Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

Yes, I know midterm elections as supposed to go against the party with the White House. Sometimes by a large margin, at other times not.  But I do believe that we are looking at an exception this year, especially in the Senate. There won't be any "red wave" in the House, either. Perhaps a marginal improvement in the GOP's position in the House, but the size of its will be a disappointment. My guess? If Pelosi is no longer Speaker a year from now it will be because she has decided to step aside in favor of a younger-generation Democrat, not because any Republican holds the post. As to the U.S. Senate -- I'm guessing the Democrats win a minimum of two seats, enough to make Manchin and Sinema figures of lessened importance. The voters of deep-red Kansas, God bless them, have revealed the depth of popular revulsion at the overreach of the U.S. Supreme Court as now constituted, and by association revulsion at Mitch McConnell and the shenanigans by which SCOTUS has reac...

 I made the case in a post here on May 31 that reality wasn't cooperating with our very human desire for nice story lines.  As part of the evidence, I referenced the May 24 Republican primary in Pennsylvania, for the nomination for the US Senate, in which Kathy Barnette, the underdog surprise candidate (THAT is always a nice storyline), faded into relative insignificance at almost the moment the actual counting of ballots began.  Right around the time I wrote that post, the issue has narrowed down to this: would undated signed mail-in ballots be counted? There was nothing fraudulent in the wind: some voters simply forgot to fill out the date line on the outside envelope.  Had those votes been counted, it seems, McCormick might have won. Without those ballots, Oz had his win/  But let's back up. In the final stretch of the campaign, Mehmet Oz remained a favorite almost entirely on the strength of Trump's endorsement. THAT suggested a storyline (Trump still has gr...

  No reasoning here. Just prediction, as the headline says. I'm looking into a crystal ball.  Let's see if I get this one right. It won't take long. The Republicans hold their primary in the U.S. Senate race on May 3. That's only two weeks away now.  The Dems hold one on May 3 too. But that campaign is a more decorous affair and the vote counting will probably be boring too.  Let's look to the Republicans.  My prediction is in an envelope. It has been inside a mayonnaise jar on Funk and Wagnell's porch since noon today. Am I the only one left who remembers the talents of Carnac the Magnificent? Anyway, the prediction?  The Hillbilly elegy guy wins the primary. J.D. Vance. You heard it here. Sim sala bim. 

  Yesterday I listed, though without much discussion, ten of the U.S. Senate races this year that, collectively, will determine which party controls the U.S. Senate beginning in January of next year.  That is of course critical for the fending-off of autocracy in America. I have to say this though it offends old instincts and quite justifiable habits of thought: lovers of liberty must hope and even work for a Democratic win where they can here. "Here" refers to the very specific issue of control of the U.S. Senate as of January 2023.   Those of us who are concerned about the central-planning temptations of the Democrats, or just aspire to move forward to anarchism in one way or another, can go back to struggling with the Dems later. But our goal here has to be the fending-off of autocracy (let's not call it "democracy" ugh -- let us not even call it a "republican system" though it would be nice if the capital-R Republicans remembered that concept). Th...

  There are ten Big Senate Races this year. That is, there are four races in which the Democrats have a seat and a plausible shot at losing it, and there are six races in which Republicans are in the same position.  I believe it is now likely that, whatever happens in the House of Representatives in November, in the U.S. Senate the Democrats will retain at least 50 votes.  In large part this is due to the personal failings of Mar-a-Lago's favorite obese golfer. The former President has been making endorsements (and dis-endorsements) on the basis of spite, not on the basis of any policy platform other than a magical decertification of an election two years ago. And not on the basis of any coherent plan to get the Republican numbers up. He is ruining Mitch McConnell's prospects of becoming majority leader again and don't the two members of THAT lovely couple deserve each other? Anyway, the ten races everyone is watching with regard to the Senate are these (alphabetically or...

News of the death of Justice Scalia, a Reagan appointee, has broken in upon our endless political campaign, and will surely give the candidates something new to talk about in the weeks to come. That was very first thought on hearing this news. I apologize to those to whom it seems crude. I have no personal knowledge of Scalia, but am perfectly happy to believe that he was a wonderful man and to commiserate with his family and friends. I disagree with his jurisprudential ideas in a number of respects. But my first thought was and is neither personal nor jurisprudential; it was and is plainly political.  Further, I'm thinking just now of another campaign year, 1968. In June of that year, Chief Justice Earl Warren announced his retirement. He did this precisely because he thought it would give President Johnson plenty of time to choose a replacement for him, and the Senate time to act upon it, thus preserving his own considerable legacy.  Johnson replied by nomi...

A Facebook friend of mine has recently quoted Senator Bernie Sanders thus: She (my friend) then added her own comment: There were a lot of things wrong with the 50's, but one parent working with another one staying home (which they owned) was doable when the onus of taxes wasn't on citizens. There are so many different lines of thought that arise out of such claims., I almost replied thus: One line of thought this suggests, (your comment, not Bernie's) is the size of the labor pool then and now. Were women staying home (after the riveting services of Rosie were no longer required for reasons of war) because their men could make enough money to support them comfortably? That's what you seem to be suggesting, though you prefer to state the fact in a gender-free manner that would have seemed off in 1952. Anyway: consider the other direction of causality. Perhaps the fact that women were expected to stay home helped keep the supply of labor for certain sorts of...

Bordewich is the author of AMERICA'S GREAT DEBATE, a book Simon & Schuster brought out last year on the legislative compromise of 1850 that kept the United States together for a final decade. I enjoyed the following observation, from the preface: "Something else intrigued me, too, the more I read through the records of the debate itself: never did American politicians speak to the nation more honestly, more persuasively, more provocatively, and more passionately, in language that was often so splendid that it nearly reached the level of poetry. The poll-tested, spin-doctored, shoddily argued, and grammatically challenged 'messaging' that today passes for political communication is pathetic and often incoherent by comparison. It can be no surprise that many Americans have lost interest in politicians who have forgotten how much can be accomplished by the persuasive power of well-crafted English."

Fergus M. Bordewich, a journalist and historian, has written America's Great Debate , a book about the sectional compromise of 1850 that preserved the union without bloodshed, for another 11 years, anyway. Describes John Calhoun thus early on: "A nominal Democrat through most of his political career, in 1847 Calhoun proposed the formation of a new southern party founded on four principles: that new territories clearly be declared the common property of all the states; that Congress be clearly denied the right to enact any law, or undertake any act, that would deprive  a state of its 'full and equal right' in any United States territory; that any law barring the citizens of any state from carrying their property into any territory was a violation of the Constitution; and 'that people have the unconditional right to adopt the government which they think best calculated to secure their liberty, prosperity, and happiness.' This last was a virtual invitation to se...

The Federal Lawyer this month ran my review of the fourth volume in Robert Caro's ongoing biography of Lyndon Johnson, the 36th president of the United States. I discuss aspects of the volume not discussed much in the other reviews I've seen, including Johnson's dealings with Bobby Baker and ( through Bobby Baker) with insurance salesman Don Reynolds. Here is a quote from the book (I don't quote it, though I allude to it, in my review): Reynolds told Williams that in 1957, having been advised that a 'political connection' would be helpful in building up his insurance business, he contacted Bobby Baker, a fellow South Carolinian, and they entered into an agreement under which he would make payments to Baker 'because,' as Reynolds was to put it, 'of his social contacts and his wide knowledge of people [whom he] could present to me.' Baker had shortly thereafter introduced him to Walter Jenkins. Johnson, that same year, had mentioned to Bak...

In a forthcoming review on Caro's new book -- the fourth volume of THE YEARS OF LYNDON JOHNSON -- I summarize some of what Caro has to say about Bobby Baker. The Baker anchor was an important aspect of the Johnson VP and early Presidential years, at least as Caro is reconstructing them, and some of Caro's other reviewers seem to have said nothing or far too little about it. That review should appear in the next issue of The Federal Lawyer. Meanwhile, I've discovered that I wrote something about Caro once before. I'm the author of a book on the political history of the US Supreme Court, from the New Deal era to the George H.W. Bush presidency. In that context I mentioned Baker. It introduced my book's first invocation of the concept of executive privilege. I'll just quote that passage here: Early in 1964 the Senate opened a formal inquiry into allegations of influence peddling brought against Bobby Baker, Johnson's longtime friend and former aid...