softlynow

Dems should look at it a different way. The constitution no longer functions correctly in a number of areas. It's framework needs updating because of the advent of a number of things, not the least of which is the need for a gigantic executive which the founders had zero suspicion would arise. The electoral college is on its way to losing its legitimacy, the two-party system encourages black and white thinking in a grey-shaded world and every Congressperson represents far too many people. It's time for a refresh. Of course, that's why Dems will simply fight fire with kindling. Their personal wealth would likely take a hit in any effective plan to force actual change.

I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and say he meant Catholics are consistently pro-life (against abortion AND the death penalty) whereas the protestant pro-lifers aren't really pro-life, just out for control of poor female uteruses.

This is another reason to leave Warren in the Senate. She's very much needed there. The Dems in the Senate don't have any other bomb-throwers among them, unless you count Gillibrand, but she's into torching her own house. Other than Warren, I think Chris Murphy, Cory Booker and Amy Klobuchar are your best bets to step up effectively in this fight. I have doubts that Schumer will even want to go the direction that's needed.

The first (and possibly one which stymies the whole thing) step to doing this is to get everyone on the same page. The press is going to make a huge deal about the Dems acting like Pubs. That will be off-putting to the older Dems, set in their cravenness, who expect their appearance on TV to be rather pleasant and well in their comfort zone. If the weaklings can't handle a tough sounding question from creampuffs like Willie Geist, stay the fuck off TV and let the new blood take the lead. They should lean heavily on Katie Hill, Eric Swallwell, Ted Lieu and Chris Murphy. They should prepare to go on MSNBC like they're going on OANN. Prepare to bring their A games, because the "liberal" media is going to go completely apeshit. There's nothing those guys like better than a chance to show how objective they are by tearing into what is perceived to be their own "team" (kind of like Kirk Bohls picking Reggie Bush). This isn't the well-traveled road to an easy life of wealth and power for these folks. Which is why I'm not really expecting them to take it.

Y'all are gonna scare the DT crowd to death. They're only into tacticool cosplay, not the real thing.

Haley - Ivanka 2024. The deplorables don't have a platform, and don't need pacification they need the hate spice to flow. The showmanship got him here, but post-TIA/stroke/whatever he's not a showman any more. He's the crazy fucker at the end of the bar people used to find engaging but now drop by for a story and quickly wander away once their nostalgic needs are met. The cult is formed, and will be sated with mere allusions to the man and what he meant to the cult in 2016.

Add to that the fact that the structural economic problems that are leaving more people behind while enriching a few to fantastical levels, and I don't see this election and year as cataclysm but as prelude.

Hell, Blackum wrote Roe v. Wade, and Stevens would go on to be one of the court's most liberal justices. Souter also drifted to the left after being thought of as a probable conservative.

So cataclysmic on the day 200k covid deaths is reached the NYT cover is about politics as usual. So cataclysmic that, while Biden led Trump in national polls by about 8 in February, he now leads by . . . about 8. If you're looking for a fourth turning type event, a reset of the political spectrum, the end of the sixth political party system and the rise of the seventh, this ain't it. If you're predicting one, though, après Trump le deluge. In fact, I think we should be quite concerned about what comes next. The deplorables are not going away. When Reagan invited evangelicals into the GOP, he created a new tranche of his base. Their side won some elections and lost some elections, but have yet to disappear as they did between the Scopes Monkey trial and 1980. Trump has done the same with completely moronic pieces of shit. They are an activated political force, and losing this election doesn't end that. And they're not just old people about to die. The next GOP candidate will not alienate the morons. Liberal tears will be a campaign promise for many more election cycles. Imagine the power of a GOP that has the deplorables not only excited to continue their nihilistic push for . . . whatever, but rallied around a Nikki Haley who wouldn't be a non-starter with independents and suburban women. Trumpism without Trump has the potential to coalesce quite the lasting coalition.

I seem to recall each party predicting decades in the wilderness for the other party every 2-4 years. I've never understood why people think one party in a two-party system could ever gain that kind of dominance absent a cataclysmic event like the Civil War.

That is why you fail.

Like most on this site, I reference movie quotes way too much. I gotta kick that habit. I must unlearn what I have learned.

She has a tiny record, so that’s what we have to go on. She may break from her mentors, and SC justices do often drift, sometimes pretty far, from the ideologies of their early careers, but you can’t link to their future thoughts. I have to laugh that I blew past your OP link. I had read that previously, and went searching for more on ACB when RBG died. There’s very little out there to discuss. Not that any of it matters beyond predicting how consistently she’ll did with Alito/Thomas/Gorsuch/Beer! Most likely, quite. There will be little suspense if the court remains at 9 members.

She’s been with the 7th for less than 3 years. She’s a former Federalist Society member and has the profile cons love. Clerked first Scalia. (If she’s another Scalia, she’ll always side with LE when drugs are involved, and the 4th amendment won’t mean much outside of your home). Below is the Scotusblog writeup from 2018, and there are a few mildly controversial rulings in there. I’m sure another rundown will be forthcoming. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.scotusblog.com/2018/07/potential-nominee-profile-amy-coney-barrett/amp/

Agreed. She’s not satan and will be alright, probably. But the court rolled over and played dead when the war on drugs heated up, and she’s not carrying the defibrillator it needs. And her confirmation will highlight yet again the hypocrisy of “libertarians” like a few on this board who shrink from every opportunity to actually curtail state power in favor of guns rulings that mean little, fetus rulings that won’t mean much and rulings allowing the wealthy to hoard more wealth that are what this game is really all about.

http://media.ca7.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/rssExec.pl?Submit=Display&Path=Y2018/D05-29/C:17-1727:J:Hamilton:aut:T:fnOp:N:2162392:S:0 Her opinion starts on page 35.

Y’all do as you like on the religious angle. Boring. She penned a worrying dissent to me on the 6th Amendment right to counsel which tells me she’s exactly the wrong kind of justice to help reform our broken criminal justice system. Of course we knew that when she became a darling of the cons. And no, I won’t find any discussion on her civil rights attitudes interesting either. Nor her dismissiveness of Starr decisis. It’s noise past learning who she is. She’ll get on unless it’s revealed she thinks tax cuts violate the third amendment or something equally bizarre that would spook cons.

Even if they keep the Senate Mark Kelly could be sworn by Nov 30 and that might be enough to prevent a lame duck confirmation. He’s going forward because he will win. That’s the calculation, always. Why not when every norm broken, every new height of hypocrisy reached only firms up the evangelical/deplorable/grifter/feed the rich base? If there ever is a Dem-dominated federal government again they have to not be the pussies they always are. Anyone really think that’ll happen?

True. But music is enjoyable. If my background noise is somebody talking, they’re gonna be either intelligent and very knowledgeable about something(s) or funny as hell. I guess if you enjoy train wrecks he’s your guy.

Meaningless noise isn’t interesting. No one’s mind is changed. No votes are in doubt. Liberals will use it to rally the pro-choice troops. Cons will play up that Christians are being persecuted again. Unless you’re life revolves around tv news, who fucking cares?

I feel a bit better not because of independents but because turnout on the Dem side is going to be 2008 levels or better. That alone will do it. Independents are morons, and don’t seem swayed by left-right anyway. The additional gravy, especially in Arizona and maybe a couple other states (Georgia, Texas, SC Senate race?) is defecting Pubs, not necessarily Indys.

GOP ... have to? Lulz.

Where have you gone, Preston Brooks?

McConnell said what he said because he knows he’s got the votes OR he thinks losing the vote helps in November. Maybe both. Collins, Murkowski and Romney aren’t necessary. Hell, you could let another vote nay or abstain if Manchin votes yea like he did for Justice Beer! This one is likely done.

Lloyd and Harry singing Mockingbird would work, too