We're in a pandemic

Excellence is still right in the grand scheme of things: churches around the country are still not allowed to hold services, singing in particular is strictly disallowed. Many families were forced to bury their loved ones without a proper funeral. Similarly, public political events are either still forbidden, or heavily frowned upon by the Democrats and public health experts.

And then, the lefty politician got a proper funeral, with lots of singing, significant blocks of the church where social distancing rules were grossly violated, and the entire thing served as a platform for Obama to give a political speech and interfere in the ongoing general election campaign. Needless to say that Obama broke with the unwritten rule that former presidents are supposed to stay out of day-to-day politics and not criticize their incumbent successors. And as the cherry on top, his speech proposed lots of norm-breaking policies like abolishing the filibuster in the Senate or admitting new states in a partisan fashion - norm-breaking policies which would amount to a blatant power grab by the Democrats. Elder statesman my ass.



But hurr durr, "the church had half-empty sections, it was not actually fully packed - why cant you raise good points or make meaningful contributions? I am so much smarter than you".

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Aug 1 2020 12:34pm

If anybody cares about breaking "unwritten rules" they aren't voting GOP anyway. Trump shits on norms and "unwritten rules" every day, so why even bring this up?

Oh, and abolishing the fillibuster in the senate was immediately done by the Republicans the in 2017, so you can eat a bag of dicks on that one.

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Aug 1 2020 01:35pm

Which was a continuation of a precedent set by the Democratic party. Besides, what was the alternative? Never appoint another SC judge? Gorsuch, in retrospect, has been a very good pick.

That's the age-old debate about whether we should hold Democrats to the standard Trump is setting, or to the standard they themselves had been calling for.



Like bogie said, it was the Democrats who nuked the filibuster for every single type of federal judicial pick below the SCOTUS. From there, it was only a minor step to get rid of it for SCOTUS picks as well.

It's not really "age old". Norms only exist if they are followed. When one side decides not to follow the norms, the other side has to respond in kind or they are handicapping themselves. Democrats are pussies so they've been handicapping themselves for a long time while the GOP violated every norm. I wish the Democrats hand the balls to fight back but they're paid to not do so. So it's not really hypocritical to say "we're now gonna violate norms we criticized you for breaking" because norms stop existing when they are being violated by one side or the other. Otherwise it's kinda like saying "I know we had an agreement not to punch each other, and I punched you, but that's hypocritical if you punch me back! I mean, yeah, I was gonna keep punching you..... but still!"

Democrats nuked the filibuster for political appointments except the supreme court because Republicans made historical obstruction efforts. And no, Trump's nominees being delayed is not the same thing since Obama submitted his appointments for research months ahead of the election and while Trump didn't have his submitted for months after, and plenty of GOP members openly admitted they had no problems with the appointments and only voted no to obstruct.

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Aug 1 2020 03:21pm

thought it was a Hoax?

yeah the hypocrisy is apparent, it’s fine during normal times but during a pandemic it just becomes all too clear what the real message is: “we” (the privileged in attendance at that political convention/funeral) matter and you (everyone else) dont

and i tend not to take posts seriously from people who think Pres Obama let “russia” go and ‘hack the election’. talk about anti-intellectual

This post was edited by excellence on Aug 1 2020 04:27pm

Fine, but then drop the goddamn holier-than-you act. Being the good/smart/noble/norm-upholding side has long been a part of Democratic self-branding, and it still is. The truth is that Democrats stopped acting in good faith too, and it already happened a long time ago. Goes back to at least 2012, if not even 2010. The major difference I see in this regard is that the Democrats still put in effort to give their partisan maneuvers a phony veneer of good faith so that they and their allies in the media can keep painting their side as "the constructive ones, the party of good governance".




Was it a scumbag move by the GOP to block Obama's judicial picks? Absolutely. Is it understandable that they nuked the filibuster to break this blockade? Absolutely. However, none of this absolves the Democrats from the responsibility for the choice they made. They had to pick between upholding the norms and traditions of the Senate, or getting their judicial picks through. They made a choice, and I dont blame them for it. I would have made the same choices in their situation.

They must nonetheless have known the consequences this choice would have further down the road, and I cant let it fly when they blame the other side for their own decision. Upholding norms is no big achievement when everything moves along nicely. Upholding norms when these norms have become inconvenient, that's what characterizes a true institutionalist.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Aug 2 2020 03:14am