Will high court decisions help Democrats bite the dust?

In recent weeks the nation's uber-conservative high court, with its newest Trump acolyte Neil Gorsuch playing rookie of the year for the magnificent nine, has thrown some curve balls that could strike Democrats out for years or even decades to come.

President Obama speaks at an Early Vote 

rally at The Ohio State University

in 2012.

Democrats lost the opportunity to craft the court to its values and principles when it let a New York billionaire who made his fame and fortune by stiffing contractors before he declared bankruptcy, as records and lawsuits showed he often did, win the presidential election in 2010, by winning three key mid-western states by fewer than 80,000 votes total.

When Donald beat Hillary, the real prize won wasn't control of the White House but control of life-time appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court.

That court could have installed President Barack Obama's moderate nominee Merrick Garland, but Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky put Garland on ice for a year, effectively freezing the court 4-4. The undertaker, as McConnell has been called, banked on a Republican winning so the next nominee would be a loyal member of the conservative platoon of judges who by one vote would tilt the court to the right on so many cases that reflect the heart and soul of this aging and deflating democracy.

In recent weeks the court has delivered in spades on McConnell's gamble, as it churns out split 5-4 decisions. One of these slim wins essentially told Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted and his successor that a method of purging voting lists based on a voter's history of voting in federal elections and whether they returned a letter from the state on their status was in complete compliance with federal law is constitutional. That decision, Husted, Ohio Secretary of State v A. Phillip Randolph Institute., essentially said it's okay to "cage" voters with a piece of mail that, if they didn't see it or respond to it for one of many valid reasons, would remove them from voter rolls. Democratic base voters take the brunt of this decision, since they mostly represent minorities, youth and elders.

In another recent decision, Abbott v Perez, the court's five conservative justices kept Texas’ voting maps largely intact.

As the AP reported on the travel ban case, the 5-4 decision dealt "an election-year blow to Democrats by reversing earlier findings that intentional racial discrimination continues to stain several statehouse and congressional districts." Districts gerrymandered after the 2010 election when Tea Party Republicans turned their ire at Obama's Affordable Care Act into a tornado that won them control of the House and Senate. In Ohio, where districts are as rigged as they are in Texas, it won't be anytime soon when the electoral playing field is leveled again. With midterm elections in process now, the only miracle Buckeyes might see is for Ohio's only statewide elected Democrat, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, to win his third term.

And with Tuesday's 5-4 decision in Trump v Hawaii, a case that tested whether the president could place entry restrictions on the nationals of eight foreign states whose systems for managing and sharing information about their nationals the President deemed inadequate, Democrats saw another issue key to their party bite the dust.

Arguably one of the biggest but expected blows to Democrats arrived on Wednesday in a case called Janus v American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees. Two years ago after Justice Antonin Scalia died, the court tied in this case 4-4. The petitioner in this case, Mr. Janus, challenged a state law requiring him as a non-union member to pay a fair share fee to the union that was required to represent him in the workplace as a violation of his First Amendment rights.

Justice Gorsuch, doing what he was nominated to do, broke the tie against union power. The Illinois case also saw another split 5-4 decision that will go a long way to further hobbling Democratic candidates who previously benefited from public sector unions that bargained collectively for higher wages. Now, as a matter of free speech, members of such unions do not have to pay a penny for costs associated with collective bargaining.

“Today’s decision by this anti-worker Supreme Court is an attack on workers’ freedom to advocate for themselves,” said two-term Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown. Hoping to win a third term this year, Brown continued, “Workers produce more than ever, but don’t share in the wealth they create. Our economy doesn’t value work. We change that by giving workers a voice in the businesses they help build – not silencing them. The decision is shameful, and it’s a setback – but we’re not going to stop organizing and fighting back for workers who build the middle class.”

As the special investigation undertaken by special counsel Robert Mueller into President Trump's campaign connections and collusion with Russians during the 2016 race moves forward into the second half, the president has wondered with the help of his legal team whether he can pardon himself before or after any evidence is revealed by Mueller that he violated law?

Will Democrats Bite the Dust?

With these three decisions in mind, with more like-minded ones probably waiting in the wings, will it be a real surprise to anyone that a president pardoning himself with a power explicitly given to him by the nation's founders when they penned the Constitution will also be okay?

Democrats who can't seem to convince their voters, hard-wired or sympathetic, to turnout to vote in any election face a grim future of being losers on a grand scale. In a new Gallup poll, only 56 percent of U.S. adults say they are currently "absolutely certain" they will vote in the November elections for Congress. "That's on the low side in Gallup's trend of final pre-election midterm polls since 1954 and is similar to the 58% recorded just before the 2014 midterms, which had the lowest turnout rate since 1942," the poll reports.

With Justice Anthony Kennedy rumored to be ready to step down, and with odds makers giving long odds for this Republican congress to challenge Trump on anything, it's a foregone conclusion that impeachment by the House and conviction by the Senate is a pipe dreamers pipe dream.

If Democrats fail to take control of the House of Representatives this fall, and if Trump can keep the Senate on his team if even by a single seat, his re-election may be more likely than him losing to a nation that turned it's severe case of buyer's remorse into a win at the ballot box.

Justice Kennedy, who is seen by many as someone who can swing both ways, as he showed he can by upholding same sex marriage, will be replace by another conservative droid on the scale of Justice Gorsuch.

If Kennedy is replace by Trump, and the president wins a second term, it might be all over for liberals, progressive and intelligent independent thinkers, as a stalwart of the court Like Ruth Bader Ginsberg, now in her 90s, retired or dies, giving Trump a third pick that will pollute the court for the next half century.

When President Trump pardons himself, as he says he can, following any damning findings flushed out by Mueller, the days of Dred Scott, Plessy v Ferguson and even Brown v Board of Education might not be relegated to the history books as they are now.

Trump's new version of old fascism may very well be the country's future, as Democrats fade away to winning little races for city mayor and county commissioner while the highest offices are dominated by Trump's cult members.