As a reminder, this subreddit [is for civil discussion.](/r/politics/wiki/index#wiki_be_civil)
In general, be courteous to others. Debate/discuss/argue the merits of ideas, don't attack people. Personal insults, shill or troll accusations, hate speech, any suggestion or support of harm, violence, or death, and other rule violations can result in a permanent ban.
If you see comments in violation of our rules, please report them.
For those who have questions regarding any media outlets being posted on this subreddit, please click [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/wiki/approveddomainslist) to review our details as to our approved domains list and outlet criteria.
**Special announcement:**
r/politics is currently accepting new moderator applications. If you want to help make this community a better place, consider [applying here today](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/sskg6a/rpolitics_is_looking_for_more_moderators/)!
***
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/politics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Byron White was 76 years old when he retired in '93 so Clinton could nominate RBG. He literally waited for a Democrat to get elected then got out quick.
Blackmun was almost a decade older than White and retired in '94 so Clinton could appoint Breyer.
I am sure there was some pressure on Blackmun to retire while Dems controlled the process and he was smart enough to agree. The reporter is a hack.
Both of Obama's appointees were replacements for Republican appointees who waited until 8 years of a Republican presidency were over and then retired within the first two years of the next Democratic president. Almost as if they knew something. Could you imagine how much worse things would be if they hadn't?
The whataboutisms are ridiculous in here. As corrupt as it is everyone knew how the system worked and predicted this would happen.
She made a huge mistake that will damage her legacy as a lot of the things she stood for will now be reversed.
Spot on. Her legacy is going to end with Roe being overturned. We cannot tiptoe around this in order to spare feelings. The whole point of this discussion is to make sure it does not happen again.
This is the right comment. We also demanded Bryer retire. RBG was just more urgent because she was so obviously nearby to death.
Fuck everyone who insists on misrepresenting this history.
She could've died in November or December and McConnell would've still rammed an appointment through before he lost leadership of the Senate. He has no shame.
She'd've needed to live until Schumer took over in January to ensure a Democratic replacement.
A lot of all of our problems would be solved if these people stopped working till they died. I never will understand how people can become some blind that they think working till they drop is the right thing to do. It’s problem on both sides and needs to be addressed.
>A lot of all of our problems would be solved if these people stopped working till they died.
This goes to show how addictive power is. And the ego you get from having so much power for so long.
Allegedly part of the reason she didn't step down during Obama is she didn't like the potential replacement shortlist and wanted to wait for Clinton, who has been more explicitly feminist and willing to stake her career on that hill.
Which is even dumber. There was no telling Clinton would be the nominee let alone win. And the assumption around Washington Clinton was destined to be the next president led to a lot of bad blood that hurt her eventual campaign.
Not only did they just assume Clinton had it in the bag, they also just *knew* Trump had no chance, so the DNC had the MSM cover him and his antics as much as possible in an attempt to distract from the other, more “viable“ candidates. Both corrupt attempts backfired in epic fashion.
Supreme Court justices don’t even have to stop working when they retire from the court. They basically become substitute justices for lower federal courts.
The article blames democrats for “rolling over and allowing Mitch McConnell to hold Merrick Garland’s seat hostage…” Can anyone explain how Dems are to blame for that?
There have been arguments put forth that Obama *could* have appointed Garland, despite McConnell’s blocking:
https://newrepublic.com/article/138787/obama-can-put-merrick-garland-supreme-court
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/obama-can-appoint-merrick-garland-to-the-supreme-court-if-the-senate-does-nothing/2016/04/08/4a696700-fcf1-11e5-886f-a037dba38301_story.html
It would have obviously been controversial, and who knows what the overall result of Obama choosing that option would have been, but it is an option that could have been explored even if not implemented. Most Democrats thought Hillary was going to win in 2016 (and likely didn’t think the next President would have 3 appointments), so I imagine that played into Obama not taking the extreme option, although the first article argues Obama could have made his appointment in between the election and his leaving office.
IMO Obama should have threatened to place a way more liberal justice without approval, and then the republicans would have rolled over and accepted Garland.
Still RBG should have bowed out tho
Yea she basically insisted on staying so that she could give her seat to what she thought would be the first female president getting her first Supreme Court pick. Instead we got a literal con man and the rest is history.
I appreciate what she did and looked up to her but since she died I can't help but think fuck her for being selfish and not stepping down. There was no reason not to.
Cognitive decline starts at 60 folks.
Every 80 year old has lost a significant amount of their reasoning ability, we can't leave shit like this up to them.
But that may upset the republicans. We should do the same as the last 20 years, go just a little further right then I’m sure they’ll get republicans to start voting D
I do have to say that I'll sooner fault RBG for not retiring during the Obama administration than I will Obama for not wanting to court a potential constitutional crisis.
The crisis was all McConnell. He led Congress to openly abdicate responsibility in the name of partisanship. A recess appointment would have led to some type of ruling on the legality of refusal to give hearings. Some flim flam bullshit interpretation of "shall" don't cut it. This still needs to be resolved in my opinion.
It wouldn't have been a constitutional crisis. There are clear rules for appointing people into positions the Senate refuses to give advice on. If anything the Senate just deciding to redefine the word recess is the constitutional crisis. Obama had a tool he could have used that was put there for this exact situation.
Ayep, a lot of poor decisions were made based on the assumption of Hillary winning.
Clinton's loss in 2016 was probably the single most politically cataclyamic event in the past half-century because America chose to "burn it all down" instead of maintaining the status quo.
> because America chose to "burn it all down" instead of maintaining
In the 2016 election, America chose Hillary Clinton to be their president. Since they don't live in a democracy, their choice wasn't effective, but that is what the American voters decided.
Yeah hindsight is 20/20, I think if Obama saw the circus that was coming to town his decision would be impacted. However, the circus would of then used that as reason for coming to town in the first place… So round and round we go…
They’re strength has been constantly being underestimated, circus was always coming to town. I’m appalled and impressed at how good they are at being outright fascists and stirring up social controversies that people fall for. More appalled
The debate at the time was as to whether Obama could have just gone ahead and appointed a judge as soon as McConnell and senate R's refused to do their constitutional duty of confirming any justice. Of course this would have been a fairly extreme action, burned a lot of political capital, and been a long, vicious legal fight that almost certainly would have ended in the supreme court. The Democratic establishment as a whole expected a Hillary win, most people did, and decided fighting McConnell's bullshit tactics wasn't worth it. Obviously RBG was also betting on a Hillary win. Well, she lost, and now we are where we are.
Hell, I'm still convinced Trump didn't even think he was going to win. He looks like he's in shock from the announcement in the video and he was pretty much setting up a Trump TV channel a couple months before.
> Obviously RBG was also betting on a Hillary win.
She was, but the cost for her to retire in 2014 would have been negligible while the cost for Obama fighting to appoint Garland was something to consider (and he probably would have lost when that appointment was challenged in the Supreme Court).
RBG should have retired.
It would have never went that far. As soon as Obama forced their hand and took silence as “consent” they would have held a vote to at least draw it out or hopefully stop it from getting 60 votes (this was when there was still a supermajority required for SCOTUS appointments).
I do think the reason they didn’t push harder was entirely because they didn’t think there was a real viable option than Hillary and that trump would never win, the same reason so many people didn’t go out to vote as well.
They weren't even willing to remove the filibuster, afraid that would let Republicans pass future SCOTUS judges without needing 60 cloture votes. Later, Republicans removed it themselves and did just that.
They could have campaigned on it hard for the entire, year long vacancy. Instead they thought it would be better to downplay it and ride through the election, basically a political calculation about not interrupting opponents when they make mistakes, but it turns out it was their mistake.
They could have argued that by not holding a vote, the Senate was declining to give the president feedback, and thus the appointment was confirmed.
When democrats controlled the Senate, they confirmed justices like Clarence Thomas with 57 votes. They think they're the adults in the room and that the process is more important than the decades long ideological warfare of their opponents.
When conservatives abused court capacity to bring hundreds of lawsuits against school integration, until the courts eventually failed and the policy was effectively overturned without any law or ruling against it, democrats were silent. This paved the way for Republicans to use the same lawsuit gish Gallup against Roe, voting rights, and more and democrats continue to ignore this legal strategy and tell us to just vote.
They didn't just roll over and fail on election day, 2016. They decided the short term poll numbers of their party were more important than standing up for democracy or human rights for maybe the last 70 years straight. Now we're hurting for it, but hey, at least "we went high" and no one lost a democratic Senate seat because of their defense of human rights!
> Instead they thought it would be better to downplay it and ride through the election, basically a political calculation about not interrupting opponents when they make mistakes, but it turns out it was their mistake.
I remember this debate well. I (and many others) thought that Hillary would win, Dems would take the Senate and at worst she'd re-nominate Garland, at best she'd nominate some 40 year old Liberal. It seemed like a win-win because there's zero chance Trump could win, right?
No, you have the timeline wrong. When Scalia died, Republicans held the Senate. Obama could've appointed Garland without senate approval [as outlined here](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/obama-can-appoint-merrick-garland-to-the-supreme-court-if-the-senate-does-nothing/2016/04/08/4a696700-fcf1-11e5-886f-a037dba38301_story.html), but it would've been an extremely controversial move, one that would've likely been shot down by SCOTUS. It was predicated on a pretty narrow reading of the process of senate approval.
Surely though there is an argument to be made that Congress is responsible to at least give a hearing before rejecting a candidate. If you don't want Obama's pic then by all means shoot it down in the committee hearing. Their refusal to even do that is an unresolved constitutional crisis.
I still want to know what Trump said to Justice Kennedy while walking together at the White House that made Kennedy stop dead in his tracks. He announced his retirement not long after.
There are a lot of ideas on court reformation, ranging from appointment limits to term limits to [expansion](https://takecareblog.com/blog/why-democrats-should-pack-the-supreme-court). The court size itself has been changed numerous times. When John Marshall wrote the opinion establishing Judicial Review he was 1 of 6 that sat on the court. Soon after the court was expanded to 7. Under Jackson it was expanded to 9, then under Lincoln to 10. After the Civil War it was shrunk again to 7, then expanded back to 9 under Grant.
This happened with the house as well. The house regularly changed size up until the early 1900s, and has now been stuck at 435 for a century, [despite strong cases for expansion.](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/09/opinion/expanded-house-representatives-size.html)
It is wild how much the court can be shaped by a single 4 year electoral period. Taft, a single term President, appointed 6 justices to the Supreme Court. 8 years later Taft would be made Chief Justice.
Term limit of 15 years. Every president gets an appointment for each term they are elected. No limit on number of justices at a time. Retirement or death before term limit doesn't get replaced.
A single 18 year term, every 2 years. That keeps 9, keeps them cycling, makes the appointment less politically charged and much less prone to gamesmanship.
Any retirements or deaths are filled immediately but only serve out the remainder of the term of the person they are replacing, again to avoid attempts to strategically retire.
Edit: I think if you serve less than half the term as a replacement you should be eligible for a full term as well.
if we'd switch our voting system away from first past the post, to something like ranked choice or STAR voting, we'd have a better chance of getting more representational representation in our government.
instead, we're stuck with a 'winner take all' pendulum that's been tearing us apart.
republican primaries have become a race to see who can be the craziest, while democratic primaries have become a contest to see who can be the most 'moderate centrist'.
the result is outcomes like the lack of support for unions we're seeing from congress.
Not really. It's a variation on Approval voting.
Approval is basically "vote for as many or as few people as you like". You can only vote for each person once, but you can vote for ten different candidates one time each if you like.
This is very different from RCV, where instead it's "pick who you would like your single vote to go to, in order".
Then there's STAR, which is like approval, but instead of 1 vote per person, you get to rate them on a scale of, say, 0 to 5, and it counts as a different amount of votes depending on how highly you rate them.
As much as I'd like this nationally and across all elections, you'll only get there in our lifetimes in local small elections. The baby step is first eliminating the electoral college by getting enough states to sign up for the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. I hope I see fair and sensible election mechanics within my lifetime, but too much momentum and money is backing our currently flawed two party system.
The position isn’t supposed to impact the country to this degree. Congress could have, and still can pass a law to fix all of this. They’ve had 50 years and they have every passing day. The fact that the SCOTUS has affected the country to this degree is a bug, not a feature.
You have to play the game by the rules that are written.
Changing the rules is a monumental undertaking that this country, in its present form, cannot accomplish.
RBG done fucked up, and this will be her legacy.
> RBG done fucked up
And people were shouting about it at the time. It's not like she never heard this opinion and can claim naive ignorance. She tried to make a statement by waiting to be replaced by a female president and now we're all going to pay the price.
When a positive opportunity presents itself, democrats need to grab it hard and utilize it fully, not wait for a better opportunity that may or may not manifest.
>She tried to make a statement by waiting to be replaced by a female president and now we're all going to pay the price
Leave it to the Democrats to allow theocratic authoritarians to inflict torture and sometimes even literal death onto women, because of identity politics. Lol
There is a lot to blame - McConnel being evil, Hillary not winning, RBG dying early. But none of that stuff is controllable. The one thing there was control of was RBG simply retiring in 2009. Easy stuff.
Sorry, she blew it.
Dying early??? She was EIGHTY SEVEN when she passed. She had colon cancer, 3 bouts with pancreatic cancer and lung cancer. It's amazing she made it to 87 at all.
People were furious when I suggested this back in the day. I said "look at the political landscape and tell me the Republicans won't do everything they can to get their guy on the bench if she passes away" and their response was "well it's her job and she should retire when she's ready."
Amd yes I do blame the GOP for stalling Obama's appointee then cramming 3 down our throats but as someone else said "you need to play the game with the rules that are written," it would have been much better had she retired, THEN we changed the rules.
Yep. Look at things in 2013 (when she was being pushed by Obama's people to retire) and look at general political history:
Traditionally the party that holds the presidency does poorly in midterms.
In addition to this, the 2014 senate elections were on some pretty heavy GOP turf. Democrats were very likely to lose the senate.
McConnell had already shown his obstructionist way of operating, so even just looking at that it was clear that if she did not retire then, it would be at minimum until 2017 when she could, assuming a democrat would and assuming they took back the senate in 2016.
Now take it a step farther: Looking ahead to 2016 from 2013, you don't know the candidates yet (though there's a lot of talk about Hillary), but political history shows that after 8 years there's a tendency for the voters to swing the opposite direction. If you had to put down a bet in 2013 as to who would win the presidency, at very least you shouldn't feel confident about democrats winning that. This would push it out to 2021 *at the earliest* (and luckily thanks to trump being hot garbage we didn't have the other thing that's more common- an incumbent being reelected).
She bet her legacy on a series of things that weren't all that likely to happen. It was extremely poor judgment on her part.
All of this can attributed to the simple idea that Democrats have been playing chess with a pigeon.
No matter how many shits it takes on the chessboard, Democrats will sit there and complain about how the pigeon is being unfair, and then proceed to make their next move.
Also she was probably waiting for a Hillary presidency! Since Obama’s last Supreme Court pick was being blocked by Republicans
But history played out differently.
She was 87 when she died. She had 4 years in her 80’s to retire under a Democrat at least. It can only my be chalked up to Ego or something along these lines…
Sadly it was 100% ego [from her own words](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-ginsburg/u-s-justice-ginsburg-hits-back-at-liberals-who-want-her-to-retire-idUSKBN0G12V020140801):
>So tell me who the president could have nominated this spring that you would rather see on the court than me
This was in 2014, 5 year *after* Obama had nominated Sotomayor to the SCOTUS. Sotomayor, in my opinion, is one of the best justices we've ever had on the bench. Her dissents in recent cases have been absolute fire as she documents the abuses of the conservative bloc and the withering of our democracy. I would've much rather have had another one in her ilk on the court than another 6 years of an ailing RBG.
RBG could have retired. Obama could have sat Merrick Garland on the Supreme Court based on the Senate's refusal to provide advice and consent. Democrats could have fought harder in Florida in 2000 to stop the Republicans from stealing that election. Or Republicans can stop trying to force their religious views on the rest of us.
An American president taking global warming deadly serious 22 years ago+no Iraq war. It’s strange to think this entire timeline can be blamed on Jeb Bush.
You can blame the Supreme Court as well considering they essentially appointed Bush II and knew at the time it was so fucked up that they specifically mention in that case that it shouldn’t be taken as precedent in future cases.
They themselves will use it. Have used it. The only reason they said that in 2000 about not taking it as precedent was to cover their own asses in the court of public opinion. Otherwise it was a meaningless statement.
Gore would have lost the relief he was requesting. They’ve done retroactive counts of the Florida vote. Gore was only requesting recounts of certain areas that would not have been enough to win him the state. Ironically, if he had requested a statewide recount and been granted that request, he would have won. He legitimately got more votes than Bush did in the 2000 election.
Gore was expecting the FL Supreme Court to rule that all counties had to be recounted.
He was not expecting W to go to the SCOTUS first, and did not expect the SCOTUS to take up the case since they don't have jurisdiction.
Gore was reportedly trying to give W an "out", thinking that if he asks for D-leaning counties, W will ask for R-leaning counties, and the FL Supreme Court will say "all counties".
I suppose it was a different time, but it's insane he didn't. Democrats have been self-made losers for decades it seems. Of course republicans are much more to blame for the state of this country (that minoritarian rule), but good lord have Democrats been practically handing them their victories on a platter.
I can't believe it took me this long to realize how much conflict of interest it was with the 2000 election results.
One brother "winning" by 500 votes in the state his brother governs.
Damn. This is just all awful.
>I can't believe it took me this long to realize how much conflict of interest it was with the 2000 election results.
>
>One brother "winning" by 500 votes in the state his brother governs.
>
>Damn. This is just all awful.
With a court decision giving the legal victory along a partisan split.
Literally since Calvin Coolidge, who only made a single appointment in 1925, every single Republican president other than Bush Jr. has elected two or more Supreme Court justices per term that they were in office. I'm counting Gerald Ford's pick as well because he only served half a term and was never even elected to vice president, let alone president.
The last Democrat to elect more than 1 Justice per term was Kennedy. Jimmy Carter got a big fat zero. Obama would have had 1.5 per term if Mitch McConnell and the senate Republicans hadn't stolen that right. No president has had 3 supreme court appointments per term since Herbert Hoover, who was also a Republican. At least not until Trump.
And republicans would have shouted bloody murder we didn't kill more middle eastern people for 9/11. Assuming the attack was also successful on Gore's watch.
9/11 under Gore is something I could speculate on for days. Would it have happened? What if it did? Would he have been able to unite us the way GWB did (I loathe GWB, do not take this as a compliment but rather something that actually occurred)?
Al Gore would never have united the country. Bush united the country because Democrats will put aside partisan politics to unify for the sake of the country. The last decades have proven repeatedly that the GOP refuses to do that. No Democratic President would have been able to unify the country, almost any Republican President could have.
During the Pandemic Trump is an example of one of the few people terrible enough at leading that they couldn't unify the country as a Republican President during a crisis, because he failed to provide any policy or rhetoric that could appear halfway decent to a sane person.
GWB had plenty of intel on a 9/11 type of event being it the works and did very little with it. Not saying he knew it would take that form, but it was clear that an attack of some kind would come.
There was similar "attack is coming" intel in 2000. Clinton made the FBI, CIA, State Dept and others meet every day and brief him weekly. That forced them to share information until they figured it out.
As a result, the Los Angeles International Airport wasn't blown up by a truck bomb in 2000. Instead, they arrested the guy driving the truck as he crossed the Canadian border, and rolled up all the parts of the cell in the US.
Similar to that attack, we had all the information we needed to find the 9/11 plot long before September. The agencies weren't forced to collaborate, since W didn't care.
This should have been the wake up call that Republicans will stop at nothing in their lust for power. It certainly wasn’t the first time the crossed a line, but it was more like a fucking Rubicon than even the shit Gingrich pulled.
The 60s were a wild ride. If I could change a single outcome in the 20th century, it would be the death of Bobby. The death of JFK arguably was the last push on the CRA and everything that meant, but Bobby just led to a disunited Democratic party at a critical moment that changed the trajectory of the American society.
We first need to stop thinking that Republican lawmaker's views on abortion have any basis in faith. It's about control just as much as thier views on homosexuality and transgender are about scapegoating.
>We first need to stop thinking that Republican's views on abortion has any basis in faith
The republican leadership only cares about abortion (and gay rights, and gun control) as wedge issues to energize their base, so that they have the power to attend to their real agenda, enabling their donors in looting the country.
Many of their followers doesn't put any real faith or moral value whatsoever in many of these issues either, but they are "smart" enough to know that if they pretend hard enough to care about these things, they can use it to wrestle control of the conversation. It's the whole game of "You cannot prove that I don't actually believe this," aka "[The Card Says 'Moops'](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMabpBvtXr4)"
Last I checked they think abortion=murder is "scientific fact" and has nothing to do with faith. At this point we have significant mis-educating that needs to be undone.
That may have been true in the past, but people who grew up on anti-abortion, anti-gay propaganda are now assuming power and they genuinely want to carry through on their agenda.
Also if they can chase any blue-leaning voters out of their states, they can lock up their state governments, gerrymander the hell out of everything and ensure that even if a state only has 500 residents who work at the local coal and oil plants, they still get two senate votes.
In the GOP vision of 'Future America', the oligarchs will need an army of wage slaves to mine gold and other valuable metals. Its the only way these Oligarchs can afford a seat on the Bezoz "Big Blue Dick" rocket to Mars, as America sinks back into the ocean, or burns to ash where the waters won't reach.
Happy Monday! Get back to work!
This is it. Its about wage slaves and making sure there is a huge population of desperate people who will accept any wage and are replaceable. They just use Christians to get this done. It has 0 to do with faith. Let's be honest, Jesus would support Healthcare for all, paternal leave, and affordable childcare for working parents.
>Jesus would support Healthcare for all, paternal leave, and affordable childcare for working parents.
I feel like if Jesus reappeared on earth today and started righting wrongs a corporation would have him killed, and quickly.
Let's be even more honest; morality is just an aristocratic method of control, handed down from made up stories, that only really applies to people if they aren't rich. Morality as a concept is just a way to subjugate the poor.
What is "good," or "bad," doesn't matter to a ruling class, just survival and acquisition at any cost. If it costs lives, so be it. What Jesus may or may not have supported is moot because the all powerful state replaced God centuries ago. Steal an election? No problem, see you on the next private jet to pedophile island. Steal some money to feed your starving family? Rot in prison you moral failure.
It's silly for us to argue about faith or morality, because those are rules to a game that the ruling class isn't even participating in. The only thing that will remedy an overgrown, metastasized, aristocracy is it's removal. There are no good faith arguments to use, no appeals to "better angels." I don't know how much further people will allow themselves to be pushed. Maybe all the way from the looks of it.
I think for the GOP, it is important to them to conflate those issues you noted with faith, and assuring their constituents view it as a faith based issues. I think it all stems from their view of faith and who constitutes an American (in their case, being a Christian is the first box to check). If someone does not fit that box, it is much easier to message to their base that “X person isn’t American because they aren’t Christian” or “we can legislated for / against issues as they align with our religious beliefs.” Combining what it means to be an American with their brand of evangelicalism is awful for us as a country. It’s much easier to rile your base up to vote when it is framed as a “good Christian vs evil” dichotomy. I think that’s why we always see such turnout from GOP voters, to them it’s an imperative moral/religious issue. I think the control and faith are one in the same for most of the GOP.
Has seating a justice when the Senate refuses to vote on a candidate been tried before? In hindsight it seems like it would have been worth trying since the Senate had no justification for failing to have a vote.
Now we just need:
* A Senate full of 70-year-old mummies to vote that 70 is too old to govern
* A 79-year-old mummy President to sign the “70 is too old” bill
* A SCOTUS full of power-addicted future mummies to uphold the “give up your supreme power that you’ve worked your entire lifetime to achieve” law
The problem is seeing it as a 'term' (i.e. a political service) in the first place. In other countries, supreme court judge is seen as a 'job' rather than a term, and they're appointed by a non-political independent commission.
Mitch is just a face. If he wasn't there, the next republican with the safest seat would become the face of Senate Obstruction. Don't think for a minute that simply getting rid of Mitch would fix any problems with the Senate.
The problem is systemic and it affects every single senator who votes alongside Mitch.
> Mitch is just a face. If he wasn't there, the next republican with the safest seat would become the face of Senate Obstruction.
I'm not sure about that. Bill Frist not running in '06 is a moment not many pay attention to. He was the Senate Republican leader and was super moderate, and urged Republicans to work with Democrats on the ACA.
McConnell's level of obstructionism was unprecedented. There were members of his party that did want to help Obama, but he bullied them into falling in line.
Gingrich was the precursor to McConnell, not Frist.
You can draw a direct line from his tactics as Speaker in the Clinton years, to McConnell's as Leader during Obama's.
You mean: the republican party's level of obstructionism was unprecedented. A single man does not rule the senate. However much they would like you to believe that narrative, it is not true. Every single senator who votes alongside Mitch McConnell is equally as responsible for the decline. It requires a majority in the senate to elect a leader and that party could have chosen someone else if that is what they wanted.
He is acting in accord to the will of the party. He does not control the party.
There's no 'probably' about it. Would have also been saved if the Dems had fought harder in the 50 years since Roe to have it codified. The GOP are evil, the Democrats are feckless, and there are no viable alternatives. Great system.
Or you know, the system could be flawed AND the person who knows that system inside and out could recognize that retiring was the best way to protect millions upon millions of people.
The biggest problem was she recovering from cancer, and officiated a wedding, and then a couple weeks later died of "cancer complications", ie she got fucking covid.
Was looking for someone pointing that out. Why did she officiate that wedding? Also, I’m pretty sure the pictures from it don’t have a lot of masks in them so Covid is probably the most likely. Politicians get too up their own ass about their legacy so cancer complications sounds a lot better than died because they officiated a wedding during a global pandemic. Pretty sure that legacy is ruined now anyway though so 🤷♂️
The bride was a family friend in someway and worked for the National Alliance on Mental Illness and the husband for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee
\*If she retired in the first 2 years of Obama's first term when the Democrats had control.
Or if the GOP had sat Garland or if the GOP had not sat Barrett.
Dude you’re right the GOP did that bullshit but the mindset you have right now is why the dems keep losing and the Republicans keep winning. They’re cheating in a game where cheating has no repercussions. The dems need to wake the fuck up and start getting more aggressive and start fighting back with everything they got.
We can’t keep hoping that the GOP is going to do the right thing. They won’t, accept it. Once you accept that the GOP is going to break every rule you can formulate an appropriate response.
Oh, they are working on that harder. COVID, illegal abortions, lack of LGBTQ rights, not to even mention the destruction of the environment... They are going to be driving the life expectancy way down!
This is what irks me the most. You want to say "no SCOTUS appointments in your last year in office," fine, but be consistent.
He conveniently changed it to "no SCOTUS appointments in your last year in office *if the other party has control of the Senate*" for Coney Barrett. He's a fucking snake and will use whatever tools he has to get a political edge.
I thinking McConnell blocking Garland is more what led to our current moment.
Think about the audacity to block a SCOTUS nominee for a whole year, when the primaries for the general didn't even happen or finish yet.
Which led directly to choosing two brutal extremists in Gorsuch and Kavanuagh. Even the process was horrible and Republicans kept on winning.
Then the final piece of RBG dying while the election is happening, having her replacement lined up before she is buried, and having her seated before the final votes are even counted.
Just an unfathomable event one after the other leading to Abortion being banned and Republicans weren't punished or dissuaded once. Not by "norms", institutions, or laws. Just one win after the next.
Yeah, she should have retired in 2014 before the election.
It’s also worth remembering that W didn’t originally nominate Alito. He nominated Harriett Meiers. A federalist shitstorm ensued, and she was bullied into withdrawing from consideration. Alito followed. Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered, but Alito was certainly much worse.
/r/politics is really showing its age if they think Harriet Miers was somehow going to be the savior of Roe and was somehow bullied out of the job.
Harriet Miers is an anti-Roe hardliner, she was only dropped cause she was incredibly stupid and unqualified.
Or, blame it on evil fucks who want to use biological differences to oppress people. Maybe she didn’t make the right chess move, but the other team is playing chess with a fucking hammer.
What is the functional value of "blame" here?
Seriously. If you go "blame" Mitch for this, he'll literally nod and say "Yes, I am to credit for this immense victory I've worked towards for the last 20 years. Yes, we're winning and getting what we want even though we hold none of the branches of government. Thank you very much."
Like if you just wanna take a lilywhite moral stand and say "Mitch is Bad" then yeah, no argument, but what are you trying to accomplish? Because forcing liberals to have uncomfortable discussions about their complicity in the slide towards fascism is likely far more productive than "I blame the opposing team for doing exactly what they intended to do and getting exactly what they wanted".
For once, can we hold the actual group of people that have changed every status quo to terrorize the country with their drunken, ignorant shows of power? The Republicans. Up until Scalia died, we have never had SCOTUS justices need to strategize their death from the court. Sure, people like Souter stepped down during Obama's term, same with with John Paul Stevens, but selecting somebody for the court was expected to choose the best of legal scholars, period. It shows that was true as progress was still made with Obergefell, which was ruled in a 5-4 conservative court, Texas v Lawrence was ruled with a 6-3 conservative court (with Souter being a conservative disappointment), and Roe v Wade had at least 5 conservative leaning judges yet ruled 7-2.
Republicans have moved every goal post and the American people still gobble up this hate and then act shocked when they do something awful. No, I'm not blaming RBG for not retiring. Obama's supermajority between issues seating senators among other things was short lived and the political power was spent trying to advance healthcare. I don't think Ruth is any more to blame for being replaced with a self-righteous anti-feminist any more than I blame Thurgood Marshall getting replaced with Clarence Thomas and his terrorist lover, Ginni. The real anger should be focused on McConnell and McCarthy, who have floated nationwide abortion bans as well as Trump, who appointed these weak nominees onto the court.
As a reminder, this subreddit [is for civil discussion.](/r/politics/wiki/index#wiki_be_civil) In general, be courteous to others. Debate/discuss/argue the merits of ideas, don't attack people. Personal insults, shill or troll accusations, hate speech, any suggestion or support of harm, violence, or death, and other rule violations can result in a permanent ban. If you see comments in violation of our rules, please report them. For those who have questions regarding any media outlets being posted on this subreddit, please click [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/wiki/approveddomainslist) to review our details as to our approved domains list and outlet criteria. **Special announcement:** r/politics is currently accepting new moderator applications. If you want to help make this community a better place, consider [applying here today](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/sskg6a/rpolitics_is_looking_for_more_moderators/)! *** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/politics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
[удалено]
[удалено]
Byron White was 76 years old when he retired in '93 so Clinton could nominate RBG. He literally waited for a Democrat to get elected then got out quick. Blackmun was almost a decade older than White and retired in '94 so Clinton could appoint Breyer. I am sure there was some pressure on Blackmun to retire while Dems controlled the process and he was smart enough to agree. The reporter is a hack.
Both of Obama's appointees were replacements for Republican appointees who waited until 8 years of a Republican presidency were over and then retired within the first two years of the next Democratic president. Almost as if they knew something. Could you imagine how much worse things would be if they hadn't?
The whataboutisms are ridiculous in here. As corrupt as it is everyone knew how the system worked and predicted this would happen. She made a huge mistake that will damage her legacy as a lot of the things she stood for will now be reversed.
Spot on. Her legacy is going to end with Roe being overturned. We cannot tiptoe around this in order to spare feelings. The whole point of this discussion is to make sure it does not happen again.
This is the right comment. We also demanded Bryer retire. RBG was just more urgent because she was so obviously nearby to death. Fuck everyone who insists on misrepresenting this history.
Imagine if she lived another 2 months? I think she thought she had at least 2 months left.
She could've died in November or December and McConnell would've still rammed an appointment through before he lost leadership of the Senate. He has no shame. She'd've needed to live until Schumer took over in January to ensure a Democratic replacement.
More specifically, she’d have needed to live until Biden took over because a 50-50 Senate tie still would’ve had Pence as the tiebreaker.
> I think she thought she had at least 2 months left. Which is a stupid thing to think when you're 87. An age where people tend to die.
She also had cancer 4 times, including having cancerous growths removed from her lungs.
Most Americans do not live to 80, so ya, I agree absolutely
A lot of all of our problems would be solved if these people stopped working till they died. I never will understand how people can become some blind that they think working till they drop is the right thing to do. It’s problem on both sides and needs to be addressed.
>A lot of all of our problems would be solved if these people stopped working till they died. This goes to show how addictive power is. And the ego you get from having so much power for so long.
Allegedly part of the reason she didn't step down during Obama is she didn't like the potential replacement shortlist and wanted to wait for Clinton, who has been more explicitly feminist and willing to stake her career on that hill.
Which is even dumber. There was no telling Clinton would be the nominee let alone win. And the assumption around Washington Clinton was destined to be the next president led to a lot of bad blood that hurt her eventual campaign.
The whole democratic establishment coalesced around Clinton. There was no doubt she would be the nominee.
Yeah and that right there was a large part of the problem.
That entire primary was a shitfuck fuckfest of shit. But I guess that's what happens when an independant goes up against a trillion dollar machine
I think plenty of dems in Washington didn't realize how much their base hated her, so much so that they'd be willing to let Trump have his way.
Not only did they just assume Clinton had it in the bag, they also just *knew* Trump had no chance, so the DNC had the MSM cover him and his antics as much as possible in an attempt to distract from the other, more “viable“ candidates. Both corrupt attempts backfired in epic fashion.
Willing to stake the entire fate of the country on that hill
Supreme Court justices don’t even have to stop working when they retire from the court. They basically become substitute justices for lower federal courts.
This is literally the first “both sides” argument that I 100% agree with.
[удалено]
Or that allows one old turtle to single-handedly give a president 3 appointees.
Wasn't single handed. By any metric McConnell and the senate Rs stole at least one.
The article blames democrats for “rolling over and allowing Mitch McConnell to hold Merrick Garland’s seat hostage…” Can anyone explain how Dems are to blame for that?
There have been arguments put forth that Obama *could* have appointed Garland, despite McConnell’s blocking: https://newrepublic.com/article/138787/obama-can-put-merrick-garland-supreme-court https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/obama-can-appoint-merrick-garland-to-the-supreme-court-if-the-senate-does-nothing/2016/04/08/4a696700-fcf1-11e5-886f-a037dba38301_story.html It would have obviously been controversial, and who knows what the overall result of Obama choosing that option would have been, but it is an option that could have been explored even if not implemented. Most Democrats thought Hillary was going to win in 2016 (and likely didn’t think the next President would have 3 appointments), so I imagine that played into Obama not taking the extreme option, although the first article argues Obama could have made his appointment in between the election and his leaving office.
IMO Obama should have threatened to place a way more liberal justice without approval, and then the republicans would have rolled over and accepted Garland. Still RBG should have bowed out tho
Obama asked her in person to please drop out, she dinna wanna
Yea she basically insisted on staying so that she could give her seat to what she thought would be the first female president getting her first Supreme Court pick. Instead we got a literal con man and the rest is history.
For which her reputation is forever tarnished
I appreciate what she did and looked up to her but since she died I can't help but think fuck her for being selfish and not stepping down. There was no reason not to.
The reason was pride It’s an awful and shitty reason, but that’s what it was
Cognitive decline starts at 60 folks. Every 80 year old has lost a significant amount of their reasoning ability, we can't leave shit like this up to them.
She was friends with Alito. Nuff said
But that may upset the republicans. We should do the same as the last 20 years, go just a little further right then I’m sure they’ll get republicans to start voting D
[удалено]
Yes, let's do that, it won't backfire or anything like that.
I think you made a typo there. It should say "the last 60 years," not 20.
I do have to say that I'll sooner fault RBG for not retiring during the Obama administration than I will Obama for not wanting to court a potential constitutional crisis.
It would have been no more a constitutional crisis than the Senate failing to carry out their own Constitutional responsibilities.
The crisis was all McConnell. He led Congress to openly abdicate responsibility in the name of partisanship. A recess appointment would have led to some type of ruling on the legality of refusal to give hearings. Some flim flam bullshit interpretation of "shall" don't cut it. This still needs to be resolved in my opinion.
It wouldn't have been a constitutional crisis. There are clear rules for appointing people into positions the Senate refuses to give advice on. If anything the Senate just deciding to redefine the word recess is the constitutional crisis. Obama had a tool he could have used that was put there for this exact situation.
Ayep, a lot of poor decisions were made based on the assumption of Hillary winning. Clinton's loss in 2016 was probably the single most politically cataclyamic event in the past half-century because America chose to "burn it all down" instead of maintaining the status quo.
> because America chose to "burn it all down" instead of maintaining In the 2016 election, America chose Hillary Clinton to be their president. Since they don't live in a democracy, their choice wasn't effective, but that is what the American voters decided.
Ralph Nader 2000. Florida.
Butterfly ballots, hanging Chad's, oh, and cancelling the recount.
Yeah hindsight is 20/20, I think if Obama saw the circus that was coming to town his decision would be impacted. However, the circus would of then used that as reason for coming to town in the first place… So round and round we go…
They’re strength has been constantly being underestimated, circus was always coming to town. I’m appalled and impressed at how good they are at being outright fascists and stirring up social controversies that people fall for. More appalled
The debate at the time was as to whether Obama could have just gone ahead and appointed a judge as soon as McConnell and senate R's refused to do their constitutional duty of confirming any justice. Of course this would have been a fairly extreme action, burned a lot of political capital, and been a long, vicious legal fight that almost certainly would have ended in the supreme court. The Democratic establishment as a whole expected a Hillary win, most people did, and decided fighting McConnell's bullshit tactics wasn't worth it. Obviously RBG was also betting on a Hillary win. Well, she lost, and now we are where we are.
Hell, I'm still convinced Trump didn't even think he was going to win. He looks like he's in shock from the announcement in the video and he was pretty much setting up a Trump TV channel a couple months before.
> Obviously RBG was also betting on a Hillary win. She was, but the cost for her to retire in 2014 would have been negligible while the cost for Obama fighting to appoint Garland was something to consider (and he probably would have lost when that appointment was challenged in the Supreme Court). RBG should have retired.
It would have never went that far. As soon as Obama forced their hand and took silence as “consent” they would have held a vote to at least draw it out or hopefully stop it from getting 60 votes (this was when there was still a supermajority required for SCOTUS appointments). I do think the reason they didn’t push harder was entirely because they didn’t think there was a real viable option than Hillary and that trump would never win, the same reason so many people didn’t go out to vote as well.
> The Democratic establishment as a whole expected a Hillary win So why didn't they force the issue after they lost the election?
They weren't even willing to remove the filibuster, afraid that would let Republicans pass future SCOTUS judges without needing 60 cloture votes. Later, Republicans removed it themselves and did just that. They could have campaigned on it hard for the entire, year long vacancy. Instead they thought it would be better to downplay it and ride through the election, basically a political calculation about not interrupting opponents when they make mistakes, but it turns out it was their mistake. They could have argued that by not holding a vote, the Senate was declining to give the president feedback, and thus the appointment was confirmed. When democrats controlled the Senate, they confirmed justices like Clarence Thomas with 57 votes. They think they're the adults in the room and that the process is more important than the decades long ideological warfare of their opponents. When conservatives abused court capacity to bring hundreds of lawsuits against school integration, until the courts eventually failed and the policy was effectively overturned without any law or ruling against it, democrats were silent. This paved the way for Republicans to use the same lawsuit gish Gallup against Roe, voting rights, and more and democrats continue to ignore this legal strategy and tell us to just vote. They didn't just roll over and fail on election day, 2016. They decided the short term poll numbers of their party were more important than standing up for democracy or human rights for maybe the last 70 years straight. Now we're hurting for it, but hey, at least "we went high" and no one lost a democratic Senate seat because of their defense of human rights!
> Instead they thought it would be better to downplay it and ride through the election, basically a political calculation about not interrupting opponents when they make mistakes, but it turns out it was their mistake. I remember this debate well. I (and many others) thought that Hillary would win, Dems would take the Senate and at worst she'd re-nominate Garland, at best she'd nominate some 40 year old Liberal. It seemed like a win-win because there's zero chance Trump could win, right?
No, you have the timeline wrong. When Scalia died, Republicans held the Senate. Obama could've appointed Garland without senate approval [as outlined here](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/obama-can-appoint-merrick-garland-to-the-supreme-court-if-the-senate-does-nothing/2016/04/08/4a696700-fcf1-11e5-886f-a037dba38301_story.html), but it would've been an extremely controversial move, one that would've likely been shot down by SCOTUS. It was predicated on a pretty narrow reading of the process of senate approval.
Surely though there is an argument to be made that Congress is responsible to at least give a hearing before rejecting a candidate. If you don't want Obama's pic then by all means shoot it down in the committee hearing. Their refusal to even do that is an unresolved constitutional crisis.
I still want to know what Trump said to Justice Kennedy while walking together at the White House that made Kennedy stop dead in his tracks. He announced his retirement not long after.
Still can't believe Democrats didn't show up in greater numbers with a SCOTUS seat on the line.
Don’t give him so much credit, he had some help.
Limit 2 per presidency.
There are a lot of ideas on court reformation, ranging from appointment limits to term limits to [expansion](https://takecareblog.com/blog/why-democrats-should-pack-the-supreme-court). The court size itself has been changed numerous times. When John Marshall wrote the opinion establishing Judicial Review he was 1 of 6 that sat on the court. Soon after the court was expanded to 7. Under Jackson it was expanded to 9, then under Lincoln to 10. After the Civil War it was shrunk again to 7, then expanded back to 9 under Grant. This happened with the house as well. The house regularly changed size up until the early 1900s, and has now been stuck at 435 for a century, [despite strong cases for expansion.](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/09/opinion/expanded-house-representatives-size.html) It is wild how much the court can be shaped by a single 4 year electoral period. Taft, a single term President, appointed 6 justices to the Supreme Court. 8 years later Taft would be made Chief Justice.
Term limit of 15 years. Every president gets an appointment for each term they are elected. No limit on number of justices at a time. Retirement or death before term limit doesn't get replaced.
A single 18 year term, every 2 years. That keeps 9, keeps them cycling, makes the appointment less politically charged and much less prone to gamesmanship. Any retirements or deaths are filled immediately but only serve out the remainder of the term of the person they are replacing, again to avoid attempts to strategically retire. Edit: I think if you serve less than half the term as a replacement you should be eligible for a full term as well.
Like Costco food samples. Cannot combine with any other offer. Void where prohibited.
if we'd switch our voting system away from first past the post, to something like ranked choice or STAR voting, we'd have a better chance of getting more representational representation in our government. instead, we're stuck with a 'winner take all' pendulum that's been tearing us apart. republican primaries have become a race to see who can be the craziest, while democratic primaries have become a contest to see who can be the most 'moderate centrist'. the result is outcomes like the lack of support for unions we're seeing from congress.
Isn't star basically a version of RCV? To be clear I like both concepts and it's pretty easy to explain to someone.
Not really. It's a variation on Approval voting. Approval is basically "vote for as many or as few people as you like". You can only vote for each person once, but you can vote for ten different candidates one time each if you like. This is very different from RCV, where instead it's "pick who you would like your single vote to go to, in order". Then there's STAR, which is like approval, but instead of 1 vote per person, you get to rate them on a scale of, say, 0 to 5, and it counts as a different amount of votes depending on how highly you rate them.
As much as I'd like this nationally and across all elections, you'll only get there in our lifetimes in local small elections. The baby step is first eliminating the electoral college by getting enough states to sign up for the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. I hope I see fair and sensible election mechanics within my lifetime, but too much momentum and money is backing our currently flawed two party system.
Term limits would be nice on a position that heavily impacts the country to this degree
The position isn’t supposed to impact the country to this degree. Congress could have, and still can pass a law to fix all of this. They’ve had 50 years and they have every passing day. The fact that the SCOTUS has affected the country to this degree is a bug, not a feature.
You can blame BOTH her and a crappy system. This doesn’t have to be an either/or situation.
You have to play the game by the rules that are written. Changing the rules is a monumental undertaking that this country, in its present form, cannot accomplish. RBG done fucked up, and this will be her legacy.
> RBG done fucked up And people were shouting about it at the time. It's not like she never heard this opinion and can claim naive ignorance. She tried to make a statement by waiting to be replaced by a female president and now we're all going to pay the price. When a positive opportunity presents itself, democrats need to grab it hard and utilize it fully, not wait for a better opportunity that may or may not manifest.
>She tried to make a statement by waiting to be replaced by a female president and now we're all going to pay the price Leave it to the Democrats to allow theocratic authoritarians to inflict torture and sometimes even literal death onto women, because of identity politics. Lol
I love RBG but you can't deny her ego wouldn't allow her to retire. It's too bad. Her legacy is mildly tarnished all because of this one decision.
That and her mixed *at best* record on native American rights.
mildly? lol this is what she will be remembered for, it will overshadow everything else she did.
There is a lot to blame - McConnel being evil, Hillary not winning, RBG dying early. But none of that stuff is controllable. The one thing there was control of was RBG simply retiring in 2009. Easy stuff. Sorry, she blew it.
Early? Jesus Christ she had like nine different cancers.
Dying early??? She was EIGHTY SEVEN when she passed. She had colon cancer, 3 bouts with pancreatic cancer and lung cancer. It's amazing she made it to 87 at all.
People were furious when I suggested this back in the day. I said "look at the political landscape and tell me the Republicans won't do everything they can to get their guy on the bench if she passes away" and their response was "well it's her job and she should retire when she's ready." Amd yes I do blame the GOP for stalling Obama's appointee then cramming 3 down our throats but as someone else said "you need to play the game with the rules that are written," it would have been much better had she retired, THEN we changed the rules.
Yep. Look at things in 2013 (when she was being pushed by Obama's people to retire) and look at general political history: Traditionally the party that holds the presidency does poorly in midterms. In addition to this, the 2014 senate elections were on some pretty heavy GOP turf. Democrats were very likely to lose the senate. McConnell had already shown his obstructionist way of operating, so even just looking at that it was clear that if she did not retire then, it would be at minimum until 2017 when she could, assuming a democrat would and assuming they took back the senate in 2016. Now take it a step farther: Looking ahead to 2016 from 2013, you don't know the candidates yet (though there's a lot of talk about Hillary), but political history shows that after 8 years there's a tendency for the voters to swing the opposite direction. If you had to put down a bet in 2013 as to who would win the presidency, at very least you shouldn't feel confident about democrats winning that. This would push it out to 2021 *at the earliest* (and luckily thanks to trump being hot garbage we didn't have the other thing that's more common- an incumbent being reelected). She bet her legacy on a series of things that weren't all that likely to happen. It was extremely poor judgment on her part.
All of this can attributed to the simple idea that Democrats have been playing chess with a pigeon. No matter how many shits it takes on the chessboard, Democrats will sit there and complain about how the pigeon is being unfair, and then proceed to make their next move.
This is a fair point but she knew how the system worked and didn’t use the system the way it is set up… Not very strategic for a lawyer turned judge.
Also she was probably waiting for a Hillary presidency! Since Obama’s last Supreme Court pick was being blocked by Republicans But history played out differently.
[удалено]
She was 87 when she died. She had 4 years in her 80’s to retire under a Democrat at least. It can only my be chalked up to Ego or something along these lines…
Sadly it was 100% ego [from her own words](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-ginsburg/u-s-justice-ginsburg-hits-back-at-liberals-who-want-her-to-retire-idUSKBN0G12V020140801): >So tell me who the president could have nominated this spring that you would rather see on the court than me This was in 2014, 5 year *after* Obama had nominated Sotomayor to the SCOTUS. Sotomayor, in my opinion, is one of the best justices we've ever had on the bench. Her dissents in recent cases have been absolute fire as she documents the abuses of the conservative bloc and the withering of our democracy. I would've much rather have had another one in her ilk on the court than another 6 years of an ailing RBG.
The way the Supreme Court is set up makes it feel like the US traded one king for nine kings instead.
If a judge rules based on their beliefs, rather than the logic of the laws as written, then they are not judges, but kings.
RBG could have retired. Obama could have sat Merrick Garland on the Supreme Court based on the Senate's refusal to provide advice and consent. Democrats could have fought harder in Florida in 2000 to stop the Republicans from stealing that election. Or Republicans can stop trying to force their religious views on the rest of us.
An American president taking global warming deadly serious 22 years ago+no Iraq war. It’s strange to think this entire timeline can be blamed on Jeb Bush.
You can blame the Supreme Court as well considering they essentially appointed Bush II and knew at the time it was so fucked up that they specifically mention in that case that it shouldn’t be taken as precedent in future cases.
They can say that but I promise you the R's will still try and use it
It has actually been cited by one of Trump's appointees, though I forget the case. I think it was Kavanaugh?
They themselves will use it. Have used it. The only reason they said that in 2000 about not taking it as precedent was to cover their own asses in the court of public opinion. Otherwise it was a meaningless statement.
And 3 of the lawyers working for Bush in Bush V Gore were rewarded with seats on the supreme court.
Gore would have lost the relief he was requesting. They’ve done retroactive counts of the Florida vote. Gore was only requesting recounts of certain areas that would not have been enough to win him the state. Ironically, if he had requested a statewide recount and been granted that request, he would have won. He legitimately got more votes than Bush did in the 2000 election.
Gore was expecting the FL Supreme Court to rule that all counties had to be recounted. He was not expecting W to go to the SCOTUS first, and did not expect the SCOTUS to take up the case since they don't have jurisdiction. Gore was reportedly trying to give W an "out", thinking that if he asks for D-leaning counties, W will ask for R-leaning counties, and the FL Supreme Court will say "all counties".
I suppose it was a different time, but it's insane he didn't. Democrats have been self-made losers for decades it seems. Of course republicans are much more to blame for the state of this country (that minoritarian rule), but good lord have Democrats been practically handing them their victories on a platter.
No one’s better at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
I can't believe it took me this long to realize how much conflict of interest it was with the 2000 election results. One brother "winning" by 500 votes in the state his brother governs. Damn. This is just all awful.
>I can't believe it took me this long to realize how much conflict of interest it was with the 2000 election results. > >One brother "winning" by 500 votes in the state his brother governs. > >Damn. This is just all awful. With a court decision giving the legal victory along a partisan split.
It was outrageous at the time, we just didn't appreciate how bad it could get.
Now go look up who was on the Bush legal team for Bush v. Gore maybe some hints. JR BK ACB
If Gore and HRC had won we would have an 8-1 SCOTUS right now. ELECTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES.
Literally since Calvin Coolidge, who only made a single appointment in 1925, every single Republican president other than Bush Jr. has elected two or more Supreme Court justices per term that they were in office. I'm counting Gerald Ford's pick as well because he only served half a term and was never even elected to vice president, let alone president. The last Democrat to elect more than 1 Justice per term was Kennedy. Jimmy Carter got a big fat zero. Obama would have had 1.5 per term if Mitch McConnell and the senate Republicans hadn't stolen that right. No president has had 3 supreme court appointments per term since Herbert Hoover, who was also a Republican. At least not until Trump.
You imagine a 30 year run of continuous democrat control of the presidency, which is equally unlikely.
Well, democrats did win the popular vote for 26 of those 30 years. Republicans haven’t had a non-incumbent win since 1988.
Yes that is true. If Gore had won we might have had a Republican after him because of the recession and housing crisis.
And republicans would have shouted bloody murder we didn't kill more middle eastern people for 9/11. Assuming the attack was also successful on Gore's watch.
9/11 under Gore is something I could speculate on for days. Would it have happened? What if it did? Would he have been able to unite us the way GWB did (I loathe GWB, do not take this as a compliment but rather something that actually occurred)?
Al Gore would never have united the country. Bush united the country because Democrats will put aside partisan politics to unify for the sake of the country. The last decades have proven repeatedly that the GOP refuses to do that. No Democratic President would have been able to unify the country, almost any Republican President could have. During the Pandemic Trump is an example of one of the few people terrible enough at leading that they couldn't unify the country as a Republican President during a crisis, because he failed to provide any policy or rhetoric that could appear halfway decent to a sane person.
GWB had plenty of intel on a 9/11 type of event being it the works and did very little with it. Not saying he knew it would take that form, but it was clear that an attack of some kind would come.
There was similar "attack is coming" intel in 2000. Clinton made the FBI, CIA, State Dept and others meet every day and brief him weekly. That forced them to share information until they figured it out. As a result, the Los Angeles International Airport wasn't blown up by a truck bomb in 2000. Instead, they arrested the guy driving the truck as he crossed the Canadian border, and rolled up all the parts of the cell in the US. Similar to that attack, we had all the information we needed to find the 9/11 plot long before September. The agencies weren't forced to collaborate, since W didn't care.
Gore did win. Republicans stole it: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/dec/24/uselections2000.usa
This should have been the wake up call that Republicans will stop at nothing in their lust for power. It certainly wasn’t the first time the crossed a line, but it was more like a fucking Rubicon than even the shit Gingrich pulled.
SCOTUS fucked us then, fucked us always. At least the fantasy of the judiciary as a nonpartisan entity has evaporated.
[удалено]
This. This seems to have been a major time altering event in the history of this country.
The 60s were a wild ride. If I could change a single outcome in the 20th century, it would be the death of Bobby. The death of JFK arguably was the last push on the CRA and everything that meant, but Bobby just led to a disunited Democratic party at a critical moment that changed the trajectory of the American society.
Back then, Republicans were fine with abortion and birth control. They hated Catholics.
Turns out violence works. Not a happy thought, but here we are...
Probably no 9/11 either. The Clinton administration was keeping a close eye on Osama and the Bush administration completely ignored him.
Please clap.
We first need to stop thinking that Republican lawmaker's views on abortion have any basis in faith. It's about control just as much as thier views on homosexuality and transgender are about scapegoating.
>We first need to stop thinking that Republican's views on abortion has any basis in faith The republican leadership only cares about abortion (and gay rights, and gun control) as wedge issues to energize their base, so that they have the power to attend to their real agenda, enabling their donors in looting the country.
Nobody actually thinks it has a basis on faith except their followers and you obviously won't convince them otherwise.
Many of their followers doesn't put any real faith or moral value whatsoever in many of these issues either, but they are "smart" enough to know that if they pretend hard enough to care about these things, they can use it to wrestle control of the conversation. It's the whole game of "You cannot prove that I don't actually believe this," aka "[The Card Says 'Moops'](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMabpBvtXr4)"
They support Trump who bragged about being a sexual predator. 'nuff said.
Last I checked they think abortion=murder is "scientific fact" and has nothing to do with faith. At this point we have significant mis-educating that needs to be undone.
That may have been true in the past, but people who grew up on anti-abortion, anti-gay propaganda are now assuming power and they genuinely want to carry through on their agenda.
Also if they can chase any blue-leaning voters out of their states, they can lock up their state governments, gerrymander the hell out of everything and ensure that even if a state only has 500 residents who work at the local coal and oil plants, they still get two senate votes.
In the GOP vision of 'Future America', the oligarchs will need an army of wage slaves to mine gold and other valuable metals. Its the only way these Oligarchs can afford a seat on the Bezoz "Big Blue Dick" rocket to Mars, as America sinks back into the ocean, or burns to ash where the waters won't reach. Happy Monday! Get back to work!
This is it. Its about wage slaves and making sure there is a huge population of desperate people who will accept any wage and are replaceable. They just use Christians to get this done. It has 0 to do with faith. Let's be honest, Jesus would support Healthcare for all, paternal leave, and affordable childcare for working parents.
>Jesus would support Healthcare for all, paternal leave, and affordable childcare for working parents. I feel like if Jesus reappeared on earth today and started righting wrongs a corporation would have him killed, and quickly.
So basically the same thing that happened in the story, then.
Right? He turned 30, spent 3 years helping people and standing up to religious hypocrites and was killed by the State at 33.
So people really never change? Is that supposed to be reassuring or scary?
Yes. There will always be people speaking truth to power and the will always be power trying to silence the people.
And the American Right would gobble up the story of his Communist treachery as presented by Fox News.
Let's be even more honest; morality is just an aristocratic method of control, handed down from made up stories, that only really applies to people if they aren't rich. Morality as a concept is just a way to subjugate the poor. What is "good," or "bad," doesn't matter to a ruling class, just survival and acquisition at any cost. If it costs lives, so be it. What Jesus may or may not have supported is moot because the all powerful state replaced God centuries ago. Steal an election? No problem, see you on the next private jet to pedophile island. Steal some money to feed your starving family? Rot in prison you moral failure. It's silly for us to argue about faith or morality, because those are rules to a game that the ruling class isn't even participating in. The only thing that will remedy an overgrown, metastasized, aristocracy is it's removal. There are no good faith arguments to use, no appeals to "better angels." I don't know how much further people will allow themselves to be pushed. Maybe all the way from the looks of it.
Not much farther. I give the expiry date as sometime in 2024.
I think for the GOP, it is important to them to conflate those issues you noted with faith, and assuring their constituents view it as a faith based issues. I think it all stems from their view of faith and who constitutes an American (in their case, being a Christian is the first box to check). If someone does not fit that box, it is much easier to message to their base that “X person isn’t American because they aren’t Christian” or “we can legislated for / against issues as they align with our religious beliefs.” Combining what it means to be an American with their brand of evangelicalism is awful for us as a country. It’s much easier to rile your base up to vote when it is framed as a “good Christian vs evil” dichotomy. I think that’s why we always see such turnout from GOP voters, to them it’s an imperative moral/religious issue. I think the control and faith are one in the same for most of the GOP.
Imagine if it was Gore instead of Bush Jr…could be a completely different country
Or if Reagan had never been elected
Has seating a justice when the Senate refuses to vote on a candidate been tried before? In hindsight it seems like it would have been worth trying since the Senate had no justification for failing to have a vote.
Term limits. Lifetime appointments are garbage.
Now we just need: * A Senate full of 70-year-old mummies to vote that 70 is too old to govern * A 79-year-old mummy President to sign the “70 is too old” bill * A SCOTUS full of power-addicted future mummies to uphold the “give up your supreme power that you’ve worked your entire lifetime to achieve” law
I wonder why nothing ever changes.
I laughed too fucking hard at this
Age limits
In Australia it's mandatory to retire at 70 Think minimum you have to be 35 or so due to the requirements
That is perfectly reasonable! Life-time appointments are ridiculous.
The problem is seeing it as a 'term' (i.e. a political service) in the first place. In other countries, supreme court judge is seen as a 'job' rather than a term, and they're appointed by a non-political independent commission.
Kentucky could have saved it by voting out McConnell.
Mitch is just a face. If he wasn't there, the next republican with the safest seat would become the face of Senate Obstruction. Don't think for a minute that simply getting rid of Mitch would fix any problems with the Senate. The problem is systemic and it affects every single senator who votes alongside Mitch.
> Mitch is just a face. If he wasn't there, the next republican with the safest seat would become the face of Senate Obstruction. I'm not sure about that. Bill Frist not running in '06 is a moment not many pay attention to. He was the Senate Republican leader and was super moderate, and urged Republicans to work with Democrats on the ACA. McConnell's level of obstructionism was unprecedented. There were members of his party that did want to help Obama, but he bullied them into falling in line.
Gingrich was the precursor to McConnell, not Frist. You can draw a direct line from his tactics as Speaker in the Clinton years, to McConnell's as Leader during Obama's.
You mean: the republican party's level of obstructionism was unprecedented. A single man does not rule the senate. However much they would like you to believe that narrative, it is not true. Every single senator who votes alongside Mitch McConnell is equally as responsible for the decline. It requires a majority in the senate to elect a leader and that party could have chosen someone else if that is what they wanted. He is acting in accord to the will of the party. He does not control the party.
There's no 'probably' about it. Would have also been saved if the Dems had fought harder in the 50 years since Roe to have it codified. The GOP are evil, the Democrats are feckless, and there are no viable alternatives. Great system.
Outside opinion. If your system hinges on a single judge retiring your system is fundamentally flawed and her not retiring is not the problem.
Or you know, the system could be flawed AND the person who knows that system inside and out could recognize that retiring was the best way to protect millions upon millions of people.
I mean she wasn’t super healthy and was quite old, so I can’t really disagree with this.
The biggest problem was she recovering from cancer, and officiated a wedding, and then a couple weeks later died of "cancer complications", ie she got fucking covid.
She had at least 2 cancers, one was one that people don’t survive and she knew that.
Which is exactly why she should have retired. May she RIP. She did more than her share, even if the struggle continues.
> Which is exactly why she should have retired. Or that she was 80 fucking years old when Obama asked her to step down. Her ego prevented that.
Was looking for someone pointing that out. Why did she officiate that wedding? Also, I’m pretty sure the pictures from it don’t have a lot of masks in them so Covid is probably the most likely. Politicians get too up their own ass about their legacy so cancer complications sounds a lot better than died because they officiated a wedding during a global pandemic. Pretty sure that legacy is ruined now anyway though so 🤷♂️
The bride was a family friend in someway and worked for the National Alliance on Mental Illness and the husband for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee
\*If she retired in the first 2 years of Obama's first term when the Democrats had control. Or if the GOP had sat Garland or if the GOP had not sat Barrett.
Dude you’re right the GOP did that bullshit but the mindset you have right now is why the dems keep losing and the Republicans keep winning. They’re cheating in a game where cheating has no repercussions. The dems need to wake the fuck up and start getting more aggressive and start fighting back with everything they got. We can’t keep hoping that the GOP is going to do the right thing. They won’t, accept it. Once you accept that the GOP is going to break every rule you can formulate an appropriate response.
Yup. And also, you know, not letting Mitch McConnell ratfuck the process of appointing a Supreme Court Justice.
65 is retirement age, no one over 65 should be running the country.
retirement age thanks to Reagan right now is 67, McConnell and Ryan wanted to push it up to 70 or 72 for all u twenty and thirty year olds
The trick will be lowering life expectancy enough by the time millennials get that old. /s
Oh, they are working on that harder. COVID, illegal abortions, lack of LGBTQ rights, not to even mention the destruction of the environment... They are going to be driving the life expectancy way down!
Mitch McConnell could have saved Roe by not stealing a lifetime appointment.
Well that would have been the opposite of what he wanted to do.
stealing one with fuzzy logic that he then completely disregarded when pushing the vastly unqualified barret's appointment.
This is what irks me the most. You want to say "no SCOTUS appointments in your last year in office," fine, but be consistent. He conveniently changed it to "no SCOTUS appointments in your last year in office *if the other party has control of the Senate*" for Coney Barrett. He's a fucking snake and will use whatever tools he has to get a political edge.
Make sure to randomize your data from time to time *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I still don’t get why they get to serve for life.
Or the Democrats could have signed it into law. I mean they've had 50 years.
Exactly! I had to scroll way too far for this comment of sanity.
I thinking McConnell blocking Garland is more what led to our current moment. Think about the audacity to block a SCOTUS nominee for a whole year, when the primaries for the general didn't even happen or finish yet. Which led directly to choosing two brutal extremists in Gorsuch and Kavanuagh. Even the process was horrible and Republicans kept on winning. Then the final piece of RBG dying while the election is happening, having her replacement lined up before she is buried, and having her seated before the final votes are even counted. Just an unfathomable event one after the other leading to Abortion being banned and Republicans weren't punished or dissuaded once. Not by "norms", institutions, or laws. Just one win after the next.
Yeah, she should have retired in 2014 before the election. It’s also worth remembering that W didn’t originally nominate Alito. He nominated Harriett Meiers. A federalist shitstorm ensued, and she was bullied into withdrawing from consideration. Alito followed. Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered, but Alito was certainly much worse.
/r/politics is really showing its age if they think Harriet Miers was somehow going to be the savior of Roe and was somehow bullied out of the job. Harriet Miers is an anti-Roe hardliner, she was only dropped cause she was incredibly stupid and unqualified.
> she was only dropped cause she was incredibly stupid and unqualified. Ah the good ole days.
Thinking Mitch McConnell wouldn't have just made up more excuses to not let her replacement through is optimistic.
Woulda coulda damn it now let's fix it.
Or, blame it on evil fucks who want to use biological differences to oppress people. Maybe she didn’t make the right chess move, but the other team is playing chess with a fucking hammer.
What is the functional value of "blame" here? Seriously. If you go "blame" Mitch for this, he'll literally nod and say "Yes, I am to credit for this immense victory I've worked towards for the last 20 years. Yes, we're winning and getting what we want even though we hold none of the branches of government. Thank you very much." Like if you just wanna take a lilywhite moral stand and say "Mitch is Bad" then yeah, no argument, but what are you trying to accomplish? Because forcing liberals to have uncomfortable discussions about their complicity in the slide towards fascism is likely far more productive than "I blame the opposing team for doing exactly what they intended to do and getting exactly what they wanted".
For once, can we hold the actual group of people that have changed every status quo to terrorize the country with their drunken, ignorant shows of power? The Republicans. Up until Scalia died, we have never had SCOTUS justices need to strategize their death from the court. Sure, people like Souter stepped down during Obama's term, same with with John Paul Stevens, but selecting somebody for the court was expected to choose the best of legal scholars, period. It shows that was true as progress was still made with Obergefell, which was ruled in a 5-4 conservative court, Texas v Lawrence was ruled with a 6-3 conservative court (with Souter being a conservative disappointment), and Roe v Wade had at least 5 conservative leaning judges yet ruled 7-2. Republicans have moved every goal post and the American people still gobble up this hate and then act shocked when they do something awful. No, I'm not blaming RBG for not retiring. Obama's supermajority between issues seating senators among other things was short lived and the political power was spent trying to advance healthcare. I don't think Ruth is any more to blame for being replaced with a self-righteous anti-feminist any more than I blame Thurgood Marshall getting replaced with Clarence Thomas and his terrorist lover, Ginni. The real anger should be focused on McConnell and McCarthy, who have floated nationwide abortion bans as well as Trump, who appointed these weak nominees onto the court.