'Striking convergence': How conservatives and liberals arrived to one 'shared belief'

01 July 2024

Nearly four years ago, the Pew Research Center published a report revealing, "Republicans and Democrats largely disagree over the seriousness of several major problems currently facing the country," from the coronavirus pandemic and healthcare affordability, to violent crime and unemployment.

In August of 2023, Axios reported that new Gallop polling showed, "The role of government power is one of the biggest issues where Democrats and Republicans are drifting further and further apart," while the issues of "immigration, climate and guns" didn't linger too far behind.

Politico on Monday published a legal report written by John F. Harris and Ian Ward, in which they assert the two parties have finally found common ground on one issue.

"The country’s left and right flanks — endlessly divided on nearly every big question in national life — have arrived at a striking convergence," Harris and Ward write. "Both ends of the political spectrum believe the American justice system is simply not on the level."

The reporters emphasize, "The notion that the nation’s legal system, from the Supreme Court down, is hopelessly compromised by bias and scantily clad partisan agendas is now a foundational assumption across wide swaths of both the conservative and progressive movements."

For example, Harris and Ward write:

Take Trump’s conviction. Before the trial, many Democrats privately winced that the charges — which were elevated from misdemeanors to felonies using an unusual legal theory — might not be the strongest case to make their point that Trump is a lawless president. Yet after the guilty verdict, those same Democrats now publicly scold conservatives for maintaining that the whole exercise was unfair and would not have been brought against any defendant not named Trump. (Many of those Democrats, incidentally, have defended Hunter Biden, who similarly was convicted of charges that never would have attracted a special prosecutor if his last name were different.)

Conversely, how many Republicans, on truth serum, believe Democrats have no fair reason to suspect that federal judge Aileen Cannon — a Trump appointee who is overseeing the case against Trump for allegedly illegally handling classified documents after leaving the White House — may be going out of her way to protect her appointer from political fallout? Who thinks it is outlandish to suspect, as critics have alleged, that she is deliberately slow-walking the case to ensure that no trial happens before the November election?

Harris and Ward also point to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-CA) and current House Speaker Mike Johnson's (R-LA) recent criticisms of the US judicial system, for different reasons.

Referring to the majority conservative US Supreme Court, Pelosi told CNN's Anderson Cooper she thinks the justices "have gone rogue," and, "It’s most unfortunate."

After a Manhattan jury convicted former President Donald Trump of 34 felony counts for falsifying business documents in a hush money scheme in May, Johnson said: "Today is a shameful day in American history. This was a purely political exercise, not a legal one."

Asserting that "the Pelosi and Johnson statements put the new reality in sharp relief," Harris and Ward write, "For one, their language isn’t especially flamboyant by prevailing standards. Not long ago, the casual assertion of judicial illegitimacy would have been shocking from a former and current speaker. These days, the argument that the justice system is so distorted by politics that in fundamental ways it cannot and should not be trusted reflects mainstream thinking in their parties."

The pair adds: "The ever-more aggressive declarations of judicial illegitimacy differ from the political complaints of the past not just in degree, but also in kind. And they are putting American politics and law in untrodden territory."

Politico's full report is available here.

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