Democrats to introduce bill to pack the Supreme Court - Page 2 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15167366
Saeko wrote:For once I agree with @Istanbuller.

Mitch McConnell has spent the last twelve years destroying the legislative branch so he could pack the courts. If this bill passes, it will undo his entire legacy. All of his long years of obstructionism, and absolutely nothing to show for it. After this, there will never again be another Mitch McConnell.


Whatever McConnell did, AFAIK he didn't change the rules of the game, or only insofar as both Presidency and Senate have to be controlled by the same party to realistically fill a supreme court position. If the Dems increase the size of the court to 13 and appoint 4 liberal judges, what prevents the Republicans from doing the same in a few years? It will be tit-for-tat until the supreme court is a complete joke. Meanwhile many Americans think the election was stolen. This is a bad time for this kind of game.

You should consider the experience other countries had with democratic backsliding and what mistakes were made there. The Dems have to be the smart people here.
#15167375
Rugoz wrote:
1) Its size hasn't changed since 1869, right after the civil war.

2) Packing the supreme court is a well-known move by any wanna-be dictator. If the Dems do it now, the Republicans are guaranteed to do it next. It will render the court completely illegitimate in the eyes of Americans at a time when it is more needed than ever.



Not at all. The current supreme court just upheld an election result against vicious attacks from the right. Time to set your priorities straight.



1) That does not rebut what I said.

2) Republicans have been packing the courts for years. The kooks on the court are already undermining the legitimacy of the court. A balanced court would counter the kookiness.

3) Way to miss the obvious, the SC has made a number of decisions that favor the Right. I'm not going to get into all of it, if I can avoid it. But I can pick the high points. The 2000 election when they gave the election to a Republican due to voting in Florida, which was cheating it's ass off. Gutting the Voting Rights Act. Announcing they wouldn't take most voter suppression cases in the future. Ruling that money is speech :eh:
#15167393
late wrote:3) Way to miss the obvious, the SC has made a number of decisions that favor the Right. I'm not going to get into all of it, if I can avoid it. But I can pick the high points. The 2000 election when they gave the election to a Republican due to voting in Florida, which was cheating it's ass off. Gutting the Voting Rights Act. Announcing they wouldn't take most voter suppression cases in the future. Ruling that money is speech :eh:


...And it has also made a number of rulings that favor the Left. It didn't let Trump's Census question stand. It stood against ending DACA. It also rejected claims that Trump could block prosecutors from accessing his financial records. It also ruled on the expansion of Tribal jurisdiction in Oklahoma, a deep red state.

It seems that what you want is to have a SCOTUS that will rule always for the Left, and never for the Right (that is, a partisan court) rather than having one in charge of interpreting the law.
#15167401
wat0n wrote:


It seems that what you want is to have a SCOTUS that will rule always for the Left, and never for the Right (that is, a partisan court) rather than having one in charge of interpreting the law.



It's already one of the most partisan courts in American history, and it's getting worse.

Under the new arrangement, all it would take is one judge on either side to swing the decision.

Look at my thread, "Judges gone feral".
#15167405
late wrote:1) That does not rebut what I said.


Well, it puts it into context.

late wrote:2) Republicans have been packing the courts for years. The kooks on the court are already undermining the legitimacy of the court. A balanced court would counter the kookiness.


They have appointed judges according to the rules. The rules might be broken, but expanding the court solves exactly nothing.

late wrote:3) Way to miss the obvious, the SC has made a number of decisions that favor the Right. I'm not going to get into all of it, if I can avoid it. But I can pick the high points. The 2000 election when they gave the election to a Republican due to voting in Florida, which was cheating it's ass off. Gutting the Voting Rights Act. Announcing they wouldn't take most voter suppression cases in the future. Ruling that money is speech :eh:


What wat0n said. Also, you will have a liberal court until the Republicans do their own supreme court expansion. How does that not compute?

Long-term it would destroy the SCOTUS, which, in another time in another place, might even be a good thing, but not today in America.
#15167414
late wrote:It's already one of the most partisan courts in American history, and it's getting worse.

Under the new arrangement, all it would take is one judge on either side to swing the decision.

Look at my thread, "Judges gone feral".


How is it partisan? You got plenty of examples of rulings that go directly against the Right's interests and policies that you skipped in my post.

If you are unhappy about the composition of the SCOTUS, and how the GOP went about getting it, that's understandable. But that doesn't justify expanding the court, even more so if it's aware of the threat and will thus compel the right-wing justices to refrain from trying to torpedo each and every Democratic proposal.
#15167417
wat0n wrote:
How is it partisan?



"The United States Supreme Court’s conservative majority has taken the Court’s election jurisprudence on a pro-partisanship turn, which gives political actors freer range to pass laws and enact policies that can help entrench politicians (particularly Republicans) in power and insulate them from political competition. The trend on the Supreme Court is unmistakable whether it reflects the Court majority’s cynical view that American politics is “sordid, partisan, and unfair” or more crassly a self-interested reality of Republican-appointed Justices doing the bidding of the Republican Party.

This Article focuses not on the majority’s motivations but instead upon three subtle doctrinal tools the Court has developed to further the pro-partisanship turn and allow Republican party entrenchment. These doctrinal tools take the Court much further than it went in Rucho v. Common Cause, the Supreme Court decision holding that federal courts cannot consider constitutional claims against partisan gerrymandering. Indeed, this doctrinal subtlety has allowed much of this pro-partisanship turn to remain unnoticed in the broader legal community. The results nonetheless may block nonpartisan election reform and depress minority voting rights, especially in the “race or party” racial gerrymandering cases in which courts hold predominant racial motivations in redistricting are impermissible but predominant partisan motivations are permissible. Analysis of these subtle doctrinal moves not only lays bare a profound shift in the Court’s election law cases that likely will hurt minority voting rights, but also illustrates the power of Supreme Court Justices to move doctrine subtly while avoiding controversy that would accompany more forthright judicial declarations."

https://www.law.georgetown.edu/georgetown-law-journal/glj-online/109-online/the-supreme-courts-pro-partisanship-turn/
#15167426
wat0n wrote:
I was expecting something like an analysis showing it would tend to rule more for the GOP.

In reality, gerrymandering can help either party and indeed both play that game.



They do.

Except the Republicans have hundreds of proposed bills in dozens of states. IOW, there is no sane comparison there. They can't win without cheating their ass off, so they are trying to cheat their ass off.
#15167428
Rugoz wrote:Whatever McConnell did, AFAIK he didn't change the rules of the game, or only insofar as both Presidency and Senate have to be controlled by the same party to realistically fill a supreme court position. If the Dems increase the size of the court to 13 and appoint 4 liberal judges, what prevents the Republicans from doing the same in a few years? It will be tit-for-tat until the supreme court is a complete joke. Meanwhile many Americans think the election was stolen. This is a bad time for this kind of game.

You should consider the experience other countries had with democratic backsliding and what mistakes were made there. The Dems have to be the smart people here.


Why would the Supreme Court become a joke if it had a few or a few thousand justices? I don't see any problem with that.
#15167434
Please, please behave. The Republicans last won the popular vote in 2004 and that was still surfing the 9/11 wave. The time before that was 1988. The system is massively rigged against the Democrats. To put it in plain English they are being shafted. McConnell must laughing his arse off at the pathetic cowardly Democrat establishment. Its really quite simple. Its not rocket science. You rebalance the court to "fairly" reflect the Democrats Presidential popular vote victories over the last three decades. And then you get your liberal justices to rule that the electoral college is unconstitutional under the fifteenth amendment.

Obviously there needs to be a campaign by activists to lay the ground. But the argument is quite simple, A Black voter in California must carry the same weight as a White voter in North Dakota. You just shout anyone down as a racist who tries to argue against you. You just keep posing the question over and over again, "Do you support equal votes for Blacks?" The Lefts dominance of the educational institutions in the United States should be enough not only to build a movement but to bring the issue to boiling point in quite a short space of time.
#15167441
If the Dems increase the size of the court to 13 and appoint 4 liberal judges, what prevents the Republicans from doing the same in a few years?

Absolutely nothing, but we are already playing that game.
Mitch made his own rule when Obama had 8 months left, he made it out of his ass. Then, when Trump had even less time he simply ignored the rule he himself made just a few years earlier. Only difference that rule he just made out of his ass didn't go through a formal vote. In this case Democrats are actually playing a slightly cleaner game. Republicans have been playing with nuclear weapons for a while now and then they cry when they get hit back with them. Gloves have to come off at some point. And perphaps we will get to 13 judges and then republicans will increase it to 15 to get the upper hand and perhaps democrats will later do it to 17 and it will be a shitshow for a while. That being said, For the past 30 years republicans have won the popular vote just once and they keep placing themselves on the side of highly unpopular fights. Remember when "repeal obamacare" was all the rave? how did it turn out for them? What about covid... how is it turning out? Reps are taking a big risk.
#15167551
XogGyux wrote:Absolutely nothing, but we are already playing that game.


There's clearly a different quality to it. Refusing to confirm an Obama judge is not the same as expanding the court to the point where it does what you want. If the Dems won in 2016 there would still be a liberal majority in the court.

More importantly, the whole point of the SCOTUS it that no single legislature can realistically appoint a majority of judges. For a legislative with tyrannical aspirations it would take decades to fully take over the court. And no, I don't think the Republicans have done that so far. Even the recent appointments weren't Trump stooges, and even if they were, they would be a minority in the court.

All that falls apart if you allow an expansion of the court. If a Trump-like figure with support in the Senate would win the election, he could simply double the size of the court, appoint loyalists and hereby eliminate all constitutional oversight.

You just had a president that was bending the rules at every opportunity. You don't respond to that by preparing the ground for the next demagogue to break them.
#15167553
Rugoz wrote:
Refusing to confirm an Obama judge...



Is only a teeny tiny part of the story.

Lying by omission..

McConnell got his majority of kooks, Roberts can no longer hold them back when they go way, way too far. It took a while, but he got there. You are trying to imply there is a balance when clearly that is long gone.

Oh, wait, are you telling bedtime stories?
#15167558
Rugoz wrote:
You are trying to imply it can't get far worse. Basic common sense and experience from other countries shows it can.



The root of the word rationality is ratio. The ratio of the SC is severely out of balance. The kooks are undermining the foundations of democracy.

What we need to do is restore balance, restore the ratio.

It would have been nice if Republicans weren't lying, thieving scum. But they are, and this is the only way to restore sanity.

Remember the 6th, it's already far worse...
#15167560
late wrote:The kooks are undermining the foundations of democracy.


You have seen nothing yet.

late wrote:What we need to do is restore balance, restore the ratio.


How very noble of you. If you do this, you have to make sure the Republicans never win again. You know as well as I do that the Republicans will take this as an invitation to escalate further, along the lines I've described above.
#15167561
Rugoz wrote:You know as well as I do that the Republicans will take this as an invitation to escalate further, along the lines I've described above.


The Republicans will escalate anyway. They demand your money or they'll break your legs. But when you give them your money, they break your legs anyway and then demand even more money or they'll break your legs again. It's been like this on repeat for a while now. Fuck them.
#15167566
Saeko wrote:The Republicans will escalate anyway.

...

Fuck them.


If you haven't noticed, there are voters behind Republican politicians, and they have to opposite view than you have. Those are Americans, and you can't just wish them away with a "fuck them". If the Dems escalate by expanding the court, the Republican base will demand a response.
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