Here's my personal opinion, just so it's clear.

There's a sliding scale of if it's appropriate to appoint a supreme court justice. The 3 scales are "time until election", "senate numbers", and "controversial nature of the pick".

In 2016 the pick was pretty uncontroversial, and it was 10 months until election. Holding up even having hears on the nomination that far out for an uncontroversial pick is harmful to our democracy as it is a clear action of bad-faith on the part of the minority party.

In 2020 it's 40 days to the election, pretty damn close. The nature of the pick is unknown. The senate is effectively a 53/47 split, not exactly a convincing number for one side. If Trump nominates a super milk-toast pick that everybody can largely agree on, it would be bad to refuse to have a hearing and possibly confirm a good-faith compromise nominee, however that nominee would have to be a very obvious olive branch to breach the gap so close to an election.


McConnel clearly leaned on how close we were to an election. He might have leaned on other things in some statements, but it's hypocritical to lean on time until election when it's 10 months out and then ignore it when you're 40 days out the next time. If your argument is "they voted in 2014 for a new senate, so that counts", then I can just say "well the people voted in 2012 for Obama knowing he would last until 2016, so that counts". There is no way around where you don't come out inconsistent, because McConnel is playing power politics. He doesn't care if he's hypocritical. Oh, and there's also the issue that senators aren't reelected every 2 years. Only 1/3rd are, so it's not exactly a "will of the people" thing when only 1/3rd of senators are selected whereas in 2012 100% of the people voted on the president.

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Sep 24 2020 10:48pm

No. The only conclusion you could arrive at based on the 2016 election is that Californians do not want Trump to have any say in anything. Once again, remove the 3.5m vote excess Hillary received in California, and Trump won the rest of the nation by 1.5 million votes.

The United States of America. California does not rule the nation, nor should they. This is specifically WHY the electoral college exists.

And once again, it does not MATTER who the President is. What matters is who the SENATE is. And Senate seats are popular votes conducted by each state. So, it was LITERALLY the popular votes of the states that allowed the vote to be deferred in 2016. It's LITERALLY the popular votes of the states that make it so the senate can push through Trumps nominee today. And it was the Democrat Senator Harry Reid who used the Democrat Majority power some 15 years ago to nuke the requirement of 60 votes and take it down to a simple majority that gives the Republican majority enough votes to pass said nominee.

Perhaps you should learn the system you're blathering about before constantly repeating such stupid, false, and irrelevant talking points.

I find the logic of "If we just erased millions of votes, then we'd see that Trump had more votes".

I mean, that's just simple math?

This post was edited by Handcuffs on Sep 24 2020 10:53pm

Awful lot of emotion here

If we just erase the most populous, most productive, and most important states in the union then Republicans would win everything!

Listen, if we were to first erase millions of peoples' expression of their want, we'd then be able to see what the people truly want. And what the people truly want, is coincidentally the same as what I want.

This post was edited by Handcuffs on Sep 24 2020 10:59pm

This had me rolling. Talk about emotional. First you go from claiming the Senate shouldn't do their job because you don't like what the result will be to claiming the EC shouldn't exist because you agree with one bankrupt state's desire to rule the nation it's doing it's best to turning into a homeless camp.

What's next. Gimme! Let's see what you've got. You've ignored all facts so far. Any more emotional appeal based on an election that's irrelevant or your opinions that don't matter?

I said none of that though. You're all emotion right now to the point you can't even read.

If we just remove the votes from TX the left always wins

Trump had 74 more electoral votes than Clinton. Texas only has 38 electoral votes. Even with the 55 votes California has, Clinton lost handily.

The system is set up as it is specifically to prevent the kind of nonsense you spout.

If I run the government of the most populace state, the easiest way to get them to vote how I want is bankrupt the state, make as many of them dependent on welfare as possible, then threaten that the welfare will go away if my candidate for Pres doesn't win.

Sound familiar, at all? Let's get past this whole tyranny of the majority talking point. Not only is it old, it's infantile.