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US Politics: Ruthless ambition


Kalbear

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Just now, Kalibear said:

That people's faith in polls and fair elections and people turning out for Biden are all very much misplaced. I don't know how this is particularly surprising.

 

Oh I didn't say surprising.  Just silly.

1 minute ago, Kalibear said:

With a 5-4 decision setting I was expecting similar slow unravelling of laws for the next 4 years that might be survivable.

Well, if you were assuming Trump was almost certainly gonna win already, I don't see how this should change that much in terms of the shift from 5-4 to 6-3.  With all the health problems/amount of times Ginsburg has been hospitalized the past couple years I think we all knew she wasn't gonna last much longer if Trump got a second term.  I guess you could've hoped the Dems would take back the Senate, but if you're assuming Biden was gonna lose I don't see how you'd concurrently think they'd have a chance of doing so.

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9 minutes ago, DMC said:

Oh I didn't say surprising.  Just silly.

Well, if you were assuming Trump was almost certainly gonna win already, I don't see how this should change that much in terms of the shift from 5-4 to 6-3.  With all the health problems/amount of times Ginsburg has been hospitalized the past couple years I think we all knew she wasn't gonna last much longer if Trump got a second term.  I guess you could've hoped the Dems would take back the Senate, but if you're assuming Biden was gonna lose I don't see how you'd concurrently think they'd have a chance of doing so.

I honestly assumed that she could hold on for another few years. Not until 2024, but probably 2022. 

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1 hour ago, Triskele said:

The darkest thought I've had in a while is that the reports of what's happening at the border are a warm-up for the rest of the country.  Hope I'm overthinking it.  

I know its super paranoid, but I'm planning on getting together a suitcase of important papers and personal items before November in case things get bad quick and I have to get out of the US while I still can. Again, paranoid... but with things as volatile as they seem to be I don't want to wait until its too late. 

 

16 minutes ago, DMC said:

Well, if you were assuming Trump was almost certainly gonna win already, I don't see how this should change that much in terms of the shift from 5-4 to 6-3.

I'm mostly worried about the shift in narrative. Between COVID, the economy, and natural disasters I was pretty confident the current polls would hold and Trump would loose by a comfortable margin. Now I'm very worried that trump will be able to use the SC to dominate almost every news cycle between now and the election and potentially turn a blowout defeat into a narrow win/loss that will certainly end up before the courts. 

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11 minutes ago, tzanth said:

Now I'm very worried that trump will be able to use the SC to dominate almost every news cycle between now and the election and potentially turn a blowout defeat into a narrow win/loss that will certainly end up before the courts. 

I agree that the nomination/confirmation process will help Trump in terms of it dominating the news cycle rather than the (often self-inflicted) damaging news stories for him that tend to be the major headlines, but I'm not sure that actually moves the needle much in terms of vote share given how few true undecideds there are for this contest.

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1 hour ago, DMC said:

Completely agree, but like I said the other day talking to Maith, I think that means Gorsuch increases the likelihood the SC gives Trump the election by maybe 15-20%.  Hardly "ensuring" the election.  Unless you already had Trump's likelihood of prevailing at 80-85%.

I feel like if the election were to go to the SC, even before Ginsberg's passing, we were already fucked.  

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2 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

I feel like if the election were to go to the SC, even before Ginsberg's passing, we were already fucked.  

I think you'd need a bit more context than that. Roberts does want to protect the court's validity. 

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22 hours ago, Triskele said:

sologdin will be here soon to tell you all not to despair.

Are Dems not in an odd spot of sort of retro-endorsing Turtle's 2016 logic?

I think this is a truly fair point. By endorsing that BS, we're now saying what McConnell did is okay. It's not okay, and his act was the first big signal that they weren't going to play by any rules. This is what I mean when I criticize Dems. They are constantly reacting and not looking at the big picture. 

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15 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I think you'd need a bit more context than that. Roberts does want to protect the court's validity. 

Of course you would, since it's a hypothetical!  Only situation I see him flipping would be like a Sec State burning boxes of ballots on camera, combined with Trump's legal team arguing they spontaneously combusted.  He's already demonstrated that voting rights are more or less up to the states.  In another Florida 2000 situation he was never going to decide for Gore.

Anything that gives him the slightest amount of plausible deniability and he's going with the conservatives: 2 million registered voters in FL, GA, and OH are told they aren't registered?  Oh well!  

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3 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

Of course you would, since it's a hypothetical!  Only situation I see him flipping would be like a Sec State burning boxes of ballots on camera, combined with Trump's legal team arguing they spontaneously combusted.  He's already demonstrated that voting rights are more or less up to the states.  In another Florida 2000 situation he was never going to decide for Gore.

Anything that gives him the slightest amount of plausible deniability and he's going with the conservatives: 2 million registered voters in FL, GA, and OH are told they aren't registered?  Oh well!  

Yeah, that's a really good point. It was already hard to deal with incompetence from states being overturned. But when you have an executive branch that is completely cool with and possibly facilitating external attacks, the chances that the judiciary is going to somehow say 'oh wait, sorry, nope' is less than none. 

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9 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

Anything that gives him the slightest amount of plausible deniability and he's going with the conservatives

I kind of agree, but I still think there's a significant difference between how Roberts would rule if the case was blatantly stealing the election for Trump and the likelihood that Gorsuch will vote for such cases.  And that difference in requiring plausible deniability between the two is pretty much entirely due to Roberts' demonstrable self-interest in preserving the legitimacy of the court, something I don't think places as highly simply due to the former being the CJ and the latter not.

27 minutes ago, Fez said:

Really feel like folks in this thread need to dial-back the abject panic and fear a bit.

Well, have you discussed politics on any internet message board the past 20 years?  My reaction to overreaction and panic when talking politics in such venues is basically this:

20 minutes ago, Simon Steele said:

I think this is a truly fair point. By endorsing that BS, we're now saying what McConnell did is okay. It's not okay, and his act was the first big signal that they weren't going to play by any rules. This is what I mean when I criticize Dems. They are constantly reacting and not looking at the big picture. 

Entirely agreed.  Tom Scocca at Slate had a good post on this the other day:

Quote

What’s wrong with Donald Trump plotting to name his third Supreme Court justice is not that he is doing it in an election year, nor that it violates the consistency with which our rules ought to be applied. It’s that thanks to McConnell’s ruthlessness and shamelessness, Trump got to pick justices in a five-year window for his four-year term.

The “legitimacy of our courts” that Obama invoked was gone the moment Neil Gorsuch presented himself to the Senate for confirmation. The challenge for the Democrats isn’t to fight to preserve and extend a temporary and fictitious procedural norm from four years ago. It’s to seize back that stolen year, and that stolen seat, and control of the entire court. That, not any principle, is what Mitch McConnell was fighting for in 2016, and it’s the only thing worth copying from him now.

 

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46 minutes ago, DMC said:

I kind of agree, but I still think there's a significant difference between how Roberts would rule if the case was blatantly stealing the election for Trump and the likelihood that Gorsuch will vote for such cases.  And that difference in requiring plausible deniability between the two is pretty much entirely due to Roberts' demonstrable self-interest in preserving the legitimacy of the court, something I don't think places as highly simply due to the former being the CJ and the latter not.

Well, have you discussed politics on any internet message board the past 20 years?  My reaction to overreaction and panic when talking politics in such venues is basically this:

Entirely agreed.  Tom Scocca at Slate had a good post on this the other day:

 

I guess it's all in the details and specific situation, I just can't imagine that many (not that this signifies anything beyond my own lack of imagination) where this would change things.  

I mean, if Roberts was concerned about his legacy and the legitimacy of the court, maybe he would have had a different opinion on Citizens United.

eta: the part I bolded is where the details matter, and I think, are largely irrelevant.  If it had gone to the SC, even with RBG there it was already fucked.  

I really don't think that much has changed in the court balance, strictly election wise

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56 minutes ago, Fez said:

Really feel like folks in this thread need to dial-back the abject panic and fear a bit.

When there are as many people with the background or credentials to claim some level of authority or experience on states falling into authoritarianism sounding the alarm this is at least a little condescending.

Your government is locking literal children in cages and sterilising asylum seekers and that hasn't moved the needle at all. Your government has deployed federal agents and snatched people off the streets against the wish of the local government and again there hasn't been any real consequences for them doing that. Your government has signalled loud and clear that it's going after people like me, your governments supporters have clearly signalled other groups they'd also like their government to go after. 

It's not fucking alarmist to be afraid that they'll continue down the path they're already on if they succeed at dismantling democracy, steal the election and demonstrate there are no further judicial checks on their power. It's having your head in the sand to presume they won't.

Maybe what you're intending to downplay the chance they succeed at stealing the election, rather than the fear of what they'll do if they succeed but that's really not clear.

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20 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

I mean, if Roberts was concerned about his legacy and the legitimacy of the court, maybe he would have had a different opinion on Citizens United.

eta: the part I bolded is where the details matter, and I think, are largely irrelevant.  If it had gone to the SC, even with RBG there it was already fucked.  

Citizens United is a case that enhances his legacy among the people that share the ideology he's espoused throughout his entire career.  Conservatives or "textualists" are proud the court established that money = speech.  CU also had no impact on the public opinion regarding legitimacy of the court, and is unlikely to in the future - the people that (rightly, myself included) think the decision was appalling already had/have strong disapproval of the Roberts court.

As for the bolded, again I just disagree.  If Biden wins convincingly but Trump tries to bullshit his way to an EC victory by challenging results in a handful of swing states, I think there is a significant difference in how Gorsuch would rule compared to how Roberts would if he was still the swing vote.

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For some unknown reason, the Oscars had Eminem perform this year. I suspect anticipation of this situation is why and the audience seems to interpret it the same way. Acknowledging the seriousness of a situation and feeling the fear is one thing, but letting it affect you and your actions is a choice. I've been repeating Pelosi's "we don't agonize, we organize" to myself a lot lately.

 

Almost eerie how relevant this is. Even down to Salem's Lot.

-------------------------------------

Or more relevant to this site:

AGOT Bran I

"Yes, Father," Bran told him. He looked up. Wrapped in his furs and leathers, mounted on his great warhorse, his lord father loomed over him like a giant. "Robb says the man died bravely, but Jon says he was afraid."

"What do you think?" his father asked.

Bran thought about it. "Can a man still be brave if he's afraid?"

"That is the only time a man can be brave," his father told him.

 

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1 hour ago, DMC said:

Citizens United is a case that enhances his legacy among the people that share the ideology he's espoused throughout his entire career.  Conservatives or "textualists" are proud the court established that money = speech.  CU also had no impact on the public opinion regarding legitimacy of the court, and is unlikely to in the future - the people that (rightly, myself included) think the decision was appalling already had/have strong disapproval of the Roberts court.

As for the bolded, again I just disagree.  If Biden wins convincingly but Trump tries to bullshit his way to an EC victory by challenging results in a handful of swing states, I think there is a significant difference in how Gorsuch would rule compared to how Roberts would if he was still the swing vote.

Bolded: totally.  Now apply that method to any election related decision.  

If you were relying on the goodness and grace of John Fucking Roberts to delay the collapse of whatever the fuck this country is, I don't know what to tell you guys.  Yeah, Gorsuch is less likely to do that.  Doesn't really matter when Roberts was going to shit the bed to begin with .

To your bolded point: how would getting Trump a second term enhance Roberts' legacy among the people who share the ideology he's espoused his entire career?

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2 minutes ago, Triskele said:

You know all those "Trump is gonna replace Pence with Haley" or whatever arguments?  Those seem deader than dead now, right?

 

Actuaries would predict that Trump would have a great chance of dying in his 2nd term given age/lifestyle/diet/weight.  Obviously he is sustained by supernatural forces, but it feels not too far-fetched, just like all the "Harris will be POTUS soon talk" that a "Pence will be POTUS soon" statement isn't too crazy.  

Pence would be more on the "let's turn America's women into handmaids" side of the authoritarian coin to Trump's "let's get those looters put down by force" side.  

Jace the Patriot hopes for both.  

I still maintain there is a 50-50 shot (with little supporting evidence) that Trump has a major 'cardiac event' in the next few months.  Said event, of course, will immediately be declared an (attempted?) assassination...

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