The Left’s Elastic Principles On Judicial Authority

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote. The Democrats might repeat Emerson’s motto, but they go one better. They eschew all forms of consistency—except one. Today, since the Supreme Court just ruled against Trump’s use of the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose tariffs, the Dems are in a festive mood and are happy to praise the Court. No worries, Trump has recourse to many other statutes to pursue his economic policies. That was something the Left began to realize by Friday afternoon, when Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent set forth their plans for a workaround. Gloom and then anger gripped the liberal talking heads as they realized that their promised victory over Trump was evaporating before their very eyes.

But what I want to call attention to here is the fickleness of the Left’s attitude toward the Court. It was not so long ago, when the Supreme Court repeatedly ruled in favor of Trump, that the Dems talked darkly about packing the Court and setting term limits for justices and otherwise made their displeasure known. Remember Chuck Schumer pontificating from the steps of the Court? “I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price,” he said. “You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.” Threat, or warning?

The rule is, if you side with us, we coddle you. Go against our pet projects—climate change, COVID policy, Obamacare, trans-weirdness of any kind, censorship of dis-, mis-, mal-information, etc.—and we try to destroy you.

Which brings me to the one exception to the Dems’ transactional flouting of consistency. When it comes to preserving and extending their own power, they are absolutely, 100 percent consistent. In this respect, they may speak like Emerson; they act according to Hobbes’s dictum that “all mankind” are chivvied by “a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death.”

“Wait, don’t Republicans seek power, too?” Of course they do. But the Dems tend to be much better and single-minded at that game than Republicans. They excel especially in the art of projection: accusing others of bad behavior they themselves are guilty of.

The projection comes in two main versions. Former President Barack Obama gave a mini-masterclass in one version a week or so back in an interview. “The other side,” he said, “does the mean, angry, exclusive, us/them, divisive politics. That’s their home court. Our court is about coming together.” Note how he maintained a straight face throughout. Brilliant.

The other version of projection was on view in Obama’s National Security Advisor Susan Rice’s warning about the “accountability agenda” Democrats would impose upon Trump supporters once the Dems got back into power: “It’s not going to end well for them,” she said in an interview with Preet Bharara. She put companies, law firms, universities, media, and Big Tech on notice that, when they get back into power, Democrats won’t “play by the old rules”; it won’t be a matter of “forgive and forget”; get ready, subpoenas and worse are on the way.

Some wag posted a clip of Obama’s performance next to Rice’s furious incantation. It made for entertaining viewing, not because Rice wasn’t in earnest. I am sure she would do everything in her power to make good on her threats. No, the funny thing is that all the bad things she accuses Trump and his supporters of doing are things the Dems have been doing in spades throughout Obama’s two official terms and especially in his third, covert term, sometimes known as the presidency of Joe Biden. Remember those hundreds upon hundreds of hapless people who were hoovered up and imprisoned following the cabaret of January 6, 2021? Remember how lawyers who worked for Trump were ejected from their law firms and ostracized? Remember how the federal government leaned on social media companies to censor opinions that deviated from the party line? Remember how people who supported Trump were “debanked”—a new coinage for our new Orwellian age? No, the Dems’ “court,” to use Obama’s term, is all about the naked pursuit of power and the untrammeled suppression of dissenting voices.

Is there a silver lining in this unpleasant story? Yes, there are a few. For one thing, both Obama and Rice appear to be blinded by the narrative they are hawking. I am not suggesting that Obama actually believes that his “court” is about “coming together.” No, but he understands that his particular brand of divisiveness requires the rhetoric of unity in order to succeed. It is the glaring obviousness of his hypocrisy that provides the pleasing argentine glow.

With Susan Rice, the source of the aura is a little different. Her extended game of Achtung! was predicated on her belief that, as she repeatedly said, Trump’s agenda was unpopular and that its architect, Trump himself, would soon be neutered so that his followers could be crushed. The problem for her is that Trump is not unpopular. On the contrary, he has been extraordinarily successful. In just a single year, he has accomplished major parts of his announced goals—goals for which he was elected—from sealing the southern border and deporting illegals to revivifying the economy and securing our elections, nurturing the middle class, dismantling DEI, and strengthening the military. He has done all that and more in just a single year. He has three more to go.

Susan Rice let the mask drop. Everyone had a chance to peer into that heart of darkness. We can be in no doubt about what she would do should she get anywhere near the corridors of power again. Fortunately, she is like Barack Obama in her boundless sense of entitlement. Both wear their self-infatuation on their sleeves. Their utter cluelessness about the appeal of Trump and his agenda for millions of voters renders them unable to take an accurate measure of the political realities before them. They put the world on notice about the revenge drama they hope to stage. It was a premature bulletin. Even as I write, Trump’s Department of Justice is picking through mountains of evidence tying them both to conspiracies against a duly elected president. I would not be surprised if Susan Rice gets to see an “accountability agenda” play out much sooner than she bargained for.