SuprstitionAintthWay
SuprstitionAintthWay's JournalTreating Scalia's seat like it's their property,
like no one had any right to hold it other than one of them.
After terms of Nixon, Ford -- designating Carter as just a mistake, a brief one-term aberration! - Reagan, Reagan, and Bush I, they treated the presidency that way, too: Like it was Republican personal property. They treated Bill Clinton with contempt, speaking of him as not even a legitimate president -- how dare that hillbilly occupy the Republicans' White House?! And of course that was just their warm-up act for how dismissively they'd treat Obama for his 8 years.
You're welcome, but I too didn't serve terribly long.
Spent as many years in a police uniform as I did a Navy uniform.
Nothing like my father, a career Navy man for over 30 years. WWII vet... while my mother was back in Chicago on a factory line making hand grenades. Luckiest thing to ever happen to Dad might've been contracting a bad case of malaria, complete with delirium, in the New Guinea jungle and being one of the several thousand young men sent home to recover. Malaria was the end of the war for him. (Whereas my uncle served in the Army in WWII, came out of it an alcoholic, and never recovered from that.)
In 1946 Dad was at the Bikini Island atomic bomb tests, the first nuclear explosions since Nagasaki, topside on the USS Ajax as the bombs went off. His old decommissioned battleship USS Arkansas was dead center of the target/ghost fleet of ships that got nuked. They stopped exposing troops to the blasts later. Whether Dad's late life skin cancer was related to Bikini Is. bomb tests, or just from being a blue eyed fair complected sailor in the tropical Pacific sun no one will ever know.
In 1953 my parents were stationed at Naval Air Station Argentia Newfoundland when their 2 year-old 1st child developed problems; at Portsmouth (Virginia) Naval Hospital Pam was diagnosed with a brain tumor. It was removed, mostly, returned, and she died there 6 years later.
In 1962 JFK gave Dad's photographic aviation squadron, VFP-62, a unit commendation after the Cuban Missile Crisis. Their squadron's pilots were the ones flying low in F8 Crusaders reconning the Soviet missile installations. It's presented well in the movie Thirteen Days.
In 1981 Mom, too, died in Portsmouth Naval Hospital, post-op after a poorly done operation. The Navy went through periods when all their surgeons weren't top notch. We were too trusting of military medicine.
We were a Navy family. Where us kids grew up a lot of families were. Military service was the norm, and felt completely natural, not like something special at all. Only in later decades in other parts of the country did I notice a lot of honor starting to be paid servicemen and women.
While it's not really warranted for someone like me, the vets who really deserve thanks are our veterans of foreign wars. The "trigger pullers" most of all. (Well, a cousin of mine was a trigger puller in Vietnam. But he also beat to death a teenaged Vietnamese girl his squad worried might be spying, so him we'll put aside. The kind of soldier that John Kerry would later testify about, he was a PTSD case the rest of his life.)
The Navy got both of my parents off the farm and out of Tennessee cotton fields, and if only for that alone was a good thing, overall, for them and later for us kids.
Barriers to reform: Right. I believe we're unlikely to ever amend the Constitution again,
at least not to correct anything major. The threshhold for passage is too high. A lot of red state legislatures are not going to agree to an amendment to replace the Electoral College with a national popular vote. Not when the Republican Party has lost 6 of the last 7 presidential votes and seems able to win ONLY the EC. (But can we accomplish that same effect through the interstate Compact? I hope so; it's odds are better, at least.)
Good question. The outcome is the same but at least the Senate Majority Leader
...isn't again overtly violating and defying the spirit and intent of the Constitution.
And Mitch still retains control because he wouldn't allow a vote to occur unless he knew he had the votes to defeat the nominee.
So, same effect, the SCOTUS world has still changed in the same way. Just less flagrant an offense against the Constitution on the part of the Majority Leader.
Here's the problem. We're the majority. But the minority Repubs have a majority of the STATES.
I forget the exact numbers (split the Senate out, most populous 25 states and least populous 25, and add up the respective populations) but in the Senate the representatives of something like 20% of Americans have power equal to the representatives of the other 80%. It is an outrageously undemocratic legislative body. It is America's House of Lords and should have been stripped of power and put out to pasture long ago like the Brits did theirs, but unfortunately that's too sensible to happen here.
Hillary beat Trump by 2.9 million votes but her majority got her NINETEEN states, while Trump's minority of the vote got him THIRTY-ONE states.
Increasingly Americans are voting party, not person, and within a state the trend is towards one party winning most if not all statewide races. That helps us in Virginia, but there aren't enough Virginias. How did quality senators like Bill Nelson, Claire McCaskill, and Heidi Heitkamp lose their seats last year? They're out because their states are/were trending rightward overall, and regardless of how good a Democratic senator in such a state is, increasingly single parties are winning more of a given state's statewide elections.
Our problems winning the Senate and our problems winning the Electoral College are echoes of each other. Democrats definitely have the PEOPLE, the VOTERS, but we DON'T have the number of STATES that the Republicans do. And, bizarrely in America, counts of states matter more than counts of voters do. Here it's land... dirt... over people. Trump won 31 states with fewer votes and Hillary won 19 with more votes. That pattern it seems is increasingly being reflected in Senate election results. Carrying it over to and fully expressing it in the Senate would result in 62 Republicans to 38 Democrats. Just a hypothetical exercise, true. But given the trend of more partisan voting in statewide elections, combined with the minority Republican Party holding far more states than the majority Democratic Party... this is tough.
I'm not a fatalist. We don't accept this, we fight it and somehow win even with the odds and some dangerous trends aligned against us. To win the House last year we overcame very extreme gerrymandering. Our margin of victory in the national vote was about 8% if I remember correctly, and we needed most of that 8% to overcome the barriers Republicans erected to slant elections against us.
That said, at this juncture I'm not thrilled with our chances of retaking the Senate next year.
And my concern expressed in the opening post of this thread is amplified by Republicans' structural advantage of being able to turn a minority of votes into a majority of Senate seats.
If the Pandora's Box McConnell opened in 2016 leads to no Republican Senate ever again confirming any Democratic president's SCOTUS nominee, then it's all the more essential we retake the Senate in addition to the presidency.
Under McConnellism adopted by both parties SCOTUS would have spells when it shrinks
...and then when a new window opens gets re-stocked with a rush of new justices all at once. All of the new confirmees being liberal or all of them conservative, of course.
The centuries of the Court's gradual shifts in ideology might be over. The swings left or right could become immediate and severe.
The SC could withstand operating understaffed for decades at a time. It could function down to 3 justices.
Or, with difficulty, 2.
Or even 1 (...who'd get to be "Chief" by default).
Will A Repub-Controlled Senate Confirm A Democratic President's SCOTUS Nominee Again, Ever?
I'm concerned that in his obsession to control the federal judiciary, Moscow Mitch McConnell wiped out all remaining vestiges of fairness, comity, or bipartisanship in this vital confirmation responsibility of the Senate's, when he refused to allow Merrick Garland to be considered for SCOTUS in 2015.
I remember just before the 2016 election when everyone, Republicans included, expected Clinton to win. There was SO much concern on the right of Hillary Clinton being able to fill Scalia's vacant seat, that (1) Trump played off it by suggesting that if he were to lose, hey, maybe as a last ditch the right's "2nd Amendment" people could prevent her nominees from reaching the bench; and (2) some Republicans were floating the possibility of doing to Clinton for 4 years what McConnell had just done to Obama for the best part of one year.
It worked to keep Obama's pick off of SCOTUS, so who's to say it couldn't be done for four years of Hillary's nominees, too?
SCOTUS would just be allowed to shrink and operate with fewer justices until a Republican president was back in the White House.
This talk didn't get tested -- so far -- because of course Trump shockingly got electoralcolleged into the presidency. He's since filled Garland's rightful seat with Gorsuch, and has further stacked SCOTUS with another loyalist to himself in the form of an angry hyperpartisan drunkard and attempted rapist.
The outrageous notion that was being floated on the right in late 2016 could still be tested, though, and relatively soon.
Let's say the next 15 months go mostly well for us. RBG remains healthy enough to continue serving through January 2021. And we win the November 2020 presidential election... both the vote itself AND, this time, that crusher of democracy the Electoral College too.
There remains a good chance we won't retake the Senate next year, though. Obviously we hope and strive to, but what if that part of the fight doesn't go our way?
Say Spring 2021 RBG retires (and lives on happily to 105 or 110). President Biden or Warren nominates a well qualifed judge to fill the vacancy. As Democratic presidents do.
What happens THEN?
Here is my concern:
I worry that although we don't recognize it yet, we are already living in an era in which no Republican-controlled Senate is ever again going to confirm ANY nominee to SCOTUS put forward by ANY Democratic president.
That Republicans regard the stakes as just too high to allow any new liberal justice a lifetime seat on SCOTUS, at all, if there's any conceivable way they can prevent it. And Moscow Mitch has showed them there IS a way to do that if they retain control of the Senate: Just refuse to consider or hold confirmation votes on any and all Democratic presidents' nominees for SCOTUS. The framers of the Constitition, mistakenly assuming at least collective good faith on the part of senators, failed to include a phrase along the lines of "and the Senate shall vote to confirm or deny the nomination within 60 days." So, McConnell has demonstrated, that's their "out."
It worked for a year. Why not four years?
And, if a case goes to SCOTUS to settle the matter, hey, it's a Republican SCOTUS.
My suspicion is that we are already in this new even uglier and more ruthless political era, courtesy of Mitch McConnell.
If we are, of course Democrats will have to follow suit and Democratic Senates refuse to confirm Repub presidents' SCOTUS nominees, too.
Putting us in a United States in which henceforth no empty SCOTUS seat ever gets filled except during those periods when the presidency and the Senate are controlled by the same party.
For historical reference as to how often that occurs, since 1900 those years look to have been:
1900 - 1912 (R)
1913 - 1918 (D)
1921 - 1932 (R)
1933 - 1946 (D)
1949 - 1952 (D)
1953 - 1954 (R)
1961 - 1968 (D)
1977 - 1980 (D)
1981 - 1986 (R)
1993 - 1994 (D)
2001 - 2006 (R)
2009 - 2014 (D)
2017 - date (R)
[ I welcome corrections to anything I might have wrong on this list ]
So if we'd been working under this more viciously partisan paradigm, call it McConnellism, all along, SCOTUS seats could have been filled during those years. But not during other years. For example, in an extreme case, from 1987 through 2000 there would have been only 2 years during which SCOTUS vacancies could have been filled.
Increasingly in recent decades both presidential and senatoral elections have been a lot about who gets to be on SCOTUS. This would lock that in that much more rigidly.
Your opinions?
Is this where we're at? Or not? I grant you it may seem extreme -- but, you have seen American government of the last 3 years, right?
As I've said, I suspect we're already in this new even more fucked-up situation regarding filling SCOTUS vacancies -- thanks a lot, Turtleman! - but we just don't know it yet.
I posted my own quick run-down of the fix we're in on another thread but it fits well here.
We're living under a lawless, self-dealing, hostile foreign power-serving Chief Executive run amok, with an Executive Branch aiding, abetting, and protecting him, especially Barr at DoJ and Pompeo at State. Career civil service professionals are fired, stifled, denounced, demonized, persecuted, and stripped of their pension if they dare raise a reasoned or principled or ethical objection. The Cabinet, National Security Council, and WH Staff have been purged of any informed and responsible voices and replaced with craven sycophants. Federal law enforcement has been proven ineffectual, neutered, against him. Our intelligence agencies are dismissed, ignored, and their leadership gutted.
The Republican-controlled Senate refused to seat or even consider a moderate, eminently quailified, lawfully nominated justice for SCOTUS because it was by a Democratic president, and in fear of and supplication to Trump it refuses to enforce the Constitution in many other ways as well. The judiciary is newly crowded with rightwing judges, while Trump defies any and all Congressional subpoenas and oversight, determined to push every refusal big and small all the way to SCOTUS. Because there 5 Republicans await, including 2 he installed himself based on their support of near limitless power and complete immunity for the nation's chief executive... when it's a Republican, not a Democratic, president.
The pillars of our democracy are being shoved aside like a Montenegran president, when not captured and co-opted as cudgels for Trump's own use.
We're down to our last few defenses left.
- A free press, intrepidly staying the course even while under heavy continual verbal assault, and literally physically in danger.
- Impeachment by the House, also under around-the-clock verbal assault and threats (and memes) of violence.
- And the 2020 election, heavily stacked as it will be in favor of Republicans by the Electoral College, as intentionally suppressed as millions of Democratic voters will be, and as undermined as the whole thing will be, pushed in the direction of Trump, by enemies foreign and domestic.
American democracy is in one of its most perilous moments. Yes, it's shocking and frightening, to us and to the world, when the United States of America, of all nations, is looking very much at risk of being unable to protect its own democracy.
I've speculated Merkel, Macron, and Trudeau squelched the flagrant corruption of the G-7 being held on a Trump commercial property. Germany, France, and Canada probably just lent us a sympathetic and helpful hand against one new threat, however minor. No wonder that Trump the wannabe autocrat hates us having allies in Western Europe and Canada. They recognize him for what he is, and very much want to see America get through this.
We are in a bad fix, alright. A lawless Executive run amok, the Exec Branch aiding, abetting
...and protecting him, especially Barr at DoJ and Pompeo at State. Career professionals fired, stifled, denounced, demonized, persecuted, and stripped of their pension if they dare raise a reasoned or principled or ethical objection. The Cabinet, National Security Council, and WH Staff purged of any informed and responsible voices and replaced with craven sycophants. Federal law enforcement proven ineffectual, neutered, against him. Intelligence agencies dismissed, ignored, and their leadership gutted. The Republican controlled Senate in supplication to him, refusing to enforce the Constitution. The judiciary newly crowded with rightwing judges, while Trump defies any and all Congressional subpoenas and oversight, determined to push every refusal big and small all the way to SCOTUS, where 5 Republicans await -- including 2 he installed himself for their support of near limitless executive power and immunity... when it's a Republican president.
The pillars or our democracy are being shoved aside like a Montenegran president, when not captured and co-opted as cudgels for Trump's own use.
We're down to our last few defenses left.
- A free press, intrepidly staying the course even while under heavy continual verbal assault, and literally physically in danger
- Impeachment by the House, also under around-the-clock verbal assault and threats (and memes) of violence
- And the 2020 election, heavily stacked as it will be in favor of Republicans by the Electoral College, as intentionally suppressed as millions of Democratic voters will be, and as undermined as the whole thing will be, pushed in the direction of Trump, by enemies foreign and domestic.
American democracy is in one of its most perilous moments. Yes, it's shocking and frightening, to us and to the world, when the United States of America, of all nations, is looking very much at risk of being unable to protect its own democracy.
If Germany, France, and Canada just lent us a sympathetic and helpful hand against this one new threat, however minor, I'd rather that it happened than not. We're better off with other free democracies being concerned and wanting to help than we'd be without them.
No wonder that Trump the wannabe autocrat hates us having allies in Western Europe and Canada. They recognize him for what he is, and very much want to see America get through this.
They're not mutually exclusive. For sure there was behind-the-scenes Republican push-back
most heavily from those facing tough re-election campaigns next year.
But where there's money involved Trump ignores advice from smarter people and pleas from loyal allies who will be harmed all the time. Just look at Syria.
Only other G-7 members had the power to absolutely and immediately shut this one of the sleaze-bag's embarrassingly obvious money-grabs down, no ifs, ands, or buts.
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