Should a Democratic President add 2 more Justices on the Supreme Court?

[Virginiá]

Yes (sane).

The court is inherently conservative and it is out of step with today's America.

^^

I keep seeing these doomsday predictions with packing the court, ignoring the fact that stealing seats by refusing to confirm any nominees from a president of the opposite party does mostly the same thing, just in a different way. The point being that one party is still stealing power. When McConnell was doing that, I recall seeing conservatives exuberant, not spreading tales of doom and gloom.

FTR, I'm fully aware of why and how it could backfire, I just don't care anymore. I'd rather take a chance going down that path than sit back and watch conservatives continue stealing more power for themselves using whatever means necessary. I'm not going to wait for Congressional Republicans to get as ruthless as North Carolina Republicans before I change my tune.

[Virginiá]

I'm strongly against both of those measures. The NC GOP acting so horribly that I really wouldn't mind if they got pummeled this year. They deserve to lose their majorities.

I'm kind of surprised that Atlas dems abandon all pretense of good governance when it comes to how they want their side to act, but I guess I shouldn't be.
After you turn the SCOTUS into an arm of the DNC, where will you go next? Once you win the WH, will you want to give the Executive Branch the power to unilaterally draw congressional districts? Will you abolish presidential term limits? Will you arrest every GOP senator and remove then from the senate? Those all sound extreme, but they're really no worse than incorporating the SCOTUS as an arm of you party.

I mean, if Republicans are truly horrified at this, they could just do the right thing and fill the next conservative vacancy with Garland or some other person of Obama's choosing. I know you're making a big ol distinction between adding 2 new justices and simply stealing the seat of an existing justice that would have otherwise shifted from R-nominated to D-nominated, but to Democrats/the left, there isn't a distinction, and objectively, while adding 2 new justices is twice as bad, it's not fundamentally different in that the court's ideological lean is being shifted for partisan purposes. With McConnell's ploy, it was simply preventing a 5-4 liberal lean.

Seriously - you guys can lament over this all you want, but at the end of the day, escalating the judicial wars to the point of yanking a SCOTUS seat away from Democrats was a BIG deal to us. It's could very well be looked at historically as the moment where things went truly crazy. Not to mention McConnell stealing 100+ lower court seats, which is bad enough but not something Democrats didn't do as well, even if Democrats didn't slow-walk THAT many seats. The fact is, you guys loved McConnell's seat theft. It meant conservatives got to keep the high court even longer. You got Gorsuch, and I rarely see a conservative worry about the fallout from that, because to you guys, all is well. Nothing wrong with the Senate exercising it's rightful powers! But none of this happens in a vacuum, and I think you guys know that deep down. You know it was wrong, but you wanted it so badly it was worth it. You don't get to do that and then say the fallout is completely undeserved and "TOO FAR!"

If Republicans allowed Democrats to have the next conservative-held seat (or this current one), that would probably smooth over the whole situation and make talks to reform the judicial nomination process very much possible. Accept that the Republican Party went too far, and rectify the situation. I mean, if this is all so terrible, why don't they just agree to, at the very least, get an amendment ratified that will ensure any seat that opens up under a particular president gets to be filled by that president. But that will NEVER happen, because conservatives value the court too much. It's why they stole the seat in the first place. So no, this doesn't all go on Democrats. To say so would be pure, unbridled partisanship talking.

[Virginiá]

The left hasn’t lost its mind in mid 2014 yet


It started to lose to its mind in 2015

Eh, that author actually posted polls to back up his argument though. Are there any polls from this year or even 2017 that show what you're talking about? And if Trump is destined to make the left to go insane, revisiting this topic in 2020, after the left has had more time to marinate in Trump's presidency, might be good.

[Virginiá]

This entire argument over Garland seems to revolve around bringing up old examples of Democrats saying things or occasionally blocking lower court nominees. The fact is, we never told a Republican president that they are not getting a supreme court seat and then actually did that. If Democrats wanted to, they could have stolen a ton of supreme court seats from Republicans from Eisenhower through GHWB. They controlled the Senate for the vast majority of that time, including for Kennedy and Thomas. But they did not do that. I think we should all be able to agree that Republicans would not even consider doing the same for Democrats, nor would they confirm the leftist version of Thomas either. No, they would close ranks and either vote against them or simply refuse to hold a hearing at all, for anyone. That is the best theory until proven otherwise.

Who cares if one party blocks a particular nominee. I could care less really if Republicans said no to an Obama pick but then allowed a confirmation on someone else. The Senate is allowed to do that and it still accepts the established order that presidents get to pick judges, within reason. Obviously they shouldn't be trying to force an older and/or conservative nominee, but to turn down a person isn't wrong - it's saying no to everyone that is.

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This really boils down to a larger problem with conservatives in that they can't seem to accept that Democrats have a legitimate right to govern if they win elections. The story of lame duck power grabs, stealing judicial/supreme court picks like crazy and rampant obstruction shows a party that feels their concerns are the only ones that matter and that they are so important that they justify any and all tactics to achieve, which is an absolutely terrible way to try to run a country. At some point they are going to have to address this because the Democratic Party's base is getting increasingly more aggressive in its desire to shut out the GOP by whatever means necessary, because they feel they are constantly getting bamboozled by an ethically bankrupt opposition party, occupying countless Congressional/legislative districts rigged in their favor.

I don't know about everyone else, but I don't want a political system where two parties are absolutely ruthless in their political maneuvering and doing the things the GOP has been doing. It is sick, and the manifestation of a deeply unhealthy system.

[Virginiá]

Republicans also have a right to govern when they win elections, and liberals apparently can't accept that either. Democrats started the modern trend of attacking judicial nominees with their unprecedented assault on Robert Bork. So Democrats have, in fact, denied a duly-elected Republican president his preferred SCOTUS nominee.

Can't go back DataGuy. Between Trump and McConnell, the GOP has managed to make it impossible to justify compromising to the base. And that should not be an easy thing to do with Congressional Democrats. There's a reason the party is constantly harping on its leaders for seeking to compromise when the situation doesn't justify it. Hell, Trump probably could have gotten his wall already if he wasn't such an idiot about it.

What Brittain33 said. Bork is a bad example that keeps getting brought up. I even said that no one should hold it against a party for refusing to confirm a specific nominee so long as they confirm someone. Republicans still got a justice that voted with the conservative wing more often than not. That was the entire point of my post. If the Senate GOP wants to torch a liberal nominee, fine, it's not like I don't expect it already, but don't use it as a justification to steal seats.

So no, "in fact," Democrats have not denied a Republican a seat. Jesus, you are really reaching in just about every argument you make.

Not to mention their ten filibusters of Bush judicial nominees, their attempted filibuster of Alito, and their opposition to Trump's judicial nominees.

Oh right, the hundred seats that Republicans left open through slow-walking Obama nominees, and god knows how many seats Obama didn't even bother nominating someone for because Senators like Cruz refused to return blue slips for (and Democrats stupidly respected), or those that McConnell had made clear in 2015-2016 that he wanted to deliver the vast majority of them to a Republican president? Ten filibusters really kind of pales in comparison if you ask me. It's not like I don't expect the parties to be greedy about all of this, but good god, there is a difference between being greedy and shutting down almost the entire process for years for partisan gain.

No shortage of examples of tit-for-tat here. The difference here is that you're still getting your judges. It would make more sense if you were arguing about this when Democrats were actually blocking judges. And not just judges were wholly unqualified for office or had ethical/other problems like Farr.

As for Republicans confirming "the leftist version of Thomas," they did in fact allow hard-core liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg to sail through with virtually no opposition. She was supported by 93% of Republicans and was confirmed 96-3. That was after 81% of Democrats opposed Clarence Thomas.

And you feel confident about that happening today?

[Virginiá]

Even the Federalist Society co-founder recommended court-packing already, and this was as Trump was filling dozens of seats held open under Obama (or stolen, whatever):

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/conservatives-have-a-breathtaking-plan-for-trump-to-pack-the-courts/2017/11/21/b7ce90d4-ce43-11e7-9d3a-bcbe2af58c3a_story.html

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I don't really feel too bad about Democrats doing it because I don't believe for a second Republicans wouldn't if they could and if they felt it was necessary to protect their ability to achieve policy goals using the federal judiciary. What they've actually done so far isn't that far removed from expanding the courts.

[Virginiá]

Honestly I'm not going to keep arguing with someone who thinks the fact that a batsh**t crazy conservative nominee from the 80s was shot down is terrible and deserves a never-ending cycle of retribution (despite Reagan still getting to fill the seat). No one is really arguing that the Senate must confirm the president's first pick every time afaik. If the president's picks are never supposed to be rejected, what is the point of Senate confirmation? The unacceptable part is holding seats open until your party gets to fill them.

I'm not going to continue trading walls of text around this since there isn't much more to be discussed. Both sides have contributed to this fight, but Republicans have constantly escalated in dramatic fashions and used really poor excuses to justify it ("""Biden Rule"""? lol). End of story. Believe whatever you want.

[Virginiá]

Seriously, this didn't begin in 1987. Case in point would be Strom Thurmond's pornographic film festival to attack Abe Fortas's free speech rulings.

I'd go further and say that none of these should have ever been considered the "start" of anything. What is wrong with the Senate turning down a nominee? Our system is literally set up for this. The point Republicans can't seem to grasp is that the Senate doesn't exist to use as a weapon to starve the judiciary until they win the presidency and can make picks.

Until there is actual reform, there needs to be an agreement that whoever wins the presidency gets to pick judges, within reason (barring nutcases and other unqualified people, cronies, etc). But they are obligated to confirm someone in the end. Anything else is bound to end badly, and with court-packing become a mainstream idea in the Democratic Party, it should be obvious why. People who are constantly getting screwed bigly are eventually going to react.