Supreme Court of the United States

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Which is the relevance of Juanita Broderick. Bill Clinton was given a position of authority on much better evidence of both the single case and a pattern of behavior.


Rhetorical flourish is being childish because you can get away with it. He called you on a (failed?) attempt.

J
He called? You called. What is wrong with you? Is it not enough to constantly misconstrue other's posts, now you have to misconstrue your own as a random third persons?

And literally nothing I said had anything to do with Bill Clinton, get off it.
 
He called? You called. What is wrong with you? Is it not enough to constantly misconstrue other's posts, now you have to misconstrue your own as a random third persons?

I considered pointing that out but I actually think it might be senility, so what's even the point? The people whose opinions are worth something will have noticed.
 
Never is a long time. Most people, even a lot of Republicans, recognize that tailoring the party's appeal to nothing but angry old white men and scared old white women is a policy that cannot sustain for the long haul.
I just think that Republican's have illegally titled the playing field so much that their structural advantage will last until a while after we've returned to more normal politics. Sure, they are going to take a pounding through 2024 as a result of all this but they won't give up 2/3rds of both houses of Congress and lose the Presidency in that time span. They might satisfy one or two of those conditions but not all three.

And after things have returned to normal for long enough, people will forget how shameful all of this is and go back to closer elections across the board. It will take at least a decade to undo all of the damage that gerrymandering has done (remember, it took the Republicans over a decade to get to this point with it) and by then like I said, things will be more back to normal.

Yeah, ultimately, demographics aren't on the Republican's side but so long as their core voters turn out more frequently than Democratic core voters they can retain at least a healthy minority if not occasional majority for decades. (In my opinion)

And the damage done over the last decade at the state level is even more catastrophic than federal gerrymandering. See NC where the lame duck assembly took away many powers of the governorship before the upset Democrat could take office. They're awfully fond of saying elections have consequences but then do whatever they can to hold onto power. That type of power grab has repeated ad naseum across the country.
 
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Which is the relevance of Juanita Broderick. Bill Clinton was given a position of authority on much better evidence of both the single case and a pattern of behavior.
J

No one is claiming that Ronald Reagan being a drunken lout establishes precedent for Kavanaugh, because presidents are not the same as supreme court justices.
 
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Which is the relevance of Juanita Broderick. Bill Clinton was given a position of authority on much better evidence of both the single case and a pattern of behavior.


Rhetorical flourish is being childish because you can get away with it. He called you on a (failed?) attempt.

J


If you're going to insist on continuing this farce and keep pretending like it matters to you what happened to Juanita Broadderick, even though we already know that it doesn't really, could you maybe show the absolute smallest amount of respect to a rape victim and spell her ******** name properly?
 
I just think that Republican's have illegally titled the playing field so much that their structural advantage will last until a while after we've returned to more normal politics. Sure, they are going to take a pounding through 2024 as a result of all this but they won't give up 2/3rds of both houses of Congress and lose the Presidency in that time span. They might satisfy one or two of those conditions but not all three.

And after things have returned to normal for long enough, people will forget how shameful all of this is and go back to closer elections across the board. It will take at least a decade to undo all of the damage that gerrymandering has done (remember, it took the Republicans over a decade to get to this point with it) and by then like I said, things will be more back to normal.

Yeah, ultimately, demographics aren't on the Republican's side but so long as their core voters turn out more frequently than Democratic core voters they can retain at least a healthy minority if not occasional majority for decades. (In my opinion)

You're thinking too small here. By 2030 ether the country will be controlled by the Republicans as an apartheid/minority rule state, and there will be no meaningful elections at all, or things will have moved enough that we'll have been able to get rid of Kavanaugh. I don't see any middle ground between those two broadly-defined outcomes.
 
I just think that Republican's have illegally titled the playing field so much that their structural advantage will last until a while after we've returned to more normal politics.

If there is anything lacking the Democrats, and particularly in their younger and more idealistic membership, it is the acknowledgement that this IS normal politics.
 
If there is anything lacking the Democrats, and particularly in their younger and more idealistic membership, it is the acknowledgement that this IS normal politics.

Normal politics for a slave republic with a primitive and outdated Constitution and a two-party system in which one of the parties is a fifth-column bent on destroying everything worthwhile that the country has achieved, anyway.
 
You're thinking too small here. By 2030 ether the country will be controlled by the Republicans as an apartheid/minority rule state, and there will be no meaningful elections at all, or things will have moved enough that we'll have been able to get rid of Kavanaugh. I don't see any middle ground between those two broadly-defined outcomes.

Well, there's allowing that the citizenry of Stupidistan is entitled to set their own course and cutting them loose under their favored dear leader of the time and let them take Kavanaugh with them as chief justice on their court of supreme kangaroos. Or we could just goad them into the civil war they always yammer about being ready for and exterminate them.

Normal politics for a slave republic with a primitive and outdated Constitution and a two-party system in which one of the parties is a fifth-column bent on destroying everything worthwhile that the country has achieved, anyway.

Well, yeah. That could have gone without saying.
 
The next Democrat president, with a democrat senate, needs to bump the number of justices to 11.
 
@hobbsyoyo, it's worth pointing out that you wouldn't need any kind of legislative supermajority to pack the court - the Constitution doesn't set the number of justices or anything like that. The only reason it hasn't been done before is that it was a "norm" but to think that Democrats will care about that after the Trump Presidency is a bitter joke.
 
If there is anything lacking the Democrats, and particularly in their younger and more idealistic membership, it is the acknowledgement that this IS normal politics.
I'm not sure what you mean here. Are you saying Democrats tend to see this as normal politics or that they don't?

@hobbsyoyo, it's worth pointing out that you wouldn't need any kind of legislative supermajority to pack the court - the Constitution doesn't set the number of justices or anything like that. The only reason it hasn't been done before is that it was a "norm" but to think that Democrats will care about that after the Trump Presidency is a bitter joke.
This is a fair point that I had not considered. I still tend to think the Democrats are too softball to go through with this. And part of me really doesn't want us (as a country, not a party) to go down that route. But I guess things have become so treasonous and anti-rule of law that drastic actions are warranted. I am just too jaded I guess to see the Democrats pull it off.
 
I'm not sure what you mean here. Are you saying Democrats tend to see this as normal politics or that they don't?

Your post seemed to imply that this is a stage in our history from which we will step back, rather than being one more forward step in a long process that ends God knows where.

This is a fair point that I had not considered. I still tend to think the Democrats are too softball to go through with this. And part of me really doesn't want us (as a country, not a party) to go down that route. But I guess things have become so treasonous and anti-rule of law that drastic actions are warranted. I am just too jaded I guess to see the Democrats pull it off.

Well, I entirely agree with you if we're given the Democratic Party we have now. But that's not the party we're going to have in four or eight years.
 
I'm not sure what you mean here. Are you saying Democrats tend to see this as normal politics or that they don't?

They don't. They think that if they just "play fair" long enough that Republicans will will come around to playing a game that Republicans can't win just because that is the rules.
 
Your post seemed to imply that this is a stage in our history from which we will step back, rather than being one more forward step in a long process that ends God knows where.
Actually I was thinking about it and I sort of believe we've been heading incrementally in this direction since WWII as the Congress has handed over more and more power to the Executive. I too don't know where we will be getting off this ride.


I'm not really sure that we'll return to truly normal politics but given enough time, the least outrageous crap that the Republicans pull routinely will become the new normal. I guess I'm more arguing that light treason (to use a phrase) will become the new normal such that neither side would be held accountable for it when they engage in it. And of course only one side will engage in light treason so even as the demographics turn on them they'll be able to hold onto at least enough power to prevent a total wipeout.
 
@hobbsyoyo, it's worth pointing out that you wouldn't need any kind of legislative supermajority to pack the court - the Constitution doesn't set the number of justices or anything like that. The only reason it hasn't been done before is that it was a "norm" but to think that Democrats will care about that after the Trump Presidency is a bitter joke.

They won't do it for the same reason that they have seldom if ever violated such norms...they know that if they do the Republicans in turn will also, probably bigger (37 justices anyone?). What they have not considered in the past is that as the noose tightens on the Republicans they are going to violate norms anyway. That's what I was referring to as the lack in the Democrats.
 
The next Democrat president, with a democrat senate, needs to bump the number of justices to 11.

Isn't that the bridge too far that finally brought FDR to heel? Once the number of seats is mutable, the Court's power is gone. The politics of the hour are kid's story time compared to that one.

I mean, you are joking, right? The Republicans are reliably terrible, but rendering defunct the 3rd branch seems too Tammany to all but the <censored>.
 
Isn't that the bridge too far that finally brought FDR to heel? Once the number of seats is mutable, the Court's power is gone. The politics of the hour are kid's story time compared to that one.

I mean, you are joking, right? The Republicans are reliably terrible, but rendering defunct the 3rd branch seems too Tammany to all but the <censored>.
You cannot get off the both sides are bad bent can you? Do you really not see how the Republicans have already rendered the supreme court defunct, to borrow your phrase?

They're ramming through a potential attempted rapist and multi-perjuror for the love of sweet zombie jesus and yet the prospect of simply countering this through proportional (yet far less morally abhorrent) means makes the Democrats the bad guys?


They won't do it for the same reason that they have seldom if ever violated such norms...they know that if they do the Republicans in turn will also, probably bigger (37 justices anyone?). What they have not considered in the past is that as the noose tightens on the Republicans they are going to violate norms anyway. That's what I was referring to as the lack in the Democrats.
I fully concur that the Republicans will keep on acting in immoral and illegal ways as the noose tightens. That's precisely why I don't see Democratic super majorities ever again or at least not soon enough to make Kavanaugh's removal a relevant issue.
 
Actually I was thinking about it and I sort of believe we've been heading incrementally in this direction since WWII as the Congress has handed over more and more power to the Executive. I'm not really sure that we'll return to truly normal politics but given enough time, the least outrageous crap that the Republicans pull routinely will be seen as normal if they just get off the bat**** crazy wagon. I guess I'm more arguing that light treason (to use a phrase) will become the new normal such that neither side would be held accountable for it when they engage in it. And of course only one side will engage in it so even as the demographs turn on them they'll be able to hold onto at least enough power to prevent a total wipeout.

To me it is a broader issue than the usurping of Congressional prerogatives by the executive. That is part of the mix, to be sure, and it is a worrisome trend in that it has given Trump a freer hand than he would have had otherwise, but I think the issues at stake here are historically "larger" than that. Basically, the left had decisively won the culture wars by the mid-20th century (they won the battle of political-economic ideas even earlier, as the Depression showed everyone what the cult of the free market is worth, and the right-wing alternative to that cult, fascism, was discredited by World War II etc), and the right recognized that it could no longer make its honest case to the American people. So they got a few extra decades of power by engaging in a long-term intellectual project of redefining words and framing their attacks on civilization and the American idea as defenses of civilization and the American idea.

This worked for a while as a last-ditch effort to maintain power, but too many people have noticed that the actual consequences of right-wing policies are disastrous for everyone but the richest stratum of society. So, as Tim says, the noose is tightening on the Republicans...and as a result they are casting aside norms, becoming more-or-less openly contemptuous of democracy, because they know that they cannot achieve their political goals through the normal processes of parliamentary politics. And the problem is that the intellectual project worked, worked in a way that probably exceeded the wildest expectations of its architects. That is why we now have Trump, why even formerly moderate Republicans like James Comey or Norm Ornstein (the Ornstein piece was written in 2012, long before Trump) are coming out and saying that the Republican Party represents an unprecedented, existential threat to the US.

The sort of Constitutional failures that you're talking about with the Executive getting more and more power are sort of stress points where they system can easily be made to collapse entirely under the sort of pressure I'm talking about. When norms are so important for governing because your Constitution was written in 1789, for a party to decide that the norms and processes are to be treated as a vehicle for accomplishing partisan political objectives, is a fatal danger to the system.

This, incidentally, is why we need to completely overhaul the Constitution at the first opportunity. But that can only be accomplished after the real problem, the Republican Party, has been dealt with...one way or another.
 
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