Thread by @baseballcrank

1. You could spend all day on the slanted & misleading history in this @jbouie column why Mitch McConnell is...the new John C. Calhoun? To start with, search the column for mention of Harry Reid, Robert Byrd, or Lyndon Johnson. You won't find them. nytimes.com/interactive/20…

@jbouie 2. Bouie also begins & ends his history of gerrymandering with Republicans in the past decade, ignoring the vast history of Democrat gerrymanders. In 2009, Democrats had 15 more House seats than their share of the popular vote - without which Obamacare doesn't pass.

@jbouie 3. Bouie's history of Walker-era Wisconsin power struggles ignores the unprecedented Democrat efforts to recall Walker, have the legislative minority flee the state, surround the capitol with angry mobs, & sic investigators on conservative donors.

@jbouie 4. This is aside from the oddity of including, in a series on black Americans, a jeremiad against any political structure that defends the rights of the minority. I wonder if America has ever had minorities oppressed by the majority.

@jbouie 5. @johnddavidson also notes that Calhounist views of the American Founding have more in common with today's progressivism & the 1619 Project than they do with modern conservatism thefederalist.com/2019/08/20/gho… & thefederalist.com/2017/08/03/con…

@jbouie 6. Then there is Bouie's history of Reaganism, which consists entirely of a quote about the 1991 David Duke campaign that is so hilariously ahistorical regarding the environment of 1980 & 1984, it's hard to believe anyone who lived through that era wouldn't laugh at it.

@jbouie 7. Bouie's view that Bill Buckley only rethought his view on civil rights "when key civil rights questions had been settled by law" also has the timeline of Buckley's evolution wrong, unless Bouie thinks these things had been settled by the mid-60s politico.com/magazine/story…

@jbouie 8. I'm not sure how you write this paragraph without pulling a hamstring.

@jbouie 9. Also, in ascribing Calhounism as the source of anti-majoritarianism in American politics, Bouie ignores the role of "living constitution" judges & the administrative state, both of which derive from the anti-majoritarian theories of white supremacist Woodrow Wilson.

@jbouie 10. Now, Calhoun began with a germ of truth: the American system runs on multiple tracks - the president, Senate, House, & states each answer to separate electorates. Those distinct majorities can each, within limits, obstruct the others. But that's not why Calhoun's wrong.

@jbouie 11. The federal system, including the provision of a written & amendable constitution, ultimately allows large or lasting majorities to override all opposition. Calhoun clung to a pre-1787, anti-originalist view that the concurrent systems had an absolute veto.

@jbouie 12. To belabor the obvious, Calhoun was also bad on the merits - he also turned away from the Founders' view of slavery & embraced it as a positive good.

@jbouie 13. Antebellum South Carolina was also uniquely bad. Bouie describes it as "the paradigmatic slave state" but it was more the extreme example. From 1828-60 it was the only state that held no popular vote for POTUS. Its state government was likewise out of step w/even the South.

@jbouie 14. Anyway, there are deeper issues w/transporting Calhounism to the modern GOP while totally whitewashing the entire history of the Democratic Party outside the South & the modern progressive posture towards popular sovereignty & constitutional government, but you get the idea.