Yes, I think the Democrats have paid a price to some degree – but it was probably worth it to get the confirmations and such that wouldn’t have proceeded without whittling it down.
But yes, there are other reasons to resist getting rid of the filibuster – most notably that each party finds it useful when in the minority.
I would not object to Merrick Garland.
OK. FTR I stand by everything I’ve said in this thread, and have nothing further to add at this time.
As do I. My original posts anyway, not the stuff of mine that you altered to fit your needs.
I’m fine with letting things stand as they are.
I don’t agree the seat was stolen, except, again, in the sense that Viola Davis’ Oscar was stolen by Meryl Streep.
Streep won under the rules. So too did Trump, both with respect to the Presidency and to being able to nominate his own justice. Your use of “stolen,” here is semantically identical to a strong opinion that you wished things had gone your way.
I’m sympathetic to the notion that the seat was “stolen” in the sense that Republican actions represented a break with prior accepted approach, which would have dictated a vote on Garland. (That said, so did Democratic treatment of Bork, as we’ve discussed previously.)
It was obviously completely legal, but was not the way things were done.
Of course, it doesn’t follow that it was therefore a stolen presidency in any sense at all.
“Stolen” in that context implies illegality. “Legally stolen” is an oxymoron.
I assume Garland would have lost, if a vote had been taken. That rejection of a qualified judge, however, may have swayed the presidential election to Clinton (or may not have).
Good news, everyone! Black people didn’t have property, family, and labor stolen of them for years and years, since it was all legal!
I think “stolen” has a broader meaning, encompassing something which “by rights” should have gone one way and went the other. E.g. to “steal victory from the jaws of defeat”.
I think Garland would probably have won. All he needed was 5 Republican defectors; both of Obama’s other nominees got at least that many, and Garland was probably more qualified and to the right of both of them. (Although the Republicans had decided on this approach before Garland was nominated.)
Correct. I don’t agree that there was any major break with prior accepted practice, considering the Bork precedent. At best, the refusal to even hold a hearing, as opposed to holding a meaningless hearing with a foreordained result, is something I argue is relatively trivial. I certainly don’t accept the notion that this constitutes a “stolen,” seat, unless we’re also calling Bork’s seat stolen.
Just so you know, since you like literal definitions, the dictionary does not agree with you.
The third definition is the most appropriate, but the first two are relevant as well, and none of them imply anything about legality.
And thus SCOTUS has been successfully politicized, as God intended (though maybe not as the framers did).
The part of it that was new was the announcement prior to the nomination that they would not consider a nominee.
The practice of withholding consent on a judicial nominee by not holding a vote is not uncommon, particularly in an election year.
The framers probably didn’t anticipate Marbury v. Madison, and certainly didn’t anticipate the Warren Court. Once you had those, the rest was probably inevitable.
But that’s the whole point. The Republicans said they wouldn’t hold a vote on a nominee simply because he was nominated by a lame duck president. That broke some new ground (in terms of actually doing it, versus just talking about it).
IMHO, the Democrats (and, you know, people with empathy in general) would be justified in voting against Garland based on his dissenting opinion in TransAm Trucking v. Administrative Review Board.
The gist of the case: one cold January day, the brakes on a truck driver’s trailer locked up and froze. The truck could drive, but the trailer was essentially being dragged. He called a dispatcher for help, and waited on the side of the road for assistance. Two hours later, no one had arrived, and due to a heater failure, the trucker was growing numb. He called again for service, and was ordered to stay with his trailer. He waited another 30 minutes, then unhitched the trailer and drove to a gas station to warm up. He was subsequently fired for abandoning his trailer.
The dispute: the driver said he was wrongfully fired, because by law an employer may not terminate an employee for refusing to operate a vehicle where the employee reasonably believes that doing so would cause serious injury to the employee or the public. His employer countered that the law doesn’t apply because he did “operate his vehicle”, just not the whole thing (he left the trailer behind instead of dragging it). The Department of Labor agreed with the trucker, and so did two of the three judges reviewing the decision.
Gorsuch dissented, siding with the trucking company, and likening the situation to an employee “operating” an office computer by writing a novel rather than working. Not exactly the same situation as our trucker. The opinion is very coldly indifferent to the Sophie’s Choice-like situation the trucker found himself in: drag the trailer, which was unsafe and illegal, or sit there and freeze. Reminds me of Stallone’s Judge Dredd:
Sure. I just quibble with your notion that prior practice “would have dictated a vote on Garland.” (Although I also see no reason to view the advise and consent power differently for Supreme Court justices versus other Article III judges). Prior practice (at least, for other judges) would have supported allowing the nomination and then just not acting on it. The “theft” was in announcing that you were going to do it in advance.
“Steal victory from the jaws of defeat” applies to Trump’s winning the presidency, I agree.
**emphasis **mine
Uh… slip of the keyboard?
That was Gorsuch in dissent, not Garland.