Traitor Watch - The 45 Thread
- Thread starter Wheelimus
- Start date
Axaday... it's a good thing you've already decided to vote for harris, because you're naivete here is just... mind boggling.
You are not wrong in some things here. He is absolutely a moron. A power hungry child who doesn't know what to do with the ball once he's been given it.
Here's where you're wrong.
They don't want Trump because he'll do all these things on his own. They want Trump because he will do whatever he's told buy the voices he believes. He is just the tool. The power lay behind the throne, so to speak. He is surrounded by vile people who tell him what he wants to hear and in return he signs his name to whatever they want. And that is how he accomplishes the sort of things people are afraid he will.
He is a tool, nothing more. Unfortunately he's an effective one.
Happily, I think neither of us will get to prove it to the other.
This isn't an untested proposal.
Trump had a slight majority in the Senate and a slight majority in the House for the first half. He vetoed 9 resolutions, which are largely meaningless. Congress giving a public opinion and the President saying he disagrees. He vetoed ONE bill, a regulation on fishing nets. So legislatively speaking, he was pretty much a rubber stamp on a very tight Congress. He had two things that he was leading on: Restructure of the tax code and border wall. The tax bill was popular with GOP in general and would have passed with any GOP President. The border wall made some progress, but couldn't keep approval when Democrats got the House and he had to amble on a bit with funds he could find other places and between that and other laws and court issues stopped him from finishing the job.
He put 3 conservatives on the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh is a bad person and got resisted for that reason, but he was a high level Appeal Court judge already, would have been shortlisted by any Republican and he's been a pretty standard conservative Justice like Gorsuch and Barrett whose presence is resented, of course, by progressives but are predictably and boringly conservative. The conservative Justice that is still and increasingly the biggest pill was nominated by George HW Bush. I am not so familiar with the appointments he made to lower courts. There were lots of openings because the Senate had blocked Obama, but I understand that Trump's appointments below were similarly from pretty conventional GOP recommendations. Judges that were conservative, but had the correct resume and credentials. The same ones that any Republican would have been choosing from.
Granted, in the time that he had the House of Representatives, he also had deeper GOP-side staff in the White House that obstructed him. By the time he figured that out and mainly filled his staff with sycophants, he had lost the House. I'm not sure how much those things line up, though. The GOP-side staff were not stopping him from signing bills that the GOP Congress sent to him. Once he got his more sycophantic (<---I don't know if that is word) staff, the sorts of things that dark voices want him to do are not legislative. The crazy things that are whispered in his ears are difficult to pass through Congress. We won't see a 60-40 Senate again until some major issues shift and a majority in the House isn't what it sounds like. They are fickle and a lot more diverse. And they debate it all publicly and make headlines. They don't want to crazy things that the President asks for. They want to do things that are popular with their constituents.
\He has always done a lot of damage by talking and he was able to do more of it when he was the actual President, but he did this before he was President and he has continued to be able to do it afterward, especially thanks to having been President. He will continue this whether he wins or not.
Police use Taser to subdue man who stormed media area of Trump rally in Pennsylvania
A man at a Donald Trump rally in Pennsylvania stormed into the press area as the former president spoke, and was surrounded by police and sheriffs’ deputies.
apnews.com
The violence will only increase from here.
He can't even control his own bowels.
And the Supreme Court agrees with him.
The Supreme Court mostly just agreed that delaying the case would be helpful.
Because their rich owners don't want to look like they're going against Trump, just in case. They all know how petty and vindictive he is.
Certain members of SCOTUS, you know, the ones bought with fancy vacations, are living in fear of a code of conduct and an expanded court that will remove most of their value. I look forward to the day that Clarence Thomas just isn't worth the price of an expensive trip to the Caribbean.
It sounds like you are down for expanding? Where are we on that?
I saw a few weeks ago where a Republican Congressman said Kamala had said she would expand the court and I couldn't find that it was true. I know some bills have floated out, but you really can't get too excited about something just because a bill gets to the House of Representatives. A lot of ideas get thrown around there, but few stick. I expect you need a 60-40 Senate to make this happen and that isn't happening.
The whole idea of it is a brain-tickler to me. My whole life and long before there has been a strong degree of angst about who would get to replace justices when it has always been possible to just outvote them. But no one has done it in a long, long time. I have had a longstanding impression that FDR had expanded it up to 12, but now that I look for the details, he didn't. He wanted to, but he couldn't manage it. It hasn't been done since the 19th century. Leaving that precedent in place feels like it has some value. In spite of Trump's great luck, I think the majority of people would still view it as a political trick and that in itself could cost the midterms or the next White House, but further when you normalize a political trick you have to do it knowing that you're going to hand the reins to the other party before too long. So Kamala gets it up to 13 for a 7-6 majority. She is probably succeeded by a Republican in 4 or 8 years. Does he take it to 15 to get an 8-7? There's no Constitutional limit on how high it can go, but how many sounds crazy? Honestly, 9 is already a LOT of cooks in the kitchen.
I know if they could manage it, they could get an awful lot done before the pendulum would swing the other way, but it wouldn't be very permanent. And what we're playing with is the independence of the judicial branch. It was not intended to be changeable with every new Congress or President. If Kamala gets both houses, I think a less bold, but still constructive move might be impeaching Clarence Thomas.
Expanding the court is something they keep talking about, but never do. Frankly and until recently, other than the ever growing backlog of cases... there really hasn't been a need. I mean, they need to get to the backlog too, but these aren't overt criminal cases either; they're interpretation of the law to set precedent. Neither side has been extreme enough to not cooperate... until recently...
Now it's openly corrupt, and obviously NOT going to hold itself to any civilized standard. NOW there's need to expand and pack the court; if only to force the "uncooperative ones" into behaving by force of law and oversight. And once the reputation of the court is restored, then you can let it shrink back due to attrition.
Now it's openly corrupt, and obviously NOT going to hold itself to any civilized standard. NOW there's need to expand and pack the court; if only to force the "uncooperative ones" into behaving by force of law and oversight. And once the reputation of the court is restored, then you can let it shrink back due to attrition.
They'd for sure fill every vacancy from their own side, but why waste the opportunity to double down harder when it is the other side? Both houses of Congress and the President would all have to agree to close the vacancy. All of them are gonna be okay with that? Not in this age. If they don't pass and sign a bill to close it, that vacancy would be sitting there to be filled.
It also brings the number of justices in line with the number of circuit courts, which was how things were up until the reconstruction IIRC. I also wonder if you did do that, if it would make sense to then also require going forward that each seat is tied to a court circuit, and any nominees must come from that area. It would help in making the Supreme Court a proper representation of all the courts below it.
You're forgetting that by the time they get to the attrition point: it wouldn't BE in this age anymore. Hopefully american society would be more mature by then.
You must be talking about the distant future! Somehow I thought we were talking about things settling down in my lifetime.