I’m not sure I’ve seen a more egregious example of the tyranny of the majority (the greatest fear of our founders) than the gross violation of the rule of law now unfolding in the U. S. Senate election in New Jersey. As I write, the U. S. Supreme Court has not responded to the Republican appeal, but the damage has been done. Some would compare the case to the Florida fiasco of 2000. I think the New Jersey case is a much worse instance of state court overreach, but I also think that the predicate for the problem was laid in the Florida case when the U. S. Supreme Court failed to use Article I, Sec.4 of the Constitution in its ruling then. This section specifically delegates election authority to state legislatures, not courts or any other branch of state government. If this principle had been affirmed in Bush vs. Gore, the New Jersey court might have been more restrained.
A larger issue here is the complete insolvency of the Democratic Party, and it is manifest everywhere one looks, particularly on the national domestic policy stage—in the perversion of the judicial appointment advise and consent responsibility, in the obstruction of any number of legislative bills that clearly have a Senate majority in deference to a favored few pressure groups from the far left, and in the complete sell-out of the Senate Democratic majority to the plaintiff bar. The protection of this power to obstruct in the absence of viable policy alternatives is the whole point of the duplicity and tyranny in New Jersey. Torricelli’s televised jeremiad upon exiting the Senate race was condescending, presumptuous, narcissistic, and perfectly in character with his party’s leadership.
