US Politics, October 2018: next week will be even longer

lol i was waiting for that

He should be kicked out of the party

i wish there was an escape from all this, personally and nationally. clearly the system is broken. i don't know how an impartial observer of all this (which i've heard once existed) could believe this was an acceptable, durable governmental system. it lasted a little over 200 years, it had a good run, but this shit is over. the tragic part is that i'm not sure how this gets fixed without tearing it all down. things are so ugly right now.

What process would things have to go through to limit the duration of a SCOTUS tenure? Is that something that can happen with less tahn a 2/3s vote. I'm just wondering if it is any easier tahn impeaching a problematic judge.

if it benefits anybody human the GOP would probably vote against it anyway.

But I'm seeing comment that 16 years at maximum would be a good limit.

if the infection was just corruption in the government it would be easy, but it's spread to the brains of millions of voters

Would these problems be fixed by a different constitution/division of powers, like some kind of parlimentary system? Seems like the problem is the republican party

Xp

the constitution was brilliant because of its safeguards against corruption. those checks and balances held up well against stress over the years, but they need to be updated. what's happening now would make the founding fathers barf

and that's saying a lot because i believe they subsisted on a diet of mud with expired grapes mixed in back then

I'm looking at the bright side here and keeping in mind that every single person who ultimately votes to confirm Kavanaugh spends a fair amount of their time in public space, and I would hope that the citizens who disagree with their decision will fill every second of that time and every inch of that space politely expressing their discontent. While you or I might find it uncomfortable and overwhelming to be overrun by swarms of unhappy people during our every waking moment, I'm sure these elected representatives will welcome it as an expression of our storied democratic process.

It's great we are saving all these imaginary, unborn fetuses that are just a current wobble in the ballsac but fucking over lots and lots of sentient, autonomous life forms.

capital no longer needs american labor, and rather than transforming capital, americans are just trying to save their old standards of living. this is politics in a deeper sense than parties, and I see no reason to think americans will change their political ways.

i think it's more likely that political figures will just retreat further into the interior of kafka's Castle

xp

Vote in November, people.

xpost Yesterday one of the fathers in charlottesville was indicted for "assaulting an officer" during an anti-racism protest at a schoolboard meeting. Schoolboard that was equating BLM with confederate props.

I'm looking at the bright side here and keeping in mind that every single person who ultimately votes to confirm Kavanaugh spends a fair amount of their time in public space, and I would hope that the citizens who disagree with their decision will fill every second of that time and every inch of that space politely expressing their discontent.

they will forget in about a month.

Chris Coons, who helped hatch a deal for the FBI investigation is clearly insatisfied: “I think I’ve made my case as best I could, the materials are what they are, and it’s now left to senators to reach their conclusions.”

— Nicholas Fandos (@npfandos) October 4, 2018

this is the first time I've encountered "insatisfied"

JUst hoping that every pronounced step back catalyses a step forward.
BUt I think that creep stains what he touches so shouldn't be able to sit.

Insatisfied is a perfectly cromulent word.

Manchin already suggested he doesn't wanna be the 51st vote but may become one of the 50.

I think he's said the opposite?

one thing I've always found a bit bizarre was how unquestioned the idea of 'red state dems need to make specific vote x or y in order to help their re-election' is. like I buy the idea that manchin shouldn't be a bernie sanders figure, but I find it hard to imagine there are really moderate voters who swing their votes on exactly one vote these guys cast. voting for kavanaugh costs him something too, in that the wv dem base gets a bit disillusioned. idk, people just act like these things are directly transactional in a way that I'm not sure has ever been proven. he does need to portray himself as a moderate and not a radical, but that's an image that gets built up over time and isn't dependent on one vote. similarly I don't think the difference between 0 dems voting for something and 3 dems voting for something is actually that meaningful - if we lose the 'true count' then who cares what manchin does. I don't think any amount of symbolism here is worth more than improving our shot at taking back congress. but as I said I don't really know if these symbolic '52nd voter' votes translate the way that people act like they do.

look me in my eyes then tell me insatisfied

yes otm. I read an LGM article published this summer questioning what Manchin and Donnelly, to name two, get for voting for a conservative nominee. Manchin is popular enough to count many Republicans in his base, but the ones he lose he may compensate for by getting more Dem/left support.

*the ones he loses

I can't get no insatisfaction

wpost:

THE BIG IDEA: As senators today review the findings of the FBI’s investigation into sexual assault allegations against Brett Kavanaugh, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) looks increasingly poised to score a hat trick.

Not only are he and President Trump growing more confident that they will be able to wrangle the votes to confirm Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court — starting with a key procedural vote on Friday — handicappers also believe Republicans are more likely to maintain control of the Senate than they were a week ago because the party’s base has been so galvanized by the battle. And, even more importantly over the long-term, a Justice Kavanaugh — at just 53 years old — would help McConnell realize his long-term vision of tipping the balance of the nation’s jurisprudence to the right for a generation.

GOP pollster Chris Wilson said he’s seeing “similar trends” in local data from six states with competitive Senate races: Montana, Texas, Nevada, Arizona, North Dakota and Missouri. “Any Dem enthusiasm gap has been erased and even surpassed by GOP due to Kavanaugh hearings,” he tweeted this morning.

OK so the WaPost publishes claims by GOP pollsters who link to FOX News? OK.

'I remain unconvinced that Kavanaugh is a worthy nominee for the supreme court. I think an investigation is in order.'
(FBI agent grabs a crayon and spends three days carefully scrawling 'KAVONAW = OK' on the back of a Denny's placemat and passes it to the wavering senator in question)
'I am now convinced that Kavanaugh is a worthy nominee for the supreme court.'

nice hat trick: 2 of the 3 are about the same thing (kavanaugh getting confirmed), and the third (senate retaining control) is something that was likely anyway, with fivethirtyeight giving republicans a 2 out of 3 chance to retain control even at their lowest ebb of the election season so far

xp

but yeah, i agree that mcconnell is probably feeling incredibly evil and content today

Would these problems be fixed by a different constitution/division of powers

at least some of them, absolutely! the two-senators-per-state thing comes to mind. but specific to judicial appointments and without even changing the basic three-branches structure of the thing: you could eliminate life appointments to the court. you could lower the threshold for impeachment. you could enshrine the 60-vote threshold (eliminated by the "nuclear option") as a real requirement rather than a chummy old agreed-upon code. you could make "advise and consent" more specific, for example having a rule where if the senate doesn't take the nominee to a vote they get automatically seated (see merrick garland and about a million of obama's lower-court picks). there are countless other ways this process could be set up; some of them would probably have horrible unintended consequences of course but clearly the current system has also yielded those.

getting $$ out of politics would be nice too

yeah but those things fall under the header of reforms (as you noted.) there definitely needs to be legislation to address the abuses we have seen from the republican party. but the problem is still them, not the basic outlines of how the federal government is supposed to work

people were saying that the system is fracturing after 200 years so we need a new system. but it seems like any constitutional republic relies on norms and whatever. it could never survive a party like the modern GOP.

i agree with granny, though, that getting money out of politics is a huge one

The longer the basic structure of a given system is left essentially unchanged, the longer those given to exploitation (and they're always going to be there) will learn how to most effectively exploit that system in their favor.

you guys have all these plans but have u considered just waiting for death

Why wait when you can hasten.

Great job guys

handicappers also believe Republicans are more likely to maintain control of the Senate than they were a week ago because the party’s base has been so galvanized by the battle.

i don't really get this -- the people that have been "galvanized" were going to show up at the polls anyway! the only base that seems galvanized (in a "not voting-->voting") by any of this is on the left, surely?

I just walk around eating entire cheesecakes these days because fuck it that's why.

I'm sure the next thing to be shotgunned into law will be a couple billion dollars into Mitch's wife Elaine's budget to build a wall and repay benefactors.

Good luck getting ANY money out of US politics since money pretty much equals free speech. I think a first step would be forcing those superpacs and others to be more transparent where the money originates.

I may be incredibly naïve but I do not think ramming Kavanaugh through after a sham investigation is going to wind up being a good thing for the GOP come midterms

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/10/the-real-reason-the-white-house-told-the-fbi-not-to-interview-christine-blasey-ford/

...Forgoing these interviews undermines the FBI’s report and makes it easy for critics to contend that this has been a sham investigation. So why would the White House take such a step? The Democrats on Senate Judiciary Committee have a theory: Trump White House officials blocked an interview with Ford because they were worried about the FBI questioning Kavanaugh.

...Kavanaugh, that is, did not undergo a true and professional grilling. An FBI interview would have been a much different experience. “When you’re in front of the FBI, you cannot refuse to answer questions, you cannot attack the agents, you cannot change the subject,” a Democratic member of the committee says. “The White House did not want Kavanaugh in such a situation. And if he said anything to the FBI that could prove false, he could end up in a lot of trouble.”

Yet there was no practical way for the White House to keep Kavanaugh off that hot seat and still allow Ford to be interviewed by the FBI. A White House order to the FBI to proceed with the Ford interview but give Kavanaugh a pass would have been widely assailed as a transparent attempt to rig the probe. Consequently, Democrats believe, the White House had to instruct the FBI to strike both Kavanaugh and Ford from the list of interview subjects. (At the hearing, Ford noted her willingness to cooperate with an FBI investigation, and Kavanaugh repeatedly refused to express support for such a probe.)

...The White House instruction to not interview Ford and Kavanaugh, as could have been expected, has created a firestorm and undermined the credibility of the the FBI’s work and its report. The case remains unresolved. To many, it looks like the fix was in. Yet Trump and his aides, including White House counsel Don McGahn (a longtime friend of Kavanaugh), apparently preferred taking this hit over having Kavanaugh face federal investigators. It does make one wonder just what Trump, McGahn, and other White House officials feared about a Kavanaugh sit-down with the FBI.

xpost Possibly even for Trump. I mean, he didn't do anything and is still personally ineffectual as hell but, hey, two conservative justices were installed on his watch! Why not vote for the guy a second time!

you guys have all these plans but have u considered just waiting for death

lol but really tho, my mom (just turned 70) is SUPER into politics now, even more than she used to be. I would never say this to her but I think to myself jeez why spend your last decade or 2 fretting over all this shit. Makes me hate Republicans even more, giving my mom a coronary when she should just be at a park somewhere feeding birds and patting herself on the back for raising such a great son who is also v handsome and a giving lover.

Good luck getting ANY money out of US politics since money pretty much equals free speech.

money=speech now because of a very recent supreme court decision, but that (in theory) could either be overturned by a court decision or adjusted with a constitutional amendment. it's not inherent in the first amendment, which is a good amendment.

well yeah, but it's not gonna be reversed by a kavanaugh court

xposts I don't know how the elderly and infirm are even hanging in there at this point. The last two years have almost certainly shaved a decade off my life from the basic wear n' tear of constant stress.

You say you'll change the constitution, well, you know...