CULTURES: Blue tribe stars seemed to be shocked...

TUESDAY, MARCH 5, 2024

...by the Court's (unsurprising) decision: Yesterday morning, at 10 a.m., a new arrival on the front became the topic of general conversation.

That new arrival was the Supreme Court's decision in the Colorado ballot removal case. Dual headlines included, the leading news report in today's Washington Post (print edition) starts exactly as shown:

Supreme Court keeps Trump on ballots nationwide
UNANIMOUSLY REVERSES COLORADO RULING

The Supreme Court on Monday unanimously sided with former president Donald Trump, allowing the 2024 Republican presidential front-runner to remain on the election ballot and reversing a Colorado ruling that disqualified him from returning to office because of his conduct around the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The justices said the Constitution does not permit a single state to disqualify a presidential candidate from national office. The court warned of disruption and a chaotic state-by-state patchwork if a candidate for nationwide office could be declared ineligible in some states, but not others, based on the same conduct.

The decision was "unanimous," the front-page news report said. 

A front-page report in the New York Times used that very same word. "Though the justices provided different reasons, the decision’s bottom line was unanimous," Adam Liptak wrote in the second paragraph of his own report.

Rightly or wrong, wisely or not, all nine justices had decided that the state of Colorado didn't have the right to bar Donald J. Trump from the ballot. Not should this decision—a decision reached by all nine justices—have come as some sort of surprise.

Consider what happened on the evening of February 8, when Rachel Maddow joined her "beloved colleagues" in telling us, her "beloved viewers," about that day's Supreme Court hearing on this very matter.

As we noted yesterday, Maddow started, rather weirdly, by telling us that we were her "beloved viewers." She then offered her own reactions to the day's hearing, which had been broadcast live, though in audio only.

Eventually, Maddow turned to Ari Melber, the legal analyst among her collection of colleagues—and when Maddow threw to Melber, he straight-up told her this:

MELBER (2/8/24): It speaks to how bipartisan this was, based on the different Justices appointed by different parties. Based on the questioning, which is all we have to go on, I would give you eight or nine votes likely against the Colorado Trump ballot ban. 

And that's not because all eight or nine of those people are soft on insurrection. It's because of the things you raised and that we heard some in the questioning about.

Could Candidate Trump be banned from the ballot? As Melber finished a fairly lengthy initial statement, he offered this assessment:

MELBER: I think that the justices, including the Democratic appointees, basically said, "Yes, but not at the state level."

So Melber said, all the way back on the evening of February 8. 

The whole fandango had been quite bipartisan, Melber said. Even "the Democratic appointees" seemed to be down with the idea that the state of Colorado didn't have the right to remove Trump from the ballot.

That was Melber's assessment, based on that day's hearing. Nor was Melber's analysis some sort of outlier at this point in time. 

The next morning, front-page reports in the Post and the Times offered the same assessment. In the self-same Washington Post, a February 9 report said this:

Supreme Court poised to allow Trump to remain on Colorado ballot

The Supreme Court on Thursday seemed poised to allow former president Donald Trump to remain on the Colorado ballot, expressing deep concerns about permitting a single state to disqualify the leading Republican candidate from seeking national office.

Justices from across the ideological spectrum warned of troubling political ramifications if they do not reverse a ruling from Colorado’s top court that ordered Trump off the ballot after finding that he engaged in insurrection around the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol.

The court was considering the unprecedented and consequential question of whether a state court can enforce a rarely invoked, post-Civil War provision of the Constitution to disqualify Trump from returning to the White House.

During more than two hours of argument, the justices asked questions that suggested their often divided bench could reach a unanimous or near-unanimous decision to reject the challenge to Trump’s eligibility brought by six Colorado voters...

It was instant conventional wisdom—conventional wisdom which turned out to be thoroughly accurate! Yesterday morning, the court ruled in precisely the way Melber had predicted to his beloved colleague four weeks before:

As it turned out, all nine justices agreed. For better or worse, the state of Colorado did not have the right to bar Candidate Trump from the ballot. So said all nine justices, including the three from our own blue tribe.

Back on February 8, it had been conventional wisdom: 

The ruling was likely to be unanimous. The ruling would go against Colorado, and it would favor Trump.

In that sense, there was zero reason for surprise when the court issued its ruling yesterday morning. And yet, starting at 4 p.m., the major stars on the blue tribe "cable news" channel expressed their outrage—and their apparent surprise—about the heinous ruling the court had shockingly issued.

At 4 p.m., Nicolle Wallace seemed to be shocked by what the court had done. At 9 p.m., we ourselves were somewhat shocked by the way Maddow presented this widely anticipated ruling.

That said, we're not sure we can remember a time when our nation's two warring tribes disintegrated into so much bad faith—or perhaps, into so much furious true belief, furious tribal true belief which serves to overwhelm sound journalistic judgment.

(Or into so much baldly mercantile conduct? We can't tell you that.)

In some ways, the cultures of our two warring tribes are strikingly different. We know of no one in the world of blue tribe cable news who behaves in the way Greg Gutfeld behaved last night on his eponymous primetime program on the red tribe's channel.

In our view, Gutfeld—a 59-year-old man—is a little bit nutty and a whole lot more than a little bit smutty. We know of no one in the blue tribe orb who behaves in anything resembling the way he and his gang of flyweight guests routinely behave, on a nightly basis.

On the other hand, this:

In recent days, we've frequently thought of the poisonous culture outlined by Robert Graves in his acclaimed 1934 novel, I, Claudius. 

In that historical novel, the reader sees the way the Roman public was routinely deceived about the workings of their republican institutions. These repeated deceptions took place as central figures behind the throne engaged in ongoing behavior which was literally poisonous.

We've often thought of that acclaimed novel—and of the subsequent, highly acclaimed BBC/PBS series—as we've watched our own blue tribe match much of the more unfortunate conduct of its red tribe rival of late.

We were struck by Maddow's behavior as she railed against the court's unanimous assessment last night. One hour later, we were struck by a claim advanced by Lawrence O'Donnell—a tribally pleasing claim which strikes us as simply false.

The furious Maddow seemed to be shocked by the Court's (unanimous) assessment. As we thought back to the events of February 8, her reaction struck us as perhaps a bit strange—but also as an artifact of the deeply flawed human nature which was developed long ago, in our imperfect species' prehistoric past.

Can we blue tribe denizens learn to see ourselves as we secretly are? Might we be willing to take The Blue Tribe Challenge? 

History suggests that the answer is no! That said, we'll continue to look at the cultures displayed in certain works of high-end literature as we fruitlessly continue to suggest that we blues might strive, like the famous physician of old, to learn how to heal ourselves at this time of peril. 

Tomorrow: What Maddow, O'Donnell said