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Originally posted by jon-nyc:

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Originally posted by Piano*Dad:
Court-packing arguments begin. I'm open to the idea.

Pack the Court

I'm favorably disposed to the idea in January if the Democrats wind up with 50 senators. I'm not sure I like the idea of campaigning on it.

Months ago I said one of my fears of RBG dying late in the term GOP pushing through a candidate at the last minute is that court packing will go from a fringy idea to mainstream within the Democratic Party.

I’m not open to the idea at all. Game theoretically, there’s no equilibrium point other than status quo. I’m too much of an institutionalist to want to start down that never-ending path.

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Originally posted by Piano*Dad:
13 district appeals courts, 13 SCOTUS seats. Dems appoint four in February if they win 50 Senate seats. McConnell is counting on the Democrats tucking their tails and doing nothing.

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Originally posted by Piano*Dad:
I don't think it matters what euphemism Schumer tries to invent. The other side will reimpose the term.

Max Boot is right. There is virtually zero trust between partisans. "We" understand that the GOP is composed of power-hungry hypocrites who want to demonize non-white people and exploit the poor. "They" understand that "we" want to destroy the American economy and impose godless communism on everyone.

Ginsburg's Passing May Worsen the Crisis of our Democracy

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Originally posted by QuirtEvans:
I imagine this was deliberately leaked:

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Schumer to Senate Dems on a conference call today, per source: “Let me be clear: if Leader McConnell and Senate Republicans move forward with this, then nothing is off the table for next year. Nothing is off the table.”

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Originally posted by Axtremus:

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Originally posted by Piano*Dad:
13 district appeals courts, 13 SCOTUS seats. Dems appoint four in February if they win 50 Senate seats. McConnell is counting on the Democrats tucking their tails and doing nothing.

Might as well throw in statehoods for D.C. and Puerto Rico for good measure.

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Originally posted by jon-nyc:
That seems unlikely, Ax.

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Tyranny of the Minority

David Axelrod summed up much of the frustration, agita, and anger on the left about the state of affairs in our democratic republic in a tweet this weekend.


David Axelrod
@davidaxelrod
If @realDonaldTrump and @senatemajldr ram thru a replacement now, the SCOTUS will have a majority of justices appointed by presidents who finished 2d in the popular vote, confirmed by senate majorities who represented less than half of the country.
A tyranny of the minority.
September 19th 2020


On the right, even among some of the anti-Trump set, there has been a chafing to this frame.

They argue that it is Axelrod and other Democrats who are using this argument to justify disruptive structural changes such as court packing and eliminating the Electoral College that are destabilizing to our politics.

Their case goes like this:

No matter what you think of the decision not to hold a vote on Garland, it was within the Senate’s discretion to not take up his nomination. And regardless of your personal view on the electoral college, each justice has been nominated by a duly elected president, in fact, the Bush justices were nominated after his popular vote victory in 2004. And in the narrowest sense they are right about this. The letter of the law has been followed. And delegitimizing court confirmations made lawfully by minority coalitions isn’t our path back to political stability.

But, any good faith actor who doesn’t have their head in the sand can look around the corner and see the inevitable result of Cocaine Mitch’s Tyranny of the Minority...and it isn’t pretty.

Last night in The Bulwark Adam White—who is no Miller-esque RINO squish—wrote about how in order to avoid this future Republicans should (but won’t), take the opportunity for restraint. You should read it all, as this is his wheelhouse more than mine.

What I want to focus on is why Axelrod’s last point about the tyranny of the minority is something we are all going to have to contend with in the coming years.

Anyone who has ever written about politics and has used the shorthand “democracy” for our system of government has received a lovely reader email reminding us that yes, America is a rEpUbLiC, not a democracy. And yes, dear reader, that is true. But a healthy and successful republic requires the faith and trust and consent of the governed. If, in large enough numbers, they believe the game is rigged or unfair the system begins to break down. For better (in most cases) or worse, our democratic republic over the last 250 or so years has inched more towards the democratic because it’s what the people demanded.

Which brings us to a hypothetical world in which Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been replaced by a severely conservative jurist on a 50/50 party line vote in the days before an election. If that is to happen, even if that is an outcome you desire, I want you to step back and look at our republic through the eyes of a 21 year old who lives in a median American city and who wasn’t educated about our infallible nation by the new Patriotic Common Core Curriculum.

They were born in 1999. Two of the three presidents in their lifetime were elected by minority vote. The only one who was twice elected with a majority vote was denied the opportunity to nominate a Supreme Court justice based on some quite shaky arcana and phony rule-making that they think was largely political ********. The president they know the best has a complete disregard for the law or political norms, received about 3 million fewer votes than his opponent, had the help of a foreign enemy, was impeached for soliciting illicit foreign help again and not removed from office. After all that, he did exactly the thing that his party said the black president who had actually received a majority vote couldn’t do in an election year.

Pretty much every person this 21 year old knows is looking for a job in one of the dynamic largely democratic cities where all the growth is in the country but most of these enclaves have minimal national political power and their vote is irrelevant. In the Senate, the Republicans hold a majority of the seats representing states that make up a minority of the country. Nate Silver tells them that for Joe Biden to be assured to win the electoral college he needs to win the popular vote by about 5 points. 5 points!

So, I recognize things are cyclical and there are hypothetical political realignments that could benefit the Democrats. And, yes, I recognize and support our system of checks and balances. But we need to balance that structure against a body politic that believes they are represented or else they are either going to restructure it or burn the whole thing down.

How is that 21 year old supposed to look at this system and think things are on the up and up? Just telling them that wE LiVe iN a rEpuBLic over and over again isn’t going to fly. They are going to demand change. And that reform can come the right way, respecting our norms and processes and basic fairness. Or, it can come from two increasingly lawless parties who care only about owning the other by any means necessary further tearing apart the fragile fabric of this democratic republic.

I know which one I think is coming, what about you?

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Originally posted by jon-nyc:

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Originally posted by Steve Miller:
A true patriot.

Meh. She should have resigned when a Obama was still President. She was already 5 years into a pancreatic cancer diagnosis.

I mean, I know it’s too early. But still.

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But we need to balance that structure against a body politic that believes they are represented or else they are either going to restructure it or burn the whole thing down.