Republicans- like playing the NBA finals with refs wearing red jerseys and can only call fouls on the opposing team. All calls have to go our way only, or game is rigged.
Never forget that this case was supposedly the weakest case of the lot. Ha! I always said it was as strong as any of the other cases, just not as BIG as the impact of the other cases on the foundations of America.
Donald Trump was found guilty of all 34 counts in his Manhattan trial, making him the first former president to become a felon.
Thursday, May 30, 2024 5:12 PM ET
Trump was convicted on all 34 counts of falsifying business records by a jury of 12 New Yorkers, who deliberated over two days to reach a decision in a case rife with descriptions of secret deals, tabloid scandal and an Oval Office pact with echoes of Watergate."
It's telling that CNN added the "Guilty" part to their pizza tracker. They could have made two versions of what is either an applet or a page on their website, and updated it once the verdict was known. They seem to think he's going to lose his case.
In Politico today “ The Alito scandal is worse than it looks” actually blames Biden and feckless Democrats for the actions of Alito and Thomas…. FFS really !? Then Bill links 2 other Politico posts with negative points about Biden and Dems.
I’ve really started taking Politico les and less seriously over the past few months and I’m taking Bill less and less seriously every day.
I think running on the SC is a terrible idea in the way Mr. Kristol envisions. Biden should stick to defending the rule of law and our institutions, he’s been doing a fine job of it so far. We do not need another issue where the impression is that our institutions are the issue — it has the effect of making Trumpist claims sound plausible, just attacking it from the left point of view. Champion the principles of liberal democracy, not partisan ideology.
I’m DONE with all Republicans… having been one my whole life until the past few years and having never voted for a Democrat, I will promise here and now that Nikki H. (Who for one second my husband and I said, “well maybe we could”) she F***ed us over. The Supreme Court is a disgrace, and it’s beyond belief how the crazy bullies on the right behave! They are a disgrace to all that is good and wonderful in our country. Now, we just have to get the Dems to grow up and learn to fight back!!!
To echo a comment I saw on another website, she should have waited until the verdict came in. Then she could have claimed Rs should vote for her because she wasn't a convicted felon.
I love bill but my god is he in his own head lately. Run against the institution is being an institutionalist? Don’t get me wrong the actions on Thomas and alito has been horrifying but what exactly would Biden run against? He can’t do anything!!! Nothing better than running to bring accountability to the SC and have them spit in your face making you look weak because they have all the power.
Bill here is the honest truth: if you want Biden to stand up to alito/thomas that is called packing the court. You keep trying to split the baby on playing hardball. Don’t do partisan speeches at westpoint but do it after! Yeah that’s it!!! If you want him to not listen to the rules than you can’t complain when it goes to far
Terry I don’t disagree with your logic at all. If you want to pursue this strategy you are absolutely right. However, bill doesn’t want this!!!! That’s my point. He wants an institutionalist to attack the institution but not actually do anything. My point is if bill really wants this strategy (he doesn’t) it inevitably leads to your conclusion
As I read Bill's comment, he is not advocating that Biden run against the institution--SCOTUS, and more broadly the justice system and the rule of law. He is saying, correctly IMO, that the Biden campaign can call out individual justices like Alito and Thomas who abuse their positions and thereby undermine judicial institutions, justice writ large, and the rule of law. Like the corrupt decision in Dobbs, SCOTUS rulings are also fair game in the campaign. Biden is running hard against Dobbs every day.
Obama faced down Alito in person during the 2010 State of the Union address shortly after the Citizens United decision. Obama's remarks, and Alito's reaction, were widely covered in the media. Justices do notice a public rebuke from the sitting president. So do reporters.
Biden can't do anything about SCOTUS between now and election day. He can reform it only if he is reelected. That is Bill's point. And Bill wants Joe to toughen up the against Alito Six on the stump. Yes!!
Nancy, I think we are missing each other here. Ok so Biden calls out Tomas and Alito…and then? What’s the fix? They are not retiring if Biden wins so then what?
It’s one things to say “look how bad these guys are…they are awful and they are taking away your rights” then people will ask the next obvious question “what are you prepared to do about it? Will you pack the court? They already stole 2 seats from you because they are willing to play hardball and you aren’t.” What is his answer here? Does he say “well I’ll wait until Alito and Thomas do the right thing!” It makes him look WEAK.
In general I’m not for packing the court but one of Biden’s biggest problems is that he looks weak. If he is willing to run on this then he has to run on it. He can’t split the baby because he just looks like he is whining. He can fix Dobbs tomorrow but he won’t because he is institutionalist.
We are not disagreeing on the big questions, Migs. That said, you lose me on the last sentence, if you mean literally that Biden "can fix Dobbs tomorrow but he won't." Exactly how can anyone "fix Dobbs tomorrow"? It's practically impossible to do anything about Dobbs and the Court (1) between now and November and (2) in the event trump wins. Biden needs to take a stronger stand on the Court and its corrupt majority precisely *because* he is an institutionalist.
“I (Biden) can solve Dobbs and rebalance the court because if you elect me I’ll add judges to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court was always meant to represent the number of circuits, 13, so I will add 4 more justices to the court. This way women can have appropriate healthcare. Yada yada yada”
I disagree with this strategy because (1) I think centrist will hate it, (2) democrats are whinny little bitches when it comes to playing hardball and (3) I don’t think we win the senate.
However, I kind of don’t care if it works. If it works for Biden then do it yesterday.
However, what i am disagreeing with is fundamentally bill’s idea of “run against the institution by saying bad things about the institution but have no plan to actually do anything about the institution.” Bill recommends this awful idea (not the one you are proposing) by proposing a strategy that doesn’t run against the institution.
It’s like saying the filibuster sucks. It’s killing us. It’s awful. Then someone asks “so are you saying you want to get rid of the filibuster? No no no. That is part of the institution!!!!” What good does that do?!?!
One of the things that bothers me about SCotUS is that no person/persons should be granted that much power/influence in what is essentially a permanent fashion (until death or (ROFLMAO) impeachment).
1) Impeachment is a non-starter, period. It is not a useful/reasonable check--as has been demonstrated. It has effectively been destroyed. Not sure it was ever actually effective or useful.
2) The selection process is widely seen as pretty bogus and manipulated, by everybody. People are happy when it works for their side and unhappy when it works for the other side.
This leads me to the conclusion that a position as SCotUS justice should not be a permanent position.
Art III Sect 1 says:
The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services, a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.
Which raises the question (in my mind) in that: Could the particular justices on the supreme court be randomly selected on a rotating basis from the larger population of appointed Federal Judges. IOW, you appoint federal judges as a body, who are then randomly assigned in the system (on a non-permanent basis). Which would make it less likely that you would have "conservative" and "liberal" court districts or appellate courts. You also could not cherry pick people to pick SCotUS justices.
Just a curious question.
As people may have noted I am in favor of a degree of (scientific) randomness in a lot of these things--particularly in replacing an elected legislature with a randomly selected citizen assembly. That is because I think that elections and they way that we are doing them are pernicious and wasteful and usually don't get people what they want (but do create an elite tending to oligarchy).
In fairness, where he lives is also the scene of the crime, which I've read is usually the determinative factor. But I've also read that only two judges work out of that courthouse, so it probably would have made more sense to do their "random" selection from a larger subset of the district judges.
Honestly there are probably a ton of great ways to make SCOTUS better. None of them are feasible because (1) to get the amount of votes in our legislature is impossible and (2) then the SC gets to decide if it’s constitutional (that’s a fail).
If you want to fix the court you’re going to have to pack the court. Then Republicans pack the court. This keeps going until we realize that it is completely dysfunctional and they go to option 1: legislation or amendment.
Honestly it’s the only choice. Problem dems won’t do it
Can't do it until Ds control Congress anyway. Do think that increasing the number, which is just a matter of law, to 13, the number of districts is the way to go. Nearly everything else requires constitutional changes. Founders didn't think this issue all the way. Then again, they were human after all. Though impeachment was a weapon people could have used, and didn't. Too much faith in education perhaps back then?
As I have noted elsewhere, we have reached a point where the system is at or about to hit the point of failure... and there isn't going to be much done about it until we actually hit that point of failure.
As a whole, the people are largely dissatisfied with the state of things. They are often not exactly sure WHAT they are dissatisfied with. They are not really sure why things are not working to their satisfaction. They are not exactly sure of what needs to be done to fix things.
The various factions of the population are also dissatisfied about different things.
But this deep level of dissatisfaction exists. People do not feel like they are getting what they want--because the reality is that the system is not set up to give them what they want. It is (ideally) set up to chart a moderate, centrist court (with a strong bias towards the rich/propertied) that slow walks changes and preserves the status quo.
And a lot of people are unhappy with the status quo--mostly people who are not white or male or particularly religious.
And a lot of white, male, religious (for values of religion) people are fighting the first group... and they have the advantages built into the system. To the point that they are rolling back changes that were intended to shift the status quo. It also helps that many of the people in positions of power and influence belong to that group or possess massive wealth.
And this mess will continue until it breaks the system and you get chaos or until one side is decisively triumphant and breaks the system themselves to get what they want.
The MAGA faction is pretty clear about their intention to break the system and about what they want. They also have a very good chance of succeeding (about 50-50 at the moment).
The Democratic Party (Center) is pretty clear about not wanting to break the system--but also clear about not REALLY wanting to change things too much (centrists rarely are in favor of changing things too much). This is because of their coalition nature.
The Left is also in favor of breaking the system--but the sad (for them) reality is that they are enormously outnumbered by the other factions and don't have a prayer of doing it.
If the Democratic Party wins this round, things will continue to not actually change much. Dissatisfaction will continue and even increase, setting the stage for the eventual triumph of MAGA at some point. Because the reality is (as pointed out in the past by many) that the Democratic Party has to win EVERY time. MAGA only has to win once. That is the advantage of being the people who want to break things. even more so when you have the ability to actually stop the Democrats from doing things or being successful by sabotaging their efforts in the legislature and through your control of the Supreme Court.
Moderates and institutionalists tend to get defeated by the passionate breakers of things--to the regret, in the end, of just about everybody but a few.
My own personal thought/opinion is that things need to change. Many things about our system need to be re-evaluated to bring things back into functionality. Particularly how SCotUS is constituted and how our elections work.
If you cannot do this in a controlled and thoughtful fashion, at some point someone is going to do it in an uncontrolled and thoughtless fashion.
The only viable way to prevent MAGA from winning only once and bringing the whole show to an end is for the Republicans to be replaced with a new Center-Right party that shares (or exceeds) the Democrats' commitment to a liberal democratic republic. That's why I'm so tired of all the whining from the Right that "oh, it's so HARD!", "oh, it costs so much MONEY!", and on and on. "They would have liked to have kept their country but it was too hard." is one hell of an epitaph.
- Establish a plan for (1-1.5M?) Democrats from CA/NY to move to TX for a period of up to 1 year to turn TX blue top to bottom
-Once TX blue, GOP could functionally no longer win the Presidency
-TX join National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (you would need 1-2-3 more states to get over 270, but TX gets a huge chunk closer)
-Rinse/repeat per state as necessary
-Work to pass a nationwide voting regulations mandating jungle primaries and ranked choice voting; this more than anything would marginalize the extremes on both sides (Alaska is proof positive)
I feel like concrete plans such as the above could be achieved because it gives people something to focus on, and everyone working towards the same thing, instead of sitting around wringing our hands saying "things are terrible! what are we going to do?"
The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is unconstitutional and so is a non-starter, but a Blue Texas would make it a cinch to take the ceiling off the size of the House of Representatives, which would increase the size of the Electoral College and have pretty much the same effect constitutionally.
The pathway to change starts with changing elections. But the politicians in red-controlled states are not going to be the ones to vote for that because they know it would cost them control.
I also find the idea of somehow convincing a million+ Democrats to move to a red state or states to be more than a little far-fetched. That is basically a non-starter in any reasonable time frame.
As we've discussed elsewhere, I think that the pathway to change starts with correcting the imbalance of state delegations in the House of Representatives. That seemingly technical reform that doesn't require a constitutional amendment would have enormous downstream impact, including probably even making the amendment process a little easier. I'm not opposed to your ideas for changing elections, but I think that they're a total Hail Mary, at least at the federal level.
Over 50 years ago, the GOP set its sights on remaking and packing the Supreme Court. Now they have accomplished that, getting the 6-3 conservative Court of their dreams. They now enjoy a 61% disapproval rating, and that percentage can’t all be Democrats.
I used to say that attaining the position of Supreme Court Justice with a lifetime appointment, thus jettisoning answer ability to partisan voters, probably leads to a greater devotion by them to Justice and fairness. Justices Thomas and Alito and their flagrantly political spouses have cured me of that.
I've been thinking for the past few years: get rid of the Supreme Court. Greatly expand the number of Circuit Court judges, and quarterly pull in 15 random judges to decide which cases to near in the next quarter, and hear/decide the selected cases from the previous quarter. Have them decide anonymously, or publicized - doesn't matter to me. Just take politics and BS out of the whole equation.
Bonus if we could issue "jurist" instructions to ignore strict constructionism and have the lode star be how decisions affect the current times instead of the old-timey days..
Republicans support our system of justice like they support elections. Only if our side wins are either of them fair or legitimate.
Republicans- like playing the NBA finals with refs wearing red jerseys and can only call fouls on the opposing team. All calls have to go our way only, or game is rigged.
Never forget that this case was supposedly the weakest case of the lot. Ha! I always said it was as strong as any of the other cases, just not as BIG as the impact of the other cases on the foundations of America.
"BREAKING NEWS
Donald Trump was found guilty of all 34 counts in his Manhattan trial, making him the first former president to become a felon.
Thursday, May 30, 2024 5:12 PM ET
Trump was convicted on all 34 counts of falsifying business records by a jury of 12 New Yorkers, who deliberated over two days to reach a decision in a case rife with descriptions of secret deals, tabloid scandal and an Oval Office pact with echoes of Watergate."
YES!!!!!!!!!!!
This just in. Guilty on all counts. "Lock him up!"
It's telling that CNN added the "Guilty" part to their pizza tracker. They could have made two versions of what is either an applet or a page on their website, and updated it once the verdict was known. They seem to think he's going to lose his case.
In Politico today “ The Alito scandal is worse than it looks” actually blames Biden and feckless Democrats for the actions of Alito and Thomas…. FFS really !? Then Bill links 2 other Politico posts with negative points about Biden and Dems.
I’ve really started taking Politico les and less seriously over the past few months and I’m taking Bill less and less seriously every day.
I stopped paying attention when they kept pushing Tara Reade even after her stories were shredded.
I think running on the SC is a terrible idea in the way Mr. Kristol envisions. Biden should stick to defending the rule of law and our institutions, he’s been doing a fine job of it so far. We do not need another issue where the impression is that our institutions are the issue — it has the effect of making Trumpist claims sound plausible, just attacking it from the left point of view. Champion the principles of liberal democracy, not partisan ideology.
I’m DONE with all Republicans… having been one my whole life until the past few years and having never voted for a Democrat, I will promise here and now that Nikki H. (Who for one second my husband and I said, “well maybe we could”) she F***ed us over. The Supreme Court is a disgrace, and it’s beyond belief how the crazy bullies on the right behave! They are a disgrace to all that is good and wonderful in our country. Now, we just have to get the Dems to grow up and learn to fight back!!!
To echo a comment I saw on another website, she should have waited until the verdict came in. Then she could have claimed Rs should vote for her because she wasn't a convicted felon.
I love bill but my god is he in his own head lately. Run against the institution is being an institutionalist? Don’t get me wrong the actions on Thomas and alito has been horrifying but what exactly would Biden run against? He can’t do anything!!! Nothing better than running to bring accountability to the SC and have them spit in your face making you look weak because they have all the power.
Bill here is the honest truth: if you want Biden to stand up to alito/thomas that is called packing the court. You keep trying to split the baby on playing hardball. Don’t do partisan speeches at westpoint but do it after! Yeah that’s it!!! If you want him to not listen to the rules than you can’t complain when it goes to far
The court has already been packed by the Trump, Leonard Leo and Federalist Society. The remedy is to unpack it.
Terry I don’t disagree with your logic at all. If you want to pursue this strategy you are absolutely right. However, bill doesn’t want this!!!! That’s my point. He wants an institutionalist to attack the institution but not actually do anything. My point is if bill really wants this strategy (he doesn’t) it inevitably leads to your conclusion
As I read Bill's comment, he is not advocating that Biden run against the institution--SCOTUS, and more broadly the justice system and the rule of law. He is saying, correctly IMO, that the Biden campaign can call out individual justices like Alito and Thomas who abuse their positions and thereby undermine judicial institutions, justice writ large, and the rule of law. Like the corrupt decision in Dobbs, SCOTUS rulings are also fair game in the campaign. Biden is running hard against Dobbs every day.
Obama faced down Alito in person during the 2010 State of the Union address shortly after the Citizens United decision. Obama's remarks, and Alito's reaction, were widely covered in the media. Justices do notice a public rebuke from the sitting president. So do reporters.
Biden can't do anything about SCOTUS between now and election day. He can reform it only if he is reelected. That is Bill's point. And Bill wants Joe to toughen up the against Alito Six on the stump. Yes!!
Nancy, I think we are missing each other here. Ok so Biden calls out Tomas and Alito…and then? What’s the fix? They are not retiring if Biden wins so then what?
It’s one things to say “look how bad these guys are…they are awful and they are taking away your rights” then people will ask the next obvious question “what are you prepared to do about it? Will you pack the court? They already stole 2 seats from you because they are willing to play hardball and you aren’t.” What is his answer here? Does he say “well I’ll wait until Alito and Thomas do the right thing!” It makes him look WEAK.
In general I’m not for packing the court but one of Biden’s biggest problems is that he looks weak. If he is willing to run on this then he has to run on it. He can’t split the baby because he just looks like he is whining. He can fix Dobbs tomorrow but he won’t because he is institutionalist.
We are not disagreeing on the big questions, Migs. That said, you lose me on the last sentence, if you mean literally that Biden "can fix Dobbs tomorrow but he won't." Exactly how can anyone "fix Dobbs tomorrow"? It's practically impossible to do anything about Dobbs and the Court (1) between now and November and (2) in the event trump wins. Biden needs to take a stronger stand on the Court and its corrupt majority precisely *because* he is an institutionalist.
Nancy my bad. I meant the following:
“I (Biden) can solve Dobbs and rebalance the court because if you elect me I’ll add judges to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court was always meant to represent the number of circuits, 13, so I will add 4 more justices to the court. This way women can have appropriate healthcare. Yada yada yada”
I disagree with this strategy because (1) I think centrist will hate it, (2) democrats are whinny little bitches when it comes to playing hardball and (3) I don’t think we win the senate.
However, I kind of don’t care if it works. If it works for Biden then do it yesterday.
However, what i am disagreeing with is fundamentally bill’s idea of “run against the institution by saying bad things about the institution but have no plan to actually do anything about the institution.” Bill recommends this awful idea (not the one you are proposing) by proposing a strategy that doesn’t run against the institution.
It’s like saying the filibuster sucks. It’s killing us. It’s awful. Then someone asks “so are you saying you want to get rid of the filibuster? No no no. That is part of the institution!!!!” What good does that do?!?!
WRT SCotUS:
One of the things that bothers me about SCotUS is that no person/persons should be granted that much power/influence in what is essentially a permanent fashion (until death or (ROFLMAO) impeachment).
1) Impeachment is a non-starter, period. It is not a useful/reasonable check--as has been demonstrated. It has effectively been destroyed. Not sure it was ever actually effective or useful.
2) The selection process is widely seen as pretty bogus and manipulated, by everybody. People are happy when it works for their side and unhappy when it works for the other side.
This leads me to the conclusion that a position as SCotUS justice should not be a permanent position.
Art III Sect 1 says:
The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services, a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.
Which raises the question (in my mind) in that: Could the particular justices on the supreme court be randomly selected on a rotating basis from the larger population of appointed Federal Judges. IOW, you appoint federal judges as a body, who are then randomly assigned in the system (on a non-permanent basis). Which would make it less likely that you would have "conservative" and "liberal" court districts or appellate courts. You also could not cherry pick people to pick SCotUS justices.
Just a curious question.
As people may have noted I am in favor of a degree of (scientific) randomness in a lot of these things--particularly in replacing an elected legislature with a randomly selected citizen assembly. That is because I think that elections and they way that we are doing them are pernicious and wasteful and usually don't get people what they want (but do create an elite tending to oligarchy).
Aileen Cannon on the documents case is a product of randomness.
Not really. She was appointed as one of the judges in the district where Trump lives. I seriously doubt that was unintentional.
In fairness, where he lives is also the scene of the crime, which I've read is usually the determinative factor. But I've also read that only two judges work out of that courthouse, so it probably would have made more sense to do their "random" selection from a larger subset of the district judges.
Random to the extent that she got the documents case as opposed to any of the other judges in her district.
Honestly there are probably a ton of great ways to make SCOTUS better. None of them are feasible because (1) to get the amount of votes in our legislature is impossible and (2) then the SC gets to decide if it’s constitutional (that’s a fail).
If you want to fix the court you’re going to have to pack the court. Then Republicans pack the court. This keeps going until we realize that it is completely dysfunctional and they go to option 1: legislation or amendment.
Honestly it’s the only choice. Problem dems won’t do it
As JVL asks the question, what are the remedies? There are none regarding The SCOTUS. Won't happen.
There is one…pack the court but dems won’t do it
Can't do it until Ds control Congress anyway. Do think that increasing the number, which is just a matter of law, to 13, the number of districts is the way to go. Nearly everything else requires constitutional changes. Founders didn't think this issue all the way. Then again, they were human after all. Though impeachment was a weapon people could have used, and didn't. Too much faith in education perhaps back then?
Nope only need the senate to expand the court. I’m all for a play hardball strategy but you have to play hardball.
No, the number of justices is established by law, and can only be changed by law, i.e., both Houses plus the President.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judiciary_Act_of_1869
In support of the Palestinian people being pro-Hammas. People can walk,chew gum, and think at the same time.
But if they mouth Hamas slogans and catchphrases while doing it they become suspect, and rightly so.
You mean the river to the sea slogan? That slogan first appeared in 1972 Israeli Likud party platform.
Neither is being critical of Israel’s war tactics being antisemitic,nor is speaking up
Regarding Bill Kristol’s point about criticizing judges is not the same as the judicial system
As I have noted elsewhere, we have reached a point where the system is at or about to hit the point of failure... and there isn't going to be much done about it until we actually hit that point of failure.
As a whole, the people are largely dissatisfied with the state of things. They are often not exactly sure WHAT they are dissatisfied with. They are not really sure why things are not working to their satisfaction. They are not exactly sure of what needs to be done to fix things.
The various factions of the population are also dissatisfied about different things.
But this deep level of dissatisfaction exists. People do not feel like they are getting what they want--because the reality is that the system is not set up to give them what they want. It is (ideally) set up to chart a moderate, centrist court (with a strong bias towards the rich/propertied) that slow walks changes and preserves the status quo.
And a lot of people are unhappy with the status quo--mostly people who are not white or male or particularly religious.
And a lot of white, male, religious (for values of religion) people are fighting the first group... and they have the advantages built into the system. To the point that they are rolling back changes that were intended to shift the status quo. It also helps that many of the people in positions of power and influence belong to that group or possess massive wealth.
And this mess will continue until it breaks the system and you get chaos or until one side is decisively triumphant and breaks the system themselves to get what they want.
The MAGA faction is pretty clear about their intention to break the system and about what they want. They also have a very good chance of succeeding (about 50-50 at the moment).
The Democratic Party (Center) is pretty clear about not wanting to break the system--but also clear about not REALLY wanting to change things too much (centrists rarely are in favor of changing things too much). This is because of their coalition nature.
The Left is also in favor of breaking the system--but the sad (for them) reality is that they are enormously outnumbered by the other factions and don't have a prayer of doing it.
If the Democratic Party wins this round, things will continue to not actually change much. Dissatisfaction will continue and even increase, setting the stage for the eventual triumph of MAGA at some point. Because the reality is (as pointed out in the past by many) that the Democratic Party has to win EVERY time. MAGA only has to win once. That is the advantage of being the people who want to break things. even more so when you have the ability to actually stop the Democrats from doing things or being successful by sabotaging their efforts in the legislature and through your control of the Supreme Court.
Moderates and institutionalists tend to get defeated by the passionate breakers of things--to the regret, in the end, of just about everybody but a few.
My own personal thought/opinion is that things need to change. Many things about our system need to be re-evaluated to bring things back into functionality. Particularly how SCotUS is constituted and how our elections work.
If you cannot do this in a controlled and thoughtful fashion, at some point someone is going to do it in an uncontrolled and thoughtless fashion.
The only viable way to prevent MAGA from winning only once and bringing the whole show to an end is for the Republicans to be replaced with a new Center-Right party that shares (or exceeds) the Democrats' commitment to a liberal democratic republic. That's why I'm so tired of all the whining from the Right that "oh, it's so HARD!", "oh, it costs so much MONEY!", and on and on. "They would have liked to have kept their country but it was too hard." is one hell of an epitaph.
But the reality is that epitaph is probably a common one.
Operation Restore Democracy:
- Establish a plan for (1-1.5M?) Democrats from CA/NY to move to TX for a period of up to 1 year to turn TX blue top to bottom
-Once TX blue, GOP could functionally no longer win the Presidency
-TX join National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (you would need 1-2-3 more states to get over 270, but TX gets a huge chunk closer)
-Rinse/repeat per state as necessary
-Work to pass a nationwide voting regulations mandating jungle primaries and ranked choice voting; this more than anything would marginalize the extremes on both sides (Alaska is proof positive)
I feel like concrete plans such as the above could be achieved because it gives people something to focus on, and everyone working towards the same thing, instead of sitting around wringing our hands saying "things are terrible! what are we going to do?"
The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is unconstitutional and so is a non-starter, but a Blue Texas would make it a cinch to take the ceiling off the size of the House of Representatives, which would increase the size of the Electoral College and have pretty much the same effect constitutionally.
How is it unconstitutional?
The pathway to change starts with changing elections. But the politicians in red-controlled states are not going to be the ones to vote for that because they know it would cost them control.
I also find the idea of somehow convincing a million+ Democrats to move to a red state or states to be more than a little far-fetched. That is basically a non-starter in any reasonable time frame.
As we've discussed elsewhere, I think that the pathway to change starts with correcting the imbalance of state delegations in the House of Representatives. That seemingly technical reform that doesn't require a constitutional amendment would have enormous downstream impact, including probably even making the amendment process a little easier. I'm not opposed to your ideas for changing elections, but I think that they're a total Hail Mary, at least at the federal level.
Over 50 years ago, the GOP set its sights on remaking and packing the Supreme Court. Now they have accomplished that, getting the 6-3 conservative Court of their dreams. They now enjoy a 61% disapproval rating, and that percentage can’t all be Democrats.
I used to say that attaining the position of Supreme Court Justice with a lifetime appointment, thus jettisoning answer ability to partisan voters, probably leads to a greater devotion by them to Justice and fairness. Justices Thomas and Alito and their flagrantly political spouses have cured me of that.
If it walks like an ideologue, talks like an ideologue, acts like an ideologue, it must be an ideologue.
I've been thinking for the past few years: get rid of the Supreme Court. Greatly expand the number of Circuit Court judges, and quarterly pull in 15 random judges to decide which cases to near in the next quarter, and hear/decide the selected cases from the previous quarter. Have them decide anonymously, or publicized - doesn't matter to me. Just take politics and BS out of the whole equation.
Bonus if we could issue "jurist" instructions to ignore strict constructionism and have the lode star be how decisions affect the current times instead of the old-timey days..
Nice ideas. Not happening.
Though Congress can expand the number of judges, etc. Those are determined by Congress, not the Constitution.