Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) on Sunday night called on her fellow Democratic lawmakers to utilize every procedural weapon in their arsenal to keep Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) from ramming through a Supreme Court judicial appointment by President Donald Trump in wake of liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death.
Will they listen?
That she cannot enumerate said tools speaks volumes.
What possible brakes does she envision being used? Mitch carefully deconstructed every reasonable means to defer in the Senate rules already.
AOC is right. This whole Amy Coney Barrett has been baked in the mix since Kavanaugh.
The 48-year-old judge was a favourite in the race two years ago when justice Anthony Kennedy retired from America’s highest court. In the end, Brett Kavanaugh, another social conservative darling, was appointed but the president reportedly said at the time that he did not plump for Barrett because he was “saving her for Ginsburg”. Now that time has arrived.
I would like to see the Democrats get some traction on this, but they seem confused about what to do with the outlandish abuses of power from the GOP side of the ailsle.
Unfortunately, the procedural tools available to Democrats now are pretty weak. If the Dems win the Senate and White House they can start action to expand the court, or make Puerto Rico a state, which means two more Senators likely to be Dems, or look at term limits for justices.
It’s hard to use procedure in the face of blatant corruption and hypocrisy. But that doesn’t mean Dems should try to be as foul as the Reps, if they do, then Democracy in the US is a dead letter.
Right off the top of my head, they can deny the R’s a quorum in committee. If there is day where less than 51 R’s show up, they can deny a full senate quorum. There is a rule that any sessions over 2 hours require unanimous consent from all the senators. There are literally a thousands of stupid procedural rules in the Senate. EXPLOIT THEM ALL! BRING THE ENTIRE BODY TO A STANDSTILL UNTIL THE INAUGURATION. They’re not going to pass anything useful anyway.
Plus, Mitch is a master at gaming the rules. No way can Democrats stop it.
But if the Republicans were really smart, they’d nominate Merrick Garland.
It would be a win win for them. He’s moderate. The court won’t veer too far right and have the people revolt against Republicans at the ballot box. Most of the country would look at them as doing the right thing.
But, they are not smart. They are more power hungry than smart.
Speaks volumes, yes. It speaks to exactly your point. There is none, procedurally. (Other than small delay tactics that amount to a day here and there, maybe a week)
We only have that truth to point out.
But we aren’t going to come out and say they hold the cards. We are going to make them say it, show it.
Then shove it up their ass w/ four new justices next spring. For the same reason, we’ll have the power.
Yep, and AOC is shining a light on that. As she should.
She has her audience, she will rally those that look up to her, for all of our cause. I hope we can count on others in our party, with their respective audiences to highlight the same.
Exactly. Turtleface is evil, not dumb. As much as I hate him, I have to respect the game.
I like the way you think, but extending this through the entire lame duck session doesn’t seem feasible, and definitely not without a huge political cost (blocking the budget e.g.).
No reason to stop at Puerto Rico.
Add DC for sure, and then American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands and the United Virgin Islands.
Bury the fuckers.
“All they have to do is nominate a judge like Merrick Garland, and he would move right through, but he won’t do that”
Where have I heard this before?
Except for Evangelicals.
Otherwise, yes. Moreover, repubs would still have 5/4 on the court and even if they lost the presidency and the senate, there would be no political cover for judiciary reform.
As you said, they are not smart
Everything has a political cost. If we can can get it pushed past the election (which actually seems likely with the concern twins, Romney and Grassley not appearing up for it before the election), who cares about political cost? We’re worried about political consequences after the election and 2 years before the next one? The budget being delayed a couple months we have seen we can survive.
AOC can put some brakes on the process by filing articles of impeachment against Clarence Thomas (whose impeachable offenses are almost too numerous to count, but we could start with lying on his financial disclosures and Ginny’s abuse of his office in her lobbying career) and Beer Buddy Brett Kavanaugh for perjury before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Those two trials should keep Mitch the Bitch busy for a couple of days.
AOC lining things up to blame Dems for not being able to block it.
Actually, Garland would move the court somewhat to the left. He is definitely more moderate than the Notorious One.
If they try nothing but public shaming, they deserve blame. If they try everything they possibly can and fail, that’s just sad reality. But if they try nothing because of the ‘political costs’, they’re cowards and deserve to eat shit for it. Show the people this is worth fighting for (because it is). It’s highly likely that if you do and you risk political capital, people will appreciate it. McConnell did EXACTLY this 4 years ago and they took over Congress and the WH, without losing the Senate.
Wrong. Speaking to her flock as more moderate Democrats will speak to theirs, in their language.
It’s all hands on deck.
Should she just sit down and be quiet?
Hmmm. Using all the tools available to them.
I just read those same excerpted words from Mueller’s top deputy Weismann:
“Had we given it our all — had we used all available tools to uncover the truth, undeterred by the onslaught of the president’s unique powers to undermine our efforts?” he writes. “I know the hard answer to that simple question: We could have done more.”
Weismann also says that parts of the final Mueller report were “mealymouthed” and should have directly stated that the president obstructed justice with his attempts to fire Mueller and to get former White House counsel Don McGahn to falsely deny that he had ever been ordered to get the special counsel fired.
In fact, Weismann says that the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russian agents in 2016 did a better job of describing the president and his allies’ actions. “It made judgments and calls, instead of saying, ‘You could say this and you could say that,’” he said.
We do realize, don’t we America, that Mueller soaked up ALL the info, details, documents, traces, intelligence, witnesses, and the 2 productive years this was on the front burner…placed it BEHIND the back burner and effectively buried all the evidence and then handed it to Bill Barr whom everyone expected would adulterate it. Nice work, G-Men.
They’d still have a conservative majority. And most of the country is not evangelical. And not all evangelicals are raving morons. Sure, there’s a lot that are, but…
No sense discussing it because I would win the Powerball lottery before Mitch would do something both decent and smart.