Slippery Slope
I’m not a mountain climber, but I’ve been on top of lots of mountains. Mountain climbing is a very particular set of skills; a combination of hiking and rock climbing and, for the highest mountains, winter survival and high altitude techniques. That’s never been my “thing”. But, when I was a younger man, I backpacked a lot; some in the Rockies and the high Appalachians. I found that some trails just followed up through the woods to the top, and some required some “bouldering”, going from rock to rock to reach the peak. And other mountains, particularly some high enough to be above the tree line, were a steep path of shale, almost pebbles, to the top. One that I remember well was a narrow trail along a steep ridge, with shale on either side.
You could walk along the peak of the ridge just fine. But, just a step or two to either side was a slippery slope, where you might not be able to control you descent. So it made sense: walk on the ridge, don’t risk stepping onto the slippery slope. Who knows where you’d end up.
Rules
The metaphor of the “slippery slope” applies to a lot of things. I talked to a young coach the other day, who had to suspend his best athlete for skipping practice. It was the day of a big meet, and the coach felt the impact of losing his best: was he punishing the kid, or the team, or himself? But, if the coach allowed the kid to skip, what “slippery slope” was he on? What standard could he hold the rest of the team to?
Famed basketball coach Al McGuire put it succinctly: “If you make rules, your best athlete will break them”. I once thought he meant to not have any rules at all, but what McGuire was really saying was a warning. If you make the rules, make sure you’re prepared to apply them at the most critical time to the athlete you need the most. In my forty years of coaching, I discovered that McGuire was right. And, most of the time, I stayed on the ridge and didn’t venture onto the slope.
Gerrymandering
In America today, we are on that slippery slope. For decades, Progressives (Liberals, Democrats) have pressed for fair re-districting of legislative seats and an end to Gerrymandering. Congressional and state legislative districts should not be drawn to reach a pre-ordained political outcome, but should be made up of areas with similar interests and needs. Democrats here in Ohio stood against Congressional Districts like the Eighth or Fifteenth, which stretch over a hundred miles in order to dilute urban, likely Democratic votes with rural, likely Republican ones.
But the Republican Party has not had the same “scruples”. That’s become a huge issue today. Texas and other “Red” states redrew their maps to squeeze more Republican Congressional seats out. But that’s been going on for years. The “Red Map” plan was a pairing of computer mapping and politics. It began in 2010, and has continued to this day. Democrats generally responded by demanding bi-partisan or non-partisan “commissions” to more fairly divide representation.
Most Democrats (and a lot of other Americans) see the Trump Presidency as an existential risk to our democracy. We never foresaw that a President could exercise such unbridled power, without the balance of a Congress willing to exercise its own authorities. In light of that threat, we are abandoning the safety of the “ridge trail”, and venturing down the slippery slope. Democrats in California and other states are postponing their hard won reforms, and Gerrymandering as hard as the Republicans to keep Congressional seats. But it’s not just about re-districting.
McConnell Rule
Barack Obama was the President of the United States when Conservative icon and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died of a heart attack, eleven months before the next Presidential inauguration. “Normal practice” was that the current President would make a nomination, and the Senate of the United States would vote to either confirm or deny it. Obama nominated Merrick Garland, a “middle of the road” judge from the Appellate Court. He was a man that, in any other era, would earn ninety votes in the Senate.
But then Republican majority leader Mitch McConnell refused to allow Garland to have confirmation hearings, much less a vote. McConnell determined to “hold the seat” open until the next Presidential election, betting that a Republican might win. To everyone’s surprise, Trump did win in 2016 (I’m a Democrat and I can say that). The next appointment to the Court wasn’t Garland, it was arch-conservative Neil Gorsuch.
There is little spoken of about the Supreme Court and the Trump Administration right now. But, three conservative Supreme Court Justices are aging. Clarence Thomas is seventy-seven, Samuel Alito is seventy-six, and Chief Justice Roberts is seventy-one. While a Republican President is guaranteed until 2028, a Republican controlled Senate is not.
Republicans still have the “edge” on controlling the Senate after the November 2026 elections. But the gap is closing. The continuing impacts of Trump’s war of choice in Iran, and riding roughshod over “normal” civil rights, raises the specter of a Democratic controlled Senate. And Democrats are now willing to venture down the “slippery slope” of the “McConnell rule”. They might well hold any vacant seat open until a new President is elected, hoping for a Democratic victory.
Save the Union
To what lengths will Trump go? He can’t “fire” a Supreme Court Justice. But, as rumored with Justice Kennedy, he can offer them a “deal they can’t refuse”, perhaps choosing their own successor. If Thomas, Alito, and even Roberts would resign, then Trump could assure their seats are filled by like minds to Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett. That would cement his brand of 1890’s American law into the Court for decades. Otherwise, as soon as this January, Democrats might actually have some control.
And if he does manage to pack the Court with relatively young “Federalist” judges, what should Democrats do should they regain the White House and the Congress in 2028? Would they go even farther down the slippery slope, and expand the number of Supreme Court justices? How far will America have to go to regain our democracy, and our values? What would you do to “save the Union”?
Just as I finished editing this essay – the current Supreme Court gutted the remaining sections of the Voting Rights Act. A Democratic Congress and a Democratic President can “fix” that.
