One more reason we can't afford a Democratic White House no matter how awful Trump is.

Judge Chutkan, an Obama appointee, illustrates the danger.

Both Paul and I think Donald Trump is unfit to govern and have said so so many times I’m not going to recount them. Paul’s comment to my recent post about how Trump can nonetheless win by pretending for a few weeks to be a gentleman makes the point in terms that are alternately acid and hilarious.

Still, as I’ve said at least as often, life is choosing, and the choice this November is not between Donald Trump and True Wonderfulness. It’s between Trump and Kamala Harris, a word-salad airhead when she’s not being openly anti-police, anti-Semitic, anti-American and pro-race huckstering.

In other words, our choice in November is going to be dreadful but not that hard. No normal person can be happy about it, but this is where we are.

There was an underplayed story today that makes the point. As the NYT reports (emphasis added):

In a sprawling legal brief partly unsealed on Wednesday, the special counsel, Jack Smith, laid out his case for why former President Donald J. Trump is not immune from prosecution on federal charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election.

The redacted brief, made public by Judge Tanya S. Chutkan of the Federal District Court in Washington, adds new details to the already extensive public record of how Mr. Trump lost the race but attempted nonetheless to cling to power….

After Mr. Trump’s Twitter post focused the enraged mob’s attention on harming Mr. Pence and the Secret Service took the vice president to a secure location, an aide rushed into the dining room off the Oval Office where Mr. Trump was watching television. The aide alerted him to the developing situation, in the hope that Mr. Trump would then take action to ensure Mr. Pence’s safety.

Instead, Mr. Trump looked at the aide and said only, “So what?” according to grand jury testimony newly disclosed in the brief.

There’s nothing wrong with Smith’s filing a brief to argue that the Supreme Court’s immunity opinion does not rule out his Jan. 6 case against Trump. Having made the (very problematic) decision to bring the case at all, that’s what he’s supposed to do as a prosecutor.

The problem isn’t even directly with trying the case in the press, which is what the Times and numerous other MSM components are doing and have done for months.

The problem is that an allegedly neutral federal judge, at her discretion, unseals a one-sided, incendiary account of Trump’s behavior a month before the election.

We have grown accustomed to the “October surprise.” What we have not grown accustomed to, and should never grow accustomed to, is having the October surprise launched by the judicial branch.

A zillion words have been written about how Trump is a threat to our democracy. But today we see in bold relief what has rightly been considered a hallmark, if not the hallmark, of a threat to democracy: A strike against an independent judiciary in favor of one that, through the calculated disclosure of sealed material, is trying to help a politically-appointed prosecutor throw the out-of-power party’s candidate in jail.

Good grief. Banana republics at least have bananas.

It’s no surprise at this point that Judge Chutkan wants Trump to lose. As a private citizen, she’s perfectly entitled. Indeed she might be in the majority. But as a judge, this is a shocking, ominous, and politically rigged abuse of power. Even Judge Merchan delayed Trump’s sentencing (in an even more rigged) prosecution out of at least minor deference to the vital tradition of the judicial branch’s staying out of politics. It’s hard to make Judge Merchan look good, but Judge Chutkan has pulled it off.

And that’s not the worst of it. The worst is that, if Ms. Harris wins, we’re going to see the appointment of more Judge Chutkans by the bushel basket (Chutkan is an Obama appointee, and Obama, unlike Ms. Harris, could occasionally pretend to be serious about law). If Ms. Harris becomes President, the portent for the federal judicial branch, and the faith American citizens will be able to have in it, is worse than depressing.

You think you don’t want Trump? I hear you. Think the Republican Party needs a serious rebuke for nominating him? I hear that too. But consider: Do you want the loss of one of the critical hallmarks of democracy in order to make the point? That and the outcroppings of that loss rippling for decades through what’s left of even-handed justice?

Unappetizing as it is, it might be time to think again.