EPTUS Politics Mega-thread - Page 874
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KwarK
United States43248 Posts
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Plansix
United States60190 Posts
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CosmicSpiral
United States15275 Posts
On October 26 2018 01:39 Plansix wrote: I'm uninterested in blame or both sides. I'm interested in talking about who is in power at this time and what their goals are. Which is the problem in a nutshell. Whoever is in power should be a minor influence on SCOTUS despite their aims. The structural issue will persist long after Trump leaves office and the Republicans lose control of the House. We’re stuck in this scenario largely because of an overt focus on the present at the expense of long-term considerations. It’s very bad for Democrats considering Ginsberg and Breyer are the two oldest Justices standing. On October 26 2018 01:39 Plansix wrote: Like you said, in Obama's second term both parties crowed about the just action or overreach by the high court. But no one did there job to pass bills to address gay marriage. But at that time the Republicans owned the House and they would have been the ones to get that process started. The Republicans are very interested in controlling access to abortion and limiting the government's ability to regulate, which is why they have stacked the court in the manner it is today. I’m rather indifferent on the former. Personally I don’t believe abortion is a private right nor should it be supported by the government, but a Republican-controlled SCOTUS will be reluctant to backtrack on abortion rulings without directly violating precedent. It would have to be a very slow whittling away of rights and the recent appointees’ reputations would help slow down any Republican-driven agenda. Azar vs Garza was very...odd to say the least so I don’t see Kavanaugh’s dissent on that as a reliable portent. We might see the court pick away at the ACA’s contraceptive mandates as the opening salvo. I'm very worried about the Court giving too much leeway to federal agents on topics like immigration (their comments on the ACLU case here is already disconcerting). Given that Gorsuch + Kavanaugh are sticklers to the “original meaning” interpretation of the Constitution, we might also see the government further rescind itself from environmental regulations. That's unconscionable considering we're endangering the world ecosystem. If anything Kavanaugh is benign compared to Gorsuch, who strikes me as more amenable to taking hardline stances and playing tribal politics. On October 26 2018 03:55 IgnE wrote: Well if your point is simply that an understanding of court power became "partisan" along familiar lines, between parties that resemble our current parties, then ok, yeah, maybe the 60s was when that happened. But judicial "activism" and the power of the courts to "extra-constitutionally" define law was appreciated very early. The Supreme Court has been expanding its powers since its inception. That's no surprise since its original conception was quite vague and limited, so it had considerable leeway to assign itself new powers. Besides who could initially countermand them without appeal to English law? And even judges have been bitching about "judicial activism" since Lochner vs New York; just read Holmes' dissent. The difference is the Supreme Court was still expected to be impartial and exempt from outsider meddling besides nominations. There would have been no uproar at FDR's proposal otherwise. On October 26 2018 03:55 IgnE wrote: The court-packing scheme, while not partisan, in the sense of breaking down along party lines, makes it very clear that entire legislative agendas, and even peculiar visions of "progress," depended on the court's composition. Despite having 4 conservatives, 3 liberals, and 2 swing votes (rulings generally went 4/4/1), SCOTUS unanimously voted against FDR in all 3 Black Monday cases. FDR wanted to stuff SCOTUS with ideological sycophants because the Justice Department couldn't muster the due diligence for proper court cases. Their arguments were so poorly drafted and arranged the court wouldn't uphold New Deal legislation regardless of personal beliefs. It's why he advocated for 6 extra seats in addition to the age rule. That's hardly proof the composition dictated entire legislative agendas. FDR might have dismissed it entirely if he hadn't tried to push through the New Deal proposals so quickly. | ||
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CosmicSpiral
United States15275 Posts
On October 26 2018 02:38 farvacola wrote: While you're still ignoring all of the ridiculous casuistry that went into the expansion of the "right to contract" as basis for finding government acts unconstitutional that took place during the leadup to the switch in time that saved nine, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. 1) The rationale of "substantive due process" in regards to deriving rulings on economic regulation from the Fourteenth Amendment was reversed in the 50s. It is now used to protect personal rights, hence why I "ignored" it. 2) Whether factions of the Court duplicitously, maliciously struck down wage laws is a different question from whether they ought to have the power to do so. This is further a different question than whether they intentionally ganged up to push the decisions through instead of being misery capitalist pigs who independently arrived at the same conclusion. If I was a Republican I'd be beating the drum on how SCOTUS has shoved gay marriage and abortion and all that jazz down our throats since the 70s. Fortunately I'm a disaffected leftist so I see these developments in a favorable light. However, that doesn't ease my mind on how the Court passed them since I know it incentivizes a winner-take-all mentality that leads to number 3. Many of the earlier developments of the Court led to 1 or 2. I'd prefer it if we went to a European-style system and changed the nomination process, but we know that's never going to happen. The Court would have been severely curtailed for that to work. On October 26 2018 02:38 farvacola wrote: I would maintain that "bickering and underhanded BS" is basically the substance of this nation's politics and always has been. Positing that the bad stuff really took off after such and such event, other than the nation's founding (or even the implementation of the Articles of Confederation), is itself a bit of historical nostalgia of the sort that many conservatives use when they want to impugn the decisions of the Warren court or the passage of the CRA. Bad stuff has been happening since the dawn of time. Why not expand that claim to all of human history? What you're suggesting is poor historiography at its core. Sure, I could argue it started with Marbury vs Madison, except the specifics of that ruling are so generalized and diffused over time it would refer to everything post-1850. There's no explanatory power to assess why we are worrying about abortion and immigration on this topic instead of rehashing the Lochner era. It's as pointless an endeavor as saying the Soviet Union failed because Plato wrote the Apology or Italism fascism owes its existence to Imperial Rome. The other problem is how the Court gained prominence isn't straightforward. Sometimes it came out even, sometimes it gradually lost practical power over time (rollbacks on the Lochner era also signified retreat from judgments on state economic regulation), something cases set a precedent that isn't a problem for decades. For example, the underlying implication in Miranda vs Arizona didn't really kick in until the middle of the Reinquest era although the death penalty cases vs Georgia were rather prominent. On October 26 2018 02:38 farvacola wrote: It's a hard stretch to assert that the federal courts saying what the law is is not judicial activism while contending that judicial explication of the rights underlying the Amendments to the Constitution is judicial activism. Judicial activism is when judges make decisions based on personal opinion instead of interpretation of existing law. It will happen, largely because the idea is nebulous and "interpretation" folds into "opinion" easily. What SCOTUS has done over the last ~240 years is slowly arrogate power regardless of political orientation. "Explication of rights" becomes "expansion of jurisdiction" precisely because they are the Alpha and Omega in that department. And since institutions are loathe to relinquish power, it doesn't matter which party nominally controls it. On October 26 2018 02:38 farvacola wrote: As for regard for the penumbra right to privacy guaranteed by the Constitution, Brandeis and Holmes were the ones who came up with that concept in Olmstead anyhow. Historically, the Warren court is an odd place to affix your criticism. I already addressed this. Neither Brandeis nor Holmes established a fixed standard on what the phrase meant or how it applied in federal law, largely because they didn't intend to do so. So it's no surprise different Justices used it in different ways afterwards. Holmes = sometimes he meant rationally implied rights unarticulated by the Amendments, other times a gradient on how strictly a law could be applied (see the beginning of his dissent for Springer vs Philippine Islands) Cardozo = an ambiguous area of the law Douglas = "zones of privacy" emanating from the Bill of Rights Realistically we can cite Brennan in Lamont vs Postmaster General as his precursor for using nearly identical, but less flamboyant, language. Yet Douglas is the trendsetter. His rationale became the benchmark for how all Justices in the future conceptualized it and frankly he presided over a more famous case. Holmes used "penumbra" in what he thought was a common-sense manner and Cardozo went for superfluous stylistic flourish. On October 26 2018 02:47 Plansix wrote: Again, the critique of over reach by the Warren Court over all others is linked to its role in ending segregation and pushing civil rights by protecting the rights of blacks. Judicial overreach happened before the Warren Court of course. But by fixating all the critique of the criticism on that court, they can target the "over reaches" like the upholding the voters rights act. Which sets the stage for overturning it and allowing for the return of overt voter suppression. The use of of judicial activism is coded language for supporting the federal governments ability to protect the civil rights of citizens. People inherited this talking points and critiques that have been refined since the 1950s and 1960s. Often unknowingly. But it is hard to discount the result of the more conservative court and its recent overturning the will of congress with the voters rights act. The rush to voter suppression was instant, like a gun went off when the ruling came down. Swing and a miss there. | ||
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iamthedave
England2814 Posts
Pretty much all the major in-play states seem to have the Republicans turning out in significantly higher numbers at this stage. That could be bad, very bad indeed. I do wonder where the Dems are going to be if they get trounced at the mid-terms. The Republicans are just going to dance on their graves. | ||
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Mohdoo
United States15725 Posts
On October 26 2018 09:07 iamthedave wrote: Looking bad for yon Democrats at this early stage: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/republicans-outpacing-democrats-early-voting-key-states-nbc-news-finds-n922881 Pretty much all the major in-play states seem to have the Republicans turning out in significantly higher numbers at this stage. That could be bad, very bad indeed. I do wonder where the Dems are going to be if they get trounced at the mid-terms. The Republicans are just going to dance on their graves. Yeah and if Oregon's governor loses to this Republican Challenger, I'm just gonna curl in a ball | ||
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TheTenthDoc
United States9561 Posts
Especially since plenty of places are fighting tooth and nail to make early voting as hard for the people they don't want to vote as possible. (the other thing, of course, is that you don't really want to benchmark R vs D, you want to benchmark D vs past D and R vs past R if anything; the idea that an R voter and D voter are equally likely to vote early across all states is silly as hell) All of which is to say nothing of the fact that this is purely about the House (Senate hopes are basically dead for the Dems because of the seats they have to defend) and direct popular vote total and the House have very little to do with one another | ||
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Plansix
United States60190 Posts
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Adreme
United States5574 Posts
On October 26 2018 09:07 iamthedave wrote: Looking bad for yon Democrats at this early stage: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/republicans-outpacing-democrats-early-voting-key-states-nbc-news-finds-n922881 Pretty much all the major in-play states seem to have the Republicans turning out in significantly higher numbers at this stage. That could be bad, very bad indeed. I do wonder where the Dems are going to be if they get trounced at the mid-terms. The Republicans are just going to dance on their graves. There is a line in that article that they kind of buried about how Republicans typically win absentee balots which generally happen earlier and Dems win in person so this is not actually great news for GoP. It reminds me of that poll from a few days ago that showed Dems up 50-47 in the major contests and somehow that was considered a win for Rs despite it being virtually the same number (50-46) when it was taken 2 months ago. | ||
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iPlaY.NettleS
Australia4356 Posts
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Introvert
United States4862 Posts
That being said, so far there is no evidence of a wave... depending on your definition. The only two people I have found so far that I read and take very seriously on early voting are 1. Jon Ralston, well known Nevada expert. Even people who distrust early voting read his stuff. It's here. So far what he sees is, like I said, somewhere between 2014 and 2016. The GOP had a strategy of trying to negate losses in Clark County by running up votes in the rural areas with absentee voters, and so far it's keeping them in the game. 2. Steve Schale, (former) Democratic operative in Florida. He very clearly roots for a side, but he seems to know his stuff. I think the most telling thing he's said in the past few days is that it looks like lots of people are voting, but otherwise it looks normal, i.e., a typical close Florida election. The main question from everyone is if these high early voting numbers are new voters, or merely people who normally vote anyway but are just super excited this year. It would be very hard for Democrats to not take the House, but it's possible...I'll be content if the GOP can expand its senate lead by a few. They win enough seats here and it's hard for them to lose the chamber before 2024. | ||
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iPlaY.NettleS
Australia4356 Posts
On October 26 2018 05:37 Plansix wrote: Ah, but you have already fallen into the trap by saying everything is so different now. Each immigration law was designed to keep a specific group of people out. At first, in the late 1800s was designed to keep the Chinese out or deport them after 10 years of labor. Then in the 1924 they had the first proper immigration limit in the US, designed to keep Italians, Greeks, eastern Europeans and Jews out of the country. And so on and so on and so on. Each law was created due to a strong xenophobic push to keep a specific undesirable group out of the country. We even kicked out illegal immigrants in Operation Wetback(that is literally its name) where we just took 1.3 million people and moved them back to Mexico in the 1950s. With every attempt to limit immigration in this country, we have just created more illegal immigrants because it is about closing borders, not controlling immigration. . And every single law that was passed was backed by some group of racists that feared these new immigrants. It is only in the 1980s that we even start to talk about treating illegal immigrants with any compassion on a national level, which was quickly abandoned. Of course we need immigration reform and control, but lets not kid ourselves that illegal immigration in the US is a problem created by a long line of people who 11 million illegal immigrants to have citizenship and to be able to vote. Steve Miller loves the Chinese Exclusion Act and would pass a South American Exclusion Act in a heart beat. Clintons NAFTA is what started the illegal immigration boom in the 90s, when small scale mex corn farmers could no longer compete with subsidised us imports.Why talk compassion for illegals whilst creating policies that literally destroyed their lives in their country of origin. Of course the dems welcomed these new arrivals, due to their voting preference.Which is why they’re on the nose with white working class voters, losing states like Michigan Ohio and Wisconsin.Lower skilled whites recognise the threat to wages that large influxes of lower skilled people represent.Basic supply and demand economics. https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/11/24/what-weve-learned-from-nafta/under-nafta-mexico-suffered-and-the-united-states-felt-its-pain | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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Plansix
United States60190 Posts
On October 26 2018 10:39 iPlaY.NettleS wrote: Clintons NAFTA is what started the illegal immigration boom in the 90s, when small scale mex corn farmers could no longer compete with subsidised us imports.Why talk compassion for illegals whilst creating policies that literally destroyed their lives in their country of origin. Of course the dems welcomed these new arrivals, due to their voting preference.Which is why they’re on the nose with white working class voters, losing states like Michigan Ohio and Wisconsin.Lower skilled whites recognise the threat to wages that large influxes of lower skilled people represent.Basic supply and demand economics. https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/11/24/what-weve-learned-from-nafta/under-nafta-mexico-suffered-and-the-united-states-felt-its-pain I’m not really sure what this has to do with what I posted or reality in general. Hispanics split their vote down the middle. This has to be the 5th or 6th I’ve told you this and that your theory is wrong, so I have to assume you either don’t read or have something against Hispanics, Democrats or immigrants in general. | ||
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NewSunshine
United States5938 Posts
On October 26 2018 11:00 Plansix wrote: I’m not really sure what this has to do with what I posted or reality in general. Hispanics split their vote down the middle. This has to be the 5th or 6th I’ve told you this and that your theory is wrong, so I have to assume you either don’t read or have something against Hispanics, Democrats or immigrants in general. Past conversations with other conservative favorites has taught me that it means nothing if you show their talking points to be 100% false, they will repeat them until the end of time regardless. If they can make it true in their own head, maybe they'll feel powerful enough to make it true for others as well. | ||
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Doodsmack
United States7224 Posts
On October 26 2018 10:39 iPlaY.NettleS wrote: Clintons NAFTA is what started the illegal immigration boom in the 90s, when small scale mex corn farmers could no longer compete with subsidised us imports.Why talk compassion for illegals whilst creating policies that literally destroyed their lives in their country of origin. Of course the dems welcomed these new arrivals, due to their voting preference.Which is why they’re on the nose with white working class voters, losing states like Michigan Ohio and Wisconsin.Lower skilled whites recognise the threat to wages that large influxes of lower skilled people represent.Basic supply and demand economics. https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/11/24/what-weve-learned-from-nafta/under-nafta-mexico-suffered-and-the-united-states-felt-its-pain Trump's trade deal, in contrast to NAFTA, favors the US even more. Therefore, Mexicans workers are disadvantaged as a result of Trump's trade deal. This, in turn, means that more Mexicans will come to the US illegally, to seek out a better life. Do I have that right? | ||
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Plansix
United States60190 Posts
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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Nouar
France3270 Posts
On October 26 2018 21:59 Plansix wrote: They have found a 11th bomb that was sent to Cory Booker. Even though this has been completely botched by whatever brain trust has attempted it, this is still the only time I can remember when there was a mass assassination attempt on political leadership by a domestic terrorist. Aaand a 12th to Clapper. | ||
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ticklishmusic
United States15977 Posts
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