US Politics Mega-thread - Page 2789

On October 27 2020 09:04 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:


So.... within the margin of error for most of the recent polls?
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/Texas.html

You berate the pollsters for doing a shitty job and then you wind up agreeing with them >.>

On October 27 2020 10:26 FlaShFTW wrote:

You're most certainly not alone. A lot of lean-conservatives have really been left with no party at this point. We can only hope that after Trump leaves, the Republicans might go back to what they used to represent in the 80s/90s. But who knows at this point.

As a moderate now NPP, I'm not going to vote for any Republican at the federal level until the Court returns to relative parity unless the Democratic candidate is just so bad, like Trump-level bad. It's a real disappointment what happened today.

On October 27 2020 11:02 Nevuk wrote:

About 10 years ago I was slightly sympathetic to McCain on some issues. I thought he was the better debater, fucked over by Bush's failures, but may have been less cozy with wall street.

Fast forward to now and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't vote for a republican dog catcher, or even someone who donated to even a republican dog catcher once within the last 10 years.

I don't think court packing will happen in 2021 unless ACB rules in favor of Trump on election issues, before election day.

It will definitely happen in 2022, though, unless ACB has a sudden and total ideology change.

Here's an interesting stat :
Trump loses to Biden 63-25 among those under 25, I think I just read. Very, very bad sign for the future of their party.
Edit- Correct stats.
https://iop.harvard.edu/youth-poll/harvard-youth-poll

Biden leads Trump by 63 percent to 25 percent among 18-29 year olds. No effect on this election, really, but not good for their future.

On October 27 2020 11:29 Shingi11 wrote:
I am actually not that mad at the 6-3 court because we can finally put all that bipartisanship talk to rest. And now we have a reason to reform the court. That was never going to happen with 5-4 court. The backlash once the court touches roe v wade and lbgq rights is going to be swift. And once Republicans are in the minority and are crying dems aren't listening to them Schumer and Pelosi can tell them to stick it where the sun dont shine.

I don’t know who is going to win the election. I write this on the fourth anniversary of the Billy Bush Access Hollywood tape. At the time House Speaker Paul Ryan set the tone for the GOP leadership’s response by condemning Trump’s comments: ‘I am sickened by what I heard today. Women are to be championed and revered, not objectified. I hope Mr Trump treats this situation with the seriousness it deserves and works to demonstrate to the country that he has greater respect for women than this clip suggests.’

Ryan concluded his statement by withdrawing from an event the next day with Trump in Wisconsin. Mitch McConnell followed: ‘These comments are repugnant, and unacceptable in any circumstance. As the father of three daughters, I strongly believe that Trump needs to apologize directly to women and girls everywhere, and take full responsibility for the utter lack of respect for women shown in his comments on that tape.’

Once again, Republican leaders found themselves confronting a hostile press over their nominee’s behavior: the tweets, the antics at rallies, the mocking of disabled reporters and innuendos of violence against protesters. But come November 2016, it was Ryan, McConnell and the GOP who found themselves on the other end of Republican voters’ ire.

In 2016, the voters wanted the GOP’s leadership to fight alongside Trump against what they felt were dishonest attacks by Hillary Clinton and her media allies. They felt bullied from the two previous election cycles in which they perceived, accurately or not, their party had chosen weak candidates in John McCain, who Trump slandered regularly and mercilessly, and Mitt Romney. But the GOP leadership and Republicans in Congress feared that Trump’s erratic behavior and inability to stay on message would cause a catastrophic general election loss.

Trump was trailing in national polling. It appeared the GOP was headed off the cliff, and towards a reckoning: how to explain such a loss? But Donald Trump defied the media on both the left and the right and the jaded professional consultant class in his own party, and won the election. He swept every battleground state including Democratic strongholds in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Republicans who had come out against Trump during the campaign were now at the mercy of their voters.

It wasn’t a fluke and it wasn’t because of fevered Russia conspiracies. Anti-Trump consultants and pundits in the GOP were now apostates. The shock-talk culture of AM radio was squarely in charge. Like it or not, Trump was now the face of the Republican party and, more importantly, the country. Now Ryan and McConnell had to find a delicate balancing act with a new president who wouldn’t hesitate to turn his Twitter army on them. In the end, kicking and screaming, they had no choice but to fall into line with him, and with the will of their voters.

The general feeling in the GOP was that Trump could be reined in. His crazier impulses would fall by the wayside in favor of traditional governance, and he would become a backstop, signing long-promised GOP legislation on tax reform, immigration and healthcare. The last four years have, however, been anything but stable — apart, that is, from the courts. Now with an election only a month away, the GOP again find themselves again staring at a reckoning.

Once again, the President is trailing in polls and in key demographics. Once again, he has delivered a scatterbrained debate performance. And this time his COVID-19 diagnosis has turned the West Wing into a petri dish. Though Trump surely could be reelected — as we learned four years ago, anything can happen — right now it’s Joe Biden’s race.

Yet there seems to be an odd sense of calm on the right as we head into the election. Sure, the President’s base is fired up with its flag-waving MAGA armadas and monster truck parades. But the party as a whole doesn’t seem to be panicking. This is because of one simple reason: Amy Coney Barrett.

Make no mistake: Barrett will be confirmed and seated either shortly before the election or in the lame-duck session. No ‘Resistance’ or media-driven delay tactics relating to the President’s COVID diagnosis will change this. It’s inevitable.

Barrett will certainly tilt the Supreme Court toward originalism in the mold of her mentor Antonin Scalia. In the event of a Biden administration, she could act as a bulwark against questionable executive actions. If the Republican party can hold onto a slim majority in the Senate as well, Joe Biden’s first-term agenda is effectively dead. He can spend his days swiveling around in the Oval Office before retiring.

After the past four years of having to defend morning rage tweets and random sound bites, that may be exactly what Republicans and a large chunk of their voters want, though they would never admit it. If Republicans suffer heavy losses this election cycle — losing the White House and the Senate, with the risk of a Democratic majority moving to end the filibuster and expand the Supreme Court — the move to confirm Barrett would still have been worth it. You don’t suppress your duly granted majority power when given the opportunity, because of something the opposing party says they might do down the road. Mitch McConnell knows this.

The Republican base believe that the Barack Obama/Joe Biden presidency ran roughshod over the Constitution. Offered a deal — three Supreme Court Justices in exchange for one Donald Trump term — their base would overwhelmingly take it. They might have to. The Barrett confirmation will soften a Trump defeat, for him and them. Trump could walk out of the White House on January 20 a conquering hero to the party and the base, despite having been his own worst enemy.

The devil’s bargain that traditional Republicans struck with the bombastic president will have paid off in spades. Trump’s three conservative justices will tilt the Court for a generation. His concession speech, should he condescend to give one, would become another of his notorious rallies. He would leave office one of the most consequential one-term presidents in modern American history (sorry Mr President, John Adams you are not). The courts will be his legacy, and the GOP’s reward for tolerating their non-traditional president and defending him through his impeachment.

It shouldn’t be like this, but it is. The fate of legislation and government should not come down to a seat or two on the nation’s highest court. But everything changed with the Obama presidency. Obama vowed to work around a Republican Congress when they acted as a just and constitutional check on his executive powers. Conservatives see the Supreme Court as the only thing stopping the unconstitutional exercise of executive power from the Oval Office, on everything from healthcare to conscience restrictions put on religious organizations, or even state lockdown orders from over-zealous Democratic governors such as Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer or New York’s Andrew Cuomo.

If this were not the case, and Democrats were truly interested in fixing the legislative authority in Congress, they themselves would not be now threatening to pack the Supreme Court, should the opportunity arise.

On October 27 2020 11:31 Wegandi wrote:


People's political views change significantly as they age. Events, experiences, family, circumstances of the day, etc. I doubt even 10% of those 45+ hold relatively "samey" views as they had when they were 18 or 24. Ideologues will for sure, but ideologues are extreme minority % of the population (Your Ron Pauls and Bernie Sanders of the world).

In general, however, this points toward the idea that partisan identification — while not exactly being “hard-wired” — can be quite persistent as the voter moves through her lifecourse. Voters who came of age during the eight years of the Bush Presidency are roughly eight points more Democratic than the rest of the country; that advantage could be worth an extra point or two to Democrats throughout the next half-century.

On October 27 2020 11:36 Wegandi wrote:


It's not weird that once your side loses a branch of Government your solution is to destroy it and rebuild in a manner to your advantage? How about you guys just win more elections and persuade more folks to vote for your candidates? Don't put up losers like Hillary Clinton for President? If you guys can't beat Nixon, Bush's x2, Trump, etc. (Reagan was a good candidate so that's not entirely the DNC fault) that's on your party not our civil institutions.

The SCOTUS is out of control, but y'all never cared until you're in the losers position. It's so hollow and way worse than anything the GOP has done. Every time Democrats lose their solution is to structurally reconfigure our institutions and change our systems, which is funny considering how much they holler about Trump destroying those same institutions and norms.

The GOP picked 15 of the last 19 SCOTUS justices. I'm not sure why non-republicans are so upset that we had to violate norms, then hypocritically violate the principle we established to violate norms for the 14th one, in order to go from 13/17 to 14/18 to 15/19.

On October 27 2020 11:36 Wegandi wrote:


It's not weird that once your side loses a branch of Government your solution is to destroy it and rebuild in a manner to your advantage? How about you guys just win more elections and persuade more folks to vote for your candidates? Don't put up losers like Hillary Clinton for President? If you guys can't beat Nixon, Bush's x2, Trump, etc. (Reagan was a good candidate so that's not entirely the DNC fault) that's on your party not our civil institutions.

The SCOTUS is out of control, but y'all never cared until you're in the losers position. It's so hollow and way worse than anything the GOP has done. Every time Democrats lose their solution is to structurally reconfigure our institutions and change our systems, which is funny considering how much they holler about Trump destroying those same institutions and norms.

On October 27 2020 11:48 FlaShFTW wrote:

This is not true.

1980s had the left block of Brennan, Marshall, and Powell, with moderate justices like O'Connor and Stevens. Sure, you had the solid conservative block of Burger, Rehnquist, Blackmun, White (with Burger replaced by Scalia), but this is far better of a balanced court compared to today.

1990s were Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas as your solid conservative block, a moderate block of Kennedy, O'Connor, and Stevens, and a liberal block of Breyer, Souter, and Ginsburg.

How are you actually going to say with a straight face that the 90s and 80s were more conservative and a better GOP court make up than the current? Where the current, you have Gorsuch as your "median vote". The solid conservative block is now Gorsuch, Kava, Barrett, Alito and Thomas, you only have 3 liberals now with Sotomayor, Breyer, and Kagan, and Roberts is still a lean right "moderate" justice. Yeah, no, the courts in the 80s and 90s were far more balanced.

Sure, Republicans have won more elections. But it's also been incredibly lucky that Republicans have averaged 2 justices per term while Democrats only average 1 justice per term (16 justices for 9 Republican terms, 5 justices for 5 Democrat terms).

On October 27 2020 11:50 Nevuk wrote:

No, that's not actually true.

It's said a lot, but it's never held true (including the aphorism attached to Churchill actually having it backwards, iirc, though not exactly something that's been studied a lot). A person's beliefs will change, sure, but not the entire demographic. Generally generational partisan beliefs are set in stone between 18-25 politically. If 63% of them do not trust the GOP now, it is unlikely more than 5-6% of that group ever trust them.

Here's a very old article that I'd love to see an update for - so old some of the charts are expired, but it goes through and compares the partisan preferences of voters to who was president when they turned 18.


https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/bush-may-haunt-republicans-for/

That's Bush, who was never as unpopular as Trump is with 18-29 year olds.


How can SCOTUS be out of control if, in your view, if, as you've said, it's generally been republican?

The difference between now and the 80s is that the GOP was so infuriated by Reinquist that they decided that all future justices had to be vetted and indoctrinated by the Federalist Society. If it had been 3 moderate republicans, rather than 1 partisan hack, 1 religious extremist, and 1 qualified conservative, then it would be a lot more palatable. Of course, then they wouldn't have been assured of their goals, so ... eh.

Expanding the court in reaction to bad faith behavior is one of the oldest traditions in US politics. It was literally part of what Marbury v Madison was about. It's not new, and I'm baffled that people seem to have forgotten it was an option. Seriously, it's also been shrunken. This is what happens when you play constitutional hardball, or airbud the constitution, ie, do things that violate norms just because they weren't written : your opponents will do it back to you ("no rules say a dog can't play basketball").

On October 27 2020 11:50 Shingi11 wrote:


Ohh but it ok when your side brakes the system when they hold a pick hostage for almost 250 days right. Where was your righteous indignation when the Republicans said America's need to have voice when selecting a justice but can approve one a week before election

On October 27 2020 12:03 FlaShFTW wrote:

"You do know in the 80s and 90s the GOP had a much better SCOTUS advantage than they have now, right?"
What is this supposed to mean, if not about the ideological makeup of the court favoring the GOP?

Put it another way, you had two people respond to your comment here talking about the makeup of the court. Clearly, your comment meant the "makeup" at least to two commenters. But do enlighten me, maybe pull a little bit of Scalia or Thomas for me here to explain how to interpret your mess of a sentence.

On October 27 2020 12:17 Wegandi wrote:


I'm not a Republican, but I'm also not surprised that the GOP controlled Senate didn't want to give the Democrats a SC seat. The Democrats would have done the same thing and my a priori assumption for politicians is that they all lie and they're all hypocrites so I'm not distraught or surprised when it happens. Of course, your rationalization is that hypocrisy is enough to fundamentally alter, destroy, and reform a huge civil institution because wah they said one thing, but did another. That's a pretty damn low bar for such a fundamental change to our society.

If the vacancy happened in say 2013 the GOP couldn't have succeeded in blocking because a good chance the electorate would have given the D's a Senate majority in 2014, but Obama was unlucky it happened in the last year of his term. It is what it is. You really expected GOP Senate to confirm? Would you expect the same thing from D Senate in similar circumstances?