Jophiel wrote:
gbaji wrote:
It's also incredibly over simplistic to just say you're "for" or "against" NATO.
Laying the groundwork to apologize for Trump. Good, good. I bet you didn't even realize you were doing it
My statement is true regardless of who happens to be president.
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Stuff about how McConnell should delay until after the midterms is just keeping people riled up and reminding Democratic voters that this is happening because they didn't get out there in 2016.
I don't know if past actions have as much impact on voter participation as current ones though. McConnell delaying the vote in 2016 had the effect of mobilizing conservatives to go out an vote (and many to hold their noses and vote for Trump just to avoid Scalia's seat going to a presumably far more liberal Obama pick). One can argue that this was at least one of several factors to Trump's victory. The same can't really be said in a midterm, and especially if the selection and appointment has already occurred by election day.
You may be giving voters more credit for far forward thinking that I do though. I just don't know if "OMG! Trump appointed a replacement for Kennedy and there might be another one in the next two years, so we'd really better get out there and vote for Democrat Senators to prevent that future hypothetical from happening" works. Especially considering this same fear is used in
every single election cycle anyway. I can't remember an election (midterm or presidential) in which the "We must vote Democrat or Roe v. Wade will be overturned!" isn't used as at least part of the election rhetoric. That is kinda already baked into the election cake IMO.
If the issue was immediate with a significant shift in who might be appointed sitting right in front of the voters as a consequence of their votes? Sure. But that's not going to be the case here.
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The next obvious step will be that the next Democratic president & Congress will start packing the courts.
What do you mean "next step"? The Democrats have been doing everything they can to do this for at least the last 30 years. The use of the court system as a means to push forward their socio-economic agenda has long been a key element to Democratic strategy. It's not like Obama hesitated to put a couple pretty hard core liberal activists on the court when he had the chance (admittedly, Kagan less than Sotomayor). He was replacing justices already associated with the Left though (Souter and Stevens), so it had little impact on the court.
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Republicans will howl but all the norms were already blown off the table with McConnell refusing to hold hearings on Garland and then abolishing the filibuster for SCOTUS nominees. There's no gentlemen's rules left and no way to prevent court packing aside from a Constitutional Amendment that'll never pass. Roosevelt didn't have luck with it but that's because we still operated with a system of governmental norms and "fair play" back then.
I think that some people on the Right made this observation when the Democrats started using the "nuclear option" for appointments in 2013. Arguably unnecessarily and for extremely short sighted reasons.
Edited, Jul 12th 2018 7:03pm by gbaji