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- cross-posted to:
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Biden’s and Trump’s records show sharp differences in what types of judges they would choose. And the winner of the fall election could appoint more Supreme Court justices.
The Democratic-led Senate is poised to confirm President Joe Biden’s 200th federal judge Wednesday, a milestone that highlights a sharp contrast with his election rival, Republican former President Donald Trump, as they seek to shape the courts over the next four years.
It’s unclear whether Biden will catch up to the 234 judges Trump secured in his presidential term. But the winners of the presidency and the Senate majority will have the power to shape the courts for the next few years, and the two men have dramatically different criteria in choosing nominees.
Whoever occupies the White House in the next term could even pick one or more new Supreme Court justices, which could shift or entrench the current 6-3 conservative majority. By the time the winner is sworn in, conservative Justice Clarence Thomas will be 76 and conservative Justice Samuel Alito will be 74. The next oldest member of the court is liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who will be 70. Chief Justice John Roberts will turn 70 a week after the swearing-in.
Right? It’s fuckin wild to me that this appears to be the entire dem strategy in the face of immanent fascism.
It’s really not that wild. You win elections by appealing to voters. You could take a gamble that you can inspire the younger generations enough to vote in larger numbers, or you could try to appeal to existing older swing voters. You can’t always do both simultaneously though.
That’s WHY it’s wild! The Dem leadership is alienating tens if not over a HUNDRED million prospective voters in order to keep courting the ever-shrinking “undecided who’s almost a Republican” group that might be as little as a few million now as they keep dying or joining the fascist party.
I guess I’ve just seen it enough times that it is no longer wild to me. It just looks like typical cold calculus and risk-averse behavior.
I get what you’re saying, but I disagree: every time they run another election as if it’s still 1992, that becomes a crazier thing to do than it was the last time.
ESPECIALLY now that the GOP has become a literal fascist party, meaning that the Dem leadership are courting very far right people while insisting that they perfectly represent EVERYONE whose ideals and policy preferences are to the left of fascism, which is roughly 250m people, children and nonvoting adults included.
It’s a coalition, and like all coalitions, it has a wide variety of sorts in it. We’re not together because we like each other, we don’t like each other. Nobody says we do, that I have heard anyway.
The two party system allows them to shift further right though. The further right the GOP goes, the further right the dems can go to try to vacuum up disaffected voters. I’m pretty sure parts of the GOP coalition know that too, and it factors into their strategy of getting some of their way even when they lose.
It’s about casting the widest possible net though, not lasering in on any particular subset and trying to make them happy. I don’t think anyone is perfectly happy currently, damn near absolutely no one.
Our solution is to try to make our positions more popular with the public, though. Not to try to pressure the party apparatus to appease a certain inner faction and pretend it won’t cost them with others. It will cost them elsewhere, the best we could do there is try to argue it might be worth it. But would it? Can that be guaranteed? Because if there’s one thing I’ve gauged about Biden, it’s that he doesn’t like taking big risks.
Yes, I know. What I’m pointing out is that more than half of those 250m+ people are in effect ideologically disenfranchised by the Dem leadership actively preventing candidates that better represent their views from being nominated, often from even running for office.
I’m aware of that too. It’s part of the ratchet effect:
Tell that to the Dem leadership. What I’ve been complaining about this whole time is that the Dem leadership snatches defeat from the jaws of easy victory by refusing to actively appeal or even LISTEN to anyone except that tiny group and the “vote blue no matter who” crowd who’s almost literally incapable of not supporting the party no matter what.
Expanding the net leftward would make it possible for them to win most major elections, including every presidential election, in a landslide from now and until the GOP either change their politics back to something sane or manage to manipulate elections so much that voting has no effect.
The owner donors and whomever else profit from the status quo probably are.
Progressive and further left policies are already much more popular with voters than the center right to right wing ones of the Dem leadership.
You’ve got it backwards: most of the actual Left has become an outside faction due to the party apparatus’ refusal to listen and demands for blind obedience causing resentment and alienation.
I’m doing nothing of the sort. I’m saying that listening to the left like they used to before the Clintonites took over would gain them many times more voters than it would cost.
Except for stubbornly gluing his tongue to the boots of a genocidal apartheid regime even as the majority of the people of the world and indeed the country are condemning it. Doing so is an enormous risk, one that I fear has already cost him the election and by extension the country its democracy.
I think your feelings of resentment are clouding your judgement.
The essence of your argument seems to be that progressive policies will strengthen the hand of dems in a large number of elections. Can you back that up with data? Because when I look at electoral maps of the country I just don’t see it. It would strengthen their hand in progressive regions, no question, but those aren’t where the battle is being fought.
I would love it if you were right, but having lived in middle America often enough through my life, I just don’t see it reflected in the attitudes of locals.