2020 Presidential Election: let the jockeying commence

[bystander]

Just read this... this is why Trump will get my vote. Pelosi is such a corrupt, egomaniac. I give Blitzer 100% credit for putting her on the spot. All she has is playing I'm the chairman, you should respect me yada yada yada. She is a liar.

Pelosi calls CNN's Blitzer an 'apologist' for the GOP in heated exchange over stimulus bill

 

[Horn6721]

By?
did she say something more ridiculous than usual?

 

[bystander]

By?
did she say something more ridiculous than usual?

Sorry. I forgot the link. It's posted now.

 

[mchammer]

Voting Lines half mile long in Woodlands.

 

[mchammer]

From 2016!!!!

 

[Horn2RunAgain]

Judging by the (sizable) crowd in line at the flower mound rec center for early voting , I'd say trump is kicking some serious *** here right now

The closer 7pm came, the lines got shorter but the folks looked less Trump friendly. You can spot a democrat in a suburban voting station. That "I hate my life" scowl...

 

[Garmel]

Voting Lines half mile long in Woodlands.

Can we be sure those are Trump voters?

 

[mchammer]

Can we be sure those are Trump voters?

Not for sure, but Montgomery county is 70% GOP. I did see a poll that showed Trump losing to Biden with seniors and suburban women by 20 pts each. I think COVID is responsible for a good portion of that. For example, those demographic groups are least affected by shutdowns.

 

[Garmel]

I'm having a hard time believing seniors will go democrat this election.

 

[mchammer]

I'm having a hard time believing seniors will go democrat this election.

FEAR. Seniors I know are scared shitless. Some are on this board who wanted football shutdown.

 

[Mr. Deez]

I'm having a hard time believing seniors will go democrat this election.

Hard to imagine, but it can happen. I remember the late '90s when they were backing Clinton and almost cost Bush the 2000 election because of Medicare. You'll notice that Bush had a much harder time carrying Florida in 2000 than in 2004. It's because the Medicare crap was still on their minds. By 2004, they Medicare Part D had been enacted, and they were more concerned with Muslims blowing **** up. It made a big difference.

 

[Joe Fan]

Joe busted lying again -- he had said “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.” The emails show Hunter introduced his Ukrainian business pals to his then-VP dad.

 

[Joe Fan]

Joe busted lying again -- he had said “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.” The emails show Hunter introduced his Ukrainian business pals to his then-VP dad.

"The Obama administration let a Democratic p.r. company that worked for Ukrainian energy firm Burisma take part in a conference call about an upcoming visit to Ukraine by then-Vice President Joe Biden, e-mails obtained by The Post show.

An associate at Blue Star Strategies then e-mailed a memo with minutes of the conference call hosted by the White House to a top Burisma executive, Vadym Pozharskyi, as well as to Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, and Hunter’s business partner, Devon Archer, both of whom sat on Burisma’s board.

The trip, in December 2015, turned out to be the one during which Biden later bragged about forcing Ukrainian officials to fire a state prosecutor who was investigating Burisma by threatening to withhold a $1 billion US loan guarantee.

The memo, sent shortly after the Dec. 2, 2015, call, also “outlined the trip’s agenda and addressed several questions regarding US policy toward Ukraine.”​

https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/obama-conference-call-leaked-to-burisma-biden-emails/

 

[Joe Fan]

 

[Mr. Deez]

Trump should get to fill one seat or the other, but not both. The combination of what happened in 2016 and what is about to happen in 2020 is outright theft of a seat. And no, I'm not persuaded by your resort to definitions of "theft" in the literal context of taking away another person's property.

I brought up the "theft" element, because using verbiage like "steal" implies that the seat is being taken from someone it belongs to, when that's not happening. It's rhetorically sloppy and inaccurate. If you don't care, that's fine, but it's still sloppy and inaccurate.

And I do wonder what the spin would be if they had granted Garland a hearing and rejected him as the clock ran out. Would you have called the seat stolen? Or what if they had confirmed Garland but tried to fill the RBG seat? I suspect that you'd still have a problem with it, because we're closer to the election than we were with Garland. In other words, I think you'd be calling them thieves if they took either one. Let's remember that the court-packing was getting tossed around four years ago as well and when nobody had any idea when Ginsburg's seat would open.

Many of your points, including this one, address questions about what one side or the other can get away with. That argument doesn't address the much more relevant questions -- what is fair and best for the American experiment. Plus, this argument does not distinguish the current Republican shenanigans from the possibility of Court packing by the Democrats. The fact that they might be able to get away with it would not make it right.

No, it doesn't make it right. Political hypocrisy is wrong, and I don't deny their hypocrisy. The big difference is that the consequences of the GOP's political hypocrisy are far less severe than the consequences of court packing, and of course, the consequences of setting a precedent of court packing are horrific. If they go through with this, do you think Republicans would hesitate to pack the Court again if they gain power again? Hell no. Why would they?

On this, we will have to disagree. The vast majority of appointments to the Supreme Court have been filled by the sitting president. That is true regardless of who controlled the Senate.

Of course they are, but election years and the party composition of the Senate make a big difference. That's not new, and it's not unique to McConnell.

I pretty much agree with you on all of this -- except the idea that the freakout will dissipate and feminist women in New Jersey will let this go if Roe gets overturned. Not a chance.

Then responsible citizens need to tell them to go to hell. They are part of the problem. If they want to advocate for abortion, that's their right. More power to them, but that advocacy belongs in Trenton. It doesn't belong in the Supreme Court. It's a court, not a policymaking body.

The Democrats vetoed Bork and forced Reagan to nominate another Republican. That's exactly how the system was designed, and is fundamentally different from vetoing any and all Reagan appointments and stealing the seat.

You are understating the wrongness of the Republican's conduct, and overstating the impact of Court-packing. We'll probably never agree on either point, and I've already discussed the first point so I'll move on.

But that changed in the 1870s, when the Supreme Court was expanded from 7 to 9 to dilute Southern influence.

More broadly, the newly expanded Court became much more open to an expanded role for the Federal government. Of course, it's hard to assess this as a precedent because it happened in the shadow of the Civil War.

I'm understating and overstating wrongly? That court-packing was done in response to states leaving the union and provoking a Civil War. (By the way, it was still wrong.) You might think that Mitch McConnell being a flip-flopper to hustle a Supreme Court nomination is on that level. I think that's a wild overstatement. He just isn't that consequential, and neither is this seat.

I also feel that packing the Court would be unwise in the current situation, but the case will be murkier if Barrett is confirmed. That act will severely hurt the Court's credibility and threatens to undermine America's democratic institutions.

What you're really missing here is that the Court's credibility has already been damaged to a large portion of the population. If you're on the Left, it has credibility, but even that is a false credibility that only exists because it has mostly done their side's bidding at least on social issues for a very long time.

This seems to be the core of the issue. To summarize:

• The right supported blocking Garland and now supports confirming Barrett because they like Barrett's judicial philosophy and dislike Garland's.
• The left supported confirming Garland and now supports blocking Barrett because they like Garland's judicial philosophy and dislike Barrett's.

It's a big issue, but it's actually not the core issue. Even this is ancillary to something else.

This hyper-partisanship enables conservatives to employ tactics that are Constitutionally sound but threaten political stability, and tempts liberals to consider tactics that are equally Constitutional but even more destructive.

Why do you think there's hyperpartisanship on judicial nominations? We're dancing around side issues, but the real issue is that the Court is deciding every damn hot-button cultural and social issue in the United States, and people (and therefore the politicians they elect) are treating it as such. If the Court is deciding issues like "what's a marriage?," "what's a man/woman?," "with whom must you associate in your business life?," "can the state put a convicted murder/rapist to death?", "can I own a gun?," and a whole host of other enormous issues, people are going to go to political war to make sure the Court is favorable to them, because that's where the real fight is. Do we have the right to define our culture, or is some court in Washington, D.C. going to do it for us? That is the bottom line, and until that ends, people are going to do whatever it takes to put their people on the Court. Mitch McConnell being nicer to Chuck Schumer or being more consistent isn't going to change that.

Another thing that's worth noting is that the impact of the Court's composition is not symmetrical from Left to Right. If the Right controls the Court, the feminists in New Jersey and California have to go to Trenton and Sacramento to make their case to elected officials and may have to compromise from time to time. Amy Coney Barrett isn't going to force a one-size-fits-all abortion rule on the United States, and nobody thinks she will. If the Left controls the Court, a cultural conservative is completely ******. He or she is wholly disenfranchised on whatever the issue is and have no remedy at all - and regardless of what the law actually says. That's another reason why conservatives aren't particularly concerned that Mitch McConnell dicked the Democrats around on this. They've been getting dicked around in the Court since the New Deal (and usually despite having the written law on their side), and they're sick of it. And they should be sick of it.

I want the underlying issue fixed. Ezra Klein (and surprisingly, Rick Perry) have called for term limiting federal judges to reduce the stakes of judicial confirmations. Link. Honestly, I'm receptive to that, but it doesn't fix the problem. The Court needs to respect federalism again. The Court needs to respect the rule of law again (not the slogan - actual adherence to what the law says on paper). The Court needs to stop trying to "resolve" social and cultural issues when it doesn't have very clear legal text to support its decisions. The "least dangerous branch" isn't supposed to do that. Fixing that is the only way forward and the only way to get people to calm down a little more about winning judicial confirmation battles. You have to make them matter a lot less.

 

[Clean]

^^ and yet he's supposedly winning. I live out in the sticks and it's 100% Trump banners and signs out here, but I drove in to San Antonio yesterday and it's a lot more balanced there.

The NY Post article will get zero traction in the MSM. It proves (if the laptop containing the emails is legit) that Joe is a liar, but we already knew that. At this point he can claim he has no recollection and every one will believe him. He doesn't even know what office he's running for.

 

[horninchicago]

Any Dem who says he would have been okay with Garland hearings and then an almost assured NO vote is lying. Dems and the media would spin it as a waste of time and abuse of power by the GOP held Senate.

 

[Joe Fan]

Not an Md by the way

 

[mb227]

Wasn't going to vote on the first day but I was glad I checked early voting locations...the one I typically use is NOT in use this year. Still one in the area and, no, I don't view this as any form of suppression.

 

[lkainer]

Joe busted lying again -- he had said “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.” The emails show Hunter introduced his Ukrainian business pals to his then-VP dad.

 

[lkainer]

Other material extracted from the computer includes a raunchy, 12-minute video that appears to show Hunter, who’s admitted struggling with addiction problems, smoking crack while engaged in a sex act with an unidentified woman, as well as numerous other sexually explicit images.

 

[Clean]

People stood in line for 6 hours to vote in San Antonio yesterday!! They're definitely gung ho about something to do that.

 

[mchammer]

People stood in line for 6 hours to vote in San Antonio yesterday!! They're definitely gung ho about something to do that.

These are the folks being polled. Once these votes are in, what about the other 80%? Are they excited ? The youth, the minorities, etc. Are rural areas being undercounted? Still lots of questions.

 

[Clean]

In 2016 I waited a week and then early voted on a Friday afternoon. It took less than 5 minutes from check in to walking out the door!

 

[nashhorn]

One of the few accurate points the Dems are making in the hearings is the fear of Obamacare holders in losing insurance. That’s true and the GOP has no one to blame but their lazy a** selfs.

 

[huisache]

what were they supposed to do, come up with their own plan?

 

[Mr. Deez]

Any Dem who says he would have been okay with Garland hearings and then an almost assured NO vote is lying. Dems and the media would spin it as a waste of time and abuse of power by the GOP held Senate.

My recollection is that NJ supported Garland's confirmation, because he viewed him as a moderate, which is what a President should appoint when the other party controls the Senate. Obama did his part by nominating a moderate. Republicans should have honored that by confirming him.

And he wasn't full of ****. Garland wasn't a Ginsburg-style radical. He was a moderate Democratic nominee in the Washington-sense. The problem is that moderate Republican and moderate Democratic nominees aren't moderate in the same ways. A moderate Democratic nominee is one who doesn't offend the Republican donor class and isn't anti-cop but is otherwise liberal. The moderation is on business and law enforcement issues. A moderate Republican nominee is someone who does not offend the Democratic social base as much. It's the difference between Stephen Breyer and Anthony Kennedy. So social conservatives always get screwed even by moderate Democratic nominees.

 

[Horn6721]

nash?
Do you not think there are new plans by Trump and or the GOP?

 

[nashhorn]

Have you seen them? If they have solid plans do you not think we would see them? Heck if they had a legitimate plan it would be all over the place. This is my single most impactful weakness in the GOP.

 

[Horn6721]

I know the Pubs put out a plan last year
let me see if I can find it