Let me hand the mic to Scott Lemieux:
Do you have any substantiation whatsoever for that?
This. And “Usurper” is just name-calling. It really doesn’t get any deeper than that.
By denying the subject any name except a false name, you continuously reinforce the apparent “truth” of what the epithet says.
It’s hard to call someone the usurper for 8 years and not have come to believe it completely.
As with so much else of magical thinking, the name given to something gives it actual attributes. It’s more than simply an ID tag. If you call it an X, it turns into an X.
Good thing there’s only about 125 million of these people in the US. If there were any more we’d have a real problem :eek: :smack:
Blocking Obama’s nominees is a dangerous strategy for the GOP, I think. They risk being primaried if they vote for a nominee, and the primary winners would likely be less electable, so that’s a risk of losing the senate. But they increase the risk of losing the senate AND the presidency if they don’t. It’s a real pickle.
If that’s your definition of an ‘activist judge’, no one was more of one than Scalia.
What Scalia had was not a philosophy, but a rationalization framework. “Deciding where they want to come out” is exactly what he did. He was, for all his faults, a very, very smart man. Which made it easy (most of the time) to claim that he was simply following his philosophy of ‘the plain meaning’ of the law, and yet to always come out on the side his ideology demanded.
What is “an election year”? Kennedy was nominated in November - less than a year before the next election. Or is the the calendar year in which an election is held (which would make it an election 10+ months?" Or is it the final year before inauguration?
No, I’m not pushing any interpretation. The entire premise for inaction is ridiculous. I just offer this to suggest even the terms used are ridiculous.
How many supreme court confirmations have been delayed until the next administration?
Amanda Marcotte writes that this situation is a boon for Democrats, but especially for Clinton.
Legislative intent is firmly accepted. Originalism is treated as insanity. The “Dead Constitution” is a horror confined to the right on a par with gays as the devil’s spawn.
My first thought when I heard that he had died on a hunting trip was “If he died on a hunting trip, then the demands of story structure requires that he was shot in the face by Dick Cheney.”
Note how quick the GOP was to re-define ‘lame duck President’ as, apparently, ‘any President during the last quarter of his elected term.’ Somehow we all missed that clause in the Constitution that says Presidents are elected to three-year terms (with the fourth year to consist of nothing but ribbon-cuttings and other ceremonial functions).
We might have guessed that the Republican play-book contains some very Orwellian re-definitions, but this incident surely confirms it.
Going back to the thread title, I think the election has probably changed a good bit, but the nomination contests probably haven’t.
On the GOP side, they all, of course, agree that the Senate shouldn’t even consider any Obama nominee, and Scalia’s replacement should be as ideologically identical to Scalia as humanly possible. So it’s clearly a wash on that side.
And on the Dem side, even taking Marcotte’s words into consideration, this issue may help highlight the necessity of having a President who knows in her bones what sort of war the GOP is fighting, but I don’t think it’ll make a crucial difference on the Dem side.
Things might change once a nomination is put forward, and if/when the Senate holds confirmation hearings. I don’t know how, but that will be the political focus at the time, if/when it happens.
I know they did vote the same around 90% of the time, but I recall a few cases when Thomas was the lone dissenter or was the only one (or only conservative) to take the side of individual rights (the LIBERAL perspective IMHO). Scalia was more conservative and consistently pro-government, pro-state authority. I am a fan of Thomas, in a limited sense. Because sometimes he can be counted on to be the only one who doesn’t defer completely to state power. So it does bother me when he’s portrayed as some brainless guy who follows Scalia. Most of the justices serve government authority in the way Roger Goodell serves the NFL. They work for ownership.
He’s either too libertarian or conservative and Trump is neither. I bet Souter was Trump’s favorite recent justice. Of course, Trump’s hypothetical pick probably wouldn’t be based on his own actual beliefs. Which would even more eliminate anyone with libertarian leanings and no real political benefit. I guess you’d you have to find someone who loves eminent domain, protectionism, etc. Probably some moderate Dems fit the bill, actually.
How about this? Did Scalia have any moderate clerks who fit the above criteria?
Color me as somebody who thinks that the Republicans will cave and Obama will have his nominee confirmed. Seriously, this is just WAY too dangerous a precedent to set. If the senators start mandating that the ideological makeup of the Court has to hew to 5-4 GOP/Dem nominations, then the Court will just systematically dwindle in number until Sotomayor decides all of the cases herself.
Don’t think for a second that the Dems wouldn’t follow suit during the next nomination fight under a GOP president. Oh, we’re sorry, President Trump, but the election is only four years away; we need to allow the American people to have a say in who will be the next Supreme Court justice.
That isn’t to say that the impending obstruction will somehow subsist. The senators from safely red states will be seen as doing God’s work by their constituents; however, folks like Portman, Ayotte, and Collins - who are already in serious trouble this year - will have no way of spinning this to their benefit.
Obama’s nominee will of course have to be impeccably credentialed, but let’s be real here: the person who Obama nominates will be left of center, because, y’know, Obama is nominating him. That means the ideological makeup of the Court is going to shift. Full stop.
Then you agree with adaher. Reassess!
I think it’s all talk myself. It’s red meat for the base, and who knows, maybe Obama will play along and nominate someone unconfirmable, thus justifying the Republicans’ stance. You lose nothing by just saying you’ll do it, then if Obama presents a good choice, Republicans can gloat about how Obama caved and confirm the nominee.
IMO the smart choice for Obama is a white guy. A moderately liberal white guy.
The R base agrees almost unanimously that all non-white non-men are unqualified to any government position. And they can make enough noise to prevent the senate from being able to think beyond the baying of the horde.
Obama takes that issue off the table with a white guy. And the benefits of tokenism can go too far. Picking Sri Srinivasan, though one heck of a jurist, would simply reconfirm the R story that Obama is a foreigner intent on handing all the levers of state power over to foreigners of one sort or another.
To be sure, Obama playing to the right’s lunatic fringe isn’t a winning game for Obama nor for the country. But there are plenty of what passes for mainstream Rs, and Rs well left of the R’s current center that put some gut credence in the idea that the world and the US is changing faster than they’re comfortable with. They may not want a wild-eyed swerve into fascism as the Trumpistas do, but the definitely want somebody to tap the brakes.
Take that way from them and a lot of the middle has one less reason to fall for the simplistic seductive roar on the right.
TLDR: mild nativism runs very deep in all humans. Play to it. This is an emotional age, not an intellectual one. Which is a large part of while Obama has been remarkably effective given the circumstances, he’s not viewed all that sympathetically even by his own side.
Except we like that guy and want the Asian vote, so I think he’ll be confirmed.
An interesting perspective. I don’t know the specifics well enough to comment further. I’ll look into it. Thanks for the heads up.