"Markey wants to leverage another threat: that, if Democrats win the presidency and the Senate, they will abolish the filibuster and add more justices to the Supreme Court."
Are they trying to lose the election, and do they never learn (Reid made the rules so that only a majority need confirm a Supreme Court Justice, and it bit the Dems in the butt)?
"The fate of Ginsburg’s successor rests with a handful of Senate Republicans" by Jess Bidgood and Liz Goodwin Globe Staff, September 19, 2020
WASHINGTON — As he relaxed on a white sofa during a public forum in 2018, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina swore up and down that, if there was a Supreme Court vacancy in the last year of President Trump’s term, he would want to wait until after the election to fill it.
“Hold the tape,” he said of the event’s video.
Then on Saturday, with seven carefully worded tweets, Graham, the powerful Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, reversed himself and fell in line with his party’s effort to quickly install another conservative on the high court in the coming weeks.
Buttressed by senators like Graham, President Trump and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said they have every intent of filling the vacancy left by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg quickly. They are steamrolling past the cries of hypocrisy from Democrats who say the move flouts a standard set by Republicans themselves four years ago when they refused to even take up President Obama’s nominee for an election-year Supreme Court vacancy, declaring that the electorate should weigh in first.
On Saturday night, Trump told a rally in Fayetteville, N.C., that he would nominate a woman this week, setting up an acrimonious political battle that could cement a conservative court majority for decades and shape the nation for generations to come. The crowd chanted, “Fill the seat,” and Trump suggested his campaign should make T-shirts with the slogan.
He has vetted picks left over from his last nomination process who are ready to go, including federal Judge Amy Coney Barrett, 48. “I think the process can go very very fast,” Trump told reporters Saturday, but his success will ultimately depend on whether a handful of Republican senators decide, like Graham, break with their past positions and join the ugly partisan fight in the six weeks before the election.
With all the craziness going on, this is the last thing we need and mark my words, it will provide a massive pre$$ distraction in the run-up to the election and beyond.
“There’s no reason why the Senate couldn’t confirm Trump’s nominee in November, December, even January regardless of the outcome of the election,” said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist who worked on Senator Marco Rubio’s presidential run. “The question just becomes: Do they have the votes?”
Some Republicans have already signaled they won’t vote to confirm a nominee this year. On Saturday, Maine Senator Susan Collins, who is facing a tough reelection fight, said she believed the next justice should be nominated by the winner of November’s election. Shortly before Ginsburg’s death was announced on Friday, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska told a reporter she would not vote to confirm a new justice before the election because voters need to weigh in.
That means McConnell can afford to lose only one more Republican senator from his slim majority if he wants to confirm a new justice before Election Day — and he has other members who are facing uphill reelection fights similar to Collins, or who have shown a tendency to buck the party in the past, like Murkowski, to worry about.
I imagine Romney will bolt since he is a RINO.
In a letter to the GOP caucus on Friday night, McConnell urged Republicans who are on the fence to “keep your powder dry” and not announce whether they would vote to confirm a Trump-nominated justice before the end of the year — a sign that he has more work to do. McConnell explained his willingness to confirm a Trump nominee now, but not Obama’s nominee four years ago, federal appellate Judge Merrick Garland, by pointing out that the Senate hasn’t confirmed the nominee of an opposite party’s president during an election year since 1888.
Still, McConnell has not specified whether a vote would come before the Nov. 3 election, or after, in the so-called lame duck session before new senators are seated in early January.
The timing could have ramifications for the election, as well as for McConnell’s margin of error, since Mark Kelly, the Arizona Democrat who is favored to beat Republican Senator Martha McSally in a special election on Nov. 3, could be seated as early as Nov. 30 if he wins because he would be filling the rest of a vacated term.
Keep that in mind going forward.
If McConnell holds a vote before the election, he might have a better shot at confirming the justice, but he will also be forcing vulnerable Republican senators to take a vote that could endanger their reelection efforts — and his majority with it.
“This is a deeply troubling vote to have to take in the final weeks of an election,” said Ryan Williams, a Republican strategist.
On Saturday, Democrats were assembling a menu of procedural options to use to slow the proceedings, but they know their only real option lies in persuading colleagues from across the aisle to buck their party’s leaders.
“The Senate is split 53-47 — just four senators can stop this latest travesty, and no amount of pressure is too much pressure,” said Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts in an interview. “They need to see it and feel it and hear it every single day before Nov. 3.”
He talks like an antifa leader. Markey the Marxist!
The Republicans most likely to feel that pressure are those facing reelection in Democratic or swing states, such as Cory Gardner of Colorado, or senators with a bit of a maverick reputation, like Mitt Romney of Utah, who was the lone Republican to vote to convict Trump after his impeachment trial. So far, both senators have offered condolences to the Ginsburg family, but no clues as to their positions on replacing her.
Gardner could face blowback from more moderate voters if he backs an anti-abortion nominee like Barrett, but rebuffing Trump would likely put him in even more political peril, even though the president is unpopular among Coloradans overall.
“They’ve run the math nine different ways and the president’s god-like popularity with the base he just simply cannot distance himself” from, said David Flaherty, a pollster in Colorado for the Republican-leaning Magellan Strategies. “I’m sure Cory Gardner will go along with anybody and support the nominee whoever the president puts out.”
He's not distancing?
That’s likely the calculation made by Republican Senator Thom Tillis, who faces a tight reelection battle in North Carolina, where Trump has also been trailing in the polls. Tillis said in a statement Saturday he would support Trump’s nominee to prevent Democratic nominee Joe Biden from nominating a “liberal activist” instead.
Romney has shown concern about the reputation of the Senate, which could make a rushed hearing in the final days before an election less attractive, but he’s also a strong supporter of conservative judges — an issue that binds even Trump’s Republican critics to the president.
“I do think that Senator Romney does want to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg with a conservative justice, the question is: What does he think the process should be?” said Williams, a former aide to Romney’s presidential run. “I don’t know at this point.”
The picture for Collins in Maine is entirely different. The moderate, whose office was bombarded by clothes hangers sent from pro-choice voters during the 2018 confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, is seizing on the chance depict herself as independent, since she is down in the polls and many of her constituents are still smarting over her vote to confirm him.
I don't want to reopen that case after all the bitterness and lies.
"In fairness to the American people, who will either be re-electing the President or selecting a new one, the decision on a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court should be made by the President who is elected on November 3rd,” Collins said in a statement Saturday.
“This position that she’s taking I think it will be very helpful to her because I think it reminds people in Maine what it is that they’ve always liked about her — that she’s not a party stooge by any stretch of the imagination,” said Kevin Raye, who was chief of staff to former Maine senator Olympia Snowe.
The battle will likely match the intensity of that over Kavanaugh, when protesters pounded on the doors of the Senate, sent senators hangers to signify back-alley abortions, and chained themselves to office buildings. A liberal group, Demand Justice, has pledged to spend $10 million opposing Trump’s pick, while the conservative Judicial Crisis Network has vowed to match them on the other side.
In a private call on Saturday, Senate Democrats vowed to dial up the pressure, linking the Supreme Court — which has long animated Republican voters — to the issues that drove the party’s success in the 2018 midterms, like the future of the Affordable Care Act. The court is set to hear a challenge to Obama’s signature health care law soon after the election, but at least Markey wants to leverage another threat: that, if Democrats win the presidency and the Senate, they will abolish the filibuster and add more justices to the Supreme Court. It’s a threat Biden has not yet embraced.
“In the face of Republican hypocrisy and corruption,” Markey said, “we must use all the tools at our disposal.”
The Democrats have to threaten you to get you to vote for them and their insane ideas.
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That doesn't confer virtue to the Republicans, the other $ide of the $ame coin, and is it just me or does anyone else have a problem with the gobs of money being thrown into the nomination process while Americans suffer?
"Cash is flowing over confirmation battle for Supreme Court vacancy" by Michael D. Shear and Nicholas Fandos New York Times, September 19, 2020
WASHINGTON — Just hours after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death was announced Friday, the leaders of three of the left’s most potent advocacy groups, Demand Justice, Naral Pro-Choice America, and Indivisible, were on a call with 1,000 progressive activists and strategists to begin to unfurl a plan they hoped they would not have to use.
I think the opposite is true.
Demand Justice, a relatively new group led by longtime Democratic aide Brian Fallon to match the powerful conservative legal apparatus, quickly pledged to spend $10 million “to fight to ensure no justice is confirmed before the January inauguration.”
He ran Clinton's 2016 campaign.
At the same time, a coalition of President Trump’s conservative allies said Saturday that it was preparing for an intense confrontation over Ginsburg’s seat and was gearing up for a lobbying and public relations blitz.
The message: Move quickly to replace her.
“Tensions are very high politically,” said Carrie Severino, the president of Judicial Crisis Network, a group that has long pressed for conservative jurists for the court. “We expect this will be a major, major battle.”
Asked about the pledge by Democratic groups to spend at least $10 million to prevent a confirmation, Severino said, “We will match their $10 million and whatever it takes.”
The time factor is critical as I will explain a bit later.
The announcement of Ginsburg’s death Friday night plunged the nation’s capital into what is certain to be an especially fierce and costly clash as liberals seek to stop Trump and the Republican-led Senate from confirming a replacement before Inauguration Day. On Saturday, Trump hinted he would move “without delay” to fill the seat and urged Senate Republicans to follow suit. Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, said late Friday he would hold a vote on a nominee but did not indicate when, constrained by a narrow majority.
Both sides have been bracing for this moment for years, but few expected the fight over the court’s direction to take place in the final weeks of a polarizing presidential election and in the middle of a devastating pandemic.
Confirmation of a conservative jurist to succeed Ginsburg, one of the court’s most liberal stalwarts, in the weeks and months ahead could cement a right-leaning ideology on the nation’s highest court for decades to come, providing Trump with a lasting legacy whether he wins reelection or not.
The prospect of that outcome has galvanized Democrats, who vowed Saturday to put into motion a long-planned campaign to make the case that Ginsburg’s vacancy must not be filled until after the American people have chosen the next president and decided who will control the Senate.
“Progressives will fight with everything they have to make sure that this seat does not get filled,” Nan Aron, the president of the Alliance for Justice and a fixture of Washington legal fights for decades, said in an interview. “Progressives are ready for this fight.”
I read somewhere that they said they would burn the country down if a nominee was confirmed.
The passion among liberals was underscored Friday night when Democratic donors shattered records on ActBlue, a donation-processing site, giving more than $6.2 million in the hour after Ginsburg died. Donors contributed at a rate of $100,000 per minute in the next hour as well, for another $6.3 million. By noon Saturday, donations had topped $45 million.
ActBlue is a money-laundering outfit set up my Obama, but a “lot of the focus right now is on the Republican hypocrisy because the future is now on the line,” and the Globe says Republicans must denounce violence after what the antifa goons they support have done!
In 2018, the vitriolic fight over the nomination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh played out against the backdrop of pivotal midterm elections, costing tens of millions of dollars before it was over.
This time, the fight over the court will compete for the attention of voters and politicians. With the nation’s televisions already saturated with hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of political advertising around the presidential election and races up and down the ticket, super PACs and campaigns will face their own decisions over how much airtime to dedicate to the issue, and the stakes could be even higher. A conservative replacement for Ginsburg has the potential to shift the court’s judgment on core issues for the Republican establishment: abortion, gun rights, taxes, religious liberty, immigration, health care, and more.
Severino said her group was preparing a “huge grassroots network” and would broadcast television ads as well as use social media to demand that the Senate quickly confirm a Trump nominee to the court.
Timing is everything.
Heritage Action, the political advocacy arm of the conservative Heritage Foundation that spent millions in 2018 pushing for the confirmation of Kavanaugh, called Saturday for the “swift” confirmation of a new justice. It did not immediately detail its plans to try to make that happen. “Conservatives will not waver in our support and resolve for a speedy and fair process,” said Jessica Anderson, the group’s executive director. “Republicans must exercise the power of confirmation that voters have entrusted in them and fulfill their constitutional obligations. The American people depend on this.”
In this case, the fight will take on an added dimension: With 23 Senate seats held by Republicans on the ballot this fall, the fight over replacing Ginsburg, centered in Washington, will sprawl across the country from Maine, where Senator Susan Collins, a moderate, is fighting for her political life; to South Carolina, where the Judiciary Committee chairman, Senator Lindsey Graham, is facing a tighter-than-expected race; and to Arizona, where the results of a special election between Mark Kelly, a Democrat, and Senator Martha McSally on Nov. 3 could tilt the balance of the Senate even before 2021.
As Ginsburg was battling cancer, the prospect of a looming Supreme Court confirmation battle had already been squarely at the center of the fall’s political campaigns.
The Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion organization, announced Saturday that it would add $500,000 to its election-year budget of $52 million to specifically mobilize grassroots support on behalf of quickly confirming whoever Trump nominates. The group had already hoped to contact 4 million voters through digital ads, direct mail, and in-person communications aimed primarily at stressing the importance of having a conservative court to oppose abortion. After Ginsburg’s death, the organization will increase that goal to 7 million voters, said Mallory Quigley, a spokeswoman for the group.
“The passing of Justice Ginsburg and the ensuing fight to nominate a replacement — this really puts abortion front and center in voters’ minds,” Quigley said. “It sharpens everything we’ve been doing.”
Feminists are always amazed that Susan B. Anthony was antiabortion.
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Related:
"I’ve been interviewing women lately who are feeling an unbearable burden but are bearing it. They are, after all, mothers, but they are mothers in an unprecedented time, holding the weight of everything that is being thrown at them during a global pandemic. “There is no way that I can have my two older kids do school from home and keep my toddler alive and work,” one said. She quit, but she mourned. “It was so great to have an existence outside of my home, and my purpose wasn’t wound up entirely with my children. It was important to me.” So when the news came that Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the iconic working mother, had died, I thought of this woman I’d spoken with just hours earlier. Of the ways in which Ginsburg found parenting not to be a blockade to her success, but a relief, an inspiration....."
The Globe says the Senate should follow precedent and honor Ginsburg by not confirming a new justice in an election year, and is of the opinion that she was an ordinary person who spoke truth to power (I hate that term because power already knows truth) and sealed her legacy as a women’s rights crusader as she persevered her way to the US Supreme Court, opening doors of opportunity for women and others at stops along the way.
Meanwhile, Massachusetts leaders from across the political spectrum mourned the death of the iconic Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, with many — including popular Republican Governor Charlie Baker — urging that her dying wish be respected and a successor not be chosen until after the November presidential election.
Here is what’s at stake if Trump gets a conservative justice:
"Ginsburg’s death crystallizes the choice in November as no other issue can" by Dan Balz, Washington Post | September 19, 2020
When I read the headline I realized she has been dead for a while and they only decided to unveil it now for optimum political effect. No one had seen her in public since July, folks, and her death has crystallized the choice in November as no other issue can?
In a year that has included impeachment, a global pandemic, economic turmoil and a reckoning on race, the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg crystallizes the choice in November as perhaps none of the other issues can.
Nothing quite captures the national disquiet over the future of the country as the passing of one of the most iconic and best-known jurists in history and the vacuum that her death has now created. If there was hope that the November election might result in an outcome that could begin to settle the country, the odds of that lengthened with the first reports on Friday night of her death after a long battle with cancer.
For those on the left, the passing of the revered justice is a potentially cataclysmic event, opening up the possibility that her seat on the court could be filled by someone who would cement a conservative majority for years. For those on the right, the vacancy to be filled presents the rarest of opportunities to fulfill a decades-long drive to change the court for a generation or more.
The coming battle over Ginsburg’s successor will have all the drama, procedural maneuvering and bare politics to match any of the most controversial of court nominations, but the impact of this particular vacancy could ripple far beyond what takes place on Capitol Hill. The issues that surround the vacancy encompass the broader culture war that divides red and blue America, from abortion to marriage equality to health care to the very structure of government.
Ginsburg’s death changes the calculus for the campaign between President Trump and former vice president Joe Biden.
My suspicions were just confirmed.
The court long has been a voting issue for some conservatives, particularly evangelical Christians and others who put opposition to abortion at the top of their issue list. Trump will be counting on the prospect of expanding a conservative majority on the Supreme Court to further energize that part of his base, but the possibility of a conservative majority of long standing on the high court is just as likely to have an impact on opponents of Trump. The history of the abortion debate suggests that when the right to an abortion is truly threatened, proponents of that right suddenly become hyperactive. Given Ginsburg’s status and the role she played in empowering women and fighting for women’s rights, her loss will add octane to the fuel on the left.
Depending on the outcome of the election and of the resolution of who fills the Ginsburg seat, the battle could easily expand to an even more charged debate over whether the high court speaks for and represents the views of a majority of Americans or even whether the democratic system of government more broadly has become undemocratic.
Wow, who knew Balz was a closet communist?
Twice in the past five elections, the popular vote winner has lost the presidential election. It could happen again in November, as Trump is likely to lose the popular vote as he did in 2016. Senate Republicans control the upper chamber, but their members represent fewer than half the nation’s population. Republicans in the House have routinely won more seats than their share of the vote, thanks to the makeup of congressional districts.
Actually, it is looking more and more like he will win the popular vote by a substantial margin. His approval rate is up to 53%, the highest of his presidency. What the Wa$hington Compo$t is doing is pre-programming the public with propaganda before the election.
This is not an issue that is suddenly upon the country. Two years ago, the Economist magazine ran a cover story with the headline, “American democracy’s built-in bias,” which highlighted the consequences of a nation with an expanding urban-rural split as wide as it is now in the United States layered on top of the constitutional system crafted upon compromise between big-state and small-state interests.
Noting that “a red vote counts more than a blue one” in America, the magazine’s editorial argued, “This bias is a dangerous new twist in the tribalism and political dysfunction that is poisoning politics in Washington.”
Former presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg said in August that if Trump were reelected a second time without winning the popular vote, it could force an examination “of what’s become of our democratic system.”
They really do want to tear down our Republic and replace it with $tate Communi$m!
In recent years, ideas that have been put forth by those who believe it is time for such an examination. They include adding more justices to the high court (as Buttigieg recommended during his presidential campaign) and amending the Constitution to eliminate the electoral college and elect presidents by popular vote. More provocative have been suggestions that Democrats should push to bring D.C. and Puerto Rico into the union to affect the balance of power in the Senate.
Is that a threat?
Up to now, this has been a discussion that animates many on the left, but it’s not one that has gained a wider audience. Nor is it in the current capability of Democrats to effect such changes, but if Republicans exercise their power brazenly in an attempt to install a new justice in the face of a Biden victory in November, who can say where this fight could go?
Everyone is on high alert for a brazen exercise in raw power by the Republicans as they fulfill their Constitutional duty!
I'm telling you, the one-sidedness of this stuff is sickening!
On Friday night, McConnell issued a statement declaring that Trump’s nominee would receive a vote on the floor of the Senate, a flagrant provocation that served to remind everyone of the stakes in the election, though one that holds the potential to backfire depending on which side is now more motivated to turn out to vote.
Biden was quick to protest, arguing that the winner of the presidential election in November should be the person to select a successor to Ginsburg. “This was the position that the Republican Senate took in 2016, when there were nearly nine months before the election,” he added. “That is the position the United States Senate must take now, when the election is less than two months away.”
Biden will be under pressure to go farther on other questions, particularly those relating to changing the structure of government. On Friday night, he did not say whether he was prepared to change his position and now support adding justices to the court, but that will not be the last time he gets the question between now and Nov. 3.
McConnell is not yet guaranteed that he can engineer a floor vote in behalf of a Trump nominee. Enough Republican senators are in competitive races to make them squirm at the prospect of such a raw display of power. A Biden victory or a Democratic takeover of the Senate, or both, would put many Republicans in a lame-duck session in an even more difficult position if Trump and McConnell were insistent on moving ahead with a confirmation fight.
Why?
What would Republicans have to lose at that point?
More events will have to unfold before it’s clear who has the power to do what in the near term, but the timing of Ginsburg’s death raises the stakes dramatically for the November election and potentially enlarges the battle over her successor to include fundamental questions of democratic governance and representation.....
Hmmmmmm.
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Trump's hope is he will win over some women:
"Trump hopes a woman Supreme Court nominee will help him with female voters, but the move could backfire" by Jim Puzzanghera Globe Staff, September 20, 2020
President Trump is confronting a gigantic gender gap, fueled by his policies and his rhetoric, in the presidential race. Women voters prefer Democrat Joe Biden by upwards of 25 percentage points in recent polls. So it’s no surprise that the president has decided to pick a woman to fill the seat of one of the four women to ever serve on the Supreme Court, but his choice, to be unveiled this week from a list of potential candidates he already had made public, is likely to be strongly conservative and opposed to abortion rights, and that is unlikely to help him gain much, if any, additional support from women voters in November, said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.
“I think if he picks a woman who is very conservative socially and women feel that in fact many of the issues they are concerned about will be at risk, it will not help him with women voters,” she said. “It is that fundamental misunderstanding that, if somehow I just put a woman up there, they’ll forget about all these other issues and they’ll be so mesmerized by my pick. What it might do,” Walsh continued, “is energize women who are more centrist to come out and to vote in this election against him.”
Former Democratic senator Barbara Boxer of California put it more bluntly. “Just because you pick someone who has a skirt, it doesn’t change the situation, it only makes it even worse frankly,” she said. “I’ve served with a lot of women who work against women’s rights. It makes it worse for women and women understand that.”
Glad to see you gals aren't monolithic.
In the 2016 election, Trump’s 11 percentage point gender gap — the difference between the percentage of women and men who voted for him — was tied for the largest of any major party candidate since 1980, according to the center’s data.
The odd thing is he won white women by a 10% margin. That's what cost Hillary the election, not Russian interference or James Comey.
Since Trump took office, polls have showed his support among women declining because of policies like family separation at the border and his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Those come in addition to numerous allegations of sexual misconduct and rhetoric that often is harsh and outdated, but Penny Young Nance, president of Concerned Women for America, a conservative public policy organization, said Trump’s comments won’t hurt him with women of faith, and they’ll be energized if Trump nominates a strong conservative woman to the Supreme Court.
They really have nowhere else to go. No way they vote for pedo Joe.
Walsh said women historically are more likely to vote for Democrats because of their policies and there’s been a gender gap in their favor in every presidential race since 1980. Republicans who pick women for high-profile positions usually aren’t successful in luring more female voters.
They are taken for granted almost as much as the Blacks.
She said the best example was Republican presidential nominee John McCain’s pick of Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008 in hopes that it would lure some disgruntled women supporters of Hillary Clinton, who lost that year’s Democratic primary, away from Barack Obama, but McCain had the same gender gap in that election as Republican George W. Bush did in 2004, Walsh said. “It is not about the gender of the candidate. It is about the party of the candidate largely,” she said.
You can't just vote the party line. That's how you get a transsexual, satanist, anarchist who laid a trap for Republican voters in Cheshire County, and they walked right into it.
Nance said there are some “amazing” women on Trump’s list and believes his choice will help him with women voters, but Boxer predicted Trump’s nominee won’t help him because her positions won’t align with those of most women voters. “Women are not stupid. We understand this,” she said. “You’re not going to pull one over on us.”
Then why have a majority of you bought the COVID lie and hoax?
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Thus, as Trump and the Democrats brace for showdown over Supreme Court seat we are reminded that family, work and opera filled Ginsburg’s final summer, and her death echoes in celebrations of Jewish New Year (timing again) with candlelit vigils around the region serving up the gratitude.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
NEXT DAY UPDATES:
"With few options to stall a Supreme Court confirmation, Democrats talk drastic change to end ‘minority rule’" by Jess Bidgood and Liz Goodwin Globe Staff, September 21, 2020
WASHINGTON — With President Trump vowing to name a Supreme Court nominee this weekend, Senate Democrats on Monday found themselves searching from a narrow, and obscure, list of options as they struggled to find leverage to halt a confirmation before or shortly after Election Day.
Senator Chuck Schumer of New York took to the Senate floor to sum up his quandary: He needs four Republicans to break ranks and block the Senate from approving a Trump nominee.
“There is only one way for us to have some hope of coming together again, of trusting each other again, lowering the temperature, moving forward, and that is for four brave Senate Republicans to commit to rejecting any nominee until the next president is installed,” Schumer said, but by Monday night, two more key Republicans — Cory Gardner of Colorado and Chuck Grassley of Iowa — made it clear they would not be heeding Schumer’s call, leaving only Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska as publicly opposed to moving forward before Nov. 3.
As Democrats returned to the Capitol Monday for what could be the biggest partisan brawl of their lives, they reached into their arsenal and found just two weapons: pleas like Schumer’s overture urging Republicans not to proceed, and procedural hurdles that at this point seem unlikely to stop Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader who has pushed for a quick confirmation.
The Democrats’ powerlessness and frustration is reviving a once-obscure debate about making sweeping changes to the judiciary and leveling the playing field to erode the institutional advantage that has given Republicans so much power in Washington.
If you can't win fairly, change the rules!
Democrats’ options seem far-fetched and would dramatically escalate the already explosive fight. In the short term, they haven’t ruled out passing a quick House impeachment of Attorney General William Barr in order to clog up the Senate with a trial, but if McConnell has the votes for the nominee, many observers say there is little the Democrats can do to stop a new conservative justice from being confirmed to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the weeks before or after the election.
“Ultimately, Mitch McConnell and the Republicans do have a lot of power to just trample the procedural rights of Democrats in this process and we are well aware of that,” said Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey.
They are not trampling on anything, they are proceeding per the Constitution.
Democrats are dangerous and need to be massively rejected this fall.
As they prepare to watch a president who lost the popular vote nominate a third Supreme Court justice, once far-out arguments for abolishing the Senate’s legislative filibuster, adding new states to the nation in order to elect more Democrats, or packing the high court with new justices are quickly picking up speed among Democratic activists. They’re attracting attention even among party stalwarts who have long clung to hoary ideals of tradition and decorum.
Markey is so far the only senator to call directly for expanding the Supreme Court, but when Schumer was asked whether he would support doing so during a press conference on Sunday, he refused to rule it out. “Once we win the majority, God willing, everything is on the table,” Schumer said.
I can' think of a better campaign ad for Republican control!
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler went further, saying Democrats would have no choice but to add Supreme Court justices if Republicans push their nomination through.
The number of seats on the Supreme Court is not set by the Constitution, and past presidents have changed the makeup of the court with the help of Congress, but the idea has received little attention until recently. Some Democratic presidential hopefuls, including Senator Kamala Harris, now the party’s vice presidential nominee, said during the primary campaign they were open to the idea.
“There’s a lot of discussion that many of us have had — former Hill staffers, scholars — about what’s wrong with the system, including the need for filibuster reform, the need for expanding the court,” said Rebecca Katz, a progressive Democratic strategist.
“In the last 48 hours,” she added, “I’ve heard more of the expanding-the-court conversation than I’ve heard in the last two years.”
Democrats are seething over McConnell’s willingness to confirm a new justice so close to an election when he refused to give so much as a hearing to President Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, after Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative, died nearly nine months before the 2016 election, but to some Democrats, the need to consider a suite of reforms is driven by what they see as an even larger injustice: The fact that their party is not proportionately represented in the Senate, because Democrats are heavily concentrated in populous states, such as California or New York, that get the same amount of representation as sparsely populated states with more conservative voters.
Scalia was murdered so Obama could fill the seat despite the notorious friendship, that's why McConnell refused him, and what a bunch of sore losers (something they have emphasized the last four years).
“The Senate’s pro-Republican bias is at a historic high” said Dave Wasserman, an editor at the Cook Political Report. “The result is minority rule.”
Well, it's a REPUBLIC so the MINORITY is to be protected from the jackals of the majority, sorry. That's the beauty of our system.
It’s not just the Senate. Trump is president despite losing the popular vote by almost 3 million votes, one of just five times that’s happened in US history. (Another was George W. Bush, also a Republican, in 2000.)
With the Supreme Court on the line, the frustration among Democrats is palpable.
:)
“This is the last gasp of a desperate party that is over-represented in the halls of power,” Senator Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat, said on Monday on a conference call with activists who were advocating for an expansion of the Supreme Court. “It is the last gasp of a corrupt Republican leadership that does not represent the views of a majority of our people or our values as a nation.”
It's your identity politics party that doesn't represent the majority or our values, unless riots and perversion are now prevalent.
Some Democrats see the prospect of expanding the court as a ray of hope for liberals if Trump manages to get a new justice confirmed, which could cement the court’s conservative majority for a generation. A 6-3 conservative court would be unlikely to approve the legislation that progressives want, including dramatic measures to combat climate change and create a universal health care system.
The conservative court will be the last bulwark against flat-out communism.
“There’s a question now of what can Democrats do to stop it, and there’s a question next of what can Democrats do if it does happen anyways,” said Chris Kang, co-founder of the liberal group Demand Justice.
Republicans counter that Democrats are attempting a power grab and would undermine the legitimacy of the court.
Expanding the court is not an option that has been embraced by Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. In a speech in Philadelphia on Sunday, Biden asked Senate Republicans — many of them his former colleagues — to act with their conscience and let the next president select Ginsburg’s replacement.
Activist groups including the Sunrise Movement are vowing to immediately push Democrats to expand the court if the party wins the Senate majority.
“I think what you’ll probably see is the pressure becoming insurmountable on the Senate Democrats,” said Zina Precht-Rodriguez, the deputy creative director for Sunrise.
Then Republican control is critical, even more than the presidency.
Other changes, such as statehood for Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, have already garnered high levels of support within the party, and even Biden, a longtime senator and a committed institutionalist, indicated earlier this summer that he could be open to abolishing the legislative filibuster — a procedural maneuver that allows one senator to hold up legislation unless 60 members vote to end it — which a growing number of Democrats say will be necessary to pass meaningful legislation on climate and other issues if they win the Senate back.
You guys never learn, and if there was so much support for them they wouldn't have to do it.
“There really is no time left for Congress to fiddle around,” said Representative Andy Levin of Michigan.
There is another one.
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It appears that the underlying agenda is to flip Maine:
"Collins trails Gideon in Maine Senate race, according to a new Suffolk/Globe poll" by Victoria McGrane Globe Staff, September 21, 2020
Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine is narrowly trailing her Democratic challenger, Sara Gideon, the incumbent’s reelection bid hindered by diminished popularity among moderate Democrats and independent voters who’ve soured on her since President Trump’s election, according to a new Suffolk University/Boston Globe poll of likely Maine voters.
They favor Gideon, the speaker of Maine’s House of Representatives, over Collins, 46 percent to 41 percent, according to the survey of 500 likely voters, the bulk of which was conducted before the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was announced Friday.
The skeptical reactions to Collins’s position on the vacancy underscore the challenge the four-term incumbent has faced throughout the race: The polarizing Trump era has battered her image as an independent-minded moderate in the eyes of voters from both sides of the aisle.
“For me, it’s too little too late," said Janet Jamison, a Democrat from South Paris. She read Collins’s statement on the court vacancy as the senator “hedging her bets” and trying to win back women who are mad after she supported the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh — a vote Jamison said left her “distraught."
Even some Republicans who are backing Collins are doing so unenthusiastically, viewing her as the least bad alternative.
Gideon’s narrow polling lead could be even stronger when Maine’s ranked-choice voting system is taken into account. Two independent candidates will be on the Nov. 3 ballot, and Maine’s system allows voters to rank the candidates from first to last on their ballots.
???????
The race is narrowing?
If one of the four Senate candidates gets more than 50 percent of the vote, he or she is the winner, but if no one clears that threshold, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and those voters are reallocated based on their second-choice candidate. The process continues until a candidate receives at least 50 percent of the vote.
That all sounds good, but it opens up a can of worms for fraud and ironically means the person who received the less amount of votes could be declared the winner!
One person, one vote. Period.
Among the very small sample of respondents not planning to pick one of the major-party contenders as their top choice, Gideon is much more popular than Collins as a second choice.
If this were a traditional race where voters chose one candidate, “this would be a closer fight,” with more voters undecided, said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, but Collins’s unfavorable rating with voters “is putting a ceiling on her ability to grow to 50 percent through the second round” of voting, he said.
Among her challenges, Collins is struggling with women. A longtime supporter of abortion rights, she is attracting support from 33 percent of the women polled, compared to 54 percent for Gideon. Collins leads among men, 49 percent to 38 percent, the survey found.
That gender gap echoes the backlash against Collins, sparked when she delivered in 2018 a key vote for Kavanaugh, a conservative jurist, who is viewed as being opposed to abortion rights and was accused of sexual assault during his confirmation process, a claim he vociferously denied.
A New York Times/Siena poll of 663 likely voters showed Gideon ahead by 5 points, while a Quinnipiac poll of 1,183 likely voters found Gideon leading Collins 54 percent to 42 percent, a 12-point lead that was comfortably outside of the poll’s margin of error.
A majority of respondents rated President Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic as “poor,” while 35 percent said Trump had done an “excellent” or “good” job with the crisis.....
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Time to bury this update:
"Trump to make court pick by Saturday, before Ginsburg burial" by Lisa Mascaro, Jonathan Lemire and Alexandra Jaffe, Associated Press | September 21, 2020
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Monday he expects to announce his pick for the Supreme Court by week’s end, before Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is buried, launching a monumental Senate confirmation fight over objections from Democrats who say it’s too close to the November election.
Conversations in the White House and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s office were increasingly focused on two finalists: Amy Coney Barrett and Barbara Lagoa, according to a person granted anonymity to discuss the private deliberations. Trump himself confirmed that they are among the top contenders.
Barrett as long been a favorite of conservatives, and was a strong contender for the seat that eventually went in 2018 to Brett Kavanaugh. At the time, Trump told confidants that he was “saving” Barrett for Ginsburg’s seat.
Trump said he is planning to name his pick by Friday or Saturday, ahead of the first presidential election debate. Ginsberg’s casket is to be on view mid-week on the iconic steps outside the court and later privately at the Capitol. She is to be buried next week in a private service at Arlington National Cemetery.
Democrats, led by presidential nominee Joe Biden, are protesting the Republicans’ rush to replace Ginsburg, saying voters should speak first, on Election Day, Nov. 3, and the winner of the White House should fill the vacancy.
Trump dismissed those arguments, telling “Fox & Friends,” “I think that would be good for the Republican Party, and I think it would be good for everybody to get it over with.”
The impending clash over the vacant seat — when to fill it and with whom — has scrambled the stretch run of the presidential race for a nation already reeling from the coronavirus pandemic that has killed nearly 200,000 people, left millions unemployed and heightened partisan tensions and anger.
Democrats point to the hypocrisy of Republicans in trying to rush through a pick so close to the election after refusing to do so for President Barack Obama in February 2016, long before that year’s election. Biden is appealing to GOP senators to delay the vote until after the election. “Uphold your constitutional duty, your conscience,” said Biden, speaking in Philadelphia on Sunday.
The difference is back in 2016 it was Democrat president, not Republican, thus no hypocrisy.
Ginsburg, 87, died Friday of metastatic pancreatic cancer.
Lagoa has been pushed by some aides who tout her political advantages of being Hispanic and hailing from the key political battleground state of Florida.
McConnell is pushing ahead with plans to begin the confirmation process, vowing to vote “this year” on Trump’s nominee.
Protesters are mobilizing for a wrenching confirmation fight punctuated by crucial issues before the court — healthcare, abortion access and even the potential outcome of the coming presidential election. Some showed up early Monday morning outside the homes of key GOP senators.
Trump admitted that politics may play a role.
Everything is about politics now because of him.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer objected to McConnell’s “utterly craven” pursuit of Supreme Court confirmation under such circumstances, warning it would shatter Senate norms. “It’s enough to make your head explode,” he said.
The sudden vacancy is reshaping the presidential race, which to this point has been largely a referendum how Trump had managed the COVID-19 pandemic.
I'm wondering how sudden it really was. I mean, she hasn't been seen since in public February, and Trump's approval on COVID management has been rising as people have started to see what an absolute $cam it has become with all agendas being advanced behind it. Methinks they kept Ginsburg on ice until just the right time.
It seems certain to electrify both sides: Democrats were breaking fundraising records while a packed Trump crowd in North Carolina Saturday loudly chanted “Fill that seat,” but it remains unclear if the high bench vacancy — which could impact everything from abortion rights to legal challenges to the 2020 election — would persuade disenchanted Republicans to return to Trump or fire up women or suburban voters to break for Biden.....
It may not $eem it $ometimes, but dollars don't vote. Advantage: Trump.
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Rob Reiner says the Democrats must play hardball and send a clear message to Republicans who have been accomplices to the crimes of this president, and the Globe is of the opinion that you should fight fire with fire (there they go encouraging and applauding antifa again).
Also see:
"The partisan battle shaping up over the confirmation of President Trump’s nominee to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg has barely begun, but it is already vacuuming up enormous attention on Capitol Hill and overshadowing negotiations to provide desperately needed aid to workers, businesses, and state and local governments struggling because of a pandemic that now has killed more than 200,000 Americans....."
"Senator Mitt Romney of Utah said on Tuesday that he would back President Trump’s push to fill the Supreme Court seat vacated by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, cementing all but monolithic Republican support six weeks before the presidential election for confirming a new justice who would tilt the court decisively to the right. Romney’s decision capped off an extraordinarily swift and enthusiastic rally by Republicans around Trump’s position that underscored his iron grip on the party four years into his presidency, but it also reflected the political bargain that has been driving Republicans for much of the past four years. Republican senators have loyally stood behind the president at every turn, even as he trampled party principles, shattered institutional norms and made crass statements — all in the service of empowering their own party to install a generation of conservative judges in the nation’s federal courts. Now, with the biggest prize of all in reach — a third seat further tipping the Supreme Court to the right — they are rushing to collect on their bet, even if it is the last thing they do before they lose their Senate majority, Trump loses the presidency, or both. Neither party is sure how the court fight will affect the election....."
Or if it will!
Related:
Romney’s high-mindedness is no match for his desire to win
Here is what key Republicans are saying about the Supreme Court vacancy
That's according to Christina Prignano of the Globe Staff.
Set term limits for Supreme Court justices
The Globe says democracy would be better served by a High Court that is reinvigorated and renewed more frequently as they continue their push to destroy this country and its traditions and institutions, and nothing is stopping justices from retiring.
Scrap life terms for Supreme Court justices
Even the Globe's resident dissident and Jewi$h neo-con agrees!
A Pinocchio court strategy for today’s GOP
MUST READS:
No, the U.S. Supreme Court Will Not Save Us
Also see:
"Mildred Geraldine “Gerrie” Schappals has survived not just one but two global pandemics. The 102-year-old Worcester native overcame the Spanish flu back in 1918, and then contracted the coronavirus this past spring. She managed to recover from COVID-19 and credits the first pandemic with boosting her immunity. “She thinks she was given a lot of immunity as a result of having the 1918 flu,” said her daughter, Julia Schappals. It’s a feat that not many people can boast about, and one that earned her special recognition from her hometown....."
She celebrated by having a beer and then it was back to bu$ine$$ as u$ual!
