Yeah, just because you cannot draw a line between tall and short people, doesn’t mean there are no tall or short people.
I learned a few months back that the Supreme Court’s own guidelines on recusal say that litigants are entitled to have a full nine-member court decide their cases, and that recusals are accordingly disfavored and ought to be rare. Too bad those justices (and they weren’t all Republican appointees) who’ve cheerily said “Yeah, we’re one justice short, but everything’s great!” over the past ten months didn’t remember that.
There is nothing in the Constitution that sets a number of SC Justices.
The Democrats are powerless - McConnell won’t let democrats block their pick. The republicans in the senate played dirty but they won their little game by blocking a vote of Obama’s nominee and banking on an election win, which is what they got. And now they’re going to pretty much do away with the filibuster once and for all.
That’s not to say Democrats should do nothing. They ought to wage a PR campaign or something, but legislatively, they’ve got few options until 2018 and 2020.
Slate recommends pushing hard for one of the two on Trump’s shortlist that isn’t Richard Pryor. Can’t really disagree there - Pryor makes Scalia look like a competent justice.
I’m sure Schumer has already done it, but the dems should tip their hand and let them know who’s likely to get the biggest fight. Of course that could backfire – Trump likes a fight so it’s entirely possible Trump goes for the most controversial of picks. Maybe reverse psychology or Jedi mind tricks are in order.
How about George Carlin? Or maybe Sam Kinison?
Sorry, William Pryor.
This must be one of the alternate facts I hear tell about.
Regards,
Shodan
I never said it did.
Well, tomorrow we should find out who Trump’s pick is, but it seems that Democratic Senators are already gearing up for a big fight. Does anyone think the filibuster will survive this? Personally, I doubt it.
I doubt it too, and after a nomination of Merrick Garland (or similar) or the Democrats successfully voting down nominees until we have a Democratic President, than I think the loss of the filibuster is the best possible outcome.
I think the democrats have made a tactical error in that they should have decided upon one of the earlier nominees and provided stiffer resistance. If they filibuster an otherwise uncontroversial nominee just because they’re angry at Trump, it could backfire and make them look petty. A better tactic might be to stonewall the DeVos nomination, wait to see who Trump picks for SCOTUS, and then decide which direction to go. If Trump picks a nightmare SCOTUS nominee they could try to stop it but otherwise they ought to try to work on DeVos, or one of the remaining nominees who has yet to be confirmed.
The Republicans success in '10, '14, and '16 shows us that going all out against almost anyone and anything actually works. The Democrats should emulate that success, especially considering that Trump is much more unpopular than Obama was.
That depends on how things are going at the time. If things are going well, then that rubs off on the president, and opposing him tooth and nail doesn’t necessarily work. If there’s dissatisfaction in the air, then that rubs off on the president too, and being clearly opposed to him is a big advantage.
Trump is much more unpopular than Obama was at this time in his presidency. He’s not much more unpopular than Obama was at the time of those mid-term elections.
I’m estimating, and I could be wrong of course – it’s just based on my sense of what’s going on and future trends. I expect this sort of chaos and confusion and incompetence to last quite a while, since I think it stems from fundamental parts of Trump’s character. I’m less confident in my abilities on this than I was in October, not surprisingly.
Very possible. But there are also reasons to think it might not be so.
Firstly, Trump has been acting at a pretty feverish pace, what with trying to hit all his campaign promises - including his provocative ones - in a short period of time. After those are out of the way, I would expect things to happen much more slowly.
Secondly, Trump is a very sharp break from anything before him, at least within living memory, in a very unpresidential way. But as time goes by, this might come to be seen to an extent as “the new normal” and won’t shock as much as it does today.
By contrast, Obama was greeted as the new messiah when he was elected, both due to his skin color and due to his oratorical abilities. The nitty gritty details of actually governing made it hard for him to keep that lofty level of popularity.
In sum, there’s reason to believe that Trump’s popularity and Obama’s might follow very different trajectories. But of course, as earlier, a lot has to do with the economic cycle and other circumstances that might come about. And of course too, Trump is still Trump, as you suggest.
I don’t see how it’s possible at this point, unless the Democrats (meaning at least 8 of them) cave. I’m sure there are a lot of Republican senators who would prefer not to end the filibuster for SC nominations. But I can’t imagine many of them who would accept zero Republican-nominated justices as the price for it. Since the Democrats are signaling that they gearing up to filibuster any conceivable Republican nominee, it looks like the only way around it is to end the filibuster.
538.com has some sort of odds relating to the likelihood of each Democratic senator supporting a given type of Republican nominee. Not sure I put much stock in the numbers, but FWIW: How Conservative A Supreme Court Nominee Can Trump Get Through The Senate? | FiveThirtyEight
Do you honestly believe the GOP would have rolled over and confirmed Garland immediately after election day?
I do.
Although it’s possible that Obama or Clinton would have rescinded that nomination and replaced him with someone more liberal and/or PC.