Unilaterally disarming and problems with doing "the right thing"
In response, to the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) allowing Texas’ abortion ban to continue staying in effect, California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, is proposing a similar law aimed at guns. The Texas law prohibits governmental officials from enforcing it, but allows private citizens to sue anyone who provides abortions for up to $10,000 per abortion. California’s proposed law would allow private citizens to sue owners of assault weapons and "ghost guns" for up to that same amount.
I think the proposed law is horrible and I wholeheartedly support it. No, that is not a typo or a contradiction. SCOTUS has opened that door and Democrats should take advantage of it. I hope more states run by Democrats do the same not just on guns, but on other issues, too. I am sure there are plenty of creative lawyers out there thinking of all kinds of devious schemes Democrats could pursue. May the force be with them.
Why such enforcement mechanisms are awful should be obvious. By allowing private citizens to be enforcers, they effectively end any constitutional challenges to any laws as the constitution only prohibits actions by governmental entities with a few very specific exceptions (see the 13th Amendment). It makes a mockery of the entire concept of judicial review. That should have been obvious to all of the ivory tower dwellers at SCOTUS, but apparently it was not. Encouraging private citizens to become snitches is also a terrible idea and can only deepen the huge mistrust we have of each other.
I hope that at some point soon SCOTUS does wind up striking down that mechanism because of the massive door it opens. But until that happens, Democrat-controlled (blue) states should go full speed ahead on whatever they can think of. I am sure Republican-controlled (red) states will do it on other things, too. It is a terrible situation, but the only thing worse than that is one side getting all high and mighty and unilaterally disarming.
Don’t two wrongs not make a right? No! Not in today’s politics they don’t. The fact is there are no brownie points for doing “the right thing.” Voters do not pay any attention to that. If they did, Democrats would have been rewarded for passing the Affordable Care Act because it was paid for and did not add to the deficit. Democrats who unilaterally disarmed by refusing to accept big dollar campaign donations all would have won. Trump would have lost all 50 states in a landslide. Maybe in the past when polarization was much weaker it was advantageous to be Bruce Wayne, but that is not the world we live in today.
To be clear, I am not advocating for us all to become Hannibal Lecter. Doing the right thing can sometimes be good politics and strategically smart. Trump, for example, did pay a price for his awful behavior in that his approval rating was never good despite presiding over a great economy for three years. Avoiding scandals is not just the right thing to do, but strategically smart because scandals take up time and every second spent dealing with a scandal is one second that cannot be spent on getting legislation passed (look at Bill Clinton’s second term). As for Biden, I do not think he would gain anything by insulting people and acting like a preschooler. Still, there are limits to how much doing “the right thing” will help out.
What is “the right thing” anyway?
It is not always clear what doing “the right thing” even means. For example, Republicans are aggressively gerrymandering some of the states they control. Democrats in some blue states got all high and mighty and adopted redistricting commissions. The result? While this is a worst-case scenario and hopefully will not come to pass, Democrats may have forfeited up to 15 House seats by going that route. California, New Jersey, Washington and Colorado are controlled by Democrats and they have redistricting commissions. Texas, Florida, Georgia and North Carolina are controlled by Republicans and they do not have redistricting commissions. Was unilaterally disarming by blue states “the right thing” to do?
Similarly, with Republicans now using private enforcement mechanisms to get around courts, would it be “the right thing” for Democrats to forego it? Unless doing so would get Republicans to do the same, the answer to me is a resounding no. In my view, “the right thing” is both sides playing by the same rules, whether those rules are good or bad. Blue states waiving the white flag on gerrymandering is not going to stop red states from doing it. I am 100% for a national ban on gerrymandering. Short of that, I am 100% in favor of blue states using the power they have to gerrymander like there is no tomorrow.
That is the crux of the problem here. It takes 2 to tango. If one side refuses to do “the right thing,” the other side cannot stop them. By still trying to do “the right thing,” the other side is just hurting itself. Is this a race to the bottom? In some ways, yes. But the only thing worse than that is one side hobbling itself.
I admit I once was guilty of being all high and mighty. I favored redistricting commissions. I was glad when SCOTUS upheld them in 2015. In retrospect, I was foolish. I wish SCOTUS had struck them down. While gerrymandering is overrated in its importance, it is not nothing. I would love for Democrats to pad their majority as much as possible even though I highly doubt it would save them if the national environment is terrible next year. That they may have given up as many as 15 House seats because of their quest for righteousness is heinous malpractice. Shame on me for being so blind and supporting those efforts.
On the national level, part of this realization I have come to that unilaterally disarming brings no rewards is that I no longer care about the federal deficit. I used to believe in paying for things and that it was important to put entitlement programs on sound footing. Obama believed in those things, too. His reward? Democrats got creamed during his tenure when he was not on the ballot. He spent the better part of 2-3 years trying to pursue a grand bargain on entitlements and taxes to no avail. He got no credit from Republicans in Congress or elsewhere. Democrats did not rally around him either. Not even the self-appointed deficit gods gave him any credit.
We all know how Trump (and Bush before him) was when it came to fiscal responsibility. Spending under him increased further from what it was under Obama and taxes were cut. Was that a cause of his unpopularity? No. Of all the reasons he lost re-election, the deficit was not in the top trillion. Voters do not care about how much the government is spending versus how much it collects in revenue. By trying to be fiscally responsible, Democrats in the Obama era hobbled themselves and limited their ambitions. While the Affordable Care Act is good policy, it was made needlessly complex and limited by the desire to be fiscally responsible.
To Biden’s great credit, he seems to have internalized that nobody cares about the deficit. Democrats in Congress seem to have realized that as well. If nothing else, the last year showed that trillions in debt can be accumulated very fast and the world will not blow up. In fact, had Congress tried to be fiscally responsible and pay for the pandemic relief efforts, we would all be living under bridges.
Democrats this time around can only spend as much as Joe Manchin will go for, but to see even him being willing to spend well over $1 trillion is amazing and 10 years ago would have been unthinkable for all but the most left-wing Democrats. In the future, absent some drastic change, Democrats should be willing to spend to their hearts’ content and put it on the tab, just like Republicans have always done.
If Republicans decided they were genuinely going to be fiscally responsible and work with Democrats on a whole host of issues in good faith, nobody would be happier than me. The same is true if they agreed to support a national ban on gerrymandering. If Texas Republicans agreed to repeal their anti-abortion law, I would encourage California Democrats to abandon their anti-gun law. But that is not the world we live in now. Maybe that will change some day, but until it does Democrats have to be every bit as ruthless as Republicans are and play by the same rules. Anything less than that is unilaterally disarming and hurting their causes and will not be rewarded by voters.