US Politics: Ruthless ambition

[Martell Spy]

1 hour ago, Gaston de Foix said:

It's a done deal.  The Trump trio (Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett) will dominate the Supreme Court for many years to come.  

The Senate Dems will not have the numbers for Court packing.  And it's also a bad idea substantively. 

If there is a silver lining, it is the utter bad faith of the Republican caucus will galvanize the usually pusillanimous Democrats. 

We can hope for is a package of political and judicial reforms that includes a mandatory retirement age for federal judges and mandatory ethics obligations.  Automatic voter registration, election day a federal holiday, abolish gerrymandering.  Then Biden and Congress should do gun reform, immigration reform, climate change.  Just get shit done.  Fuck bipartisanship, fuck deliberation and especially fuck Lindsay Graham. 

Congress should also pass a law legalizing abortion. This will not stop the Court from overturning Roe or even overturning laws passed by Congress on federalism/commerce clause/ 2nd amendment grounds.  But it will make clear to the whole country that we now have an ideologically committed judiciary.  The Trump trio will rush in where O'Connor, Kennedy, Souter, Stevens and even Roberts feared to tread. 

Reversing the damage of the Trump era will take decades.  

Finally, even as I loathe the Republicans, I think Obama and RBG both deserve a fair share of blame for her not retiring to between 2012-4.  This was a live risk both ignored and the country will suffer for it.

And when the Lochner Court strikes all these laws down for reasons?

[DMC]

1 hour ago, Gaston de Foix said:

I think Obama and RBG both deserve a fair share of blame for her not retiring to between 2012-4. 

What was Obama supposed to do?  Launch a drone strike at her house?

[Week]

"Cans of tuna fish. They go out and buy tuna fish and soup. You know that, right?...Because they throw it. It's the perfect weight, tuna fish, they can really rip it, right? And that hits you. No, it's true. Bumble Bee brand tuna."

-- philsopher

[Lord of Rhinos]

Voting only matters in aggregate.  Anyone who decides that on a individual level voting matters is the dumb one.  People that vote do so because society spends a lot of time brainwashing them to do so.

[Kalbear]

1 hour ago, GrimTuesday said:

Talking about how dumb and shitty the electorate is part of the problem. People are so convinced that there is nothing that can be done to get those voters that there is barely any outreach being done these days to those communities, and the outreach that is being done is halfhearted and not particularly effective.

Conversely, those are people who are not particularly inclined to vote for a variety of reasons, and outreach won't matter. 

The notion that people are not spending crazy amounts of resources, time, and advertising to get people to vote is not in line with factual reality and appears to be wishful thinking. 

1 hour ago, GrimTuesday said:

Something like 45% of voting age people did not vote in 2016. even if you could take 1% of that 45% did not vote in 2016 that is over a million votes, and I honestly think that if you actually speak to the needs of those people, it will get them invested ibe way or another.

Do you know what their needs are? Sanders thought their needs were things like M4A, and as a result he got fewer people who generally don't vote to vote for him than he did previously. Whatever their needs are, it doesn't appear to be the case that it's addressed by super progressive viewpoints. 

1 hour ago, GrimTuesday said:

People don't not vote for the fun of it,

As someone who didn't vote for a few years, I can tell you that the main reason is that it didn't seem to matter all that much and I forgot because there were more important priorities in my life and I wasn't that engaged. That's really it. A lot of people don't vote because they just don't care that much. 

1 hour ago, GrimTuesday said:

 including feeling like their views are not being represented.

Citation needed.

1 hour ago, GrimTuesday said:

Obviously not all of those votes would go to Democrats, but I'd guess that a significant portion of them would of you actually speak about the shit that actually matters to them. Populism and mass mobilization works, and we can't just give up on it. 

Citation REALLY needed. Populism was tried in the most recent election and it failed pretty spectacularly. Mass mobilization was tried as well, to similar failures.

1 hour ago, GrimTuesday said:

As an aside, if the Democrats do decide to pack the court, is that something that could be challenged in court? There is no way that that would make it through a hearing due to the will to maintain power.

There is absolutely nothing in the constitution that indicates how many justices there should be, only how long they serve and how they're appointed. As long as the POTUS nominates and the senate advises and consents, they can put in literally 1 billion justices.

This will, of course, not stop there being lawsuits, and it's likely that the conservatives could find some stupid basis for denying it. But chances are good that there's enough precedent of this happening in our history that there will not be enough to say no.

[tzanth]

4 minutes ago, Kalibear said:

 

There is absolutely nothing in the constitution that indicates how many justices there should be, only how long they serve and how they're appointed. As long as the POTUS nominates and the senate advises and consents, they can put in literally 1 billion justices.

The number of justices is set by US law which would have to be overturned by Congress, but that should be easy enough to do. 

The biggest problem as far as I see it is Joe Manchin... assuming a 50/50 split the democrats would need his vote to expand the size of the court and I doubt he would give it cheaply. 

[Week]

35 minutes ago, Lord of Rhinos said:

Voting only matters in aggregate.  Anyone who decides that on a individual level voting matters is the dumb one.  People that vote do so because society spends a lot of time brainwashing them to do so.

Is this serious or as dumb as it sounds? 

Might be new info for you - there are positions on the ballot other than the President that are very consequential and often have slim margins.

[Lord of Rhinos]

1 minute ago, Week said:

Is this serious or as dumb as it sounds? 

Might be new info for you - there are positions on the ballot other than the President that are very consequential and often have slim margins.

And yet those positions are also not determined by one vote.

[DMC]

13 minutes ago, Kalibear said:

There is absolutely nothing in the constitution that indicates how many justices there should be, only how long they serve and how they're appointed. As long as the POTUS nominates and the senate advises and consents, they can put in literally 1 billion justices.

This will, of course, not stop there being lawsuits, and it's likely that the conservatives could find some stupid basis for denying it. But chances are good that there's enough precedent of this happening in our history that there will not be enough to say no.

Like @tzanth said, it takes an act of Congress to set and change the composition of the SC.  And it has 6 times since the Judiciary Act of 1789.  That's ample precedent that I have a hard time seeing even a Gorsuch swing-vote court overturning.

[Larry of the Lawn]

15 minutes ago, Kalibear said:

Conversely, those are people who are not particularly inclined to vote for a variety of reasons, and outreach won't matter. 

The notion that people are not spending crazy amounts of resources, time, and advertising to get people to vote is not in line with factual reality and appears to be wishful thinking. 

Do you know what their needs are? Sanders thought their needs were things like M4A, and as a result he got fewer people who generally don't vote to vote for him than he did previously. Whatever their needs are, it doesn't appear to be the case that it's addressed by super progressive viewpoints. 

As someone who didn't vote for a few years, I can tell you that the main reason is that it didn't seem to matter all that much and I forgot because there were more important priorities in my life and I wasn't that engaged. That's really it. A lot of people don't vote because they just don't care that much. 

Citation needed.

Citation REALLY needed. Populism was tried in the most recent election and it failed pretty spectacularly. Mass mobilization was tried as well, to similar failures.

There is absolutely nothing in the constitution that indicates how many justices there should be, only how long they serve and how they're appointed. As long as the POTUS nominates and the senate advises and consents, they can put in literally 1 billion justices.

This will, of course, not stop there being lawsuits, and it's likely that the conservatives could find some stupid basis for denying it. But chances are good that there's enough precedent of this happening in our history that there will not be enough to say no.

Re: bolded, citation needed.  This is circular reasoning, they didn't vote, so they are unlikely to vote, so we shouldn't try to get them to vote.

[Week]

2 minutes ago, Lord of Rhinos said:

And yet those positions are also not determined by one vote.

I see. The latter it is then.

[Lord of Rhinos]

3 minutes ago, Week said:

I see. The latter it is then.

I see you don't actually have an argument.

[karaddin]

The other thing when you're discussing turnout is that your entire system is set up around convincing the other sides voters to stay home, or outright trying to prevent them from voting. Your voting is on a weekday that prevents many people from taking part on the day without a financial consequence many can't afford, in many locations there are insufficient voting locations for the number of people resulting in extensive delays to vote. I would classify this as an issue with the system that depresses the vote turnout rather than something parties are failing to do to appeal to voters.

[Kalbear]

3 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

Re: bolded, citation needed.  This is circular reasoning, they didn't vote, so they are unlikely to vote, so we shouldn't try to get them to vote.

No, the reasoning is that despite literally billions of dollars attempting to get them to vote via outreach they didn't vote and are thus unlikely to vote with more outreach. They may need other things - less of a barrier to vote, less difficulty, more time to vote, a holiday to vote - but outreach is not likely to get them to vote.

At this point for the most part I don't think we can say that we haven't tried outreach. If you want more people to vote, you need to make other things happen. As an example, King County in WA is looking to have 90%+ turnout of eligible voters. They can try to do this by a combination of outreach, transparency, removing as many barriers as possible and giving people as many options as possible. But 'outreach' wasn't nearly as effective as having 100% vote by mail, and outreach wasn't nearly as effective as removing postage requirements and adding drop boxes. 

[Week]

48 minutes ago, Lord of Rhinos said:

Voting only matters in aggregate.  Anyone who decides that on a individual level voting matters is the dumb one.  People that vote do so because society spends a lot of time brainwashing them to do so.

 

2 minutes ago, Lord of Rhinos said:

I see you don't actually have an argument.

What you posted isn't an argument. It's a nihilistic whine that doesn't bother to make a point. To have such a view of voting reeks of privilege and condescension. 

[Lollygag]

The my-one-vote-doesn't-matter position is really just an excuse for not wanting to put up the effort to vote or about your vote not inevitably resulting in you getting your own way and pouting about it.

Some don't vote because they just can't accept the ego hit of being a drop of water in an ocean. They're kings or queens in their own mind and don't like being reminded otherwise.

[DMC]

7 minutes ago, karaddin said:

I would classify this as an issue with the system that depresses the vote turnout rather than something parties are failing to do to appeal to voters.

Yep, the reason for the US' low turnout is not because the American citizenry is dumb, and Kal is right that there's plenty of outreach devoted to trying to turnout voters - I don't, btw, think that should stop.  The turnout is quite obviously due to the system encouraging political apathy among its people in a wide variety of ways.

[A True Kaniggit]

And it doesn't help that election day is a friggin Tuesday.

[S John]

Just saw on Fox that recent Iowa and Georgia polls have the candidates tied. Considering that Trump won Iowa by 9 points and Georgia by 5, that’s like, bad news if you are Trump right?

I was taking to my dad about this last weekend. I am sure there is still a path for Trump to cobble together a win here, I wouldn’t be all shocked by that. But I just feel in my gut that he has not won over many n00bs during his presidency and that he’s going to lose more voters than he gains vs. 2016. My dad, who gets ALL of his info from FOX believes in a hidden cache of Trump voters, that the polls are biased, that people are not being honest in them, and that Trump will enjoy a blowout victory. I guess some of that might be true, but talking purely gut level here - I really don’t see it.  I might be blinded by my distaste for Trump, but I cannot picture these hordes of the converted who did not already vote for him the first time. The fact that he’s tied in a place that he won by 9 and outright losing in several other 2016 states that he won should serve as evidence that this is true, but since 2016 it’s now impossible to convince a conservative person of anything using a poll.

its like the Washington Generals beat the Harlem Globetrotters one time in 1989 and now Generals fans everywhere are convinced they are the better team and clear fan favorites no matter what the spread is.

I don’t think this RBG (God rest her soul) / SC fiasco is going to move the needle too much in terms of galvanizing support behind Trump. At this point I think the debates are the last real hurdle and even they probably won’t move the needle too much barring a disastrous performance by Biden. Note that I don’t think a disastrous performance by Trump will sway any of his voters at the 11th hour. Biden just needs to be serviceable.

[Lord of Rhinos]

17 minutes ago, Week said:

 

What you posted isn't an argument. It's a nihilistic whine that doesn't bother to make a point. To have such a view of voting reeks of privilege and condescension. 

It is an argument.  It makes the point that non-voting is a perfectly rational decision and has nothing to with being "dumb".  A person who says their vote doesn't matter is correct.  The person who says their vote matters is incorrect.