WTF! "Democrats Say They Don't Regret Making It Easier To Confirm Judges" HUFFPO

[hlthe2b]

Democrats Say They Don’t Regret Making It Easier To Confirm Judges
“It wasn’t a mistake,” Sen. Jeff Merkley said.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/democrats-senate-rule-change-judges_us_5af5b263e4b00d7e4c1a24c3

WASHINGTON ― Republicans are confirming judges at a breakneck pace and are pushing forward with changes to Senate rules that make it even easier to confirm more of President Donald Trump’s judicial nominees. It’s a tremendously important achievement ― one that is already being called their most enduring legacy.

But Democrats who blew up the rules when they were in the majority to make it easier to confirm executive and judicial nominees say they have no regrets about doing so.

“It wasn’t a mistake. The mistake is to have people confirm judges that are way out of the mainstream and to refuse to be thoughtful about what we’re going to do the judiciary,” Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), a lead proponent of filibuster reform at the time, told HuffPost this week.

In 2013, under the leadership of then-Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Democrats voted to deploy a parliamentary procedure dubbed the “nuclear option” to change Senate rules to pass most executive and judicial nominees by a simple majority vote, instead of the long-standing 60-vote threshold needed to overcome a filibuster. They argued that unprecedented obstruction to then-President Barack Obama’s executive and judicial nominations necessitated the historic change to Senate rules.

sigh....

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. The pendulum swings both ways.

[fleabiscuit]

2. Huffpo should adopt a "hair on fire" logo. nt

[unblock]

3. i agree, it was the right thing to do. republicans were always going to blow up the rules later.

there is *zero* change that mcturtle, who abused rules to stymie obama's appointments, and who abused rules to steal a supreme court seat, would not have gone nuclear himself as soon as republicans had the senate.

had reid not gone nuclear when he did, there would be even more vacancies left with donnie filling even more of them.

[hlthe2b]

4. One can only hope we take back House & Senate in time to offset at least a bit of this

The damage wrought by having these unqualified ideologues on the appeals courts will outlive me.

[unblock]

5. there was a post here recently advocating democrats play "constitutional hardball"

and do things like stack the courts. realistically, we would need the trifecta -- both houses of congress and the oval office.

but once we have that, we can effectively fix the gorsuch theft by adding two seats to the supreme court by federal law.

my snarky suggestions would be garland and obama the partisan in my would suggest either or both clintons, but constitutional hardball demands that we put younger people in those seats

[fleabiscuit]

18. I'm more of an advocate of adding 25 to the SCOTUS

and forming big new district court in Nome AK to transfer all the republithug judges.

[unblock]

21. ;)

We also need a new voting rights act.

And progress at the state level as well.

[still_one]

7. Exactly. The solution isn't that profound. Vote in Democrats

[EffieBlack]

10. THIS THIS THIS

I am so sick of the "Oh you better not do that because then the Republicans will do it too!" As if the Republicans need the Democrats to do something first before they'll try it.

If the Democrats hadn't done everything they could to get President Obama's judges confirmed, the Republican STILL would do exactly what they're doing NOW - only with even more judicial seats to work with

[procon]

6. What was the alternative?

The obstacles hindering Obama’s efforts to appoint new judges were insurmountable with a Republican majority. McConnell sat on Obama’s Supreme Court pick, Merrick Garland, guaranteeing that he would never be confirmed. Republicans were united in their plot to leave as many judicial vacancies as they could for the next president...which they somehow knew would be a Republican.

[JCanete]

8. This was not a mistake. The Republicans would have just made it easier themselves after we

took the high road and got nobody appointed. Is there anybody who believes the Republicans wouldn't have passed the nuclear option in order to get their judges confirmed?

And, it looked for all intents and purposes as if the Republicans were not going to take the White House. Their field was bleak and absurd. That Trump won was hard to see coming. What we did was wait too long to do this. Republicans would have done it the first time a nominee got held up.

[NCTraveler]

9. Ratfucking article. I hope people at least read it.

How many Democrats are quoted in the article saying they don't regret it?

How many are quoted as saying it was a bad idea?

Democrats Say They Don’t Regret Making It Easier To Confirm Judges

And that is the headline. Pretty clear who this one is directed at.

[JCanete]

11. Manchin is among those saying it was a bad idea. His is the voice I trust.

[NCTraveler]

12. Yes. He is one.

Glad that you trust him.

How in the wold did they come to that headline?

True ratfucking with no intelligent commentary in the article.

[JCanete]

13. It is pretty shitty. going to look up this writer's other contributions...god forbid he lean hard

left. That would disappoint me greatly.

[NCTraveler]

14. How in the wold did he come to the headline?

The article doesn't back it up.

How many Democrats were quoted in the article as having not regretted it?

How many Democrats were quoted in the article as regretting it?

What is the headline?

[JCanete]

15. yeah, that's what I was going to come back and say. Its that the headline is what it is and that

he frontloads the whole article with "but democrats say they don't regret their decision." Its already put in to be foregone that they should regret it. That framing is the problem. As you say, the rest of what he writes actually supports the democratic claims that Republicans were going to fuck with the rules anyway.

[NCTraveler]

16. I just read a couple of other articles from the author.

To be fair, some of them are pretty good. Ratfucking was the wrong word to use. Maybe they were just hung-over when they wrote this one.

[onenote]

17. Thanks in part to that deal, there are over 300 Obama nominated judges on the federal judiciary

During is 8 years in office 55 Court of Appeals judges and 268 District Court judges were appointed by Obama and confirmed by the Senate.

While Trump is nominating judges at a brisk pace, he's got a long way to go before he can put his stamp on the judiciary in the same way Obama has.

After almost a year and a half, Trump has had 17 Court of Appeals judges confirmed, with another 14 pending. And he's had 17 District Court judges confirmed with another 72 pending. If the Democrats can take the Senate, they can slow his roll considerably over the last two years of his presidency (assuming he lasts for four years).

[Demsrule86]

19. And? What choice was there...you think the GOP wouldn't have done it anyway? They refused to

confirm a SCOTUS nomination...why always the hits on Democrats and the Democratic Party?

[hlthe2b]

20. I assume you are being rhetorical.

(Did you not see my "WTF" prefacing the title? and sigh... at the end?)

I share your disgust..