09-24-2020, 02:19 AM
(09-23-2020, 01:01 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: If we don't want to let Classic Xer have his way, and have to consider the pros and cons of secession, then the Democrats need a big win in the Senate.
RBG's untimely death is in my opinion potentially the worst USA national tragedy since JFK. The congress needs to use all available tactics to block the vote for her successor.
Potentially as important: Democrats need to get a Senate majority so that they can filibuster any Trump hack as a nominee for Associate Justice between January 3 and January 21, 2021. The optimal solution would be for the President to nominate some moderate (as if moderation is any way a part of the President's character) in return for a binding commitment by Democrats to not pack the Court. It is not up to any Party to change the rules of politics at its convenience -- unless that Party is to become a "leading force" (the language that recognized Communist Parties as dominant in some countries until 1989. .
Quote:If that fails, the Democrats need to win a several-seat majority this November so that they can overturn the filibuster and pack the Court. They will need more than a majority so that a few reluctant Democrats can't stop filibuster and Court reform. The Democrats currently lead by 5 points or more in Maine, Colorado, Arizona and North Carolina, the 4 states they need to take control if Harris becomes VP. They are also tied or a point ahead in Georgia (Ossoff vs. Perdue), South Carolina (Harrison vs. Graham) and Iowa (Greenfield vs. Ernst), and are about 1 point behind in Montana (Bullock vs. Daines). If the Democrats surge, they are within about 5 points in Alaska, Texas, Georgia (Warnock vs. Loeffler), and Kansas, and Amy McGrath is getting lots of donations to throw against Moscow Mitch in Kentucky. Some claim that the Democrats can win in Mississippi. Democratic Senator Jones in Alabama seems likely to be deposed.
I am not sure of whether the lame-duck Vice-President or the incoming one is the President of the Senate between Junary 3 and January 21. Kamala Harris may have cause to not rush abandoning a Senate seat until January 21.
Quote:If Kelly in AZ and Warnock in GA both win their special elections, they could take office in late November and stop the nomination if it is blocked that long. I don't know if McConnell or the governor of AZ could block them from taking office, but by law they are supposed to be seated right away. Blocking until January might be easier too when Kelly takes office.
Count on Mitch McConnell telling defeated Republican Senators to not quit early. The Republican Party has become an authoritarian, cadre Party and will remain one until at least January 3, if not January 21. The analogy to Communist Parties in central and Balkan Europe is not perfect. For America to remain a democracy (and don't give me the spurious claim that America is a republic and not a democracy; there have been plenty of undemocratic regimes that simply took over a republican system) must either reform itself or die. If the current Republican Party should die, then we might have the start of the 1T as another Era of Good Feelings before a big-tent Democratic Party becomes so unwieldy and itself splits, perhaps into something like Christian Democrats and Social Democrats as in Germany.
Quote:Fall back measures if the Democrats win include reducing the filibuster to 55 rather than eliminating it, but if they can only do that, they should put back the filibuster to 55 for the Supreme Court too. The Democrats also need to make Puerto Rico a state and provide DC with two senators as soon as they can, to help balance the electoral college and the senate from its rural and southern majority, originally created to keep slave states in the union in 1787.
What began as a measure to frustrate the complete intransigence of a ruthless minority as a cadre Party has become a tool of the same cadre Party now the majority. Remember well: America has several economic elites dedicated to grabbing everything possible so long as poverty induces people to work two jobs to avoid death from starvation and exposure. Those elites (large corporate farms, urban landlords, tycoons, and executives) have imposed inequality almost as severe as that which exists in countries in which some royal family owns the oil resources that are the "only game in town" in their country. Of course a fine line exists between destitution and famine, and should 'our' economic elites let things go so bad as to allow starvation, then we are on the brink of a revolution -- and of course the issue of Crisis or non-Crisis will be the least of human concerns in a rotten order in need of toppling.
Quote:Term limits for the Court have also been suggested, and I wonder if this could be made retroactive. I doubt it. Another idea is that the extra justices could be seated with the proviso that when future justices are added, they don't need to be replaced on death or retirement until the number goes back down to 9. The fanatical and extreme, ruthless nature of the Republican minority that now controls our country through the Senate, Electoral College and Supreme Court is, in my estimation, a temporary aberration, and so these court packing and filibuster measures could be made temporary as well.
The term limit that effectively applied in the time of the Founding Fathers was that few people, even in the upper echelons of life, reached the ages of 70 and higher. To be sure, smart people holding the dream job of judge (it is mostly ceremony as one is on the bench, it is highly stimulating intellectually, and it is not the sort of work that brings wear and tear to a body as does hard labor) typically did not retire until they were no longer able to do the job or had some things to cross off the 18th-century and early-19th-century equivalent of a bucket list. Good personal habits might have fostered a long lifespan by standards of the time, but people did not generally know those.
Note well: it is up to the elected officials to nominate and approve judges. I wish we had wiser politicians than what we have now, but consider well that the super-rich fund much of the political process. We live in a borderline plutocracy, and when the economic elites believe that nothing matters except their power, indulgence, and gain (note the first initials and what those spell!) who cling to the idea that no human suffering can ever be in excess in stoking the power, indulgence, and gain of those elites (limited only by the fear of a proletarian revolution that would kill those elites upon success). Money does not simply talk in our system; it shouts!
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.