Stacyhs
Penultimate Amazing
What we can count on for many years to come is a very conservative SC where Republicans get their way on pretty much everything they want. And that scares the crap out of me.
RBG leaves the stage.
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uke2se
Penultimate Amazing
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Which is why the Democrats - whenever they win the senate and the presidency next - should change the system. The US system is broken beyond repair.
Stacyhs
Penultimate Amazing
I don't know if we're broken beyond repair but we are severely damaged. We're in for a long, long recovery at the very least and it cannot even start until the malignancy known as Trump is removed.
angrysoba
Philosophile
Let's be a little reasonable on this.
Can the Republicans "get their way on pretty much everything they want"?
Do you foresee the Supreme Court just making up judgments and saying that anything and everything that a Democratic President and Congress want to pass will be vetoed as unconstitutional?
Or even going further and dicatating policy and writing bills and declaring war because they will just say that as the interpreters of the Constitution they noticed that if you rearrange all the letters then it gives them all their own powers?
Working in concert with the lower courts, sure why not ?
For example they could significantly extend states' rights so that the red states can simply opt out of any federal laws that are inconvenient.
They won't have to make up judgements, they will simply have to apply a legal interpretation that yields the desired results.
Mumbles
Philosopher
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Everything the dems pass? No. Pro-corporate legislation, for example, will be allowed to stand regardless. Civil Rights? Well, we've already seen the Roberts court simply make up reasons to gut the CRA, including a false assertion that the covered states would absolutely not attempt to discriminate racially (an assertion that Texas proved incorrect within hours of the ruling, and that Congress had repeatedly found strong evidence that they had attempted long after the VRA was enacted), and Scalia's assertion that equality under the law is a "racial entitlement". Would have thought that this would apply more for state-enforced white supremacism, but nope. I rarely mention him, since he died and McConnell broke norms to install Neil "Truckers should freeze to death if their truck engines stall, on a cold road instead of leaving the truck" Gorsuch in the seat Scalia once held.
It's not as though "making up judgments" would be new for Roberts, in other words - they've already done exactly this.
The constitution has become a suicide pact. Changing the system will require radical action and that's not in Biden's DNA.
I've proposed a mechanism -- threaten to appoint everybody to the court, and be prepared to act on it. Unlike packing the court 'normally', this can't be easily undone by a subsequent GOP administration.
I also propose that leftie seniors (and anyone else able to uproot) from CA and NY temporarily relocate to the Dakotas en masse in order to flip 4 senate seats.
Nobody takes me seriously. Fine, but how about someone propose a feasible alternative before dismissing these feasible concepts. All I hear is flacid, unimaginative, defeated complaining.
Fast Eddie B
Philosopher
Very close to what I’ve come to think.
I’ve never been a Democrat. I’m still not. But now I find myself (temporarily?) aligned with them on a few select issues, but primarily to get Trump and his Republican sycophants out of office, “voting blue no matter who”.
And though I’m now rooting for Democrats across the board, I still can’t help seeing them as “The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight”. I think they rolled over too easily on Merrick Garland, abandoning principle because they assumed Hillary would be selecting the next Supreme Court Justice anyway after her inevitable victory. I firmly believe the impeachment was totally bungled by being far too narrow in scope, which made them look petty for just going after a “perfect” phone call, since Mueller handed them many cases of obstruction of justice where all three elements of the crime were presented in stark detail. And watching Schumer and Pelosi thrash around now from a definite position of weakness gives me little hope for success.
What would I do? Recognize the situation for what it is and make a clear statement: “Here’s the choice. One, wait on your selection until after inauguration and if you win the presidency and the senate, so be it - enjoy your 6-3 majority and four more years to increase your conservative majority even more. Or, second, push through your choice now. In that case, if we win the presidency and the senate, watch your brief 6-3 majority dissolve into a 6-7 minority as we add four seats to the Supreme Court and fill them with super-liberal Justices.” Then end with a Dirty Harry line, “So, do you feel lucky?”
But I guess the difference is that Dirty Harry could shoot straight.
Again we need to take a step back, take a deep breathe, and remember that "Politics" and "The Political Fandoms" aren't the same thing.
Online, pundits, rallys... these are people who love their respective parties like Trekkies love Star Trek. They are, and I use this term deliberately, fans, not supporters.
90% of votes though, are going to come from people in the real world who don't live and breathe nothing but politics.
I support the Democrats, I'm not a fanboy for them. I'm not throwing everything I have behind the Democrats in any hope that it will finally make it so politics make me happy, I just want to be angry within normal parameters again.
Online, pundits, rallys... these are people who love their respective parties like Trekkies love Star Trek. They are, and I use this term deliberately, fans, not supporters.
90% of votes though, are going to come from people in the real world who don't live and breathe nothing but politics.
I support the Democrats, I'm not a fanboy for them. I'm not throwing everything I have behind the Democrats in any hope that it will finally make it so politics make me happy, I just want to be angry within normal parameters again.
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Fast Eddie B
Philosopher
In last season’s premiere episode of “The Good Fight”, nearly the entire episode is a dream sequence of a world where Hillary won the election. Spoiler alert: not everything is puppy dogs and rainbows. Anyway, I thought it was quite well done and insightful and worth tracking down if you can find it.
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Well if political (hell any) discourse was in a better place this would be an easier discussion to have.
I doubt most anyone can claim the Democrat Party has achieved some state of Nirvanic Perfection. I could write volumes on my issues with the Democratic Party and unlike what passes for mainstream criticism of the Democratic Party it wouldn't just be "They haven't started the progressive uprising yet."
But discourse is what it is and nuance like that just invites side, nihilistic "Both sides sux! LOL lookit me I'm a pizza cutter all edge, no point" trolling.
In a sane world a discussion about one side that is completely controlled by a core group of totalitarian, reality-denying, post-fact, racist, sexist, anti-science, trolling nihilistic hate filled monsters who are factually wrong about nearly literally everything and have been on the wrong side of history pretty much every time.... and the other side that let's be fair has a tendency to be a little wishy-washy, over-dramatic, kind of goobering, has a horrible track record for reading the room, and is basically as organized and effective a herd of cats would be possible without people either A) being honestly confused or B) sealioning about which side was obviously the worse one.
But now politics is like discussing firefighting techniques while having to constantly stop to remind people that fire is bad because you failed to mentioned it for 10 seconds.
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Segnosaur
Penultimate Amazing
I guess the question is, what could they have done differently. The republican-led senate had control of the confirmations. Not many options for doing an end-run around that.
A bit off topic. However, lets face it... the republicans in the senate were never ever going to vote to convict Stubby McBonespurs, even if they had video evidence of Trump personally handing the nuclear launch codes to Putin. And the impact of the Mueller report was affected by all the redactions.
Piling on too many charges also risks making the Democrats look 'petty', since all the republicans would have to do is target the weakest of the charges.
I saw a news clip of Biden where he talked about 'stacking' the supreme court. He said he didn't want to talk about it now, because it might detract from the outrage people currently feel towards the Republicans for their actions. Which makes sense... keep people focused on unethical acts of the republicans (rush to confirm Ginsburg replacement) instead of debating whether your response (expanding the court) is a good idea.
I doubt the threat of an expanded court would have stopped the republicans anyways... so talk about how bad the republicans are now, wait till after the election, and if they win, THEN start packing the courts.
BobTheCoward
Banned
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Norms only matter if imposing them incurs a cost. So, if democrats drop something that previously did not cost them for a gain now, then that demonstrates they don't actually care about norms.
But the party seems to want to be the party of norms.
Segnosaur
Penultimate Amazing
So, some recent polling information:
From: The Hill
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden leads President Trump in six key battleground states..Nationally, Biden’s lead grows to 9 points, up 3 points...
Why is that significant? Because the poll was taken after Ginsburg's death, while the Republicans were talking about filling her spot. Which shows that if the Republicans were expecting any sort of bump from their rush to fill the seat, they were wrong.
Furthermore:
The poll shows that a majority of likely voters nationally — 57 percent — do not believe that Trump should be able to nominate a replacement for Ginsburg. A little more than a third of respondents — 37 percent — say that he should fill the open seat.
From: The Hill
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden leads President Trump in six key battleground states..Nationally, Biden’s lead grows to 9 points, up 3 points...
Why is that significant? Because the poll was taken after Ginsburg's death, while the Republicans were talking about filling her spot. Which shows that if the Republicans were expecting any sort of bump from their rush to fill the seat, they were wrong.
Furthermore:
The poll shows that a majority of likely voters nationally — 57 percent — do not believe that Trump should be able to nominate a replacement for Ginsburg. A little more than a third of respondents — 37 percent — say that he should fill the open seat.
If we decide to go forward with changing the size of the Supreme Court it is vital, vital that we assign it to some metric or it will just seem like some power grab.
"The size of the Supreme Court shall be set at 1 justice per X" X can be population, the number of cases they see in a year, the number points scored in that years Superbowl... I don't care but it has to be something. It can't just be "We're making it bigger because right now we're the minority on it."
"The size of the Supreme Court shall be set at 1 justice per X" X can be population, the number of cases they see in a year, the number points scored in that years Superbowl... I don't care but it has to be something. It can't just be "We're making it bigger because right now we're the minority on it."
Trebuchet
Penultimate Amazing
Because Trump and the party expect the election results to end up in the Supreme Court and John Roberts, while conservative, still has some principles.
Yep. Roberts would vote to turn America conservative at the drop of a dime, but he won't vote to destroy it.
thaiboxerken
Penultimate Amazing
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But if they do that, then the GOP will use those same tactics to make the courts more conservative again.
And if they don't to that, then the GOP will still use those same tactics.
thaiboxerken
Penultimate Amazing
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Right, it's like entering a "gentlemen's agreement" with a person who has no intention of keeping the agreement. Worse, Democrats continue to play by the rules of the agreement.