I’ve already sent my email off to Gardner. I don’t expect it to have any impact but we intend to overflow his inbox.
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Agree overall, but assuming this road becomes inevitable, 15 seems a much more auspicious number.
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Just to make sure the history is clear, The Supreme Court started with 6 Justices (including Chief Justice) in 1789. Congress revised it to 7 in 1807, 9 in 1837, and 10 in 1863. It was reduced to 7 in 1866 (though grandfathering of sitting justices meant that it only got down to 8 in reality), then restored to 9 in 1869, in machinations by Republicans to thwart Andrew Johnson from undercutting Reconstruction. In 1937, only Justice Owen J. Roberts’ “Switch in Time that Saved Nine” prevented FDR’s “Court Packing Plan” from coming to a decisive head in Congress.
So Congress has a significant history of exercising its authority to change the size of the court over a long period of US history.
Now with that history in mind, I pose this practical question: Is the work of the court at least one and a half times as large and complex in magnitude, as it was in 1869?
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Well, that’s interesting…Romney and Murkowski have said they won’t vote to confirm. Collins said October is too close (wonder if Mitch will try to get a Senate vote next week…). And, Grassley says it shouldn’t happen either. Plus, several senators who will want no part of this before the election…and McConnell may have just shot his campaign in the foot by coming out with a statement that they will do this not even one or two hours after the announcement of RBG’s death. The last may just rankle enough people to help McGrath, we’ll see how that works out in the next polls of the race. We don’t know the nominee yet, but I predict a woman, hard conservative…we can only hope that they select someone that turns out to be so awful that she gets rejected out of hand, but I doubt they will be that stupid.
I think Romney and Murkowski will stick to their guns, they have before and still seem to believe in the idea of fairness and rules in the Senate. Grassley, he’s got nothing to lose at this point, and he has also stood by things like this in the past (like his defense of IGs), so I can see him holding the line here. Collins…she’ll find some excuse to vote for this, just because that’s who she is, though if the vote is before the election she may hold back because she will lose if she pulls this stunt again.
My prediction is that the vote happens after the election, with McConnell trying to squeeze it through the process as rapidly as possible. The Republican senators that lose in November will line up and vote for Trump’s nominee…I don’t think any of them have the decency to abstain or vote against despite their constituents telling them what they want. Pence will break the tie if there is one…no VP has ever voted for an SC candidate, and it’s pretty unseemly, but he won’t give a shit. It’s really going to come down to if any of the Republicans see their way to making a moral choice and not letting this travesty happen…and I have no hope of them doing that.
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McSally, to my understanding has tonight indicated she will vote to confirm. Of course she has to stick with dt and McConnell now. What was her previous statement something like she would have to be dead to abandon her “dear leader” dt.
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Really, the argument that there are 13 circuits so there should be 13 justices is pretty easy to make, and then the number of justices is fixed to the circuit count and becomes harder to change arbitrarily. It’s the way the Democrats should pursue this, with something like appointing a new justice per year or two to spread them out…it makes it look fair, and means that they have to win in 2024 to pack the court all the way. I’m only offering this for appearances, middle of the road people hit Democrats much harder when they play hardball than they do Republicans (see how there was no effect from Garland).
Democrats should definitely tell Republicans that if they push this through, then the courts will be reorganized after inauguration…save that statement until after the election so it doesn’t wrinkle some people’s feathers, but put the Republicans on notice that if they really steal the seat, instead of following the McConnell rule one more time (so it balances out), then Democrats will add four new justices and undo their cheating. Maybe that will be enough to give some of them pause, though I doubt it.
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I don’t think of expanding the SC as punitive though. It needs to be done.
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Yeah I dont understand the we need 3 no votes at all because that would leave us with Pence casting the tie breaking vote.
We need 4 votes and I nominate for consideration lame duck Lamar Alexander as possibility to join Romney, Murkowski and Collins (although if she loses who knows).
Of course I guess it is possible that another Senator might just decide not to ever show back up on the floor of the Senate denying McConnell the 50th vote.
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Smells like methane to me.
In a national election, Sanders would never be able to top about 40% of the popular vote. Anyone who thinks otherwise is just fantasizing.
The DNC rigged the primary? What, by letting someone who wasn’t even a member of the party run in its primaries? What, by not getting more Democrats to vote for him?
Geez, give this tired bullshit a rest, already.
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Neither are a lot of Democratic voters. How many lost elections will it take until that sinks in?
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It’s likely this wouldn’t come to a vote until the lame duck session, and if Mark Kelly wins (which looks extremely likely), he’d probably be sworn in time for that.
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It’s unpacking if you are restoring the balance after a seat has been stolen.
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I don’t think that is a special election that would allow him to be seated prior to January 2021 but I hope I am wrong about that and that you are right.
That’s again why i was hesitant about this (I’m still for the legislative filibuster), doing this means the Democrats have to always deny Republicans a chance at perceived revenge.
There can’t be any ‘we forgot’ or ‘i didn’t get what i want’.
this is one of the stakes now and it’s forever.
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Grassley will turn back claiming that was his position as chairman not as a regular Senator.
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You are wrong, it’s a special election to fill McCain’s seat. McSally was appointed to it after she lost to Sinema, because he died too close to the 2018 election for the special to be held then.
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All of these “wavering” G.O.P. Senators will eventually conclude that the McConnell Rule is fine as long as the President is a lame duck, as Obama was - he wasn’t running, couldn’t run, and would certainly have been out of office on Jan. 21, 2017, no matter what. Trump isn’t a lame duck (yet), so the “rule” doesn’t come into play.
They are not going to pass up the chance to plant another Federalist Society hack on the bench, preferably a young one who will plague us for decades.
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I’m so damn angry about this that I feel like rubbing their Republican noses in it. That is, 13 SCOTUS judges ain’t enough. Go eXtreme. Make it one more than the Electoral College. Yeah. 539 Supreme Court Justices. Railroad them all through like a line in a cafeteria. And make sure that at least 50% of those are approved by AOC. Get rid of the filibuster; it’s a relic of the Jim Crow era anyway that was setup to protect the minority from “the tyranny of the majority” and was used for many nefarious reasons.
Yes, I’m being more than a little sarcastic, but I want to punish the fucking hypocritical Republicans for what they have done to our country. I want them to weep, complain and scream. I want them to become a permanently shrinking minority until such a time that sanity returns to true conservatism, because the shit they’ve been dealing sure as hell is not true Conservatism; It’s Fascist Authoritarianism, Racism, Willful Ignorance and American Talibanism. Fuck them. I want them to feel “the tyranny of the majority” kneeling on their necks for a very, very long time.
Just in case the readers here don’t recall, a very long time ago I was a Republican. I left during the '60s.
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Apparently @gusfabriani wasn’t alive in 1972. I was.
ETA. And I knocked on doors for McGovern.
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