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I’m trying to workshop an understanding of how some people view politics, and I’m curious what other people think about this politics and process.
Politics and Process
Personally, I care about order and process. I think it’s important that the laws be consistent and predictable. My general preference is that laws are passed by a legislature. Judges will sometimes have to clarify conflicts, and bureaucrats will have some discretion, but the main mover of policy should be the legislature who craft the actual laws. This makes it easier for people to understand and respond to the laws. The remedies are also clear: if you don’t like it, vote the bastards out.
For many Democrats, there’s a different vision. They seem to prefer that smart people, be it judges or bureaucrats, have greater discretion. One vision of the law is legal liberalism, where according to Harvard Law professor Niko Bowie, “elite lawyers will always be able to use elite reasoning to persuade elite judges not to let things get out of hand.” And this is less predictable than the approaches of textualism (what does the law say?) or originalism (how was the law understood at the time it was passed?)
The questions of legal theories matter if we’re trying to figure out how to determine if a judge is doing a good job. There are many times when a judge would make a different decision as someone who is supposed to interpret the law than if they had been a legislator whose job it is to write the law. And it’s important to figure out what those principles are.
My sense is that in general the left is more likely to try to dictate results from on high, but there is a right-wing contingent with a similar view. There seem to be some who view conservative Federalist judges as too precious about process, and they would prefer judges who know what time it is and who would push for policies that lead to results conservatives and/ or Trump fans would like.
Process and Gerrymandering
During discussions about gerrymandering, progressives generally argue that we need independent commissions to make the right decisions. But they don’t articulate the criteria by which we can judge whether the commissions chose correctly. Should they prioritize preserving existing communities? Should the independent commissions prioritize maximizing the number of swing districts? Should they prioritize outcomes that match the popular vote (IE- If Democrats win 57% of the vote in a state, they should have roughly 57% of state legislative seats?)
My concern with independent commissions is that it’ll be filled with partisans who have a veneer of respectability. There should be some kind of criteria to determine that they’re making the right decisions, so they’re not just using whatever pretext helps out their political allies.
Republicans can look at efforts at independent commissions and see much to be concerned about, be it Democratic operatives pretending to be generic community advocates in order to trick the California redistricting commission (with no pushback from the party or mainstream media), the New Jersey commission using an algorithm that is proprietary so that no one knows what the standards were, Democratic legislatures swinging on the question of independent commissions based on whether they had control of a state government, or former Governors admitting to gerrymandering under oath, in order to get support for independent commissions.
The obvious way to make sure that an independent commission has credibility is for them to have clear guidelines, but that’s not what’s going on. There are multiple ways to determine district borders, some of which favor Democrats. As a private citizen, my question is: How do I make sure that’s not what they’re doing? There should be some kind of criteria to determine that they’re making the right decisions, so they’re not just using whatever pretext helps out their political allies.
Process and Immigration
A big argument I’ve had for years is that Democrats do not appear to have any messaging on limiting principles when it comes to legal immigration (IE- How many people should be allowed in, and how do we determine this?) I’m reasonably informed on American politics, but I don’t have any sense that if Democrats were to pass a major immigration reform, what would be the limits of the number of legal immigrants per year? If the view is that the decision should essentially be offloaded to smart people, the limiting principle would be whatever the authorized individuals (immigration judges or some commission) decide is necessary to meet the needs of the nation at a particular time.
Why I Don’t Just Trust Democrats
I do want to be clear that there’s nothing I’ve said that suggests that legislators shouldn’t be smart, or that qualified people shouldn’t hold positions of importance. I can easily point to dumb Democrats from the list of people who have represented me in political office as a lifelong (pushing 40) resident of Queens, NY.
I’ve had three Democratic Governors leave in disgrace, one Democratic Congressman resign in disgrace when he became a national punchline, one additional Attorney General (whose two predecessors became disgraced Governors) resign because he liked choking his girlfriends, and a Democratic state senator take a guilty plea for mail fraud. Compared to them, my former mayor Bill De Blasio and current mayor Eric Adams are paragons of civic virtue, and I don’t think most people on the left want to claim that they are exceptional or even typical members of the party.
Am I off-base here? For those of you on the left, is this how some of you see things, or think that some of the people who are generally on your side things? Or is there a different perspective?
If you liked this work from the author check out “Democrats are going to miss Senator Joe Manchin”
