Those are all great points.

To be clear, I don’t agree with the notion that the president requires immunity in order to be “undistracted” while being president.
I think that immunity for explicitly delineated powers makes sense purely from a logical point of view: the constitution says the president can do a thing, therefore a law saying they can’t do that thing is either unconstitutional, or doesn’t apply to the president.
If they’re impeached it wasn’t a valid use of their powers and they are potentially personally criminally liable.
I feel like it’s less traditional immunity and more an acknowledgement that the legislature can’t criminalize things in the constitution, and someone can’t be guilty of a crime under an unconstitutional law.

It’s the not-enumerated official acts bit that’s wonky to me.

I don’t think anything that trump did would even remotely fit under an enumerated power of the president, which are pretty clearly and narrowly defined. Nowhere does the constitution empower the president to futz about with elections. If Congress delegated that power to the president, then the president is acting in the bounds of a law they can break.

I mean, if he’s even sorta a boot licker, that’s pretty awesome.

Hopefully that “lol, nice” makes up for that iota. :)

Because the legislatures power to impeach and convict isn’t dependent on the judiciary.

Criminal and civil charges are a judicial branch thing. Impeachment is a legislative branch thing. The legislature does not answer to the judiciary, and the judiciary doesn’t have the power to tell the legislature how or when they execute their constitutional authority. Basically the only restriction is that the need some manner of “due process”, or to be basically fair.

There’s the office of the president and the individual who is the president. Both are often called “the president”.

In this case, it was ruled that the individual cannot be criminally charged for doing actions defined as a role of the office in the constitution: constitution says the president can veto bills, so a law saying it’s criminal to do so is unconstitutional.
There are other activities listed, the “official acts” bit, that are to be presumed to be immune unless you can prove otherwise, like the president communicating with the justice department.

The ruling didn’t change the ability of the office of the president to be sued or constrained, only delineated when you can legally go after the individual. “Delineated” because this has never been relevant before, so it didn’t matter that we hadn’t answered the question.

It’s a bad ruling not because it makes the president unremovable, but because those “other official acts” are given way too much slack.

The rationale is that the powers aren’t unchecked, but that the check for official constitutionally listed acts of the president is Congress, not the courts.

Article 48 gave the presidentisl office the power to unilaterally bypass the legislature.
This supreme Court ruling delineates the line between the individual and the office with regards to the judicial system, not the relationship between the office and the other branches like article 48 did.
Rather than granting new powers or preventing restraint of the executive branch, it purely limits the consequences the individual can face out of office.
The concept of presidential immunity existed prior to this case.

The ruling essentially listed three categories and their immunity status with regards to the courts. In my opinion, two of them are reasonable and the third shouldn’t exist.

It’s reasonable to me to say you cannot sue the president for vetoing a bill, or criminally prosecute the president for commanding the military. The constitution says the president can do those things, and that the check on presidential power is congressional acts including impeachment. The office of the president or the government as a whole may be prosecuted, and Congress and the courts can hammer out the exact meaning of the core powers, but the individual is only liable if Congress uses their power to assert that something was definitely not a valid presidential act.

It’s reasonable to me to say that being the president doesn’t grant you broad immunity for non-president things. The president does not have the constitutional authority to drink and drive, so if they do they’re just a person subject to criminal prosecution.

It’s unreasonable to me to say that in areas where the president acts officially, but their authority is shared with Congress or an inherent power of the office that they might not have immunity depending on how it impacts the role of the president.
It’s weird to say it, but in this case I agree more with Coney Barrett that the more appropriate test is to see if the law applies to the official act and then determine if in this case it would interfere with a delineated core power.

In her own separate concurrence, Justice Amy Coney Barrett agreed with the majority “that the Constitution prohibits Congress from criminalizing a President’s exercise” of his core constitutional powers and “closely related conduct.” But she would have courts approach the question of immunity for other official acts differently, by focusing first on whether the criminal law under which a former president is charged applies to his official acts and, if so, whether prosecuting the former president would interfere with his constitutional authority.

Applying that principle to the facts of this case, she suggested that at least some of the conduct that serves as the basis for the charges against Trump – such as his request that the speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives hold a special session about election fraud claims – would not be immune. “The President,” she concluded, “has no authority over state legislatures or their leadership, so it is hard to see how prosecuting him for crimes committed when dealing with the Arizona House Speaker would unconstitutionally intrude on executive power.”

https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/07/justices-rule-trump-has-some-immunity-from-prosecution/

I ultimately think that it would have been better to say that the president (individual) cannot be criminally prosecuted for exercising specifically enumerated constitutional powers unless Congress has impeached and removed from office and send it back to the lower court. They’re perfectly capable of deciding if a particular act was an executive overreach or not on a case by case basis, and the fact that this has never happened before is a pretty solid argument against needing to worry about a “chilling effect” on the exercise of presidential power. The president should be chilled, it’s practically in the constitution. Any power not given to the government is reserved to the people, clearly implying that the constitution should be read as stingy with power to the government, and generous with rights to the people. The president, as a member of the government, should be encouraged to worry about wandering around in legal grey areas.

So, national emergencies can do some of that, but this one has more to do with financing of programs, and the legal basis for financial sanctions relating to fighting terrorism. It also allows for more flexible hiring of military officers and for there to be more generals than usual.

The actual things being changed by the emergency declaration is listed in the order.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13224

It’s basically “we don’t need to ask Congress when the Treasury department tells a bank they can’t send money to specific overseas accounts”.

Oh, it’s totally freedom of speech. But freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom to broadcast your speech on public property without exception.

If they hung the banner on their house or private property, there would be nothing to be done to stop them.
But you can’t hang a banner from the governments property without their permission, which must be given in a manner impartial to the content on the banner beyond any compelling interests like “no hanging very distracting banners where it could cause accidents”.

They didn’t ask, so they can have their banner removed just as though they hung it from the flagpole in front of the courthouse.

They’re being prosecuted because a racial component to a crime is an aggravating factor that makes it more appealing to prosecutors.
So their claim is entirely correct: they’re being prosecuted because their crime was minor but made worse by being racist. We’ve already decided that it’s reasonable for the government to be particularly harsh on racist crimes because it singles out a type of behavior that’s particularly harmful to society.

Do you think that source contradicts what I said?

Mr. Miranda asked Ms. Wasserman Schultz whether they should call CNN to complain about a segment the network aired in which Mr. Sanders said he would oust the chairwoman if he were elected. “Do you all think it’s worth highlighting for CNN that her term ends the day after the inauguration, when a new D.N.C. Chair is elected anyway?” Mr. Miranda asked. Ms. Wasserman Schultz responded by dismissing the senator’s chances. “This is a silly story,” she wrote. “He isn’t going to be president.”

Shocking. She didn’t speak kindly of a person who publicly attacked her, and opted to leave the story alone instead of doing anything.

Same information, but cast with additional context

Most of the shocking things mentioned in the emails were only mentioned, and are then dismissed.

Your mistaking opinions and preference bias, which all people have, for unfair bias. Do you actually expect that the people who run a political party don’t have an opinion about politics?

The coin thing didn’t happen.. At best she won six out of a dozen, which is what you would expect. The reality is more complicated.

You grossly mischaracterize the agreement.
From the article:

This does not include any communications related to primary debates – which will be exclusively controlled by the DNC.

Nothing in this agreement shall be construed to violate the DNC’s obligation of impartiality and neutrality through the Nominating process. All activities performed under this agreement will be focused exclusively on preparations for the General Election and not the Democratic Primary. Further we understand you may enter into similar agreements with other candidates.

HFA will be granted complete and seamless access to all research work product and tools (not including any research or tracking the DNC may engage in relating to other Democratic candidates).

In other words, her campaign agreed to give the DNC money to prepare for the general election, and in exchange they got to look at those preparations.
This was definitely the Clinton campaign assuming she would be the candidate, but it’s not exactly a smoking gun for financial impropriety regarding the primary.

Honestly, if your campaign can’t find a lawyer or accountant who can understand campaign finance management, you probably actually shouldn’t be in charge of a country. The financial arrangements weren’t particularly obtuse or obfuscated for moving millions of dollars between multiple political entities in multiple states.

Quoting a phrase from an internal email out of context makes you seem disingenuous. The emails that were stolen show people being mean, but it also shows that they were consistently not rigging anything. Or does someone making a shitty suggestion and then a higher ranking member of the party saying “no” not fit the narrative your drawing? Or that the only time they talked about financial schemes was after the Sanders campaign alleged misconduct?

In context, Sanders told CNN that if he was elected, she would no longer be the chair person. The internal comment was “this is a silly story. Sanders isn’t going to be president” at a time where he was already loosing.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz has to resign.

She did. Eight years ago.

Tldr, party leadership preferred Clinton over Obama. Turns out that preference without misconduct doesn’t have much impact.

you refer to a 76 year old career politician like Sanders as a new person.

Oh please. It’s even in the bit that you quoted: new to the party. I act like he was new to the party because he was, and his campaign was run by people who didn’t know the party structures. When their inexperience with the party tools led to them not taking advantage of them, they cried misconduct for the other campaigns knowing about them.

Oh, definitely. Not just possible, they weren’t even looking for that. They were entirely looking for what the debate did to preferences and opinions directly about the candidates.

I mostly brought it out as an example of the headline not capturing the whole message of how it impacted voters. Or didn’t impact, rather.

So what were the advantages? The usual one I hear listed is superdelegates, which doesn’t matter if more people voted for the winner, or that they didn’t proactively inform his campaign about funding tricks that the Clinton campaign already knew about.

Are you saying that Clinton was an independent who just happened to align with the party for her entire political career?

I’m not sure you know how political affiliation or “people” work. Being a member of the party for decades vs being a member for months matters. Those are called “connections”, and it’s how most politicians get stuff done: by knowing people and how to talk to them.

The point of a primary is to determine who the candidate is, not who the party is more aligned with. Party leadership will almost always be more aligned with the person who has been a member longer, particularly when that person has been a member of part leadership themselves. It’s how people work. You prefer a person you’ve known and worked with for a long time over a person who just showed up to use your organization, and by extension you, for their own goals.
We have rules to make sure that those unavoidable human preferences don’t make it unfair.

The Obama campaign is a good example. He didn’t have the connections that Clinton did, so party leadership favored her. Once they actually voted, he got more so leadership alignment didn’t matter and he was the candidate. He then worked to develop those connections so that he and the party were better aligned and work together better, and he won. Yay!

So what rules did they break for Clinton? What advantages did she have over Sanders that she didn’t have over Obama?
Which of those advantages weren’t just "new people to the party didn’t know tools the party made available?”

Like what? Did she get votes for him thrown out?

People have been saying for years that she had an advantage and so it wasn’t fair, but those advantages seem to ignore that more people voted for her.

He was an independent running as a Democrat, and then claiming it’s unfair when the Democratic party was more aligned with the person who had always been a Democrat.

George Washington eschewed political parties because he didn’t want to establish a precedent where his choice as first president set the standard everyone else had to conform to, and there’s a little irony in people holding him up as an example in that light more than 200 years later.

He, and the other founders largely, disliked political parties in their entirety, not just having some specific number of them.
They also built the system that enshrined the two party dichotomy as the only option, actively sought to ensure that the “right” people could override the will of the people if needed, and founded the parties they had previously argued against.
They are far from infallible bastions of correctness in this matter.

Oh yeah, he’s totally not a viable candidate, but he does have an actual political philosophy and opinions that are surprisingly agreeable. He just lacks the actual political fortitude or will to get elected.

Dude, have you actually read vermin Supremes platform, or rather his actual political philosophy and beliefs?

I read through some of them once, and had the horrifying realization that the contemporary political figure that I think I agree with most closely is:

• unelectable
• best known for wearing a boot on his head

I couldn’t find where a lot of his actual opinions got discussed a bit more formally, but this random video snippet from 2008 does a decent job capturing it.

If I had (got? Got. I’d love to need to make the choice) to pick between a democratic socialist or a social anarchist, I think I’d honestly lean towards the social anarchist, all things being equal.

They did a lot of the pre-selection of people beforehand. The headline most places are running with is “flash poll says trump won”, but if you actually read the conclusions, it’s that “flash poll says trump won, more Republicans watched the debate by about a ten percent margin, and no one changed their opinions about fitness for office or who they’re voting for”.

True. But they were going to have the same criticism of Biden regardless.

It’s part of the reason I didn’t even watch. Looking over the polling, the debate didn’t really change anyone’s opinions on anything to any significant degree.

See, you’re talking partisan politics, I’m talking “you literally have to pick someone”. We’ve had these candidates before. You already know which one you’re going to vote for. You picked your side four years ago when you were asked the same question.

Beyond that though, there’s “parties” and then theirs “sides”. One side is xenophobic, homophobic and actively wishes harm on a lot of people. The other side doesn’t, for all their flaws.
There are more parties than there are sides in the past few elections.

By saying you think you should vote for someone who will be good for everyone, you’ve picked a side. The side that doesn’t want to do good for only the “right” people, or make sure only the “right” people get hurt.
The only question is if you’ll vote for that side to win, or if you’ll let idealism or anger drive you to vote otherwise.

People keep saying Bernie could have won, but he didn’t beat Clinton.

… Picking a side is literally what an election is.

Does it really count as “lucid” if you enunciate your lies, fabrications, misrecollections about… everything?