Accusing SC Justices of partisanship and prejudice. Isn't that hyperbole?

[Irishman]

@Aeschines

But the House is barely under Republican control and is at least answerable to the people in proportion to their numbers, so there would be hope for change in the future. Under our current system, there is no hope whatsoever.

There is a Republican advantage in the House. This comes from

1. Rural states and how reps are distributed. States get a minimum number of reps, but that does not set the population for per rep nationally. More populous states have a lower per capita representation. Ergo, rural population has more representation that urban. Because rural areas skew right while urban areas skew left, this gives disproportionate representation to rural Republicans. This is also the root of disparity with the Electoral College.

2. Gerrymandering has skewed states out of alignment to their population. Protections against gerrymandering have been cut by Trump admin and the courts. My Congressional District deliberately splits the city and county I live in because we are a liberal college town, gaining on Austin for influence. So half of Denton is included with 9 other counties stretching up to Amarillo. The other half is tied IIRC to the other side of north Texas stretching to Oklahoma and toward Arkansas. This dilutes the liberal vote with more rural areas of Texas.

This means the House is not fairly distributed by voter desires.

The reason our current system doesn’t work would batter any other proposed system - voter extremism. Fix that, and the bulk of problems with our system go away or become manageable.

@Lumpy

These two statements:

@Irishman

I disagree. The Constitution grants the President the power to nominate SC Justices. It doesn’t say “unless it’s an election year,” nor “unless the House is controlled by the opposite party.” That is clearly in opposition to the intent of the framers, and against the policy of reason and neutral processes you champion.
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-seem to me to be in contradiction. If the Senate can refuse to confirm a nomination, then the President doesn’t have an absolute authority to have his choice put on the bench.

I didn’t say he does. But the Congress refusing to even take up the nomination for evaluation is not in the Constitution, and is antithetical to the reason and neutral processes you advocate.

@Aeschines

I more or less agree with your points on the rise of echo chambers in US political life, but I think radicalization has mostly occurred on the right. Yes, we on the left do have our echo chambers, but we are normal (with a normal level of flaws, etc.), whereas the right has gone nuts with MAGA.

I agree. I was probably a little too even handed. Some of that was in the wall of text I deleted.

@Aeschines

I think the US government should be completely overhauled at this point. For example, with respect to gerrymandering, I don’t think we should have states as we do now. There should be some local government, but, for example, we don’t need local real estate law, or state-based diver licenses, etc. Federalize that shit.

Fair to consider. Our current government is a much a result of the history that got us here as it is reasonable organization.

I just don’t see how we redo the whole shebang without a brand new Constitution, nor how to get there from here.