US politics: 2 weeks notice

[DMC]

4 minutes ago, Altherion said:

What kind of legislation do you think the Roberts court will strike down? The previous iteration (led by Roberts himself) left ACA alone and waited for Congress to declaw the individual mandate (which they promptly did as soon as Republicans had united control of government).

Oh, ya know, voting rights and while it's not legislation abortion rights.  Anything involving LGBTQIA+ rights is obviously in danger, not to mention any major legislation Biden passes WILL be challenged by the GOP, make its way to SCOTUS, and very likely be significantly gutted.  That's just off the top of my head.  The Roberts court that "left the ACA alone" is fundamentally not the same Roberts court we will have upon Barrett's confirmation.

[Gaston de Foix]

3 minutes ago, Mindwalker said:

This is cracking me up: Putin Throws Trump Under The Hunter Bien Bus

Putin can read a poll.  As can Bibi.  

[Pecan]

17 minutes ago, Fez said:

The problem with judical reform is that anything short of court packing can just get struck down by SCOTUS if they don't like it.

I don't know that this is true. The structure of the court system is defined legislatively, not constitutionally. That the current law is 150 years old (approximately) does make it a really big deal when you seek to make major changes, but I've not read anywhere that the current SCOTUS could just strike down a new "stucture of the court system" law. Presumably, once passed, the law would need to be challenged, and how would you do that? Who would even have standing to challenge a law that altered the structure of the court system?

[teej6]

3 minutes ago, Mindwalker said:

This is cracking me up: Putin Throws Trump Under The Hunter Bien Bus

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/10/25/1989524/-Putin-Throws-Trump-Under-the-Hunter-Biden-Bus

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday that he saw nothing criminal in Hunter Biden’s past business ties with Ukraine or Russia, marking out his disagreement with one of Donald Trump’s attack lines in the U.S. presidential election.

Here’s a link to the Reuters story: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-putin-idUSKBN27A0TA

After a snub from Bibi, now Putin. Trump’s aides probably in damage control mode. 

[Varysblackfyre321]

7 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

Five people in Pence's inner circle have tested positive, but Pence is going to continue to campaign. He'll wear a mask, until he goes on the podium. He says.

Well all we can do is hope the fly that landed on him is okay.

[Gaston de Foix]

1 minute ago, DMC said:

Oh, ya know, voting rights and while it's not legislation abortion rights.  Anything involving LGBTQIA+ rights is obviously in danger, not to mention any major legislation Biden passes WILL be challenged by the GOP, make its way to SCOTUS, and very likely be significantly gutted.  That's just off the top of my head.  The Roberts court that "left the ACA alone" is fundamentally not the same Roberts court we will have upon Barrett's confirmation.

There is some truth to your sentence. 

But when you talk about abortion rights, it gets complicated.  The principal attacks that the conservatives have made upon Roe v Wade is that there is no privacy right or right to bodily autonomy in the constitution and that the legality of abortion is for the political branches to decide.  They can overturn Roe on both those grounds and still uphold a federal statute legalizing abortion.  And if we have unified government that's how I expect it to play out.  You might have Alito, Thomas and Barrett dissenting on whether Congress has the power to regulate abortion based on the commerce clause but the federalism arguments are much weaker, not least because the Court has upheld a partial birth abortion statute in Gonzales v Carhart.  

Voting rights is where I am most concerned.  There are things in H.R.1 I expect the Supreme Court to strike down.  But H.R.1 has a severability clause and I expect the majority of the law to survive: https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/1/text#toc-HA2F06A4F72E149DDB02F4B4C2268A9C4

Not ideal? Sure.  But Ginsburg didn't retire when it was her time, Republicans are hypocrites who will do anything for power, and Trump won the 2016 election.  So here we are. 

[Mindwalker]

Good grief, there's  a virtual fundraising concert for Biden/ Harris on YT, and the Trump bots/ trolls are out, flooding the livechat with "Hunter laptop" and "Biden China" etc.

 

[DMC]

1 minute ago, Gaston de Foix said:

They can overturn Roe on both those grounds and still uphold a federal statute legalizing abortion.

Getting a federal law through the Senate - even with say a 55 seat majority - is lot easier said than done.  Talk about a salient wedge issue that will seriously endanger every Dem incumbent in a red or even purple state.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

47 minutes ago, Mindwalker said:

I watched the material DT released, and he comes across as a whiny, weak, petulant child.

Call him what he is, a little bitch. 

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, Gaston de Foix said:

Putin can read a poll.  As can Bibi.  

So can bozo johnson in the UK.  He's waiting out the BREXIT catastrophe until the election's over.  As if this will make any difference to the people they are voting to let die of hunger right now, like innocent children.

[Zorral]

38 minutes ago, Gaston de Foix said:

there is no privacy right or right to bodily autonomy in the constitution

Ya, that's why slavery's protected in the Constitution, though those founding slave owning fathers of the country would never be so crass as to use the word slavery or the word slave in the Constitution.  So there were amendments quite a while up the line. Which abolished slavery, which then instituted body privacy and rights -- though not yet for women, so we had to have more amendments, blahblahblah.

[teej6]

Interesting article (limited clicks) in the NYT about the MSM’s role as gatekeeper. Not sure what to think about the article, but the hilarious part is that Giuliani ruined Trump’s A team’s (Arthur Schwartz, a New York public relations man close to Do Jr, WH House lawyer, Eric Herschmann, and former deputy WH counsel, Stefan Passantino) more subtle plot to bring out the Hunter Biden story through reporting in the WSJ. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/25/business/media/hunter-biden-wall-street-journal-trump.html

[Gaston de Foix]

10 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Ya, that's why slavery's protected in the Constitution, though those founding slave owning fathers of the country would never be so crass as to use the word slavery or the word slave in the Constitution.  So there were amendments quite a while up the line. Which abolished slavery, which then instituted body privacy and rights -- though not yet for women, so we had to have more amendments, blahblahblah.

Sure.  You understand I'm outlining the argument right?  It's the argument the text as originally publicly understood of the Constitution didn't incorporate unenumerated rights. 

[Altherion]

57 minutes ago, DMC said:

Getting a federal law through the Senate - even with say a 55 seat majority - is lot easier said than done.  Talk about a salient wedge issue that will seriously endanger every Dem incumbent in a red or even purple state.

Why doesn't the same logic apply to court packing? As far as I can tell, it's unpopular by roughly a ratio of 2 to 1:

Quote

Voters are divided on the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett for Supreme Court Justice, as 44 percent support and 42 percent oppose. A plurality, 47 percent say the Senate should vote on her nomination prior to the election. By a 58-31 percent margin, voters say Democrats should not increase the size of the Court.

“Republicans overwhelmingly support Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court, as do a small plurality of independents. Democrats, however, are overwhelmingly opposed,” Levy said. “And while 57 percent of Democrats think the size of the Supreme Court should be increased if Barrett is confirmed, 65 percent of independents and 89 percent of Republicans say the Court should not include more than nine justices.”

 

[Varysblackfyre321]

5 hours ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

The Dems have indeed been more fiscally conservative in the past 20 years. We had a surplus under Bill Clinton. I don’t think you can call anything g the Republicans have done to be fiscally conservative at all - after all, isn’t drug treatment less expensive than locking someone up for 20 years? Or a diversion program for rather than mandatory minimum sentencing? 

I would simply, per @JEORDHl’s comment, tend to be less inclined to have a very strong (ie, European style) safety net.

Of course, during a time of massive pandemic upheaval, we do need to spend the money to save the economy....I’m talking about in ordinary, non-pandemic situations.

I have to say there’s more nuance to a person’s political/social views than 

what @larrytheimp has shown.

Not everyperson who’s socially liberal is going to have fill a checklist.

This kinda reminds me of how many people try to frame Lgbt rights as having to.be  automatically at odds with religion.

It's not.

A person can see capitalism as good and a Christian, and not try to interfere with their rights--for example get married.

 

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, Altherion said:

Why doesn't the same logic apply to court packing?

Salience and stability of preferences.  Very few voters care a lot about court packing while very few voters don't care a lot about abortion.  Now, if the Dems expand the court the will certainly be polarized, but the distribution of preferences is much more likely to align with respondents' partisan lean as respondents will still be developing their attitudes on the subject.  Whereas virtually everybody, or at least everybody over 30, already has a strong and rather intractable opinion on abortion.

[Martell Spy]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

Call him what he is, a little bitch. 

I think Obama did just that recently in Florida.

[Altherion]

24 minutes ago, DMC said:

Salience and stability of preferences.  Very few voters care a lot about court packing while very few voters don't care a lot about abortion.  Now, if the Dems expand the court the will certainly be polarized, but the distribution of preferences is much more likely to align with respondents' partisan lean as respondents will still be developing their attitudes on the subject.  Whereas virtually everybody, or at least everybody over 30, already has a strong and rather intractable opinion on abortion.

How do you know people don't care much about court packing? It has not really come up since FDR and it should not be difficult to paint it as destroying the Supreme Court as we know it (since the Republicans will undoubtedly retaliate in kind when they next have united government).

I guess there's a chance the Democrats would do this, but I very much doubt they will do it. There are other issues which are both more pressing and have literally twice as much more popular support (or more). The court hasn't actually done anything to them yet and it's not obvious that it will.

[DMC]

1 minute ago, Altherion said:

How do you know people don't care much about court packing? It has not really come up since FDR and it should not be difficult to paint it as destroying the Supreme Court as we know it (since the Republicans will undoubtedly retaliate in kind when they next have united government).

...Because of what you said - it hasn't been a legitimate issue in over 80 years.  Like I said, I agree once the Dems take up expanding the court it will be polarizing and salient, but that's why I said the distribution is very likely to align with partisanship.  Watch as those 2 to 1 numbers all of a sudden shift to the issue becoming at least 80 percent Dem & Dem leaners in favor in a matter of weeks if not days.  Whereas on abortion?  About a quarter of Republicans identify as pro-choice and about a quarter of Democrats identify as pro-life.  That's why it has far more potential to kill Dem Senators in red and purple states than expanding the court.

7 minutes ago, Altherion said:

There are other issues which are both more pressing and have literally twice as much more popular support (or more). The court hasn't actually done anything to them yet and it's not obvious that it will.

First, yes, it is obvious they will. 

Second, strategically it's simply incredibly ass backwards to try and pass any other major legislation expending political capital - and particularly as was mentioned earlier having to potentially pass a federal law for abortion.  That's expending your political capital putting out fires and still leaving everything susceptible to a court 6-3 in opposition - with at least four of those six being trained for/awaiting precisely this opportunity their entire legal careers.  Whereas if you successfully expand the court it will cost quite a bit of political capital too, sure, but then you can turn your attention to the myriad pressing substantive policy agenda items without the judicial handcuffs.  Will the GOP respond in kind if they can?  Of course.  Like Fez said, that's why you make sure you keep the House to block that from happening anytime soon.

[A True Kaniggit]

Holy dammmm. We’re nearly into single digit days until President Trump is a lame duck. I’m starting to get excited.

(If I’ve just jinxed us, then everyone is allowed one free punch onto my left upper arm without accessories . (Not my right arm, I need that in good shape for reasons))