"Will you shut up, man?" US Politics October 2020

I do worry that the lessons of 2000 still haven't permeated.

i'm glancing over it now

blue texas would be an amazing thing

Yes, it would. It's quite a long shot, but also the outcome I want more than anything else in this election.

My wife voted early in-person.

I am still intending to vote on the day, partly because of sentimentality and tradition, partly because I am still a little spooked about shenanigans and/or malarkey.

(This despite voting in what is among the bluest places in the universe - like 80% D.)

every vote counts when you're running up the score

i don't mean to jinx it, but it feels good right now

I wouldn't call it a total sign but: my dad, a generally conservative fellow in temperment but never rabidly right-wing, religiously or otherwise, never liked Trump from the get-go, and has been looking forward to voting him out. In talking with him on the phone today, though, I would say he's upped his feelings to a strong degree, complaining about GOP voter suppression tactics (which on top of his anger with the police after this year's horrors is quite honestly a shift I never really expected to hear) and generally conveying how ready he was to be done with the election. He's already sent in his ballot but there was a really vivid sense at how much he just loathed Trump. Now, he's one of those seniors that Biden is happily relying on, of course -- will turn 80 in December -- and again, it wasn't like he had done some complete 180. But as a measure of how much someone has been, however unintentionally, pushed to a particular place he might not have always found himself on a wider level, I do think his story is less anecdotal and more like a wider tendency playing out.

Bingo. My dad is a former 80s-90s conservative who is now just more a mild anti-PC curmudgeon who went from not-liking Trump but thinking he was treated unfairly in 2016 to wishing him dead in 2020.

This means Biden is going to support it. Coons is on the right of the party and wants a cabinet position.

Not only is Coons an institutionalist and a comparatively moderate Democrat, he’s also a member of Biden’s inner circle.

This feels like a big deal. https://t.co/VgQ1uEdarS

— B’’H (@mikeyfranklin) October 18, 2020

Coons is the worst sort of hack, so this is a big deal.

they have to. a 6 - 3 court will overturn any liberal legislation they pass. it's not just flashpoint issues like roe v. wade, literally anything that impinges on the "freedom" of corporations will be struck down.

please let it be true

I will be very surprised

"My mind is open but we just couldn't convince Joe Manchin/Kyrsten Sinema/etc."

o hai
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/arizona/2020/10/14/sen-kyrsten-sinema-opposes-court-packing-some-democrats-want/3645042001/

Opponents are correct in that "court packing" will likely destroy the Supreme Court, or at least spark some sort of constitutional crisis. Just the practicalities of it are hard to fathom. How many more justices do you appoint? And what happens further down the road, does the GOP just start appointing justices? How many? I have no idea how it all plays out, but the intent and behavior of the GOP over the last few decades doesn't leave a lot of room for alternatives. Can a justice be removed? I know it's never been done, right? Seems that packing the court could force opponent's hands and make them concede term limits, at the very least.

Josh the supreme court has already been destroyed.

Yeah that is noteworthy, esp w Coons being from DE. Sure the voters there are generally going to go Dem, but the corporations that are domiciled there and fund Coons probably don’t have any real issues w ACB at all, I’d venture even excited at a 6-3 court that will overturn any sort of progressive legislation.

How many more justices do you appoint?

anyway it has already been "packed"—it started with six and went briefly up to as many as 10 members

Let’s just keep upping the number of justices until every person in America of voting age is a justice. And then voila! Democracy!

Or at least until it outpaces the House.

They all have to have clerks so it's also a jobs program.

you don’t have to actually go to law school to be a justice right? Or did I make that up

we can all issue rulings via a new, judicial college

Nope. You don't even have to be a citizen. Or an adult.

Caligula's horse could have been a Supreme Court Justice.

my dissents will be epic. and probably get me kicked off Facebook

Josh the supreme court has already been destroyed.

Arguably, the Merrick Garland Gambit already destroyed the SCOTUS as a trusted institution. The Senate, too. If the situation is salvageable at all, the arms race initiated by the Federalist Society, Mitch McConnell and the far right wing of the Republican Party has certainly taken us to the very edge of that reality.

"My mind is open but we just couldn't convince Joe Manchin/Kyrsten Sinema/etc."

― Donald Trump Also Sucks, Of Course (milo z), Sunday, October 18, 2020 4:02 PM (twenty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

What is your fucking deal, dude?

o hai
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/arizona/2020/10/14/sen-kyrsten-sinema-opposes-court-packing-some-democrats-want/3645042001/

― Donald Trump Also Sucks, Of Course (milo z), Sunday, October 18, 2020 5:05 PM (twenty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

did you miss this follow up or something?

Maybe the "deal" isn't Milo's?

No, I didn't.

What is the beef

Milo throwing cold water over everything all the fucking time

Maybe redirect your ire at Kyrsten Sinema?

TS: Actually Throwing Cold Water vs. Predicting It

My forlorn hope is that the Republicans have gamed the system so hard, to the obvious detriment of the country, that it provokes a series of constitutional amendments that revise the system to make it far more democratic and responsive. The problem with that solution is the state legislatures which have to pass the amendments.

I hope Kyrsten Sinema changes her mind.

If I were Milo I'd do a sock stint to verify that a good half of my posts get smacked down on account of my signature

Just the practicalities of it are hard to fathom. How many more justices do you appoint? And what happens further down the road, does the GOP just start appointing justices? How many?

You appoint two. Four would probably cause a backlash. If the Dems can hold on to the Senate for the next 4-6 years, they'll get a chance to appoint more justices when Breyer and Thomas retire. Further down the road is not worth worrying about, because there are so many things in the immediate future that could radically change the political landscape. If Biden wins and the Dems get the House and Senate, removing the filibuster would be huge, because it would mean they could actually pass legislation. As would statehood for DC, which helps the Dems hang on to the Senate. And in the event of a landslide victory for Biden, we don't know what will happen to the Republican party.

I don't see it as throwing cold water when pointing out that centrist shitheads like Coons like are lying to you and already have their excuses lined up and out in the open.

Breyer needs to retire the minute Joe takes the oath. Seriously. Dude is 83 next year. Go The Fuck Away.

1. The president does not determine the size of the court; congress does.

2. Biden's least risky move is to say that "it's not up to me, it's up to the congress and the people they represent. I will bow to the will of the American people."

3. He can signal that he would likely sign a bill if it came to him with widespread popular support. That's not the same as advocacy.

4. The Biden campaign's main task right now is "don't fuck this up." So making the least risky move would probably be sensible.

5. Unfortunately he's already boxed himself in by saying he'll announce a position before Nov. 3. That may be a tactical mistake, because now he can't NOT come out as pro v. con.

6. Seriously can't we agree to call it court expansion or reform, not "packing"? "Packing" has mostly unpleasant connotations.

7. ...unless it's the Trump clan packing up their shit and leaving (rimshot).

7. Leaving the court as is - but making some other comparatively sweeping change (DC statehood, changing the apportionment rules, ending filibuster, legalizing weed at the Federal level) may bring Mitch to the table. Or maybe not, I don't fuckin know.

Oops, two 7s

I don't see it as throwing cold water when pointing out that centrist shitheads like Coons like are lying to you

Gee, thank you milo. Literally no one on ilx would think this was possible without you.

milo's schtick isn't tiresome because of the content, it's because of the implicit message that we are morons and he is the one tru head.

I'm more worried about a Democratic Senate that doesn't remove the filibuster than the Supreme Court balance, because if they win the Senate and don't kill the filibuster, the Democratic Party will achieve nothing legislatively for the next two years and then lose both Houses of Congress in 2022.

Manchin and Sinema are also expressly opposed to ending the filibuster.

*mind explodes*

By all means pack the court and do it urgently if necessary but there’s an obvious and politically easy response the republicans will make to that next time they have the chance.

Adding states that do not currently exist is a better move. It’s politically harder to fight since it’s so obviously fair, and the alleged republican response (split existing states hahaha) is logistically and politically difficult. Adding states is the thing they fear and for good reason.