American Politics Discussion Thread

[Brian Shanahan]

A functioning democracy needs not only leaders that respect the letter of the law, but the spirit. If you really think just because "What goes around, comes around" the problem is not serious, I predict a rude awakening.

What if a future senate majority refuses to confirm any judge not appointed by "their" president? What if democrats resort to court packing and appoint 6 ultra liberal judges the next time they have a majority? All possible and lawful. The only problem is that the supreme court is going to lose all credibility. And what do you do, once the first police jurisdictions are ignoring court rulings (see mask mandates)? The polictical system is slowly going to erode.

The problem is that even conservative voters used to demand a minimum of political decency, but that is gone and I doubt it is going to come back anytime soon. Anything is acceptable as long as the guy doing it is on your side.

IF Trump would nominate Garland you think dems would be so against?

Do you really understand the problem here? Traditionally, the supreme court justice had to be confirmed by a larger majority of the senate (I think 60 seats?). In that way, the justice usually needed support from both parties, so somebody with extreme views or lacking expertise would have problems getting confirmed. In that way, the confirmed justice (and the court itself) gains a lot of credibility, because even though there are "liberal" and "conservative" judges, they ususally needed a bi-partisan confirmation.

To answer your question: Of course democrats would vote for Garland - because he is a moderate candidate. Instead one of Trump's favourites is Amy Coney Barrett, a right wing extremist/religious fundamentalist.

Too late on the supreme court, it's lost all credibility. By packing the court with "judges" of extremely conservative viewpoints not held by a solid 60% of the nation, the republicans have guaranteed that it'll be held in the same contempt as the rest of the political system.

[Brian Shanahan]

Lets be honest. Immigration is not about resources. Republicans just like Democrats can somehow always find resources and justify spending for their own projects. Republicans are just better at PR about the deficit (btw I hate them both for this; many countries have fallen by thinking their resources are limitless). Immigration debate is really about fear. Fear of the them, fear of the other, fear of change. We are actually probably living in an enlightened age that we can even get 1 party to advocate for people only trying to make a better life for themselves and who are in situations we can't fathom typing at our computers. It is no shock however that there is a party that will naturally justify this fear people have and use it.

It’s not black & white, there are legitimate concerns on breaking the social safety net (see Denmark) and xenophobic concerns on fear of losing national identity.  And before we applaud Democrats, let’s ponder how the parties' stance would shift if immigrant voting patterns were flipped.

Darrell

What's broken about the social safety net in Denmark? In fact the only way to break European social safety nets is through limiting immigration.

[darrelljs]

It’s not black & white, there are legitimate concerns on breaking the social safety net (see Denmark) and xenophobic concerns on fear of losing national identity.  And before we applaud Democrats, let’s ponder how the parties' stance would shift if immigrant voting patterns were flipped.

Darrell

What's broken about the social safety net in Denmark?  In fact the only way to break European social safety nets is through limiting immigration.

Edit: changed to a more interesting article.

Their generally anti-immigration policies are driven by fears that they can't support a large influx of people who contribute less than they consume.  A decent article that gives you an idea of the politics.

Darrell

[darrelljs]

Too late on the supreme court, it's lost all credibility.  By packing the court with "judges" of extremely conservative viewpoints not held by a solid 60% of the nation, the republicans have guaranteed that it'll be held in the same contempt as the rest of the political system.

You do realize half the country would say the same thing about an activist liberal court over the last 50 years? While you may disagree with them, they are in fact citizens of the US who have a say in how the country is governed. If the democrats wanted to keep conservatives off the bench all they had to do was win elections. Considering who the Republicans have been able to win with, it shouldn't have been all that hard.

Darrell

[Mjmd]

Do any countries manage to have a separate legal entity as a check and balance without it itself becoming political?

Making sure 60 votes were required for a confirmation was one of the US checks on this (you can argue how effective), but that is burned. I've already been mocked by GKC for calling Justice Roberts a moderate, but with only a slim majority being required both sides are just going to put in the most far (insert side here) that they can for the foreseeable future and Roberts will be a moderate in comparison. Not a good thing for America no matter who you support.

[T-hawk]

Considering who the Republicans have been able to win with, it shouldn't have been all that hard.

+1 to that. Do you (generic you) realize that the last Republican president elected on his own political merits was Eisenhower? Every one since was either a successor to a more popular previous administration (Bush, Bush, Nixon after being Eisenhower's VP) or a pop culture figure who happened to get a matchup against an underperforming opponent (Reagan, Trump).

[ipecac]

If the democrats wanted to keep conservatives off the bench all they had to do was win elections.

Now begins an interesting phase. Neither side will pretend that the powerful institutions are neutral anymore, not the press, not the courts.

What will hold a increasingly divided populace together?

[ipecac]

Broke: It's not fair, you guys watch out!

Woke: It's not good for the country, things are just getting more divided.

Bespoke: Deal with it, that's how politics work.

Galaxy brain: It's all inevitable, now comes the interesting part.

[Cyneheard]

Do any countries manage to have a separate legal entity as a check and balance without it itself becoming political?

Making sure 60 votes were required for a confirmation was one of the US checks on this (you can argue how effective), but that is burned. I've already been mocked by GKC for calling Justice Roberts a moderate, but with only a slim majority being required both sides are just going to put in the most far (insert side here) that they can for the foreseeable future and Roberts will be a moderate in comparison. Not a good thing for America no matter who you support.

Justice Roberts is only considered a "moderate" because the Overton Window on the Supreme Court has moved so far to the right. You're not the only person who's declared Roberts a "moderate" but that's really because there's 3 GOP operatives on the Court, 2 Conservative judges, and 3 moderate-to-liberal justices. Roberts is very conservative but he doesn't automatically do Exactly What The GOP Wants, and nowadays that means "moderate" to a lot of people.

If the Republican nominees were more like Scalia, Roberts, Gorsuch - who occasionally surprise you - they'd have more legitimacy. Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh (who absolutely should have never been approved - but the GOP refused to admit that the allegations were problematic - and they could have easily found a different nominee), and apparently Barrett aren't in this mold.

The GOP hypocrisy in how they treated Garland (and, yes, Dems erred politically in how that was handled there - the fact that Garland didn't even get a vote is a massive indictment of how the GOP can get away with shenanigans) vs Barrett makes the legitimacy issues worse too.

The US political system was not designed with a strong nationalized party system in mind, and we ended up with a system that just isn't malleable - it was designed to handle individual actors with competing goals.
I don't know how to fix these issues - the US Constitution is so hard to amend, and gerrymandering in 2010 was so effective that a lot of states are governed by the minority GOP party (MI, NC, there's others where the Dems got more votes but are the minority in the state legislature); it's possible that there's a large enough blue wave to mitigate some of that since this is a redistricting year.

[superdeath]

Burn both parties, start over where we had 138450132745 different ones. Make candidates for all offices explain what THEY want to do when they get in, not what their PARTY wants them to do. Tired of this shit.