marie Cox says I’m wrong about most of this. She says Texas is winnable for a Democrat, Talarico has the juice, and a bruising runoff between Cornyn and Paxton will help their chances.

I’ll be thrilled if Cox is right. And I’m thrilled people are participating in the primary. I just wish voters weren’t so focused on the circular and self-defeating argument of “electability.” Choosing a candidate based on how you think other people will vote is just insane to me. Most people struggle to pick a restaurant their friends will like, but they think they can pick a candidate that complete strangers will like? Strangers who largely disagree with them and everything they stand for? Electability is a ludicrous argument, which is probably why it’s most often deployed as a dog whistle to warn people against voting for a Black person or a woman or especially a Black woman.

But, whatever, it’s Texas. If Jesus were a Democrat, he could literally lose by six points to a penis brought to life and given a cowboy hat. How else can you explain the continued political existence of Ted Cruz?

The Bad and the Ugly

• In a shadow docket ruling, the Supreme Court ruled that schools in the state of California must “out” trans students to their parents. I’ve said this before, but if you are the parent of a trans kid and that kid doesn’t want to tell you, the fault is yours, not the state’s.
• The court heard oral arguments this week in Montgomery v. Caribe Transportation, a case ostensibly about whether freight companies can be held liable for negligent hiring when their drivers cause accidents. But alleged attempted rapist Brett Kavanaugh made it all about whether Trump can demand that truck drivers read English.
• The court also heard arguments in US v. Hemani, a case about whether a federal law banning drug users from owning guns violates the Second Amendment. Just to put a point on how stupid “originalism” is… there were extended questions from the justices about whether the current federal law is “analogous” to laws imprisoning “habitual drunkards” in the 18th century. We are trying to figure out if a cocaine addict can have an Uzi based on whether Tommy the Town Drunk had to spend a night in the sheriff’s bridewell in 1775. We are not a serious people.
• The Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal from a computer scientist seeking copyright protection for art generated by AI. On his application, the guy listed himself as the owner of the art (he asked the machine to create), and listed his software as the art’s author. The DC Circuit ruled that “human authorship” is a fundamental requirement of the Copyright Act of 1976, and the Supreme Court will let that ruling stand, but I promise you this isn’t the last we’re going to hear about this issue.
• I should mention that the Senate failed to do anything to stop Trump’s illegal war against Iran. Thus continues our long and shameful history of engaging in undeclared wars of choice and aggression while the people’s representatives cower in fear, refusing to exercise the powers given to them by the Constitution.

Inspired Takes

• Mark Hertsgaard and Giles Trendle wrote in The Nation that the illegal war against Iran is also a war against the climate. That’s an angle on the current horror show that I hadn’t thought of before.
• In his Nation article, Jack Mirkinson argues that the US-Israeli war against Iran will, in the long run, be bad for US-Israel relations. He says people will figure out that Israel played a big part in pushing us into this war, and that people ultimately won’t like that. I hope he’s right.
• Over at SCOTUSblog, Zach Shemtob is starting what I believe is an important series. He’s taking a deep dive into how other countries use their high courts, what powers those courts have, and comparing them to our Supreme Court. I have long believed that if Americans understood how weird and powerful our Supreme Court is compared with other high courts in other large democracies, more people would want to reform and defang our court. His first case study is the UK.

Worst Argument of the Week

The Supreme Court unanimously rejected an immigration appeal from Douglas Humberto Urias-Orellana, who claimed that a hit man was out to kill him and his entire family in his native El Salvador. Urias-Orellana applied for asylum in the US, but was denied by an immigration judge. The case went up to the Supreme Court on the question of how much power courts should have to review and overturn decisions made by immigration judges. Urias-Orellana lost, with Ketanji Brown-Jackson writing for a unanimous court ruling that the asylum decisions of immigration judges are nearly final.

I’m not surprised. Indeed, when I previewed this case at the start of the Supreme Court’s term, I predicted not only Urias-Orellana’s loss but also the fact that he would lose 9–0, as he just did.

I still think it’s a terrible decision. I do not think courts should defer to the opinions of immigration judges, at least not under our current immigration system. Immigration judges are massively overworked, meaning that even those judges operating with the best of intentions are often unable to give each individual case the time and attention it deserves. There are also far too few free or affordable immigration lawyers to represent all the asylum applicants, forcing them to go before judges on their own, without someone who can make sure they bring their best evidence and arguments to their hearings.

Meanwhile, assuming immigration judges are bringing their “best intentions” is itself a fiction in the Trump era. Many of the most sympathetic immigration judges have retired or been fired, meaning those who remain tend to be most comfortable with Trump’s xenophobic ideas. Indeed, we’ve recently seen Trump commandeer military JAG officers, who have no immigration training at all, to serve as rubber stamps for Trump’s anti-immigrant regime. The idea that the decisions made by these people should be given nearly complete deference by real judges on appellate courts who actually understand the law is ridiculous. I wouldn’t trust a Trump-appointed immigration judge to know whether Abu Dhabi or Agrabah is the real place.

So why was the decision 9–0? Why did the liberals go along with it and commission Jackson to write the opinion? Well, Jackson’s opinion makes the rulings of immigration judges nearly insurmountable. Her opinion leaves a path, a very narrow path, through which asylum seekers can obtain appellate relief. It says that asylum seekers can appeal their cases if they bring “substantial evidence” that the immigration judge was wrong—evidence that “no reasonable factfinder” would disagree with. Basically, Jackson is leaving the door open for an asylum seeker who (perhaps thanks to better representation) is able to bring more evidence on appeal than they were able to bring to their initial hearing.

I do not believe that door would be open if this opinion had been 6–3 and written by somebody like Justice Sam Alito. The ruling is bad, but it’s not the very worst version of this ruling that could have happened.

Still, “it could have been worse” is cold comfort in the Trump era. Trump has enlisted a cadre of immigration judges into his deportation regime, and the Supreme Court just unanimously told those judges their decisions will probably never seriously face appellate review. That means those immigration judges can really be accountable only to Donald Trump, not a higher court or, heaven forfend, the facts or the law.

What I Wrote

I didn’t really have anything new or interesting to say about the horrors the United States is inflicting on Iran, so I kind of sat this one out. I mean, how many times can I write, “What the president is doing is illegal and… nobody is going to stop him”? How many times can I write, “American foreign policy is violent and evil”? How many times can I write, “Our country is a rogue state that should be sanctioned and punished by the international community”? Don’t worry. I’m sure we’ll attack another brown country soon, and I’ll get to say it all again.

In News Unrelated to the Current Chaos

Major League Baseball is implementing a new system that will allow robots to call balls and strikes. It’s called the Automated Ball-Strike Challenge System (ABS). During the game, players will be able to challenge an umpire’s call by appealing to a computer replay system.

The system has been tested in the minor leagues for a couple of years. It allows only the batter, pitcher, or catcher to challenge the call of the pitch, not other players on the field or even the manager. Each team will get only two challenges per game, but they retain the challenges if they are successful—so you can challenge as many pitches as you want as long as you continue to be right. If challenged, the ABS system (which is just a bunch of high-speed cameras and motion sensors) displays a graphical representation of the previously pitched ball on the big screen. In minor league testing, challenges were resolved in an average of 13.8 seconds.

Here’s an article from MLB.com explaining all you need to know about ABS.

I… kind of hate this. I guess I’m a baseball “purist.” I don’t like the designated hitter, don’t like middle relievers, and don’t like singing “God Bless America” in the seventh inning. (I do like sabermetrics and advanced stats, but that impacts how I understand the game, not how the game is played).

I recognize I’m in the minority here. Fans overwhelmingly approve of the robots. During one spring training game this year, an umpire lost five ABS challenges, which feels like a lot.

But overall the impact has been minimal: During spring training, only 2.6 percent of calls have been challenged thus far, and those challenges have succeeded just 52 percent of the time.

You can take those numbers both ways. Some people might say that getting a few more calls correctly is a net positive, especially if it takes under 15 seconds to get it right. I would counter that getting a few calls wrong here and there has been part of the game for over 100 years, and keeping it that way means I don’t have to wait for a stupid replay before I know if I can be happy or not when reacting to a play on the field.

I’m sure I’ll get used to it. I mean, professional football has degraded to the point where I need to wait 10 minutes to see a replay at three different angles before I know what a “catch” is, and I’m in the process of getting used to that. So I’m sure I’ll learn to accept “Strike three! No. Wait. Ball four! Take your base, lmao.”

But part of being a baseball fan is to look modernity in the face… and scoff at it. I will learn to accept ABS, but I’ll never like it.

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