There is no precedent or norm that demands the president and the Senate willingly give up a SC pick. It has never been done.

Court packing is an extreme step, and one that will be seen as an extreme step. There's no going back and "bashing out a deal" once there's a precedent for violating the integrity of the courts and stacking it with political cronies.

The fact that there are so few openings practically ensures that the nominees today, left or right, are among the country's brightest legal minds. The Court itself derives power and prestige from that exclusivity. Making it the plaything of Congress, with 15 judges or 25, back down to 12, then to 18, will destroy that entirely.

Some of the arguments in 2016 were that the SC pick should be left to voters because it was an election year. Lindsey Graham believed it enough to say in 2018 he wouldn't confirm a Trump pick in 2020. I don't recall senators in 2016 making pure political power arguments, but it turns out that's what it was.

I think what McConnell and Republicans did by blocking Obama's pick, nuking the filibuster for SC picks, and now apparently confirming Trump's pick 40 days out from an election is extreme. Removing the filibuster and packing the court will be extreme as well. The escalation continues.

Labeling Democrat picks "political chronies", even though the number of votes required to confirm them will be the same as Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, is just silly. Not to mention Kavanaugh's employment history.

Expanding the court by 2 seats will give it more legitimacy with Democrats, and less with Republicans. The shenanigans from Republicans since 2016 will crater the court's legitimacy with Democrats. All paths lead to less legitimacy.

Icemage arsonist.

I'll let Lindsey Graham explain what he meant and why he changed his mind.

The Senate and President disagreed. An election was required to break the stalemate. The Republicans won, and got their pick.

The filibuster was killed by Reid. You don't get to decide "this one is still off limits" just because you didn't have a seat to fill at the time. The voters decided, Trump got his mandate, it is ridiculous to think that the Democrats were going to be allowed to filibuster every appointment for 4 years straight.

Stacking a Court with additional appointments specifically to dilute the power of the existing justices will create the perception that the Court is an appendage of Congress. That is why RBG herself opposed court-packing. You can't have an independent judiciary when Congress packs it with an ever expanding list of less and less qualified judges.

This whole ideological stalemate between liberals and conservatives can only end if one side is able to achieve a comprehensive victory and dominate several election cycles in a row. Think of the way FDR and his New Deal coalition stomped the laissez-faire Republicans of the 1920s and ushered in an era of Democratic dominance that lasted until 1968.




Lol!


Omegalol!

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Sep 22 2020 09:38am

The Democrats absolutely will not add seats or even put up a significant challenge to Trump's appointment. They are varying degrees of complicit to simply spineless.




He changed his mind because of blackmail. That's obvious.

Harry Reid was a long time ago.

This post was edited by inkanddagger on Sep 22 2020 09:46am

People like Trump and Bernie are popular because Congress doesn't have the power to get things done, even with control of government. The gridlock alienates voters and pushes them to the extreme.



You're going back and forth... sometimes invoking norms, sometimes arguing pure power politics.

The filibuster for SC picks was nuked by McConnell. It's just a fact. If you want to argue that was justified because Democrats would've held up any pick, that's a fair argument. But that was the rationale for Reid nuking the filibuster on lower court picks... a reaction to obstruction. And the Democrats escalating will be a reaction to McConnell's obstruction and escalation. It's a fool's errand to try to absolve any one side of blame in this fight.

You're simply assuming Democrats will nominate picks that aren't qualified. I don't see why they would do that.

Anyway, I'm not saying packing the court is a good thing, but it's a reasonable escalation to the actions of Republicans since 2016.



Or we can remove the filibuster, allow majorities to govern, and America will decide who does it better. The do-nothing Congress makes all of this worse. It encourages hyperpartisanship, gives the executive reason to overreach, etc.

I'm saying that the narrative that this is some form of Machiavellian politics is false. Not only do the Republicans have the ability, there's no pretender of a norm being broken.

Removing the filibuster for SC picks was a formality. The alternative was allowing Democrats to stop all nominees for 4 years. Harry Reid can argue that removing it was necessary, maybe, maybe not. Both pale in comparison to packing the Court for the singular purpose of achieving an ideological result. You're taking about permanently destroying the independence of the Judicial branch.

Aside, they're less qualified because there are only so many top tier judges, not because Dems or Republicans are choosing.

as just a sideline addition, democrats did talk for years about how Obama should be nominated and ive heard his name as an RBG successor years ago when she started to get sick.

not that it would happen, i hope, but it has been talked about.

even with his law training he's no more qualified than Ted Cruz. outsiders are well and dandy in politics, stupid and ineffectual usually, but outsiders in the scotus is just dumb.

This post was edited by thesnipa on Sep 22 2020 11:11am