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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM

Redmess Redmess from Netherlands Since: Feb, 2014
Redmess
#328001: Sep 19th 2020 at 5:31:09 PM

[up][up] From what I understand, basically the same as you saw with Kavanaugh, sans drama and court antics. The sitting president nominates a candidate, who then gets vetted by Congress (I think) on being an impartial judge of good character. Really anything from their political and judicial past can come up, why they voted X, would they vote the same now, what are their actual beliefs?

This is not to say that they cannot have blemishes on their record (similar to any bar examination, really), but they need to be able to explain themselves, and convince Congress they will not do the bad thing again.

Hope shines brightest in the darkest times
Shaoken (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Dating Catwoman
#328002: Sep 19th 2020 at 5:32:44 PM

President names some one they want as a judge, congress holds a curtosey vote where they just rubber stamp it.

Incorrect, there have been a large number of nominees over the course of 200 years who were rejected by the Senate. The most recent was Robert Bork who was nominated by Ronald Regan, although one more of Regan's and one of Bush's picks were withdrawn after they received push back from the Senate. And all of these were at times where the Republicans were in a strong position too.

For those curious two of Nixon's picks were voted down by the senate, and two more candidates he considered were shot down by the ABA.

Edited by Shaoken on Sep 19th 2020 at 10:34:46 PM

Clarste One Winged Egret Since: Jun, 2009 Relationship Status: Non-Canon
One Winged Egret
#328003: Sep 19th 2020 at 5:35:33 PM

[up][up][up]I think you are contradicting yourself Imca: earlier you appealed to the fact that Trump wasn't completely shut out by the popular vote in 2016 to claim that we need to be extremely worried about the margins. Yet now you're completely ignoring the margins for the Democratic primaries, where Sanders was surprisingly competitive (and the primaries are structured in a weird way that that encourages voters to shift towards the apparent winner based on early leads).

Obviously we don't have a majority of Democrats supporting him, but progressives are an extremely large minority of the party. The question then becomes whether moderates would hate the idea more than progressives love it, which is what I was skeptical of.

Edited by Clarste on Sep 19th 2020 at 5:35:54 AM

Imca (Veteran)
#328004: Sep 19th 2020 at 5:35:54 PM

[up][up]Huh, really? Interesting, so what makes that diffrent then what happened with Garland?

[up] No I am not contradicting myself, I am firm in my belief that we need to watch the margins, and the margins say that every single time sanders ran more people opposed him then supported him... and that was in a primary where he ONLY had to sell the ideas to people who were already accepting of his base premise in the first place.

Once you expand to people that don't even share the same base foundation, its only going to get even worse.

Edited by Imca on Sep 19th 2020 at 5:38:07 AM

Redmess Redmess from Netherlands Since: Feb, 2014
Redmess
#328005: Sep 19th 2020 at 5:37:50 PM

You mean how Garland was admitted to the court, or how the current vacancy is being filled?

[up][up][up][up] I think they meant how the process was done before the Republicans became obstructionist, so say about 30 years ago.

Edited by Redmess on Sep 19th 2020 at 2:38:44 PM

Hope shines brightest in the darkest times
Imca (Veteran)
#328006: Sep 19th 2020 at 5:38:42 PM

If judges have been rejected before, what made the Republicans rejection of Garland special, because I had been operating under the information that Judges just don't get rejected in the first place and normally it is all formality.

Edited by Imca on Sep 19th 2020 at 5:39:20 AM

Redmess Redmess from Netherlands Since: Feb, 2014
Redmess
#328007: Sep 19th 2020 at 5:39:59 PM

Oh, that was because they simply refused to have a hearing at all. Basically, they just refused to consider anyone until Obama selected someone they wanted to admit to the court.

Obviously that's not supposed to be how it works. Normally Congress would need to consider all nominees for the job, not just the ones the majority party already likes.

Edited by Redmess on Sep 19th 2020 at 2:41:23 PM

Hope shines brightest in the darkest times
Izeinsummer Since: Jun, 2013
#328008: Sep 19th 2020 at 5:41:12 PM

The turtle did not even bother to hold hearings. That was new, and also very bad, because it meant there could not even be a pretense of a substantive objection to his tenure on the court, it was just pure and simple "Fuck you, no".

Clarste One Winged Egret Since: Jun, 2009 Relationship Status: Non-Canon
One Winged Egret
#328009: Sep 19th 2020 at 5:42:01 PM

[up] No I am not contradicting myself, I am firm in my belief that we need to watch the margins, and the margins say that every single time sanders ran more people opposed him then supported him... and that was in a primary where he ONLY had to sell the ideas to people who were already accepting of his base premise in the first place.

So you're saying that Republicans will lose the popular vote every single time, guaranteed? Because every single time they've run this century more people have opposed them than supported them.

Wow, great, so proper electoral reform will secure the defeat of the GOP in perpetuity! According to your absolutely-not-contradictory logic.

Edited by Clarste on Sep 19th 2020 at 5:42:36 AM

Shaoken (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Dating Catwoman
#328010: Sep 19th 2020 at 5:45:01 PM

Garland was Obama's pick that the Republicans refused to hold a hearing on. That was unprecedented and had no basis or justification for it, Mitch just flat out made up a bullshit reason which we now see he's going back on.

For the actual record there have been 30 nominees who were not confirmed. 11 were voted down by the Senate.

Imca (Veteran)
#328011: Sep 19th 2020 at 5:45:27 PM

[up][up] Incorrect, even if you only limit to this century which is a falicy in and of itself because this "Century" has only been 4 elections, they definitively won 2004... which was right in the middle of Bushes run after people had already experianced the harm he could do too...

@Garland: I see, so they didn't even properly reject him, they just didn't hold a hearing in the first place?

Why didn't they just reject him at that point, what makes not holding the hearing a better option from there position.

Edited by Imca on Sep 19th 2020 at 5:47:27 AM

Redmess Redmess from Netherlands Since: Feb, 2014
Redmess
#328012: Sep 19th 2020 at 5:47:07 PM

And the underlying problem in this is that the majority leader of Congress can block hearings, among other things. Or rather, they can refuse to schedule one. There's all sorts of little loopholes like that in Congress and elsewhere. These loopholes exist because they were previously covered by informal rules of conduct. Before Garland (as far as I know) it was unheard of to simply refuse to hear a court nominee at all. There was no specific law against that, it was simply a political norm.

This is why Mitch Mc Connell is so bad for politics these days. He knows the system in and out, he knows all these loopholes, and he is not afraid to use them to his advantage. In that sense, he is a very shrewd politician.

Hope shines brightest in the darkest times
Clarste One Winged Egret Since: Jun, 2009 Relationship Status: Non-Canon
One Winged Egret
#328013: Sep 19th 2020 at 5:48:13 PM

I forgot about 2004, but once again you're contradicting yourself because you're saying 4 samples aren't enough yet you're also basing your argument on the fact that Sanders lost the primary twice. So 4 (3?0 isn't enough to say anything for sure yet 2 is? Your logic is incredibly inconsistent.

Edited by Clarste on Sep 19th 2020 at 5:52:03 AM

Redmess Redmess from Netherlands Since: Feb, 2014
Redmess
#328014: Sep 19th 2020 at 5:49:16 PM

[up][up][up] Because when you don't have the hearing, you also don't need to justify why you reject them.

It's basically the same thing when employers don't invite you for a job interview. They don't need to give you a reason why, because you weren't interviewed in the first place.

Edited by Redmess on Sep 19th 2020 at 2:50:13 PM

Hope shines brightest in the darkest times
Shaoken (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Dating Catwoman
#328015: Sep 19th 2020 at 5:51:52 PM

And if they did reject Garland then Obama gets to nominate somebody else, who you then have to reject again and justify a reason. By inventing some made up reason to avoid the hearing it doesn't sound like a blatant power grab (even though they shot themselves in the foot by saying that they would refuse to have hearings for any nominees that Clinton would have if she were President but they kept the Senate).

Imca (Veteran)
#328016: Sep 19th 2020 at 5:52:19 PM

[up][up][up] The predidential elections were all within 2% margins, sanders has lost by the double digits each time he runs, 15% to hillary, and 25% to Biden who had double sanders number actually....

You are insisting on comparing a definitive blowout, to a something that is near the marigin of error, and then claiming its wrong when I refuse to humor that.

[up][up] & [up] Makes sense.

Edit: Since 2020 was fractured I realize it might be more fair to add up the moderates and the liberals and compare that way, at which point 33% goes to the liberals and 66% to the Moderates.... (I know this is 99% but I am rounding to the nearest point for the ease of math)

This is if you define Warren as a liberal, which I am not sure if you should? I mean I suported her and see her as one... but others might not.

Edited by Imca on Sep 19th 2020 at 5:56:58 AM

nova92 Since: Apr, 2020
#328017: Sep 19th 2020 at 5:53:24 PM

Chalk me up as someone else who was undecided about court-packing, but for whom Mc Connell's efforts to immediately force a second conservative justice onto the court. without any respect for RBG's passing whatsoever, and under similarly specious contexts as the last "stolen" justice, has forced me to view it as a viable option now considering the blatant peri-illegality of the Republicans' actions.

[awesome][awesome] This expresses my opinion on the issue as well. I remember from opinion polls that even Democrats were on the fence about court packing, let alone independents (it really wasn't that popular a position), but I'd think that the latest development will have changed some people's minds on its necessity.

The best thing to do would be to pair it with court reforms, as Wryte (?) suggested, because it isn't enough to pack the courts, there has to be something that prevents Republicans from packing it right back, something popular enough to cause backlash in the case of the GOP removing it.

For example, term limits is very popular, but IIRC, a simple law isn't enough to get it passed, and it does nothing for the current imbalance of the court. Thomas is the most senior justice, but he's followed by Breyer, and then Roberts & Alito. Putting rules into place about who can be nominated, on the basis of things like experience/qualifications would be good, but again doesn't prevent Republican court-packing. If anything, they have more traditionally experienced judges right now on the Circuit Courts (Democrats might need a complete overall of the entire court system at this point.) I like the idea of new requirements for the nomination/confirmation process.


Resetting things to the previous status quo would be bad. If Roberts is the swing vote, that brings us back to Trump-era Supreme Court, and Roberts has been appalling on the issue of voting rights. He's voted against in almost every single case that came before the Supreme Court, he destroyed the Voting Rights Act. So if they're going to pack the courts, Democrats need to add at least 4 justices.

And optics isn't nothing, Democrats need to think very carefully on how to present this in a favorable light. The ACA, as some noted, got Democrats destroyed in 2010 after Republicans spent months screaming about death panels and Nancy Pelosi coming to kill your grandmother. On the other hand, Democrats can't afford to let fear create inaction, because a 6-3 court prevents almost anything they want to pass, and let Republicans continue to erode away democracy and people's rights. So they need to sell this to the public very carefully. I think the outrage surrounding the appointment of RBG's successor might help here.


Does anyone know what control the Supreme Court has over laws that Congress passes to change the Supreme Court? I imagine it would be a conflict of interest, but can they somehow rule against it?


So far, there is only one person who've come out against confirming a Trump nominee right now: Susan Collins. Need 3 more to prevent it, and those Senators might flip-flop when it comes time to vote.


Democrats have raised $80 million on ActBlue since yesterday; I hope it's going to winnable Senate races.


On the subject of Garland, IIRC Obama nominated a fairly centrist judge, one who should have been acceptable to the GOP. So instead of holding a hearing and rejecting him, Mitch and Senate Republicans pretended that they were against the principle of appointing Supreme Court Justices in an election year.

Edited by nova92 on Sep 19th 2020 at 6:04:52 AM

Clarste One Winged Egret Since: Jun, 2009 Relationship Status: Non-Canon
One Winged Egret
#328018: Sep 19th 2020 at 5:55:57 PM

Like I said, the primaries are structured in a way that makes early leads snowball into larger leads by the end. In the second case, Sanders even dropped out of the race before the end. You can't compare the numbers directly like that.

But my point was simply that the logic you used to come to your conclusions was contradictory, and continues to be contradictory. It's fairly obvious to me that you came to your conclusion first and are trying to justify it ad hoc.

Shaoken (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Dating Catwoman
#328019: Sep 19th 2020 at 5:58:20 PM

The predidential elections were all within 2% margins, sanders has lost by the double digits each time he runs, 15% to hillary, and 25% to Biden.

Incorrect again. Obama won with 10 million votes more than Mc Cain, at 52.9% of the vote to Mc Cain's 45.7%, then won with 5 million more than Romney 51.1% of the vote to 47.2% (so 7.2% and 3.9% differences). In both instances Obama got a very decisive victory in the EC too.

Imca (Veteran)
#328020: Sep 19th 2020 at 5:58:21 PM

[up][up]The primaries are also more favorable to the extreme elements of any party since they don't have to appeal to the people that don't share the same basic foundations of there logic.

It is a valid debate as to if the fact that they snowball outweighs that, but that is also a factor that you need to consider and cant just write off... the Primaries are to a much less hostile audience.

[up] How did Clinton do in his? If we are limiting to only this century we are limiting ourselfs to only Obama who.... was kind of a special canidate, that mans charisma can not be denied.

Edited by Imca on Sep 19th 2020 at 6:00:48 AM

RainehDaze Nero Fangirl (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
Nero Fangirl
#328021: Sep 19th 2020 at 6:00:00 PM

Hmm, I think there's a very basic logical fallacy at work in your maths, Imca. Denying the Antecedent?

You're concluding that anyone who's a moderate wouldn't vote for Sanders/Warren. But the inverse is not true—not everyone that didn't vote for them is a moderate.

And when talking about "undecided moderates who might vote for the Republicans instead", that does not mean everyone to the right of the left wing of the Democratic party. Hell, it mostly means people who aren't in the party at all or are on its right.

Redmess Redmess from Netherlands Since: Feb, 2014
Redmess
#328022: Sep 19th 2020 at 6:01:08 PM

Trump has indicated that the Court candidate will most likely be a woman, in a clear attempt to appeal to female voters.

Hope shines brightest in the darkest times
Shaoken (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Dating Catwoman
#328023: Sep 19th 2020 at 6:02:20 PM

Clinton won in 1996 49.2% to 40.7%, won in 1992 43% to 37.4%. In both cases there was a strong third party candidate who got the difference between the two votes, but that still carries the trend of Democrats winning elections by margins larger than 2%.

[up]Is that what he indicated? Listening to him ramble on around the point I'm not sure if he knows what he's indicating. Especially given how he was talking about how he thought it probably would be a woman when he is quite literally the one who decides that. Seriously, how the fuck do people listen to Trump speak and think he's convincing?

Edited by Shaoken on Sep 19th 2020 at 11:03:31 PM

Imca (Veteran)
#328024: Sep 19th 2020 at 6:02:45 PM

[up][up][up]That is a fair point, but I do also recall that Biden was quickly labeled "moderate voltron" by this very thread... so I have to ask, who here that identifies as a liberal voted for him?

Because I cant imagine the numbers are very high, and I cant find any official polls on that. :/

[up] Interesting, who was the third party if I may ask?

Edited by Imca on Sep 19th 2020 at 6:03:49 AM

nova92 Since: Apr, 2020
#328025: Sep 19th 2020 at 6:03:32 PM

Clinton also won by 5.6% (+6 million votes) and 8.5% (+8 million votes). That's the rub; Democratic losses in recent years have been incredibly narrow while their win margins are huge.

Edit: Third-party was Ross Perot, an Independent.

Edited by nova92 on Sep 19th 2020 at 6:04:08 AM


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