In politics always ask oneself this question: would I like to see this strategy/ tool/ weapon used by the other side? Court packing is a football no one wants to have to fight over.
I was silent on the question of whether this outcome would be a good or bad thing. The question was, as a political strategy would it get an otherwise moderate Republican the support to be nominated? I made a case that it might.
That ignores the fact that Republicans have already been shitting on Supreme Court norms for years and years. The current conservative majority would not exist if Republicans hadn’t already broken the unwritten rules of appointing justices, so saying “Oh no, if you break other unwritten rules, who knows what Republicans might do!” seems quite disingenuous.
Right, I’m not saying it would be beneficial to elect an openly racist but otherwise moderate Republican, I am simply making the case that if we’re going to damn the consequences and adopt populist positions, we might as well go right for the root cause of many other populist positions.
Right, if Alito and Thomas retire and are replaced by Biden’s nominees this year, if Republicans took control over the presidency and congress in 2024, they wouldn’t hesitate to pack the courts to regain the majority.
Even in the worst case scenario, that’d at least give us a sane Supreme Court for a couple of years. But ideally, it’d be paired with a Constitutional amendment to create an actual process for choosing justices.
If I were in charge, as soon as the Democrats had both the Presidency and control of the Senate, I’d write up the amendment, and then pass a law that expanded the Court by one member per month until such time as the amendment was ratified. Better ratify it quick, before the court expands too much.
And here we come back to the issue of the Democrats being, fundamentally, a conservative party (while Republicans have turned into the BatshitCrazy party). So what you describe will never ever ever happen; instead Democrats will squander whatever opportunities they come across while Republicans continue to solidify their grip.
You need supermajorities in both houses and ratification of 38 states. Not gonna happen.
What will happen is that you will have squandered any political capital you’ve gained in such a stunt, and lose the Presidency and both houses next cycle.
It’s more that they are the party that looks at the realities of keeping the country and economy functional. You have to win on pocketbook issues before you can focus on social issues. People are much more accepting of others when they feel secure in their lives. When people feel insecure in their lives, they look for someone to blame.
Most midwesterners didn’t vote for Trump because they were racist. They voted for Trump because they were worried about their jobs and families, and it’s easier to accept racism in that situation.
Best case is that the Republican party fails the next few cycles, leaving the Democrats able to implement a real UHC, provide real safety nets, expand and reform education etc. Then the Democrats can schism between progressive issues and more center issues.
That that schism exists now, when the Democrats have very little power, is largely what keeps Democrats from gaining enough power for it to happen.
Actually, I think Liz Cheney is probably thinks democracy is pretty inconvenient, too, but she insists on having at least a veneer of it over her intentions. And even that pretense of ethics was too much for the GOP—and not just the local committee but he national convention—to run her out on a rail.
These guys would be roasting Reagan as a flaming lib if he were running today. As it is, they have to cherry-pick his actions and words to make it look like he’s the spiritual forefather of the modern GOP. They’d fucking crucify Nixon, and Eisenhower wouldn’t even register in their bracket.
Stranger
Really, this is the first and probably most accurate response. Whichever of the many ‘starting points’ you choose (Reagan’s Religious Right, Newt, Becoming the Party of ‘No’, Trump, etc) the Republican party has been moving every further away from their stated platform into one of utter combativeness. And the turning point the OP mentions has, in all honestly, probably already come and gone. Consider the post-mortem that the GOP did after Romney lost, where they were losing (slowly) their base of old white rich people, and were talking about making outreach to minorities and other points of view while still keeping an emphasis on strong defense, wealth, and so-called traditional values.
And their next candidate ended up being Trump. Who while not expected, gave them more popular support than ever. They figured if they were losing slowly by the old rules, that it was better to win and preserve their power in perpetuity by doubling down on pre-existing minority party control fully supported by the rank and file Republicans becoming ever more bold in un-democratic reforms in state law and the courts.
In the meantime, the Republican voter (and I can and will damn all of Fox to the utter depths of the unfeeling void for this in large part) has been trained to disregard facts, their own interests, and reality itself as long as they’re fighting against THE EVIL. And that gets them motivated, gets them voting, in a way that the prior GOP was largely failing to do.
So, IMHO, the GOP that @Win_Place_Show wishes would step into the breach has actually been dead and rotting for at least 7+ years, and a malignant Proto-fascist Conspiracy Theory Hate group is now wearing it’s stinking Skin Bag and using it’s pre-existing structure to further it’s spread.
One side has already packed the court. Have you been paying attention?
70,000 of the 1,300,000 lawyers in the US are members of the Federalist Society (~5%).
6 of the 9 justices of SCOTUS are members of the Federalist Society (~67%).
Vast overrepresentation of a fringe group is what court packing looks like.
Remember the Monty Python election skit?
At Luton, there are three candidates. Alan Jones (Chapman), the Sensible candidate, Tarquin Fin-Tim-Lin-Bin-Whin-Bim-Lin-Bus-Stop-F’Tang-F’Tang-Olé-Biscuitbarrel (Palin), the Silly candidate and Kevin Phillips-Bong (Jones), the Slightly Silly candidate. The Returning Officer (Idle) announces the results. Alan Jones - 9,112, Kevin Phillips-Bong - 0 and Tarquin Fin-Tim-Lin-Bin-Whin-Bim-Lin-Bus-Stop-F’Tang-F’Tang-Olé-Biscuitbarrel - 12,441.
They knew 50 years ago that in a race between the Sensibles and the Loonies, no place exists in between for a Slightly Loonie candidate.
In today’s world, between the Decent candidates and the Rancid candidates, there is no place for a Kinzinger or Cheney who are at best Slightly Rancid. They appeal to no one. They can not be elected and could not function if a miracle happened.
If a single one existed in Congress today then McCarthy’s debt limit act could not have been passed. Wait, you say, four Republicans did vote against it. Well, one of them was Tim Burchett from the “Sensible” state of Tennessee, who was quoted as saying, “I have never voted to raise our debt limit no matter who was in charge." When destroying the country’s economy is too mild an action, asking for a centrist is silly. Very, very silly.
PJ O Rourke, Per NPR: “I have a little announcement to make … I’m voting for Hillary. I am endorsing Hillary,” noted conservative author P.J. O’Rourke said on NPR’s Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me.* …“I am endorsing Hillary, and all her lies and all her empty promises,” O’Rourke continued. “It’s the second-worst thing that can happen to this country, but she’s way behind in second place. She’s wrong about absolutely everything, but she’s wrong within normal parameters.”*
Which was never. But you could mail order a Tommy-gun.
Indeed- most gun owners support moderate gun control laws, such as background checks, etc. However, note that a lot of gun owners vote Dem.
Moderate gun control yes. Most Americans are against such things as handgun bans, etc.
Which wont and cant pass.
Exactly. Same for getting rid of the 2nd, etc.
This is kind of the reverse of the “Why can’t Kamala Harris run for President” thread where some posters said “Oh teh noes, we can’t run a female non-white, the GOP would seriously object.” Who cares? Why are we appeasing an enemy who is actively working for our destruction?
By the same token, the fact that Cheney and Kinzinger found the stones to Do The Right Thing is not grounds for my wanting either of them in the White House. “Okay, if they knock this guy Adolph off, which would rather have running the Third Reich: Hermann or Heinrich? The first guy’s a fat, drug-addled transvestite, but at least he’d be entertaining!”
This type of speculation is thirty years too late. The GOP has weeded any moderates out. What’s left are the sociopaths that we need to bitch-slap around the Beltway.
The myth of political capital is another thing that holds Democrats back. Is there any evidence at all that that’s a thing that exists? So far as I can tell, what happens is that people elect Democrats to implement Democratic policies, and then the Democrats enact only one of those policies because they don’t want to “spend too much political capital”, and then people get disillusioned because they didn’t get what they wanted and switch to voting Republican.
And yet, they’re not making any effort at keeping the Supreme Court functional, and without that, everything else is going to get dysfunctional pretty quickly.
I’d say it’s a lack of political capital that holds Democrats back. Too much of it gets spent on basic things like not shutting down the government every other month to do all the wonderful things we’d love to do.
The way I see it, people expect Democrats to do all these things for all these different groups, no matter how unrealistic or even contradictory it may be, and will either not vote or vote for Republicans until they do.
That we don’t always get what we want is a feature of democracy, it shouldn’t disillusion people, it should make them work harder. The Republicans certainly work hard at getting what they want, and have kept their eye on the ball for decades, with their voters being patient with the “progress” and continuing to support them even when little is visible.
Now that’s working out for them, and they are getting all the things that they wanted.
Say what you will about the morals of the Republican party, I’ll bet on a Republican voter to win the Marshmallow test against a Democrat.
The only effort they could make would be to pack the courts. Even if this were a good idea (and I have my doubts on that), it would take every single Democrat to have done so in the last session (including Manchin and Sinema), and it would take Republican votes to do it in this one.
We need to buckle down, we need to do the work. We promote local offices and issues, where the decisions are really made. We work those people up the chain, giving them a legislative history to back them up. Shortcuts just end up being invalidated or even reversed on us.
Democracy is hard, messy, and doesn’t pay off easily. If people are getting disillusioned by the reality of the political situation, then maybe we don’t deserve one. Remember, you are trying to get other people to vote for policies to benefit you. You can’t take that for granted, you can’t just take and take, you actually have to do something for those people, too.
Cite please? I was unaware of any law pre-1934 that said you couldn’t own any weapon you could pony up the cash for.
“Stacking” meant increasing the number of justices on the Supreme Court. I said nothing about the composition of the Court. And my original point still stands: if the Democrats can increase the Court to twelve justices while they’re in a position to handpick the three, what’s to stop Republicans from increasing it to fifteen the next time they’re in the driver’s seat? Whatever petty games the Republicans are guilty of Trump only got to pick three justices, not seven. Again, everyone knows doing this would be a dangerous stunt that would inevitably come back to haunt whoever gives in to the temptation to do so.
We have a constitutionally mandated process: The president nominates justices and the Senate confirms them. This was supposed to be all the process necessary, since at the top who’s going to guard the guardians? What process do you imagine would work better at de-politicizing selections?
Let us not get into a hijack over this issue, okay? That was AFAIK. It is enough to say you could buy a tommy gun over the counter.
There are no constitutional originalists. That was just an ex post facto excuse to sell their ideas. They don’t actually believe any of this. Their interpretation of the 2nd Amendment is prime evidence of this.
Yes there are, and they do actually believe this. Their interpretation of the 2nd Amendment is what they’re convinced was the original one. But let’s not hijack this thread any further.
What’s to stop them even if they don’t?
He didn’t need seven justices to create a strong majority. Do you think that if they did need seven, they would have balked at breaking precedent in order to get them?
How is this political capital “spent”? Do we lose a Senator after every three bills we pass? No, political capital doesn’t get “spent”: When you win your elections, you have an unlimited quantity of it at least until the next election. And if you spend enough of it, then you get another unlimited quantity for the next term.
The only “spending” is that after passing one or two big things, the Democratic politicians say “Well, that’s it, we don’t have any more political capital, we can’t do any more.”. No, you idiots, you’re still in office. Keep on working.
And what happens when the Senate just doesn’t feel like taking part in that process, and refuses to vote? What happens if a majority of the Senators just decide that they’re not going to approve anyone, under any circumstances? What happens if the President nominates a probable rapist and definite drunkard, but his party of yes-men controls 51 seats in the Senate? An actual process would specify those details.