Amy Coney Barrett conformed to the SCOTUS

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

2 hours ago, TitanTiger said:

To me, expanding the court does seem reactionary when you consider what you just said.  It's possible Alito and Thomas could have to step down in the next 4 years.  Or eight.  So there's a realistic chance that this 6-3 conservative majority could soon be a 5-4 liberal one.  I could be wrong, I just feel like expanding the court may end up looking like Icarus flying too close to the sun.

I completely agree.  What I'd do if I were a Democratic leader is a little more subtle, but a longer term play.

First, I'd move slower than some want by design.  Remember that the 2022 midterm Senate map is BAD for Republicans.  They are defending about 5 seats that can easily be flipped, while having no obvious pickup opportunities of their own.  It could be worth holding off in order to expand a potential Senate majority, then drop the hammer in 2023.

Do things now like infrastructure investment, Covid relief, etc.  Popular stuff that will play well to flipping those seats.  Then, in 2023 when the numbers are strong, BAM!  DC and PR statehood.  Basically a strategy to put Republicans on their heels in the battle for the Senate for the next decade.

All the while filling lower court seat after lower court seat.

[TitanTiger 20,471]

1 minute ago, Brad_ATX said:

I completely agree.  What I'd do if I were a Democratic leader is a little more subtle, but a longer term play.

First, I'd move slower than some want by design.  Remember that the 2022 midterm Senate map is BAD for Republicans.  They are defending about 5 seats that can easily be flipped, while having no obvious pickup opportunities of their own.  It could be worth holding off in order to expand a potential Senate majority, then drop the hammer in 2023.

Do things now like infrastructure investment, Covid relief, etc.  Popular stuff that will play well to flipping those seats.  Then, in 2023 when the numbers are strong, BAM!  DC and PR statehood.  Basically a strategy to put Republicans on their heels in the battle for the Senate for the next decade.

All the while filling lower court seat after lower court seat.

I mean, from a conservative perspective I hope all that doesn't happen, but I will say the thing folks have to remember is that the GOP played the long game here.  They didn't just dump a shitload of new lower court judges in overnight.  This has played out over decades really.  The Democrats have to think in the same terms.  You can't get everything you want by fiat over night.

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

Just now, TitanTiger said:

I mean, from a conservative perspective I hope all that doesn't happen, but I will say the thing folks have to remember is that the GOP played the long game here.  They didn't just dump a shitload of new lower court judges in overnight.  This has played out over decades really.  The Democrats have to think in the same terms.  You can't get everything you want by fiat over night.

Oh make no mistake.  The Democratic leadership is not smart enough to do what I just suggested.  Too reactionary.  I fully expect them to blow the opportunity if given control of all three branches.

[homersapien 11,353]

1 minute ago, TitanTiger said:

I'll also say this, trying to re-litigate the debates of the constitutional convention from 233 years ago over how best to set up our legislative branch is pointless.  We saw wisdom and advantages in both kinds of representation and created a bi-cameral legislature with a division of powers as a result.  It's not like anyone is doing anything underhanded simply by the Senate being what it was created to be and doing what it was created to do.  Rage against the slimy maneuvering of McConnell all you want and I'm with you.  I'm open to putting in some rules to prevent this sort of thing from happening again in the future.  But bitching about how representation works in the Senate and how it works in the House comes off as less about principled objections to manipulation of power and more like sour grapes.

No, it's not sour grapes, it's a genuine concern about the aspects of our constitution that allow a McConnell and a minority party to refuse to even consider a SCOTUS nominee by a duly elected POTUS representing the majority of voters. (for example). 

As you say, our constitution was designed to deal with the politics of the United States 233 years ago.  The country is not the same.  The constitution needs to be amended to reflect modern conditions.  I am fine with protection of minority rights, but what we have is a rule by a minority - as the article I posted illustrates.

[TitanTiger 20,471]

1 minute ago, Brad_ATX said:

Oh make no mistake.  The Democratic leadership is not smart enough to do what I just suggested.  Too reactionary.  I fully expect them to blow the opportunity if given control of all three branches.

I think Biden may be the one to put the brakes on some of those inclinations.  But if he doesn't and they decide to be Icarus over all this, you could see some unexpected backlash in Congress.

[TitanTiger 20,471]

7 minutes ago, homersapien said:

No, it's not sour grapes, it's a genuine concern about the aspects of our constitution that allow a McConnell and a minority party to refuse to even consider a SCOTUS nominee by a duly elected POTUS representing the majority of voters. (for example). 

Part of the design of our system of government - what's baked into it - is that the minority has ways to affect and influence government. 

And regardless of what you think about the way Merrick Garland was handled (I think they should have allowed the vote to happen and simply voted him down if they didn't want him), the President simply gets to nominate.  The Senate confirms.  As far as a "minority party" doing this, the Republicans weren't the minority party at the time.  They controlled not just the US Senate, but had a 59 seat advantage in the House at the time. Their Senate advantage was 10 seats. Even if by some magic you could have switched the confirmation process to the proportionally representative House, the result would have been the same.

 

Quote

As you say, our constitution was designed to deal with the politics of the United States 233 years ago.  The country is not the same.  The constitution needs to be amended to reflect modern conditions.  I am fine with protection of minority rights, but what we have is a rule by a minority - as the article I posted illustrates.

Actually, that's not what I said.  

[homersapien 11,353]

5 hours ago, TitanTiger said:

Part of the design of our system of government - what's baked into it - is that the minority has ways to affect and influence government. 

And regardless of what you think about the way Merrick Garland was handled (I think they should have allowed the vote to happen and simply voted him down if they didn't want him), the President simply gets to nominate.  The Senate confirms.  As far as a "minority party" doing this, the Republicans weren't the minority party at the time.  They controlled not just the US Senate, but had a 59 seat advantage in the House at the time and a 10 seat advantage in the Senate.  Even if by some magic you could have switched the confirmation process to the proportionally representative House, the result would have been the same.

By minority party I mean they don't represent a majority of the voters, which our constitution allows (for example by giving each state equal representation in the Senate regardless of population.)

Actually, that's not what I said.  

You referred to the age of the constitution.  The point that some of it's provisions are no longer relevant to modern times is my opinion. Sorry for the ambiguity.

 

 

 

Edited October 27, 2020 by homersapien

[homersapien 11,353]

Republicans have already packed state supreme courts

Norms against changing the size of courts for partisan reasons are selectively upheld

By

Marin K. Levy

Marin K. Levy is a professor of law at Duke Law School and author of "Packing and Unpacking State Courts," published in the William & Mary Law Review earlier this year.

Oct. 26, 2020 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

 

The Senate’s bare Republican majority is poised to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to a seat on the Supreme Court. But the controversy sparked by her nomination will continue, and Democrats are already discussing whether and how to “pack” the court by creating new seats. That debate, though, and especially the Republican rhetoric against court-packing, is missing an important development: numerous recent efforts across the country, the majority of them spearheaded by Republicans, to pack (and unpack) state courts.

Republican leaders have consistently described changing the size of the Supreme Court (which varied until 1869, when it reached its modern total of nine seats) in dire terms. At the Barrett hearings, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) said such a move would “do great political harm to our government.” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) stated that expanding the court would be "an abuse of power.” And Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) went one step further, calling court-packing a “partisan suicide bombing.”

But such “bombings” have frequently been attempted at the state level, where courts collectively decide the vast majority of the country’s civil and criminal cases. In 2018, more than 33 million such cases were initiated in state courts, compared with 376,000 in federal district courts. State courts decide cases with at least as much importance to individual lives and national policies alike as federal courts do, including crucial matters, such as partisan gerrymandering, that the federal courts have tended to avoid.

That makes the attempts to pack — or unpack — state courts especially important. In the past decade alone, lawmakers in 11 states have introduced at least 20 bills to expand or contract the size of their state supreme courts. The vast majority of these efforts were made by Republicans, often for apparent partisan advantage. That is, many of these lawmakers appear to have attempted to change the size of their highest state court to affect its ideological composition — and two of these attempts have succeeded.

The first so-called success was in Arizona. Early in 2016, a Republican lawmaker introduced House Bill 2537, which sought to expand the Arizona Supreme Court from five to seven justices. The Republican-controlled legislature approved the measure, despite no support from Democrats. Nor was it supported by any of the court’s five justices, with the chief justice writing to the governor that additional seats were “not required by the Court’s caseload” and in fact would be “unwarranted” given how costly such a proposal would be at a time when other court-related needs were “underfunded.” Several news outlets called the bill an attempt to “Bring Back Court-Packing,” noting that the Republican governor, Doug Ducey, would select the new justices from a list created by the Arizona Commission on Appellate Court Appointments (whose members the governor nominates). Days later, the governor signed the bill into law. The two new justices (both appointed by Ducey) took their seats in December 2016, tilting that court further to the right.

Georgia offers another example of successful court-packing. In 2016, the Supreme Court of Georgia had four Democratic and three Republican appointees. That spring, the Republican-controlled General Assembly passed a bill expanding the court to nine justices and giving the Republican governor — who promptly signed the bill into law — the power to fill the two new seats in the first instance. By early 2017, then-Gov. Nathan Deal had done so, resulting in a “more conservative-leaning court.”

Although court-packing bills have not made it into law in other states recently, some have been seriously considered. A Republican-sponsored bill that would have split the Florida Supreme Court into separate civil and criminal courts of last resort — and added three seats in the process — passed in the state House but failed in the Senate. In Montana, a Republican proposal to unpack the state Supreme Court by removing two seats (the governor was a Democrat at the time) received a hearing but died in committee. Democrats, too, have made a few attempts of late to pack and unpack courts, including in Alabama and Louisiana, though they have no recent successes — perhaps due in part to the fact that Republicans have controlled many more state legislatures in the past decade.

Court-packing is a dreadful option. Biden shouldn’t rule it out.

It is nothing new, of course, to see politicians use the rhetoric of principle to advance partisan preferences. Nor do experiences with state court-packing and unpacking offer easy lessons about the politics or wisdom of the enterprise. But the state experience might suggest that norms against court-packing are not as strong as Republican leaders suggest. Thus far, state officials responsible for court-packing proposals seem not to have faced significant political repercussions. On the other hand, neither have such proposals always, or even often, succeeded.

Still, any effort to alter the structure of the courts — whether through their size, their selection method or their jurisdiction — must be carefully weighed against the very real threats that doing so would pose to judicial decision-making and independence, which is hard to measure in the short term.

That is why the debate over the size of the U.S. Supreme Court, even if sparked by Barrett’s nomination, cannot end with her confirmation. There are deeper and lingering questions about the size, structure and function of all courts — questions that should be asked, even if the answers are not immediately clear. And arguments over those questions must be informed not by what seems politically expedient but with what has already been politically attempted.

One of the central tasks in law is grappling with precedent — the principles laid down by prior decisions. Lawyers and judges can argue why certain precedents are on point, or why they must be distinguished in some way. What they cannot do is ignore them. There may be reasons to distinguish state courts from the U.S. Supreme Court, but Republican leaders have not offered any. Instead, the current Republican argument against court-packing simply ignores precedent that Republicans themselves set.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/10/26/court-packing-republicans-states/

[TitanTiger 20,471]

6 minutes ago, homersapien said:

By minority party I mean they don't represent a majority of the voters, which our constitution allows (for example by giving each state equal representation in the Senate regardless of population.)

But again, at the time that wasn't true.  The GOP held a 59 seat advantage in the House of Representatives as well.  So at least at the time the Garland nomination came up, the GOP did represent a majority of the voters.

 

6 minutes ago, homersapien said:

You referred to the age of the constitution.  The point that some of it's provisions are no longer relevant to modern times is my opinion.

I mean, feel free to go yell into the abyss, but this isn't changing.  My opinion is it doesn't need to change either.  It strikes some good balances and compromises.  If I have to choose between the minority sometimes mucking things up vs a tyranny of the majority, I'll take the former warts and all.

 

[TitanTiger 20,471]

8 minutes ago, homersapien said:

Republicans have already packed state supreme courts

Norms against changing the size of courts for partisan reasons are selectively upheld

By

Marin K. Levy

Marin K. Levy is a professor of law at Duke Law School and author of "Packing and Unpacking State Courts," published in the William & Mary Law Review earlier this year.

Oct. 26, 2020 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

 

The Senate’s bare Republican majority is poised to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to a seat on the Supreme Court. But the controversy sparked by her nomination will continue, and Democrats are already discussing whether and how to “pack” the court by creating new seats. That debate, though, and especially the Republican rhetoric against court-packing, is missing an important development: numerous recent efforts across the country, the majority of them spearheaded by Republicans, to pack (and unpack) state courts.

Republican leaders have consistently described changing the size of the Supreme Court (which varied until 1869, when it reached its modern total of nine seats) in dire terms. At the Barrett hearings, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) said such a move would “do great political harm to our government.” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) stated that expanding the court would be "an abuse of power.” And Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) went one step further, calling court-packing a “partisan suicide bombing.”

But such “bombings” have frequently been attempted at the state level, where courts collectively decide the vast majority of the country’s civil and criminal cases. In 2018, more than 33 million such cases were initiated in state courts, compared with 376,000 in federal district courts. State courts decide cases with at least as much importance to individual lives and national policies alike as federal courts do, including crucial matters, such as partisan gerrymandering, that the federal courts have tended to avoid.

That makes the attempts to pack — or unpack — state courts especially important. In the past decade alone, lawmakers in 11 states have introduced at least 20 bills to expand or contract the size of their state supreme courts. The vast majority of these efforts were made by Republicans, often for apparent partisan advantage. That is, many of these lawmakers appear to have attempted to change the size of their highest state court to affect its ideological composition — and two of these attempts have succeeded.

The first so-called success was in Arizona. Early in 2016, a Republican lawmaker introduced House Bill 2537, which sought to expand the Arizona Supreme Court from five to seven justices. The Republican-controlled legislature approved the measure, despite no support from Democrats. Nor was it supported by any of the court’s five justices, with the chief justice writing to the governor that additional seats were “not required by the Court’s caseload” and in fact would be “unwarranted” given how costly such a proposal would be at a time when other court-related needs were “underfunded.” Several news outlets called the bill an attempt to “Bring Back Court-Packing,” noting that the Republican governor, Doug Ducey, would select the new justices from a list created by the Arizona Commission on Appellate Court Appointments (whose members the governor nominates). Days later, the governor signed the bill into law. The two new justices (both appointed by Ducey) took their seats in December 2016, tilting that court further to the right.

Georgia offers another example of successful court-packing. In 2016, the Supreme Court of Georgia had four Democratic and three Republican appointees. That spring, the Republican-controlled General Assembly passed a bill expanding the court to nine justices and giving the Republican governor — who promptly signed the bill into law — the power to fill the two new seats in the first instance. By early 2017, then-Gov. Nathan Deal had done so, resulting in a “more conservative-leaning court.”

Although court-packing bills have not made it into law in other states recently, some have been seriously considered. A Republican-sponsored bill that would have split the Florida Supreme Court into separate civil and criminal courts of last resort — and added three seats in the process — passed in the state House but failed in the Senate. In Montana, a Republican proposal to unpack the state Supreme Court by removing two seats (the governor was a Democrat at the time) received a hearing but died in committee. Democrats, too, have made a few attempts of late to pack and unpack courts, including in Alabama and Louisiana, though they have no recent successes — perhaps due in part to the fact that Republicans have controlled many more state legislatures in the past decade.

Court-packing is a dreadful option. Biden shouldn’t rule it out.

It is nothing new, of course, to see politicians use the rhetoric of principle to advance partisan preferences. Nor do experiences with state court-packing and unpacking offer easy lessons about the politics or wisdom of the enterprise. But the state experience might suggest that norms against court-packing are not as strong as Republican leaders suggest. Thus far, state officials responsible for court-packing proposals seem not to have faced significant political repercussions. On the other hand, neither have such proposals always, or even often, succeeded.

Still, any effort to alter the structure of the courts — whether through their size, their selection method or their jurisdiction — must be carefully weighed against the very real threats that doing so would pose to judicial decision-making and independence, which is hard to measure in the short term.

That is why the debate over the size of the U.S. Supreme Court, even if sparked by Barrett’s nomination, cannot end with her confirmation. There are deeper and lingering questions about the size, structure and function of all courts — questions that should be asked, even if the answers are not immediately clear. And arguments over those questions must be informed not by what seems politically expedient but with what has already been politically attempted.

One of the central tasks in law is grappling with precedent — the principles laid down by prior decisions. Lawyers and judges can argue why certain precedents are on point, or why they must be distinguished in some way. What they cannot do is ignore them. There may be reasons to distinguish state courts from the U.S. Supreme Court, but Republican leaders have not offered any. Instead, the current Republican argument against court-packing simply ignores precedent that Republicans themselves set.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/10/26/court-packing-republicans-states/

I'm not in favor of the GOP doing it either - even at the state level.

The other thing to consider is this - if the Dems go scorched earth here and the American people think it's an overreach and the GOP takes over Congress again in 2022 or 2024 (perhaps even the WH if they see Biden/Harris as complicit), what's to stop them from packing the court further to swing it back their way?  Where does this end?

[homersapien 11,353]

27 minutes ago, TitanTiger said:

I'm not in favor of the GOP doing it either - even at the state level.

The other thing to consider is this - if the Dems go scorched earth here and the American people think it's an overreach and the GOP takes over Congress again in 2022 or 2024 (perhaps even the WH if they see Biden/Harris as complicit), what's to stop them from packing the court further to swing it back their way?  Where does this end?

It doesn't.  (Maybe that will eventually lead to  constitutional change if the American people don't like it.)

But if we are going to have a two party system and one party is playing hardball, the other has a duty to play the same way.

 

 

 

Edited October 27, 2020 by homersapien

[RunInRed 16,360]

1 hour ago, TitanTiger said:

No, it's not.  But at the same time, it's likely a Democrat will get to replace two of the most conservative justices on the court in the next 4-8 years.  These things have a way of balancing out on their own.

OK ... but what happens until then? Are we just supposed to sit around and wait? There are monumental decisions that can be made as a result of a system that has now totally been jerry-rigged to favor one ideology.

[RunInRed 16,360]

1 hour ago, TitanTiger said:

I mean, from a conservative perspective I hope all that doesn't happen, but I will say the thing folks have to remember is that the GOP played the long game here.  They didn't just dump a shitload of new lower court judges in overnight.  This has played out over decades really.  The Democrats have to think in the same terms.  You can't get everything you want by fiat over night.

Actually, not exactly true.  McConnell and Co. blocked about 200 lower court appointees from Obama.  That's why, there was this big holdover of unfilled seats ... then, once the Senate and WH returned to GOP power, they ram-rodded it all through using the 'nuclear option' ... 

So, if Democrats get the WH and Senate ... they should, "wait" ... not following, sorry.

[TitanTiger 20,471]

11 minutes ago, RunInRed said:

OK ... but what happens until then? Are we just supposed to sit around and wait? There are monumental decisions that can be made as a result of a system that has now totally been jerry-rigged to favor one ideology.

I mean, isn't that what everyone has to do when the President of the other party is able to swing the court in a particular direction for a while?  Think how different the SCOTUS looked after FDR, Truman, Kennedy and Johnson held the White House for 28 of 36 years.  And while you don't have to like the results, the SCOTUS hasn't been "jerry rigged."  Hypocrisies aside (and I've made my position on how this stuff was handled well known), the President nominates and the Senate either confirms or doesn't confirm.  Many times in our history if the Senate was of a different party than the President, their nominee didn't get confirmed in an election year.  That's the way it works.  

Right now it has a heavy GOP tilt (though as Stevens, O'Connor, Kennedy and Souter show, that doesn't necessarily guarantee anything).  As homer's article stated, most of that is just the luck of the draw.  You can't help that Nixon got 4 openings to work with and Carter got none.  Or that even though Clinton served 8 years and GHW Bush only 4, they both got to nominate two SCOTUS judges. If what I sense is the case happens, we're about to see it swing the other way over the next 2 to 3 presidential terms.

 

[TitanTiger 20,471]

7 minutes ago, RunInRed said:

Actually, not exactly true.  McConnell and Co. blocked about 200 lower court appointees from Obama.  That's why, there was this big holdover of unfilled seats ... then, once the Senate and WH returned to GOP power, they ram-rodded it all through using the 'nuclear option' ... 

So, if Democrats get the WH and Senate ... they should, "wait" ... not following, sorry.

I was thinking more of the SCOTUS and court packing., but point taken with regard to the lower courts.  I don't have an objection to the Democrats invoking the 'nuclear option' to fill lower court seats the same way the GOP did.

[aubiefifty 16,705]

5 hours ago, DKW 86 said:

Packing the court will always end bad. While I do not support Trump nor his choices, elections mean things. That the Cheeto man got to name three is just sick. 

 

However, packing the court will send us into a spiral. The next time the Republicans take the Senate, they will pack the court their way. And on and on it goes. We could have a SCOTUS of 15 or more and climbing every time the Senate swaps power. That is not good for any one. 

so we roll over every single time the repukes do some underhanded crap again and again? this is twice on the courts. we heard they all saying yada yada and then abandoning their word to screw the other side. i say the hell with it. i say pack the courts, pack a bong, and lets watch them see how it feels for a change.

[1716AU 728]

5 hours ago, TitanTiger said:

I get this anger, but I think a Biden win over Trump, even a convincing one, should not be read as some massive overall shift to the Democrats.  Biden is benefitting from Trump fatigue and from a number of fed-up Republicans just wanting Trump out of office more than being super fired up for Biden.  In other words, I think it would be a mistake to see a Biden win, even paired with a Democrat Senate majority, as a mandate for sweeping change.  It doesn't mean that elections don't have consequences, but it should give a note of caution about reaching too far too soon.

This country is split down the middle and I'm hoping Biden can do some things to repair the damage and bring back some semblance of unity amongst most of us.  But "scorched earth" won't do that.  The US has always had a tendency to over-correct rather than pull things back to 'within normal parameters.'   It would be nice if we did do that for once.

We will see, but the way the Republicans have behaved the past six years, four with power, they will reap what they have sown.

And it will ALL be Constitutional.

They have brought this upon themselves, and are daring the Democrats to blink.

[TitanTiger 20,471]

On a side note, did McConnell submarine Trump's reelection campaign on this?  In my mind, the scenario that would help Trump the most would be to make this election about SCOTUS appointees and give conservatives (even those who are troubled by his behavior) an incentive to get out to the polls and reelect him (and a Senate majority).  The way you do that is to wait until after the election to hold this vote.

But McConnell didn't wait.  He chose to hold the vote now.  He has to know what I said above, but when he looks at the trends and weighs Trump's reelection and the Senate majority against definitively leaving a conservative mark on the highest court, he chose the bird in hand over two in the bush.  He traded the possibility of another 4 years of Trump with a GOP-led Senate for definitely getting to replace one of the more liberal justices with a solid conservative for the next 30 years.

Interesting calculation and I'm not sure Trump really saw it for what it was - selling him down the river.

[1716AU 728]

1 minute ago, TitanTiger said:

On a side note, did McConnell submarine Trump's reelection campaign on this?  In my mind, the scenario that would help Trump the most would be to make this election about SCOTUS appointees and give conservatives (even those who are troubled by his behavior) an incentive to get out to the polls and reelect him (and a Senate majority).  The way you do that is to wait until after the election to hold this vote.

But McConnell didn't wait.  He chose to hold the vote now.  He has to know what I said above, but when he looks at the trends and weighs Trump's reelection and the Senate majority against definitively leaving a conservative mark on the highest court, he chose the bird in hand over two in the bush.  He traded the possibility of another 4 years of Trump with a GOP-led Senate for definitely getting to replace one of the more liberal justices with a solid conservative for the next 30 years.

Interesting calculation and I'm not sure Trump really saw it for what it was - selling him down the river.

The mistake here is thinking the McConnell gives a rat's tail about anything that 45 thinks or says.  He doesn't care. McConnell has gotten what he wants, he just thinks that Schumer and Co. don't have the stones to retaliate.

He is about to get a very rude awakening..

[TitanTiger 20,471]

12 minutes ago, 1716AU said:

The mistake here is thinking the McConnell gives a rat's tail about anything that 45 thinks or says.  He doesn't care. McConnell has gotten what he wants, he just thinks that Schumer and Co. don't have the stones to retaliate.

He is about to get a very rude awakening..

You're still hung up on revenge.  I'm talking about something else.  

I'm saying, McConnell made a calculated choice here and it was one that he knew would further his own aims but would not be the best one for reelecting Trump or taking back the Senate.  And he chose it anyway.  I find that ver interesting.

[AUDub 11,131]

1 hour ago, TitanTiger said:

I was thinking more of the SCOTUS and court packing., but point taken with regard to the lower courts.  I don't have an objection to the Democrats invoking the 'nuclear option' to fill lower court seats the same way the GOP did.

What would you have done in their situation?  Remember the Rs absolutely refused to consider any nominee. 

[TexasTiger 12,810]

5 minutes ago, TitanTiger said:

You're still hung up on revenge.  I'm talking about something else.  

I'm saying, McConnell made a calculated choice here and it was one that he knew would further his own aims but would not be the best one for reelecting Trump or taking back the Senate.  And he chose it anyway.  I find that ver interesting.

I think he already anticipates losing both and knows there would be even more pressure to not vote after a loss. He took the bird in the hand.

[TitanTiger 20,471]

4 minutes ago, AUDub said:

What would you have done in their situation?  Remember the Rs absolutely refused to consider any nominee. 

In whose situation?  Who am I hypothetically in this scenario?

 

[AUDub 11,131]

Just now, TitanTiger said:

In whose situation?  Who am I hypothetically in this scenario?

 

The D's when Reid burned the nuclear option for lower court nominees

[TitanTiger 20,471]

 

Just now, AUDub said:

The D's when Reid burned the nuclear option for lower court nominees

Sorry, I got mixed up.  I don't have a problem with what he did.  I think the Republicans should have selectively used their filibuster power to target only the most liberal nominees and anyone who could reasonably be considered unqualified and allowed the others to be confirmed.