Thread by @jedshug

To the Washington insider journalists like @maggieNYT and @IgnatiusPost and other hand-wringers about “incivility”:
How do you think Jim Crow ended?
How did Watergate end?
Social pressure on the political/judicial class.
Fear of not being able to eat at restaurants.
Social norms.

2/ There are many explanations for why the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 against Jim Crow. One powerful factor was that the social world of DC and polite society had recently turned against segregation. The Justices knew the tide of history was heading in one direction in their world.

3/ When I was in law school/PhD program, we called this the Cocktail Party thesis. I don’t remember who coined it.
But the idea is simple: A check on democracy’s excesses is the social pressure of elite opinion on political elites.

4/ The @RedHenLex and the Mexican restaurant are far more democratic grassroots versions of this social pressure on specific bad actors, not simply members of a party, but the apparatchiks of evil.

5/ @PressSec @SarahHuckabee is not ostracized for being a Republican. She is a culture warrior who seeks to divide our country and enable evil policies with deliberate lies.
And the the @RedHenLex comes home to roost, and she can’t handle it?
@jbarro nailed it...

@jbarro, centrist conservative:

https://twitter.com/jbarro/status/1010711027309338625?s=21

@GilmoreGlenda, we talked about the Cocktail Party thesis in your class: where did Brown come from and what did Brown do?
Justices feared being seen as social outsiders, and once they ruled, elites and norms-shapers got the message and didn’t want to be pariahs, either.