No, I'm not dead.
But I haven't posted here since May 30.
I have -- had -- any number of excuses: I had to get my CLE done. I had to prepare for, and successfully complete, an all-family vacation (the image above is from that trip). As the photograph suggests, I have had some babysitting and transportation obligations. I have been fortunate enough to be called a number of times for arbitration duty.
But these are mere
excuses. I did all these things, and more, when I was also trying to keep a law practice going and I still had time to post here several times a week and, sometimes, several times a day.
I haven't been sick, physically -- my wife and I did have our first documented bout with Covid at the end of May, but that was merely unpleasant, not incapacitating.
No, if I've been sick, it's a sickness in my soul. I have covered judicial elections here in every election cycle since 2008. Arguably, this is a political site -- very, very, very low on the political scale -- but this work has given me more exposure to politics and politicians and their various machinations than I otherwise could ever have had.
And, I find, I don't
like politics. I like it less with each increasingly shrill, bombastic, hyper-partisan election cycle.
Getting elected to the bench (or, for that matter, getting appointed) is a political process -- and politicians are members of a notoriously closed guild. I have tried to pull the curtain back a little, as much as an outsider like me can, in order to give lawyers who are not politicians, or related to politicians, but who nevertheless harbor judicial ambitions, more of a chance to breach the political battlements.
The breakthrough kitchen-table campaigns that I would posit as the ideal were never common; they are rarer than ever these days. In my time on this beat, I have documented the increasing expense of running a credible judicial campaign, from campaign consultants (of sometimes questionable loyalty, but always real expense) to the costs (actual and ethical) of raising funds. When I ran for judge, in
1994 and
1996, we tried to send out postcards to bring friends and acquaintances to the polls; now, direct mail pieces are probably a necessity. Hopefully not the misleading and malicious ones... but some examples of this type have been found in recent judicial campaigns, too.
But these trends, dispiriting as they are, are not a sufficient explanation for my malaise.
It's been coming on me now for some time. I tried to write about it in April, trying to explain why I thought
the constant barrage of negative political advertising constitutes a form of bipartisan voter suppression.
But it's more than negative advertising. It's the groupthink. The win-at-all-costs mentality. It's the false choice fallacy that if you dare notice the obvious, glaring faults of
this candidate, you must necessarily be a synchophantic, mindless supporter of
that candidate.
What may frost me most is the casual, bipartisan contempt for the Constitution -- treating it like an obstacle to someone's vision of "progress" instead of as the safeguard of all our rights and liberties that it most certainly is.
You know, back in the day, before it was repealed, I had a lot of Structural Work Act cases. From these I learned that there is absolutely no question that safety harnesses, properly worn, can slow down the "progress" of the work. The builder's goals
might be more promptly achieved without them. But, also without them, people are much more likely to get seriously hurt, even killed.
Safeguards matter.
We lawyers -- we're sort of the Constitution's OSHA. We need to rein back our partisan, political brothers and sisters, not try and fashion creative arguments to provide cover for their excesses. And that goes for both parties. All parties. Left and Right. Progressive and MAGA. It does not appear that civics and patriotism and reverence for the Constitution are taught in our nation's schools. I know that some of us lawyers need refresher courses. At the very least.
Right now, and likely for the foreseeable future, I find the political climate toxic and increasingly intolerable. (As well as intolerant.) It's painful to observe, much less write about. Even in the limited way that I have done heretofore.
My news feed, all the stuff that comes in the email, X -- I start reading and always wind up depressed. And, mind you, this is is without watching one minute of any cable news network. Of any stripe.
So, for me, it comes down to this: Do I want to continue aiding and abetting an unhealthy political process?
The answer, for now, is that I perceive it as my civic duty. A way I can contribute, even if in only a small way, to the good of society. So... after a summer away... I will get back to work. While I may be trying to bail the ocean with a bucket, I will continue to try to help keep judicial campaigns as oases of civility and even gentility, in the hopes, however slim, that these good qualities can rise up on the ballot and into other races as well. Judicial candidates can lead the way.
But we've all got to keep our safety harnesses securely fastened.
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