The strange stupidity of the Supreme Court nomination
I didn’t watch the Vice Presidential debate last night. My wife wasn’t interested and it certainly wouldn’t change my vote. But I saw one snippet, where V.P. Pence was trying to get Sen. Harris to admit the Democrats intended to pack the Supreme Court. I found out she never answered. I think there would have been a very simple answer:
”Not if Amy Coney Barrett isn’t confirmed. If she isn’t confirmed, you get to keep your conservative majority on the Court.”
I don’t understand the Republican calculation here. The math doesn’t work.
More of the public is against the nomination than for it. Barrett has unusually high negatives for a Court nominee. A majority of the public believe she should agree to recuse herself if she were confirmed and the Court had to make a decision about the election, something she’s refused to do.
If the Senate doesn’t go through with confirmation, the Republicans retain a 5/4 majority on the Court and they get more public good will. If the Senate goes through with the nomination and the Republicans lose the White House and the Senate, the Republicans end up with a 6/9 minority. (We need an odd number and I don’t think they’d agree on thirteen.)
Maybe I’m missing something here, but what do the Republicans gain by doing this? Are they gambling on the election? Are they calculating that they will probably lose Trump but will keep the Senate? Because that’s the only way this makes sense. If they think they’re keeping both, there’s no point in confirming now. It’s a gamble to get a 6/3 majority.
But why gamble when you have a majority now and you stand to lose it if the gamble doesn’t pay off? Why not keep the sure thing?
Are they hoping they can get the Court to overturn the legality of gay marriage? Do they have a clue what will happen if they do that? What that would cost the Court in public legitimacy would be enormous; the Supreme Court would be viewed as an oppressive institution.
Are they hoping to overturn Roe v. Wade? The most recent poll I can find, from the Kaiser Family Foundation, says that about 70% of Americans oppose overturning Roe v. Wade.
Do Republicans think they’d be more popular by taking away valued rights from millions of Americans?
Maybe they’re after Obamacare, but Obamacare at this point is very popular. Aside from which, I will never understand the logic of Republicans opposing a program written by the Heritage Foundation for a Republican governor, a program which has worked both when tested by a State and by the country.
I feel like I must be missing something. Maybe it’s that the current lineup won’t overturn Roe v. Wade, Obamacare, or legal gay marriage, even with a conservative majority. Do they think using the Court to ram unpopular decisions down the throats of the public will strengthen Republicans at the polls?
What am I missing?
10/08/2020 @ 10:18 am
The only thing you missed was the fly.
10/08/2020 @ 12:17 pm
You’re missing the fact that McConnell is an abject racist.
He believes that the path to a return to a semblance of American Apartheid is through the federal judiciary and the Supreme Court.
He’s gambling on holding the Senate and possibly the Presidency if there is sufficient leverage to contest the election and force a ruling from the Supreme Court with a solid racist majority….
One thing the Senate Dems on the Judiciary Committee must do is force the nominee to commit impeachable perjury by making her lie about her pre-appointment commitments, loyalty, and allegiance to Trump…
If we can take the Senate we can take her out on that basis….
Then go about the business of ‘packing the Court’.
10/08/2020 @ 4:46 pm
You’re making your usual mistake of using reason to understand the irrational. Not gonna work.
10/08/2020 @ 4:50 pm
Jonna,
Yup. That’s exactly what I’m doing.
10/08/2020 @ 4:59 pm
I did watch the debate last night. I was curious about how they would conduct themselves. Beyond that, you did not miss much.
As for what the Republicans might be thinking, I don’t presume to know more than you do already, but I have a theory that I am willing to share.
Your view assumes a certain democratic (small “D”) rationale. In the context of the Western concept of self, everything you site as a premise makes sense. In my theory, the points of contention in our constitutional struggle(s) span several centuries of the development of the Western self. There is ours, which is intuitive, and can be taken for granted, and there is the time in which the Constitution was written, and the Western concept of self that existed at that time. As just one measure, imagine a political system designed for only 6% of the population to participate. That would meet no one’s definition of a democracy now. In fact, it did then. So, in our struggles vis a vis the Constitution, I think we are stuck in an intractable conflict which originated in the Napoleonic wars, continued through our Civil War, and the first and second World Wars. Today, we have voting citizens who weigh principles which must include things like fluid gender identity, reproductive freedom, etc. On the other end are those who would line up and fight for feudalism, and all of the social justice retrogress that comes with it.
So…I think the GOP’s rationale in informed by dominance, not rational compromise. I think they congregate and pray on the righteousness of their Supreme Court focus, so half measures wont work for them. And then after that, all things that come with a reinvigorated patriarchy justify whatever ill-will might be engendered by the process.
10/08/2020 @ 9:27 pm
I get that, but this is a formula for losing power.
10/09/2020 @ 12:30 pm
On the sound/of/one/handclapping (silence too O rue!) the Constitution is not wrought in stone like Charlton Heston’s version of the Ten Commandments (apologies). It’s just sun and walk and wait some days…should have led with ontheotherhand—the Constitution is not a chiseled omniscient commonsensical edict…nowadays with cyber spontaneity…as well as ‘future shock-like’ digital prowess e.g. ‘know everything google’ and mankind’s weaponized capacity to implode grand ol’ planet within what? Nineteen-twenty minutes? Americans would bode well to exercise pragmatism and repair what needs remedy. Existentialism is one thing; survivability of our experimental democratic nation state has no guarantee. Amazing how too many voting age citizens don’t pay attention or ‘care less’ about blatant Congressional hypocrisy as well as incessant ethical duplicity. No doubt compulsory partisan allegiance and lockstep chicanery are not the righteous direction. Whatismore, we’re only 90 days from the POTUS inauguration. There’s probably a sophomoric adage with which to close this uphill paragraph but I just don’t know. Humble cyber scribe simply sees wrongs and tries to right them.
10/09/2020 @ 2:05 pm
Try this:
” Humble cyber scribe simply sees wrongs, and tries to ‘WRITE’ them.”
10/09/2020 @ 6:33 pm
I was going to learn to fly
O my God do I try