I think its time for the Democrats to take off the gloves
So… OK… Republican legislators are pretty much uniformly disgusting and immoral human beings right now.
You know why?
More than half the fucking country is disgusting and immoral human beings right now.
Otherwise how did the politicians get there.
Now what?
We need some good limericks about Tu Quoque, but I’ll post mine in the Pit.
More importantly, GWB was just asked to appoint a more acceptable Judge. Obama was told in no-uncertain terms that no judge he appointed would be approved.
Other than that, yeah sure, Estrada / Garland? Exactly the same. John Kerry / John Bolton — what’s the difference? Preventing vs. Helping Minorities to Vote — Same-same. Mods, close the thread please. The D’s and R’s are indistinguishable.
And having judges strictly adhere to bad laws, or laws badly written that some have found semantic loopholes into leads to bad outcomes too. Plus if all you want is strict literalism at all times, damn all contexts and outcomes, just fire all judges and replace them with very short shell scripts. Streamline the whole thing right up.
But the judicial is not, and I don’t think it’s supposed to be, there merely to rubber stamp the legislative or executive. Them balances need checked, dawg.
The next Dem president expands the court by 2 seats; the next Rep expands it by 4. By 2150 every American is a Supreme Court justice.
They did.
Regards,
Shodan
I believe the word you were looking for is “segue.”
“Seque” is a subjunctive conjugate of the Spanish word “secar,” meaning “to dry.”
I’m more worried that there will never be a “next Dem President.” Will anyone stop Bannon’s plan to use the 2020 census — which encourages Hispanics to pretend not to exist — as the biggest gerrymandering scandal ever?
In my, increasingly rare, optimistic moments I fantasize that the GOP will never have more than 48 Senators again, that the filibuster will be eradicated and centrists will regain control of SCOTUS.
I do hope that the rising power of the Alt-Right provokes a backlash. While I personally would never advocate illegal activities at SDMB, if/when the Democrats regain control a militant Alt-Left might find Second Amendment remedies to the problem of a Bannonist majority on SCOTUS.
It’s important to understand why Republicans have been fighting dirty. They’ve been fighting dirty because in a diverse, pluralistic society, their policies don’t benefit as many people as typically Democratic policies do. In a society that is changing and becoming more diverse, their traditional white power establishment is threatened. Thus, they have to become less democratic in order to preserve that power.
There were two ways Democrats can fight back: they can fight back by using people power, which is challenging but still preserves the kind of society we all want. Or they can fight dirty, but in the process, contributing in their own way to the collapse of Democratic norms and values. We’re all kinda fucked then.
That’s disingenuous.
Let’s say the Dems take the Senate next year. Would it be fair to never act on a single Trump judicial nominee, no matter how qualified, on the basis that they want to wait until Trump is out of office in 2021 before addressing vacancies in the judiciary?
I bet a lot of folks advocating that Dems “fight dirty” would be fine with that. I am not. I think the Senate should deal with nominees on their merits.
Doesn’t matter. There have to be serious, severe, and lasting consequences for the Garland blockade and the installation of the illegitimate Gorsuch. Right now, the presumption seems to be that no Democratic senate will ever again confirm a Republican president’s SCOTUS nominee; what I am saying is that the Democratic response has to be vastly broader than that, and that it must reflect the kind of tit-for-tat escalation in procedural warfare that the GOP has been waging for years.
A way out of the SCOTUS wars would obviously be a constitutional amendment that sets the number of seats at whatever given number, abolishes lifetime tenure, and swaps Gorsuch for Garland. That will never happen, though, so in the meantime the Dems need to just abolish the filibuster and add more seats.
I don’t think playing dirty will help at all.
Well-meaning left-leaning vlogs already talk about partisan politics and tribalism being the problem, and how both sides need to move back to the “center”. In my view, all that talk helps legitimize the republicans because in reality it’s just not a symmetrical situation at all IMO. The modern GOP will deny reality, and all their former principles, to defend the behaviour of one of their own (principally but not only Trump). There’s very little of that on the other side.
A few dirty tactics by the dems would be enough for *everyone *to believe that partisan politics is the main problem, and “both sides are as bad as each other” etc etc.
As enraged as I am with GOP behavior since the 90s (and especially since 2009), I agree that going lower is not the answer. First off, we suck at it, but more importantly it runs counter to our ideals.
Fighting back through “people power” really just means convincing a small portion of the moderate center that we have better answers to today’s challenges than those lunatics over on the right. This shouldn’t be hard, but we’ve been failing pretty consistently at it over the last decade.
And no wonder. Our core messages are all about long-term stuff (preventing climate change, ensuring equal opportunity), while the GOP owns short-term gratification (protect coal & oil jobs, get rid of illegals, cut taxes). Plus they own simple-minded rah-rah patriotism.
The Sanders crowd gets this. Unfortunately, their short-term voter bait ($15 minimum wage! Free college! Repeal the 2nd Amendment!) is pure fantasy. Where’s our plausible, center-winning strategy?
The problem with that route is that whatever the Democrats do if and when they regain power, they will still be dependent on approval from a Supreme Court that has already been packed with right wing ideologues who give credence to cockamamie lawsuits against Democratic policies. You don’t even have to search very far for evidence of that; just look at the extent to which we’re already through the looking glass of anti-Obamacare lawsuits. Depending on whether Trump gets any more Court picks, it’s possible that SCOTUS turns into another branch of the Republican Party whose only purpose is to strike down Democratic laws.
I mean, what would you have the Democrats do if SCOTUS issues a 5-4 decision in 2022 that declares Medicare-for-All unconstitutional? The only appropriate response as I see it would be to add more seats.
The idea that Democrats have not been playing dirty all along is laughable.
Democrats in the Senate they pushed Obamacare through on a reconciliation vote. There had never been a judicial nominee successfully filibustered until they did it to Estrada just for being Hispanic. They then filibustered another 9 nominees. When in the minority they made a deal only to filibuster in extraordinary circumstances which they broke as soon as they got in the majority. When they got in the majority they then eliminated the filibuster for judicial nominees so the Republicans could not do what they had just done 20 times. They attempted to filibuster Alito and Roberts. They accused Thomas of sexual harrasment, and rejected Bork. When Clinton picked Supreme Court justices his nominees got 9 and 3 no votes. Bush’s nominees got 22 and 42 no votes.
Judges are not activist when they consider whether a law runs afoul of constitutional guarantees.
Judges ARE activist if they create novel theories of what constitutional guarantees exist.
In the example you offer, I believe that applying existing constitutional caselaw to the scheme you describe would result in striking down the law.
I don’t agree that’s activist: a judge who did that would be applying existing case law, not creating new law, or new constitutional guarantees.
That’s not accurate.
They did it to Estrada just for being a conservative lawyer who was Hispanic. They were terrified of a future nomination for a Supreme Court Justice Estrada, someone who would run counter to the liberal narrative that Hispanics are Democrats.
So, no: not just for being Hispanic. They’re not racists.
I’d be fine with it morally, as retribution, and plus it would be friggin hilarious to hear the gnashing of teeth. I do not know if it would be effective or not.
It’s remarkable that when it comes to society in general, liberals (like myself) often embrace the maxim of eye-for-an-eye leaving everyone blind; but the idea that this would apply to politics seems outside of anyone’s conception (either left or right).
This isn’t a tu quoque because it’s not saying that one position is wrong based on hypocrisy. It’s a challenge to the original premise. The original premise was that Democrats need to fight dirty, saying that “On one hand, such moves are absolutely an escalation. On the other, this escalation currently is entirely one-sided”. That premise is flawed because it’s not accurate. Stating how it’s not accurate is far from a tu quoque.
I agree that those are different things. But they are differences of degree, not of kind. Response to Garland’s nomination was absolutely an escalation, but so was the response to GWB. So was the situation that called for the gang of 8’s compromise, and so was Reid’s killing of the judicial filibuster, and the subsequent Republican killing of the SCOTUS fillibuster. All of those were escalations. The point is, the escalations haven’t been one sided.
I think not acting on any nominee would also be an escalation, and simultaneously within the current rules of the senate. I can’t speak to fairness, but my preference would be that nominees get an up or down vote. After that, voters should decide if that’s how they want the senate to run.