What About

I was listening to the 538 Politics Podcast (which hasn't been the same since Nate Silver left the site), and one of the topics was President Biden's pardoning of his son, Hunter. And one of the comments that host Galen Druke made was something that we hear a lot. Basically, Mr. Druke noted that because of this violation of democratic norms, the Democrats would have no standing to complain if Donald Trump handed out of a bunch of inappropriate pardons as his term was ending in 2029.

But one of the things that 538 has been very vocal about has been Donald Trump's continuous flouting of democratic norms. But they have never made the point that the Republicans should shut up about what they perceive as bad acts on the part of Democrats, given their support for Mr. Trump's activities, both in and out of the White House. If these norms are so important, why should only Democratic officeholders be told that they must either uphold them at all costs, or be responsible for the precedent they set? After all, these are what are called "small 'd'" democratic norms; they aren't party rules.

It smack of rather explicit bigotry of low expectations. Republicans aren't going to uphold the norms anyway, so why bother either expecting them to, or noting the hypocrisy of their criticisms? After all, what norm violations on the part of Barack Obama justified Donald Trump's behavior during his first term? It's been pretty clear that the Republican Party hasn't needed a precedent set by Democrats to treat the norms as useful only when they lead to the outcomes the party wants. When the late Senator John McCain, who otherwise had a reputation for being a pretty stand-up guy, made the suggestion during the 2016 campaign cycle, that if Hillary Clinton had won, Republicans should seriously consider leaving Supreme court vacancies open until a Republican reclaimed the White House, there was no precedent for that from the Democratic side.

Donald Trump made it very clear that he planned to use the Justice Department as a weapon against people he understood to be his political enemies. And the whole point behind the Project 2025 was to ensure that the incoming Trump Administration would be able to staff the civil service with loyalists who would do the work to understand how to put the President-elects orders into force, rules or no rules. Why insist that President Biden gamble that they would fail in this, when the stakes are his son?

The Rule of Law and the Constitution don't protect anyone. They're a concept and a document, respectively. People have to do the work to protect other people. And a lot of times, they haven't. Which is why the Trail of Tears, the internment of the Japanese and expansive National Security Agency spying were all things. It's fine to have faith that, no matter what Donald Trump, the courts and Congressional Republicans do, everything will be fine, and so going out on a limb to take precautions is inappropriate. But I'm not sure it's legitimate to force that faith onto other people without being able to give assurances.

I suspect that many Democrats feel that it's unwise to make a unilateral commitment to norms that do nothing other than make them vulnerable, when very few people really seem to care. Donald Trump has made no secret about his plans for the future, and millions of previously Democratic either stayed home or crossed over to the other side. If Republicans can claim that the Constitution shouldn't be a suicide pact, and there seems to be an acceptance of them acting in accordance with that outlook, I think that Democrats can be allowed some leeway in deciding that democratic norms shouldn't be a death warrant.