What HE said! (And what I said. Yesterday.)
Any American under the age of 50 has no memory of living with a liberal Supreme Court. That could change soon. Were a Democratic appointee to fill the current opening, laws could change on voting rights, corporate power, campaign finance, criminal justice and many other issues.
“For the first time in decades,” Jeffrey Toobin writes in the current New Yorker, “there is now a realistic chance that the Supreme Court will become an engine of progressive change rather than an obstacle to it.”
— A Liberal Supreme Court, David Leonhardt, NYT, today
Time to campaign on this, with specifics, Hillary Clinton. And time for your surrogates to do so. As I said yesterday.
Please instruct voters on the difference between Sonia Sotomayor and Samuel Alito. There is a difference. A big one. The Mercers know this. Please ensure that voters and potential voters know this, too.
Thank you.
____
ADDENDUM: Anyone who’s actually interested in this subject might want to read the Comments thread to my post from yesterday, which I linked to above.
Added 9/30 at 1:39 p.m.
“It’s not a tax, so we can rule on it; but it IS a tax, so it’s constitutional,” sounds like a liberal Court to me.
Actually, Warren, the purpose of that was to both settle a critical issue that threatened to undermine the country’s healthcare system if it remained unsettled until the statute came fully into effect (the it’s-not-a-tax-for-purposes-of-court-jurisdiction-issues issue, AND uphold large parts of a duly enacted federal statute rather than strike it down on the basis of a Conservative-Legal-Movement-manufactured-but-actually-nonexistent constitutional ground.
So … maybe not such a liberal Supreme Court. Maybe just a sort of normal one.
I understand your point, but aside from abortion I do not think the left does. The right is much more in tune with SCOTUS and it is often used as a fig leaf by educated conservatives who are not raging racists to justify their support for Trump. Of course the GOP could have simply confirmed Garland an old centrist and if Breyer and Ginsburg leave the court in the next 4 years it will not make any difference. If Kennedy dies that would certainly have the potential to change things, but that is a pretty thin reed to justify voting for Trump.
Warren,
Given where we are now, it is easy to forget that when ACA was being considered in Congress, nobody was saying it was unconstitutional. It supposedly had death panels, was socialistic, nobody would sign up for it, doctors would quite their profession, and small businesses would either fold or at least not hire anybody, and costs would zoom, not a single one of which was or came true.
However, nobody foresaw that partisan opponents would go after it in the courts, which suddenly became partisan with the attack going to the SCOTUS through a string of GOP appointed judges, and then with all the GOP just convinced that the GOP SCOTUS would (and should) just throw the whole thing out, despite barely anybody thinking it was unconstitutional when it was its biggest problem was that it was all about socialist death panels.
So we got this ridiculous ruling with almost no precedent coming out of right field that states could opt out of the Medicaid expansion part, thus sharply reducing the ability of it to reduce the number of uninsured, with lots of state governments turning down federal money that would help their hospitals just so they could join this partisan spite fight against the evil Obama and his rotten Obamacare.
So, somehow Roberts realized that it would be a disaster to throw the whole thing out and came up with this clearly goofy tax argument to save it from that fate. Probably he should have just stood against this indefensible bit about allowing the state exemptions. Bad all the wary around, but a sign of what a partisan outfit the SCOTUS has become..
I agree fully with Beverly here, but I think there is something important she has left out. Of course the outcome of the presidential race is crucial, but almost as important is the outcome of who ends up controlling the Senate. It is highly unlikely the Dems will win the Senate if Trump wins, but it is certainly quite possible they will not do so even if Clinton wins the presidency, in which case they may well succeed in blocking any appointment she may try to make to the SCOTUS. This may seem unlikely or incredible, but if after they have behaved as they have they maintain control in the Senate, they will feel justified in doing pretty much whatever they damned well feel like doing.
Given the total outrageousness of the conduct of Trump and the total focus of the media on him, it has become completely easy to forget that the GOP-controlled Senate in the last two years has behaved in a completely indefensible manner that has no remote precedence in US history, even in such days of extreme partisanship as the period around the Civil War. No previous Senate has refused to approve so few executive or judicial appointments, not even close. It has become standard that an appointee should expect not to get approved, with the burden of proof on the administration and supporters to show that this appointee is the rare exception who should be approved, in sharp contrast with even the previous Senate, where the shoe was on the other foot, and it was those opposing approval who had to make the case that someone should not be approved. This is outrageous, but nobody at all is making a sqawk about it, or not much of one. If they get away with this and retain control, I see no reason for the next Senate to approve anybody Clinton puts up for anything. Why should they if the American people will let them get away with such conduct that should have the lot of them impeached from office.
Barkley I just don’t think a Republican controlled Senate will dare do a perma-block on SCOTUS. Not with as narrow a minority as they will hold under best outcomes for them. Far better for them is to take a single centrist bullet and then count on fattening their majority in 2018 when far more Dems are up for election (a mirror to this year). Otherwise straight out obstruction might result in a lot of winnable Dem seats remaining in Dem hands and just prolonging internal Senate deadlock forever. Or at least to 2020 and the risks of Dems running against the “Do Nothing Republican Senate”.
McConnell is on record over and over stating that the Scalia seat will be decided by the American people depending on which President they choose. Granted his credibility on just about anything is hanging by a thread, but this kind of move would elevate Mitch in the eyes of the American people from “ofttime unrepentent hypocrite” to “YUUUUGE effing liar”.
I am voting GOP in everything short of Jill Stein.
I am quaffing IPA steins in everything short of VSOP snifters.
Which makes as much sense. Because I am reading this as Stein for Pres and then straight GOP downticket. Way to stick it to the MIC bro!!
Perhaps we should both hold off on the drinkee drinkee posting for this evening.
“[Maybe] not such a liberal Supreme Court. Maybe just a sort of normal one.”
That’s my point — a normal Supreme Court IS a liberal Supreme Court, defined as one that makes $H!T up for political expediency, ignoring the actual law and the Constitution in the process.