What does she do after being confirmed?
She shows up at a Trump campaign event so that he can show her off.
We are so screwed.
It’s amazing to me that such a short, simple phrase resonated so much. It might not even make teh news today. As far as I can tell, nothing, nothing will resonate today the way that short paragraph did more than 50 years ago.
But the way the current majority party looks at it, by delaying the nomination and appointment, the Democratic Party would be “packing the court” because I don’t think they believe, at this point, their leader will remain in office. It’s a simple calculus: “We pack the court now to prevent them packing the court next year”.
I’d say it’d be better politics to hold off announcing court-packing until after Biden wins. As it is, the liberals are pissed and motivated like never before, while the conservatives have gotten all out of Trump that they’re likely to get. Now they can indulge themselves in not voting, or voting third-party, and piously declaim that they “don’t like what Trump says,” now that he’s done about all the damage he can do.
If Biden announces before the election that he’ll pack the Court after he’s elected, that may well re-energize the right, without doing much good for the left.
I have been thinking that for 4 years. 4 years ago, I bought a huge box of “sanitary supplies” in bulk (very cheap), thinking “these are the last I’ll ever buy.” They are nearly gone, and my period is still running like a German train.
I just celebrated the 40th anniversary of my bat mitzvah. I have had a period for 42 years. The next woman who tell me she had a hysterectomy at 32 is going to get punched. My mother freaking died of ovarian cancer, and I am NOT having more children at nearly 54. But I can’t get my doctor to give me a hysterectomy.
+1
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I thought it was very obvious that Biden has refused to give a solid statement regarding the courts because it would turn into just another sound clip for an attack ad.
A group I follow on Facebook spent last night debating whether or not it was appropriate to refer to the new justice as “Justice Handmaid” when her position is actually closer to Serena Joy or an Aunt. Personally, I’m leaning more toward calling her “that fucking quisling on the Supreme Court.”
And my mom keeps telling me that I should hit menopause soon, because my grandma went through early menopause. I’m not so sure of that; but yeah, for some reason it’s impossible to get a doctor to take you seriously when you’re describing cramps so bad that it feels like your uterus is wrenching itself loose. (My mom was finally able to have a hysterectomy - uterus only - due to loads of cysts and other medical problems. She has no clue when her periods would have stopped, but based on other symptoms, I’m guessing she would have experienced menopause somewhere in her late 40s to early 50s.)
Just how unprecedented was her appearance at a campaign event as a Supreme Court Justice?
I call her “Justice Ofdon”.
You HAVE to be joking.
Let me be clear: I am not saying that Biden should stand up and say “we will expand the courts”. I am saying he should make it a threat to republicans; if you rush through a ACB appointment, in a show of blatant hypocrisy you force us to have to respond.
I think that would help the democrat vote because at least we’ll know something is going to get done. Where we are right now, it feels like game over, and I think despondency will have an effect on the vote.
Regarding the effect on the right…I take the point, there is risk there that there are some “never-trump but really care about the supreme court”-ers that hypothetically could be swayed by hearing that Democrats might finally have some fight in them.
But, to be honest, I’ve given up trying to understand current republican voters. It’s like trying to appease the mad hatter. For example, in this analysis, we’re talking about voters that are cool with blatant lies and hypocrisy to shift the court, but would freak out at the notion of the Democrats threatening to merely fight back.
The Democrats might not need to expand the court - they could instead impeach the questionable justices. I can say for sure that if they don’t do something with what appears is going to be a huge blue wave, they’re certainly going to lose a lot in the 2022 midterms and 2024 presidential elections. Either people will just say ‘fuck it, we can vote for right wing extremists, or the people who won’t actually do anything against right wing extremists’ and turnout will plummet or there will be a third party based around actually stopping the Republicans.
I think he should do that. I’m quite certain that he will not and I understand his calculus, but if we’re talking about what would be best for the country, I think he should. When the Barrett nomination was made, there was a lot of noise from more moderate Democrats about how the Democrats were going to pull out all the stops and “burn it all down” and so on. Pelosi said she had lots of arrows in her quiver, mainstream media did a lot of speculating about what the Democrats could and would do, would they impeach, would they obstruct, and so on. My subjective interpretation of what happened around that time was that people who were more moderate thought that was actually going to happen, and were actually waiting to see what the Democrats did – i.e. thought they would do something. People further left (again in my subjective view) assumed the Democrats would do nothing.
Couple weeks later, and the Democrats not only didn’t do anything to interfere, but Feinstein publicly praised Barrett, Pelosi said “voting” was somehow the answer, and Biden said she was a very fine person and he wasn’t opposed to her (although he non-specifically didn’t think she should be confirmed before the election).
It seems to me that the effect of that is that both the moderates and the left are disenchanted, to some extent, with the outcome here, for different reasons, and while moderates are unlikely to vote in significantly lesser numbers as a result, the left might (and, as you suggest, it isn’t clear the right wing can be significantly more energized about anything at this point). If Biden says “we’re going to fix this,” I think it’s absolutely insane to believe that doesn’t do anything to energize the left. That falls into the trap Democrats have been falling in for years, which is to believe that there is no coherent left-wing ideology that isn’t theirs. It’s only a perspective that makes any sense at all if you assume, like most centrist Democrats, that people to the left of them are all petulant and irrational species called “non-voters,” and whose preferences are therefore not worth considering because they can’t be addressed.
People who are generally disinclined to vote for Democrats because the Democrats are too far right will respond to a more aggressive left wing stance, particularly one that involves actually combating the right and not trying to work with them or get back to business as usual. How could it be otherwise?
I feel like the Right will assume that’s going to happen whether Joe says it’s going to, avoids the question or outright denies it. The right (or rather Trump) has never had any issue lying, projecting or baselessly accusing the left of anything and their base eats it right up. Look at how many republicans are absolutely convinced that if Biden takes office, all the cops will be fired and the US will be in purge-mode within hours. And why? Because Trump has said that if Biden takes office he’ll defund the police and you won’t be safe in your house anymore.
All Trump has to do is say that if Biden wins, he’s going to add X (2, 4, 20!) more radical left (or do noting democrat) justices and they’re going to take away all your freedoms.
Hypocritical? lol, if they only gave a fuck about that label.
All of those years of
“But Democrats flip flop”
“They have no convictions.”
“They want to make me pay more taxes, but they live in a nice house. Buncha commies!”
Now it’s just fetal worship and whoring themselves out to the highest bidder. That is your republican party in 2020
I think Biden is playing this right. Coy is probably the way to go. He has earned a reputation of not giving in to partisanship, but I think he’s old enough and late enough in his career to not give a shit about traditions when one side has essentially stopped honoring them.
The fact is that Republicans do NOT represent a majority of political voters in this country, but they have been incredibly successful at waging procedural and political warfare to achieve outsized, exaggerated influence. They’re barely played by rules at all. It is time Democrats reckon with this, or there won’t be any rules left to play by except republican misrule.
I see the Republicans in real danger of overplaying their very weak hand. Let this SC overturn a couple of important and politically popular decisions and Biden can expand the court – quite constitutionally – with the strong support of the electorate.
And yes, Trump and the gang did in fact hold a confirmation celebration because they are making no bones about what they think she represents for them politically in the decades to come.
Get ready for checks and balances, bitches, the Supreme Court doesn’t run the country over the Executive and Legislative branches.
I hope that’s Biden’s actual plan and not some kind of wimpy ‘oh, I hope we can be bipartisan again’ nonsense. I think/hope that Biden sees this as his time to leave a mark on history, and will try do do something major in his presidency, especially if there’s a Blue sweep. Since he certainly doesn’t plan on continuing a political career after the presidency (he’s way too old), he doesn’t have his old worry about being reelected to slow him down. He may very well be talking a moderate game to get into office, but plan to spearhead something major once he gets into office.
I think Roberts will also be interesting - he’s a right-winger, but he’s also conservative in the traditional sense, and clearly hasn’t wanted to be the Chief Justice who presided over the court turning into a purely partisan arm. He also might well act unexpectedly just to try to minimize the damage to his and the court’s reputation. I’m not counting on it in the least, but I definitely wouldn’t rule it out.
I figured he was (consciously?) channeling Cicero:
Nitpick: It should be “conservative minority”. It’s not even as if the majority of the American electorate even voted for these jokers.