Ok, but to do this, the Dems would need a blowout election in their favor. They would need to retake the House and have a commanding lead in the Senate so that they can get this passed even with a couple turncoats.
“If these conservative justices want to make public policy, they should simply quit the Supreme Court and run for political office”
Why do that when they can exploit a shitty system instead? They now are there for the rest of their lives and can interpret the law to mean whatever they want and there is no legal recourse to do anything about it as long as their corrupt party has enough power to prevent impeachment.
Plus they can receive bribes just like politicians too, so the “low” salary (far higher than most people will ever make, but tbf a significant amount of training required to reach that point) isn’t an issue.
So Bernie & AOC are the only ones I’ve heard that call for change of the SCOTUS.
Only ones serving the people & deserving of support in many aspects.
There are others that don’t get the coverage, but yeah, pretty fuckin lame anyway. If only for the fact that they don’t get the coverage.
They have the luxury of saying things should change without providing an actual plausible path to achieving that change.
AOC championed expanding SCOTUS without worrying about how it could actually be done, or what the consequences would be 10 years down the line.
Bernie does the same. His public statements frequently gloss over the massive hurdles that make such idealistic ideas implausible, like requiring a super majority which is functionally impossible in today’s political climate.
To be fair, I do think that it’s important that idealistic voice how things could be in a political utopia, if they also include a pragmatic breakdown of what it would take.
However, virtue signaling in itself without acknowledging reality is also dangerous.
Lemmy is a perfect example of it. Lots of dissatisfaction with the status quo, and a whole lot of impossible ideas floating around like “there are obvious solutions that establishment politicians just refuse to consider”, when they just aren’t feasible.
Do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
My point is that there is no good in this scenario. The proposed solutions are literally impossible.
See my other reply in this thread for a better explanation.
The other side of that coin is that if there is no demand for change, no one will be pressured to work out the logistics required. All change starts with people demanding a solution.
We need a solution right now more than we need a perfect plan of execution. The solution is being called for, to expand the Supreme Court to balance the blatant corruption pouring from the conservative justices. That’s the first step
We need a solution right now more than we need a perfect plan of execution.
I agree. But IMO, the proposed solutions don’t have a chance in hell of being passed, because of the reality of needing a super majority. Either to impeach a SCOTUS judge, or to reform the SCOTUS rules.
And I think the messaging should focus on the need for a super majority to impeach these corrupt judges, as well as pass reform. The messaging should highlight the republican representatives refusing to cross the isle to fight this blatant corruption.
And most importantly, highlight what can be done if voters give the Dems a super majority.
Yeah, it’s not going to happen, but instead of AOC and Bernie just floating impossible ideas, we need to focus on how voters can give the Dems the power to actually fix these problems. And without that super majority, there is very little that can be done.
Because the current approach makes the Dems seem ineffective and only serves to disenfranchise voters, when we really need to put a fire under voters to put a fire under the Republican half of our government to either cross the isle or GTFO.
All fair points.
They’re feasible with a voter mandate. You get that mandate by building it in your platform and getting elected on it with sufficient margins. The Democratic party, however, is not a revolutionary party but a status quo party and refuses to go that route because they’re afraid of losing. So they just lose by default.
That’s understandable since they are the most popular.
My city’s senator called it out on the news and it’s not getting any attention from mainstream media.
And remember that it’s only been about 48 hours since Biden can legally assassinate anybody so right now, the news is kinda uncertain how to play this out.
My city’s senator
You mean representative?
Welcome to America, fellow voter
Ah yeah that was a slip
Vote harder, change the party from inside, blue no matter who!
I wish the dnc didn’t fuck him over
Me too. Well, I guess I’ll support the dnc anyway and vote for biden/genocide because I prefer trump’s policies with biden’s veneer of politeness rather than trump’s policies with trump’s veneer of impoliteness.
You’re free to commit terroristic political assassinations if you feel the two party system is too restrictive. It worked fine for Oswald.
It also works well for the CIA, which has been rescuing Nazis and assassinating leftwing political leaders around the world for decades. Oswald was also working for them. Oh well, back to watching CIA talking heads on MSNBC / CNN / the New York Times / the glorified reddit with extra steps known as lemmy
I wish I lived in your world where people were actually competent.
But in the real world, the CIA, working in Lebanon, used a code word “Pizza” to literally mean, go to the local Pizza Hut for more orders. Hezbollah used their amazing deductive reasoning skills to crack the code, and then just had people watch that particular Pizza Hut. They ended up outing about a dozen highly trained CIA agents and the informants they were meeting with.
In the 60s, these chuckle fucks were too busy secretly dosing each other with LSD to actually get anything done.
Every revolution or regime change that the CIA was involved in ended up a complete clusterfuck. Look at the Bay of Pigs as an example.
The only thing they’ve ever been good at is smuggling drugs, and they only reason they were good at that is that they could tell the DEA to look the other way.
And there are stories of fuckups from CIA drug smuggling. Like Iran-Contra. The Contra were trading drugs for guns so they could literally run around as right-wing death squads.
Anyway, this is a long rant to say that the CIA wishes they were competent enough to have been behind Oswald. They were not then, and are not now. But they love the PR, and some of them might even believe the bullshit. Doesn’t make it true.
Remind me who placed the Shah in power in Iran. Also, please tell me about the coup in Guatemala. Who was running Cuba before the workers/peasants sent nazis like yourself packing?
I’m not saying the CIA doesn’t do damage, I’m saying that they’re not competent enough to do it on purpose.
The CIA wishes they did even a quarter of the shit people say they do, but are not actually masterminds. Because no one is. No one runs the world, and Color Revolution is made up nonsense.
The CIA cut a deal with a general in Iran to overthrow the government, but that general was already planning the coup before the CIA caught wind of it. But wouldn’t you guess, the guy the CIA backed didn’t actually win in the end.
As to Cuba, did you know that the CIA tried to kill Castro like 30 times? Some of the attempts read like a Three Stooges routine.
The KGB was just as bad. Their fuckups are less documented because of how controlled the media is in Russia and the USSR before it’s fall.
Guatemala, Iran, the Congo, and the Dominican Republic are all listed here:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/08/20/mapped-the-7-governments-the-u-s-has-overthrown/
This doesn’t include Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine, or Israel, where the CIA has been heavily involved for decades. They were also very much involved in destroying the USSR, now that you mention it, and happily admit to all of this (in addition to rescuing thousands of high-profile nazis). They’ve also admitted to controlling the corporate media (Operation Mockingbird) and just admitted to pushing anti-vaxx propaganda in the Philippines. Millions of needless deaths can easily be attributed to them. Do you enjoy listening to people who rescue nazis telling you how to think on CNN and in the NYT?
Yep preach it
In other words everyone, things are not going according to Liberals/Democrats, so, we need to change the entire structure, Constitution, and political system in America.
Republicans’ stated goal is to change the entire structure and political system in America and the 6-3 ideologically Christian scotus has already begun ignoring the constitution.
This is the very definition of a constitutional and democratic crisis. If democrats don’t do something as the only other party with any power, republicans will make sure they no longer have the opportunity the first chance they get.
Now is really not the time for “both sides” logic to prevent democrats from acting.
Likely the nuclear option for a lame duck Biden.
There’s a fucking Democrat in the position that the Supreme Court just handed a blank check to, and you think they’re worried because that aren’t getting what they want as opposed to how that power might be abused?
What kinda crack are you smoking?
The Democrats are fucking weak, and although I will continue to vote for them, i am ashamed of them.
Biden won’t do shit with his newfound power, even though he should to defend this country because it’s under attack.
It’s not too late to pack that fucker. Sinema and Manchin could sit it out while Harris breaks the ties. Judicial nominations do not have the filibuster. If you’re looking for a campaign season pick me up, this kind of direct response to SCOTUS going off the rails is something that could do it.
Fucking fight Dems, and you’ll get backed up. We’re tired of watching you do nothing while the GOP pisses on everything. This would be a great way to demonstrate that a vote for Biden is for more than a neoliberal order controlling a sleepy old man.
The Dems could also get rid of the filibuster right now. Getting rid of it completely only requires a majority and Republicans already proved they will drlp it the moment it isn’t useful to them to obstruct Dems like they did with judicial nominations.
I thought that eliminating the filibuster took a 3/5th vote in the senate. That’s 60 votes. We are nowhere close, though I support holding it to a vote to put it on the record, to highlight the hypocrisy later.
The filibuster is already gone in regards to judicial appointments, The Republicans killed it and the Democrats didn’t bring it back. But also, yeah the chamber rules are a simple majority vote. It’s Manchin and Sinema keeping that from happening, but also without the house of representatives it’s kind of useless to get rid of it right now.
Yes it is. That opportunity passed in 2022 when the Dems lost control of the House.
Fun fact, the Constitution gives authority to make new SCOTUS judges to the Senate and the President. Congress as a whole only has the power to organize courts below SCOTUS. The entire idea that the house can set the size of the court is unsupported.
Sinema and Manchin could sit it out
Big problem. They are Republicans in Democrat clothes. They will, as they always do, find a reason to vote against
Then play hardball with them, get on board or get primaried by an opponent with the backing of the DNC.
It’s worked for the right, they’re terrified of their constituents.
I vote for Sanders as King of America. I guess I gotta write that in?
Please don’t though
Add 6, and impeach 2.
Got it, the split is now 12:1
Damn bruh if only we had the power to summarily imprison those greasy fucks.
Biden does if he deems it an official act!
Fucking let’s go. Do it.
“Let’s go” what? What will you go do?
I hear that phrase from the most worthless folks. Then Deadpool…“Let’s go” means Jack shit… so those who say it are saying what?
You can go. No one cares.
Oh man, someone woke up the idiot today. Are Wednesdays the day you’re allowed to talk to other people?
Let’s go? By all means let Bernie off the chain…
Go back to bed moron.
Bidens guys already came out saying they don’t want to reform the Supreme Court. It’s not on the ballot this cycle.
Yall gonna hate me, but it is on the presidential ballot, Jill Stein has come out supporting term limits and expanding the court after this fiasco.
Sure, but only if we had ranked choice voting.
no, she’s going to be on the ballot whether we have ranked choice or no.
She supports that too
Is she viable with our current first-past-the-post system? No? Then she’s not a realistic choice. All she can do is pull votes from Democrats handing the election to Trump.
Is she viable with our current first-past-the-post system
viability is a myth invented by the media. hilary was viable. john kerry.
Did you read beyond that word? I’m not applying a political yardstick to her, I’m using the term in the sense that she literally cannot win.
All she can do is pull votes from Democrats handing the election to Trump.
the ambiguity of this syntax is fun! the democrats are handing the election to trump, and jill stein is trying to pull votes from them!
Its a weird self fulfilling prophecy thing. Its entirely up to vote whether or not she wins, but people wont vote for her only because they dont think she’ll win.
I won’t vote for her because she’s a traitor pushing Russian interests, just like trump.
anything besides her consistent calls for less US military interventions? The green party is a lot less military focused than republicans and democrats
That traitor pushes Putin’s propaganda on Ukraine. That’s enough for me to know she is pro-oligarchy and anti-democracy.
I feel like you still aren’t getting it. It’s not these reasons, it’s because we have a 2-Party system. I don’t like it, and we desperately need election reform, but until then, no one can win without being the Republican/Democrat Nominee. Bernie Sanders, Jon Stewart, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, not one of them could win as a 3rd-Party candidate…
I don’t like it, and we desperately need election reform
these words are hollow in the face of actions actively perpetuating the 2 party system. Im looking enviously at Peter Magyar in Hungary forming a party in March and now being elected to EU parliament because people wanted an alternative after a corruption scandal. This shit aint enough for you?
Some real “Curious… You criticize society, yet you participate in it” vibes here. “Perpetuate” the 2-party system!? What are you actually talking about? People should not vote, or throw it away until they magically give us ranked choice voting?? Absolute nonsense.
If you want to walk the walk, start a grass roots effort to reform the system, and I’ll support you. Until then, I’ll assume you’re just trying to get people to not use our only real power currently: voting.
You mean Russian Asset Jill Stein?
Is this that one photo again? Why yes it is. Surely you wouldn’t vote for a candidate with photos of being friendly with Putin
It’s more than the photo and you know it.
But it is the same old photo, i knew what it was gonna be before i even clicked it
Righto, I suppose you also support the annexation of Ukraine like your hero does? That makes you the enemy of democracy.
How about you read the actual rather than just looking at the thumbnail.
Ive seen it before, the article is some nonsense about…her trying to win an election against Biden? Biden is shit and I agree with her criticisms. Then it’s trying to say she never criticizes Trump when most of her criticisms of Biden are pejoratively comparing him to Trump. Trump being shit is a given.
She’s got my vote!
A vote for that traitor is a vote for both Russian assets.
Oh, the audacity of that woman to go and get pictured with Putin like that, in public, at a larger conference, in the interest of actual diplomacy.
Surely this is on the same level of treachery as a closed door meeting with no American translator. Or the eternal fanning of war flames by neolibs in order to fund the military industrial complex.
Yeah I just saw that. Ridiculous.
And in 2 years he’ll probably “regret” not doing anything.2 years he might be dead.
That’s why I didn’t say 4 years lol
2 years he might come to regret that decision in January when Trump usess his new powers to lock his ass up.
If fucking Biden lose in November he better use that new gift to stop Trump. Dumbass really wants to use this to fundraiser on, Biden so out of fucking touch he got no clue that we are just this vote away from a Christofascist state.
I ALMOST want to vote Trump just to see SOMEONE (like Biden) FINALLY receive Consequences for their Actions! ALMOST.
You want to make Trump the first king of the United States to punish Biden for… what, exactly? Failing to stop Trump?
What the fuck kind of logic is that?
Id follow that logic right up until the part where rich people get consequences. No one is more prepared for either outcome of the election then they are. Democrat fundraising was all time high under Trump, Biden may see his personal fundraising go up and his stocks grow if he loses. No one is less invested in the real consequences of their own actions then politicians.
He knows, but the thing is that the Democrats are about as afraid of fascism as you are gasoline in your car. They use the threat of fascism to help scare people to the polls and to donate money, which is partly why they never seem to be in a big hurry to squash it. Problem being, of course, that people eventually get fear fatigue and stop paying attention. Kinda like how in the wake of 9/11, the government would announce terror threat levels, and they were always orange or red, indicating super double plus serious danger, and eventually people stopped caring because life must go on. Well, people get fatigued of it and then the fascists win again, which provides another big, though temporary, shot of support to the democrats. Meanwhile, the democrats don’t have to make any real, serious campaign or policy commitments besides “don’t be fascist”. Everything else they do (and don’t get me wrong, they do some good stuff sometimes) is just running up the score. So, for the centrist democrats that run the DNC and Biden campaign, this feels like a pretty good Wednesday for fundraising, even though we all see it as the literal end of the Republic. They’ve been walking on the ice so long, they’re convinced that while it is thin, they couldn’t possibly fall through.
Plenty of the sitting Dems in Congress are millionaires who think they will do well under fascism anyway.
The Dems LARP as an anti-GOP force while secretly being OK with the GOP policies. It’s all theater for the plebs, to convince us the lesser evil is keeping a larger evil at bay. All lies.
That’s why the Dems are so goddamn anemic. The Dems love the status quo too, they just want little tweaks here and there, nothing disruptive.
Gavin Newsom (D) is why California does not have single payer healthcare today.
In 2 years he’ll be in a Federal prison (if not executed). Trump has basically promised it.
Refusing to stop Trump is literally suicidal on Biden’s part.
Not just suicide at this point. We’re looking at massacres. If Trump takes power by any means, political prisoners are guaranteed. It’s the only way they stay powerful. And political prisoners have a very short lifespan.
Once political prisoners are taken, it’s all downhill from there.
Link pls? I missed it.
Thanks for the link. Here’s the least bad news from the article:
Even more dispiriting for Americans who want to see real reform? The most optimistic view any of the campaign surrogates could offer Monday was a promise that Biden would at least “have conversations” about court reform that would be non-starters under Trump.
Crockett is part of a group of Democratic lawmakers advancing three separate pieces of court reform legislation — bills that would expand the court, implement term limits, and impose a binding ethics code on justices, respectively. “If we get the House, these are bills that we are going to try to push forward with,” Crockett said Monday. “I can guarantee you that if Trump is elected, he will never sign these into law.”
She added: “If Joe Biden is elected, we can at least sit down, have conversations and talk about why it’s important to institute these court reforms.”
For now, the prospect of future conversations is the most that Biden campaign surrogates can offer American voters — which is more than than the campaign itself was offering.
Even more dispiriting for Americans who want to see real reform? The most optimistic view any of the campaign surrogates could offer Monday was a promise that Biden would at least “have conversations” about court reform that would be non-starters under Trump.
This is the same language they used in 2020 for all the progressive stuff. That he then did nothing substantive on.
And his die hard supporters on here wonder why people don’t want to vote for Biden just because it keeps Trump out of office. Biden isn’t fighting this fight. The democrats are asleep at the wheel, another 4 years of, “oh no, poor me, SCOTUS said we can’t do this, we just have to executive order the most conservative policy in 60 years.” Does not excite the people who are willing to go vote.
We called for this on day 1 of Biden’s first term…
He chose to put a bipartisan committee in charge of seeing if we should just let the corrupt Republican SC stay in power, and the committee waited two years till dems didnt have the numbers to fix anything, before recommending Dems don’t fix anything.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/biden-support-expanding-supreme-court-white-house/story?id=85703773
The aristocrats! /s
As long as the Dems have less than 60 votes in the Senate, and aren’t willing to ditch the fucking filibuster, there’s literally nothing they can do.
You can’t reform the court without a Constitutional Amendment since the operation and formation of the court is defined by the Constitution.
So, 2/3rds vote in the House, 2/3rds vote in the Senate, ratification by the States.
and aren’t willing to ditch the fucking filibuster, there’s literally nothing they can do.
That’s the rub.
We have things we can do, but party leadership don’t want to do it.
So when they say they can’t do anything, things like “get rid of the filibuster” come up. And they party has to acknowledge that would work…
They’re just not willing to do it.
Which when that comes back to voters, makes them less likely to vote. Because they feel like even when we have the numbers, it won’t change anything because party leadership wants to have the fight against fascism with at least one hand tied behind their back out of an outdated sense of honor.
We’re fucking fighting fascism bro.
What matters is winning.
As long as the Dems have less than 60 votes in the Senate, and aren’t willing to ditch the fucking filibuster, there’s literally nothing they can do.
*and even the number of democrats minus 50 don’t want to. So even one (plus Harris helping) in the first two years of the term or even two (if Harris helps again) in the second two years of the past term. It’s not like all democrats are unified about the filibuster, most voted to bypass it. You need either more than 60 dems total, or more than 50 dems that support bypassing the filibuster.
Or you know, even a single republican that doesn’t want to be a facist helping to transition the country to authoritarian rule. But that seems less likely unfortunately.
If the Republicans take the Senate and White House, they will ditch the filibuster the first day the next Senate leader takes the gavel. Count on it.
The Judiciary Act of 1869 should be amended today, and 4+ justices should be confirmed before January. It’s a hell of a lot easier to confirm them now than it will be for Republicans to remove them from the bench next year. Not easy, mind you, but easier.
There are a few ways to reform the court without a Constitutional amendment:
- Increase the number of justices on the bench. The Constitution sets no limit or requirement for the number of seats, only the process by which they are filled. Nomination comes from POTUS and will need to be “consented” to by the Senate. The number of seats has changed in the past and will change again, just a matter of when and who stuffs the court.
- Establish bounds of “good Behavior” and define means of removal. The Constitution isn’t very cut and dry on the removal process of Justices (with impeachment being reserved for the “President, Vice President, and all civil Officers” the latter group being left undefined), but it does say that the Judges shall “hold their Offices during good Behavior.” Historically impeachment has been the process chosen for removal of Judges, but discussion about Congress’ role in defining “good Behavior” and the means for removal have persisted even into the late 1900s. It is entirely feasible that Congress imposes a code of conduct and simple majority review to remove those found in violation. That code of conduct doesn’t just have to be about taking free vacations, either. It could assess the quality of judgement and find that if you clearly ignored the facts of a case to push your own narrative (such as with KENNEDY v. BREMERTON) you’re in violation.
- Establish a term limit for the Supreme Court and rotate Justices into lower courts when that limit is reached. This one is probably the longest shot as it would depend on whether or not a Justice’s “Office” is literally the Supreme Court or the federal Judicial system as a whole and that interpretation would almost definitely be seized by SCOTUS if Congress even attempted this. But, so long as Congress and the Executive are in agreement on the specific interpretation, SCOTUS’ opinion here can be suppressed. Worth noting, however, that that is very rarely how the US operates.
- Remove Judicial Review. The idea that the courts have the sole authority to determine the constitutionality of legislation passed by Congress is not found in the Constitution itself, but was manifested by the same court that benefits from granting itself that power. It’s the executive branch’s job to enforce the law and both Congress and POTUS are elected to represent the people. SCOTUS’s job is to resolve conflicts involving the States and those who work with them, they are not accountable to anyone and are not elected. A new law ceding the ability to review constitutionality to some other branch would reset SCOTUS’ job to the original intent (a move which I’m sure the 6 textual literalists will gladly embrace).
- Tailor bills to undo recent catastrophic rulings. Congress makes laws. They can make laws that close “loopholes” or perceived ambiguities that SCOTUS uses to derive their rulings. Congress can (and should) undo presidential immunity, Dobbs, judicial review of government agencies’ actions, etc.
These will all take work to achieve, and are very unlikely to even be tried, but because they all address shortcomings manifest outside of the Constitution they can all be implemented without amendment to the Constitution.
And 2/3 of both houses is easy mode compared to State ratification. We couldn’t get states to agree that the sky is blue at this point in the collapse of the country.
No shit.
Someone’s gotta say it, because too much of the narrative is “it’s no big deal lol” to keep people complacent.
B-B-Bbut I thought Biden was going to stop the fascism? If the vote is for slow descent into fascism and literal fascism, does the vote really matter? There’s gotta be something better, man. Very disheartening.
