I think I’d rather use a nail-gun on my face than watch Trump’s announcement.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
Prediction: within 10 minutes bloggers will write the nomination represents the beginning of the end of American democracy
Reading some blogs makes me thing Gabriel’s horn will sound soon
Regarding this nomination it is worth remembering that it is basically impossible for it to be worse than Scalia was.
Doesn’t make it right. But the appointment means little change
This nomination will make it transparent just how awful those Jill stein votes were. Imagine the end of citizens united…
You are right, it is next to impossible for this pick to be worse than Scalia, but it is possible to be much worse than Ginsburg and Kennedy and the odds of one or both of them lasting four more years are pretty poor.
Then shit will get real.
Amen.
If the next seat is one of the 4 liberal justices, significant and bad change is coming.
The Senate looks like a nightmare in 2018.
And yet realistically it must be won.
Perhaps Trump’s unpopularity will take the entire GOP with him. There is actually a reasonably likelihood of this happening.
There is a 62.57% chance a Judge who supports Roe and Obergefell will die before the end of Trump’s term. Had Scalia been replaced with Garland, the chance of 2 justices dying while Trump is president who supported Roe are less than 5%.
Fuck. Jill Stein. Fuck the Clinton Strategists. Fuck Comey.
No way around it, in the next 4 years:
Roe will be overturned.
Obergefell
Obamacare will be ruled unconstitutional
One can foresee further limits on the ability of the government to regulate the economy.
Suits attacking voter suppression will likely be lost.
All very real and at this point likely outcomes.
The issue isn’t the nominees, themselves — it’s the shameless manipulation of the process.
This seat is supposed to be filled by Garland; the whole situation is bullshit. That’s why the political maneuvers of the next few hours/days/weeks is so important, because we have to find out 1) just how much the process (including the filibuster and the “nuclear option”) has been permanently polluted and 2) whether the Democrats are willing to fight fire with fire — which, if they can do in this context, they can presumably develop the spine to do elsewhere. It’s a template for Congressional action/inaction in a post-Bush, post-Obama world.
Beyond that, of course you’re right. The actual nominees stopped mattering long ago; just which team they belong to. (Even their judicial “philosophy” — once considered the entire point of the high court — is now just transparent expediency.)
IMHO, Thomas and Alito are both worse than Scalia. Except, unlike Scalia, they stay in the shadows and out of the limelight.
But Democrats having misplayed their hand with both Thomas and Alito. and not having made a really huge fuss about the well-qualified Garland not even getting a hearing, don’t have a hand to play this time unless there’s a large skeleton in Gorsuch’s closet.
On this vacancy and IMO, Obama played it as well as could be done. Unfortunately, liberal/Democrats expected to do better with a nomination by President Clinton and spent more time crabbing about Garland than getting behind the nomination. Were they counting on a Democratic majority in the Senate as well from the 2016 election?
There is no Thomas. He doesn’t exist. There’s just a second copy of Scalia’s vote.
Thomas was woefully unqualified from the beginning. He never speaks. He knows nothing. (Every time I make this point somebody points to “his” decisions, but the staff writes those.)
Imbuing Thomas with a judicial position is like the ancient Greeks imbuing the weather with a personality.
Regardless of who pens Thomas’ dissents, they do exist and are deviations from Scalia. Otherwise, none would be needed.
All right but I just can’t take seriously a Supreme Court Justice who 1) was so clearly over his head from the beginning (I remember that argument being advanced at the time, over and over); 2) comes with such execrable personal baggage and 3) never fucking speaks, like a frightened consort at an intellectual party not daring to open his/her mouth.
Don’t disagree with your opinion of Thomas. That seat went from a judicial heavyweight and progressive to a featherweight and regressive. A double whammy shift on the court unlike any seen at least prior to FDR.
Perhaps similar to what a Carswell or Haynsworth confirmation to replace Fortas would have meant. Although neither would have served on the SC for as long as Thomas already has. But that was back in the days when thirteen Republicans were not about to confirm the “mediocre” Carswell and seventeen Republicans weren’t willing to overlook Haynsworth’s non-recusal on cases in which he had a financial interest and/or anti-labor and pro-segregation rulings.
Could have sworn That I read comments from you and others from the purist Left that you didn’t want to hear about how important it was to vote Hillary just because of the Supreme Court.
It’s mandatory to read what David Brooks wrote this week. It’s also mandatory to ignore what David Brooks wrote last week.
.
I have zero responsibility for this mess.
If you supported and voted for loser Democratic candidates and expected clapping louder for Obama was all that was required seems to me that you have some responsibility for this mess.
Sadly, we’re all responsible for helping fix it.
Anyone who enthusiastically forwarded anti-Clinton propaganda all the way to November 8th can’t pronounce themselves holier than thou.
That said, it’s not necessary for anyone to capitulate on their interpretations of the last 20 years to join together to fight Trump now. You either want to join together to fight Trump, Ryan and McConnell or you don’t. If you don’t, fine. We know where you stand.
your attitude recently is confusing.
This, at a minimum, is like making Scalia thirty years younger and much healthier.
But he’s a radical who wrote an entire book on how awful assisted suicide is because, I guess, no other area of the law interested him more.
Scalia was worse for his influence than his rulings, and this guy is a child of his influence.
Worse?
Definitely worse than having Scalia live for another 10 years.
Most definitely worse than Garland.
Quit attacking people who are upset about it.
I think the unserious arguments of apocalypse are undermining the serious case that should be made
You’re Dr. Pangloss all of a sudden.
Whistling past the graveyard?
As a Jill Stein voter, …. WHAT ?!
think harder, genius.
Just got up from a nap. Nothing. Go ahead. Inform me, landlord. The only reason I don’t chew you out.
i don’t think anyone has time or inclination to explain to you, shit for brains.
It represents some more of the middle of the end of American democracy. Its not like we started losing it the day Trump announced. Been degrading for a while.
Gorsuch is young and a devotee of Scalia. He’s trump’s reward to the Evangelicals, who, as dedicated Christians, overlooked all of trump’s horrible past and voted for him anyway.
I don’t think that evangelicals who voted for Trump (and I know some who definitely did not) “voted for him anyway”. I think they were just motivated by the same factors as other Trump voters, and by an ends-justify-the-means attitude.
You can call them dedicated Christians, if it makes you feel better. I prefer dumbasses and say fuck you to them.
No need or point in breaking the filibuster for this. Force 60 votes and slow the process down every chance you get. Eat as much time out of the fascist legislative agenda. Who knows how far it can be taken, if at all. But we only have one bite at that apple, and he’ll get seated somehow some way. Rather hold it for someone like Janice Rodgers Brown or flipping the court itself — or even threaten it now for concessions elsewhere.
Fuck that. Make him get 60 votes. They stole this seat, make them earn it.
Democrats standing united, developing a backbone. What a novel thought/fantasy.
Hey I’m not saying don’t filibuster, but I don’t think it’s prudent to force them to nuke it for this nominee when:
A. Is about as good as we could possibly hope for in this environment
B. Is to the left of Garland on policing and executive power
C. Will get seated eventually anyway, so why give up a weapon when balance of court doesn’t shift
Better a Scalia than an Alito, especially when the balance hasn’t changed yet.
I say fuck that. So on the margins you figure he is just peachy. Fuck him. He will out Scalia Scalia. Before these people are done we could have a 7 to 2 supreme court.
At this point I suspect that every Alito describes himself as a Scalia–for a variety of reasons.
And of course the conservative Idol must be praised during rituals of high ceremony, haha.
I haven’t checked, but is Gorsuch another Catholic, or do we have our first Protestant justice?
Gorsuch is extremely conservative. He’s dangerous to bodily autonomy, including assisted suicide and abortion; in that regard he could also strike down the death penalty. He thinks there should be no limits on campaign finance, and likely that campaign finance laws should be abolished — but any Trump pick would say the same. He is a vote to kill Chevron deference, but they don’t have the votes for that yet.
However, he will potentially rule against a lot of Trump’s executive overreach, and against police. On the downside, “religious liberty” is going to reign supreme.
Rumor has it that if the Republicans go nuclear it may make Kennedy reconsider retirement.
I say make them do it. There’s nothing stopping them from doing it on Kennedy’s replacement either, or whoever the next nominee is.
Make it absolutely clear that all damage is 100% the responsibility of the GOP. The time for attempting to mitigate collateral damage has passed, because there’s nothing we can do about it anyway.
Of course there’s nothing stopping them from doing it, but I want to extract concessions for when it happens. You nuke now you get to have your pity party and there is nothing gained and a bargaining chip lost. This is all purely reactionary thinking and it’s absolutely corrosive, even if understandable. We don’t have the leverage here.
How do you extract binding concessions though?
We don’t have any leverage. That’s the problem.
There is chat of taking Garland for RBG and keeping the filibuster.
I dunno. May be better to court pack with two new justices IF Dems ever retake the Senate.
RBG is alive and on the court. Even if the offer were reasonable enough (and Garland for RBG isn’t reasonable enough), expecting Republicans to deliver when the time comes forgets their nature.
The question for Democratic Senators is if this is the nomination on which to lose the filibuster for SC nominations? It’s not a question of if the filibuster will cease to exist but when. Strategically, make that loss for Democrats in this congress and with this WH ass a solid winner in the court of public opinion for Democrats.
IMO that can’t be done at this time and with this nominee. The anti-Trump hysterical rhetoric since the election is exhausting public attention and not helpful to them in sorting out what’s insignificant, minor, and truly important.
That doesn’t mean that Democratic Senators shouldn’t take full advantage of the confirmation hearings, and Gorsuch shouldn’t be hammered during them. However, they need to do a lot better than pulling out their tired forty year old scripts. They need to clearly establish several things that the public can hear and comprehend and set the table for the next nomination should that be made by Trump or Pence.
Lead-off comment from every Dem Senator: “Welcome Judge Gorsuch. The reason we’re here today is that our Republican colleagues denied the well-qualified Judge Garland the courtesy of a hearing.”
Ranking minority member sets up the areas of inquiry: As you’re nothing like a Teddy Roosevelt Republican, there’s a lot of ground that we have to cover in a short period of time.
Each D member takes a different component. The biggies:
Stare decisis. (and ruling on cases presented to the court and not ruling on cases made up by the SC as CU was. Or finding a unique application of law for one particular individual that may not be used as a president as in Bush v. Gore.) Get the guy on record and committed.
Establishment clause –
Civil Rights/Equal protection clause.
Environment (this apple may not even have fallen from his Mama tree)
Agreed about everything but the hysteria, and only on a per se basis. I believe we need to be hysterical; trump is a danger to any post WWII order. Bannon wants to ethnically cleanse the US of immigrants. He wants a war on Islam. I’m not sure how to articulate these premises without being hysterical.
But nuking the filibuster for this nominee is a sign of powerlessness, not power. Meanwhile, I don’t think Bannon is a genius — I think he’s trying to inflate his own power, especially by intimidating media. What we are doing is working in terms of what we can actually have an impact on.
Let us all take a moment and give thanks to,all those who labored mightily to bring us thirty years of a fucked up Supreme Court. At the top of the list are the Hillary haters, followed by the self righteous Stein supporters. And it would be remiss to ignore our so very smart rural cousins. They showed us, did they ever. Fuck them all. I guess I’m just a sore loser,who hasn’t gotten used to it yet. But I will. We all will. Give it time, thirty years if you live that long.
As everyone has noted, this 50 year old conservative white male turd maintains the previous Scalian balance of power on the Court, when Fate had seemingly decreed that the Court would (finally) move leftward. It means that (Repub) Justice Kennedy continues to effectively decide what the law will be 5-4, and it maintains Repub control of the Court.
Repubs defied Fate, and prevailed. They have cheated history, and not only suffered no adverse repercussions but obtained a massive benefit. It is quite clear they are winning. Their strategy has been a spectacular success, aided and abetted by a complicit corporate media.
This guy has reached the pinnacle of power and we will very likely have to look at his hang-dog horseface for another 35 years, given current health care advances for the super elite. The Gods can no longer intervene in human matters.
He is (another) illegitimate justice, like Roberts and Alito, because Der Trumper is another illegitimate Repub prez. Our antidemocratic failed constitution has given us this appalling reactionary Supreme Court against the clearly expressed will of the citizenry. The Roberts Court, like most of our institutions, is democratically illegitimate.
To filibuster or not to filibuster, that is the question. To keep one’s powder dry and choose one’s battles, or take arms against a sea of troubles, ending them. Since there is simply no Repub senator that does not want an extremist corporatist Court, I suppose it is a moot question. They will vote in lockstep for every Trumper nominee because that is what both their plutocrat paymasters and their reactionary base want. None of them are statesman. So they will nuke the filibuster to get their reactionary justice(s). Do Dems make them do it now, or next time?
Since the Scalia seat was clearly stolen by the Repub party, and since this is historically unprecedented, Dems have the strongest argument that they will ever have for filibustering a supreme court nominee. Repubs cheated (as usual) and this Gorsuch character is the recipient of a stolen seat. That he is willing to be complicit in the crime demonstrates he has no honor or integrity. He is another amoral conservative lackey who will do anything for his position.
That should be the message. Conservatives and their captive party will do anything to remake the country in their image. They are political criminals, who will do absolutely anything to prevail. You can try to fight fire with fire or “take the high road”. Too bad view from the high road ain’t been looking so good lately…