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

[Florida Man for Crime]

How to lose the 2022 midterms and make America a third world hellhole 101!

If Dems win the 2020 Presidential election, they automatically lose the 2022 midterms. That is simply how midterm elections work in our current political age.

Packing the Supreme Court or not packing the Supreme Court (and also any policies that Democrats do or do not attempt to implement) would only make a marginal difference in the size of the Republican gains. It might (though even this is actually questionable, I would say) add a percentage point or two to the size of their lead in the generic congressional ballot.

There are reasons that one can reasonably oppose packing the Supreme court, but the idea that it should be opposed because Democrats will they lose the 2022 midterm elections is just delusional.

[DrScholl]

Before the Republican-controlled Senate refused to give Garland a hearing I would have said no to this, but now I am for it. If Republicans didn't want Garland they could have voted him down, but McConnell didn't have the votes for that so he refused hearings. Adding two seats to the court will not end the republic.

And then the republicans will add two more seats once they retake power, I also have a feeling this plan for 11 seats will turn into 13 if rbg dies and gets replaced by a functional justice

Post-Trump, Republicans might not have win a trifecta again for awhile. And they already got a seat that they weren't supposed to have so expanding the court to 11 would even things out to how voters intended.

[Yank2133]

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Not really.

As Virginia pointed out.

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Yeah, it really makes no sense. Would conservatives/moderate heroes be more content if a Democratic Senate refused to confirm any SCOTUS pick from a Republican president? How about if they kept the number of justices the same, but simply impeached all the conservative ones?

You guys never actually answer this question and seem to have a very arbitrary line in the sand. It seems to just boil down to "The GOP can do whatever it wants, but the minute the Dems respond in kind apocolypse will occur because reasons!"

Yeah, a lot of conservatives want to have it both ways. Just look at Old Republican claiming he would vote Republican if the Democrats did this, while I am sure having no problem voting Republican in 2016 after what McConnell pulled.

[Pandaguineapig]

Before the Republican-controlled Senate refused to give Garland a hearing I would have said no to this, but now I am for it. If Republicans didn't want Garland they could have voted him down, but McConnell didn't have the votes for that so he refused hearings. Adding two seats to the court will not end the republic.

And then the republicans will add two more seats once they retake power, I also have a feeling this plan for 11 seats will turn into 13 if rbg dies and gets replaced by a functional justice

Post-Trump, Republicans might not have win a trifecta again for awhile. And they already got a seat that they weren't supposed to have so expanding the court to 11 would even things out to how voters intended.

Yes that is the delusion democrats taught themselves before 2016 as well, also, as I said earlier, if you really want to play tit-for-tat I'm sure Trump is more than happy to add a couple more justices to even out the democrats judicial games during the Nixon years

[IceSpear]

How to lose the 2022 midterms and make America a third world hellhole 101!

If Dems win the 2020 Presidential election, they automatically lose the 2022 midterms. That is simply how midterm elections work in our current political age.

Packing the Supreme Court or not packing the Supreme Court (and also any policies that Democrats do or do not attempt to implement) would only make a marginal difference in the size of the Republican gains. It might (though even this is actually questionable, I would say) add a percentage point or two to the size of their lead in the generic congressional ballot.

There are reasons that one can reasonably oppose packing the Supreme court, but the idea that it should be opposed because Democrats will they lose the 2022 midterm elections is just delusional.

For an ostensibly politically aware forum, a lot of people here don't understand how elections work. Many of you were CONVINCED Trump was finished and would lose in a historic massive landslide because of the pussy grabber tape, but nobody cared a month later, lol. Many of the D hacks were also convinced the Garland fiasco would hurt Republicans, and that was about as impactful as a fart in the wind. Thinking adding SCOTUS seats would hurt Democrats politically is foolish. Half of Americans wouldn't even notice, and most of the remaining half are already locked in partisans who will never change their vote under any circumstances. The "swing voters" might be displeased, to the extent that they actually notice, but they'll forget and be distracted by a new shiny object within a month.

[junior chįmp]

To the red avatars taking the porn lawyer seriously; what makes you think that republicans wouldn't just restack the court once they retook the whitehouse? I don't think this is a serious policy consideration as much as it is the left-wing desire to chnage the rules if you don't win, just like the Electoral College

It's already been answered. The Republicans already have de facto packed the court with their theft of Garland's seat, and it would surprise nobody if they did it again in the future. So what this accomplishes would be Democrats returning the favor, rather than letting the GOP walk all over them in perpetuity. Of course we'd expect them to pack it as well once they regained power, but they already have zero interest in democracy or functioning government as it is (see Garland, their reactions to the Mueller probe, among many other things) so we might as well have it all out in the open and fight fire with fire. Thanks to the GOP's nihilism, their contempt for democracy and American institutions, voter apathy, voter stupidity, and intense partisanship/polarization, the fact of the matter is that the Democrats have very little to lose from a political perspective (they think they do though because they have learned nothing from 2016, so this will never happen.)

It's funny how your continued moaning over St.Garland doesn't mention how democrats had been nuking replublican nominations for years. Using your twisted logic, Trump should be able to nominate a couple justices to "re-balance" the court from the Nixon years

American politics is a zero sum game...your either winning or your losing, there is no in between except for the suckers gullible enough to believe in that bipartisanship con game. 14 of the last 18 SCOTUS nominations have been by Republican presidents. The GOP has appointed enough SCOTUS nominees

[DrScholl]

Before the Republican-controlled Senate refused to give Garland a hearing I would have said no to this, but now I am for it. If Republicans didn't want Garland they could have voted him down, but McConnell didn't have the votes for that so he refused hearings. Adding two seats to the court will not end the republic.

And then the republicans will add two more seats once they retake power, I also have a feeling this plan for 11 seats will turn into 13 if rbg dies and gets replaced by a functional justice

Post-Trump, Republicans might not have win a trifecta again for awhile. And they already got a seat that they weren't supposed to have so expanding the court to 11 would even things out to how voters intended.

Yes that is the delusion democrats taught themselves before 2016 as well, also, as I said earlier, if you really want to play tit-for-tat I'm sure Trump is more than happy to add a couple more justices to even out the democrats judicial games during the Nixon years

Believing every election will turn out like 2016 is a recipe for disaster that Republicans seem determined to follow. You all have the next 30 years of presidents planned out through the entire Trump family which is insane.

[Yellowhammer]

To the red avatars taking the porn lawyer seriously; what makes you think that republicans wouldn't just restack the court once they retook the whitehouse? I don't think this is a serious policy consideration as much as it is the left-wing desire to chnage the rules if you don't win, just like the Electoral College

It's already been answered. The Republicans already have de facto packed the court with their theft of Garland's seat, and it would surprise nobody if they did it again in the future. So what this accomplishes would be Democrats returning the favor, rather than letting the GOP walk all over them in perpetuity. Of course we'd expect them to pack it as well once they regained power, but they already have zero interest in democracy or functioning government as it is (see Garland, their reactions to the Mueller probe, among many other things) so we might as well have it all out in the open and fight fire with fire. Thanks to the GOP's nihilism, their contempt for democracy and American institutions, voter apathy, voter stupidity, and intense partisanship/polarization, the fact of the matter is that the Democrats have very little to lose from a political perspective (they think they do though because they have learned nothing from 2016, so this will never happen.)

They have a lot to lose.
For starters, they'll be selling out what little remains of their party's soul to dictatorial fascism.
Factions within the GOP do indeed have contempt for democracy, but unlike many democrats, at least the GOP at large is not keen on overthrowing the American republic and installing a dictatorship.

[Orser67]

The part I don't get about this argument is, what happens when Republicans take power in 2024, 2028, 2032, or 2036? Wouldn't they just double the size of the court and appoint their own nominees?

[Yank2133]

To the red avatars taking the porn lawyer seriously; what makes you think that republicans wouldn't just restack the court once they retook the whitehouse? I don't think this is a serious policy consideration as much as it is the left-wing desire to chnage the rules if you don't win, just like the Electoral College

It's already been answered. The Republicans already have de facto packed the court with their theft of Garland's seat, and it would surprise nobody if they did it again in the future. So what this accomplishes would be Democrats returning the favor, rather than letting the GOP walk all over them in perpetuity. Of course we'd expect them to pack it as well once they regained power, but they already have zero interest in democracy or functioning government as it is (see Garland, their reactions to the Mueller probe, among many other things) so we might as well have it all out in the open and fight fire with fire. Thanks to the GOP's nihilism, their contempt for democracy and American institutions, voter apathy, voter stupidity, and intense partisanship/polarization, the fact of the matter is that the Democrats have very little to lose from a political perspective (they think they do though because they have learned nothing from 2016, so this will never happen.)

They have a lot to lose.
For starters, they'll be selling out what little remains of their party's soul to dictatorial fascism.
Factions within the GOP do indeed have contempt for democracy, but unlike many democrats, at least the GOP at large is not keen on overthrowing the American republic and installing a dictatorship.

Lmao!

Understatement of the century right here.

[IceSpear]

To the red avatars taking the porn lawyer seriously; what makes you think that republicans wouldn't just restack the court once they retook the whitehouse? I don't think this is a serious policy consideration as much as it is the left-wing desire to chnage the rules if you don't win, just like the Electoral College

It's already been answered. The Republicans already have de facto packed the court with their theft of Garland's seat, and it would surprise nobody if they did it again in the future. So what this accomplishes would be Democrats returning the favor, rather than letting the GOP walk all over them in perpetuity. Of course we'd expect them to pack it as well once they regained power, but they already have zero interest in democracy or functioning government as it is (see Garland, their reactions to the Mueller probe, among many other things) so we might as well have it all out in the open and fight fire with fire. Thanks to the GOP's nihilism, their contempt for democracy and American institutions, voter apathy, voter stupidity, and intense partisanship/polarization, the fact of the matter is that the Democrats have very little to lose from a political perspective (they think they do though because they have learned nothing from 2016, so this will never happen.)

They have a lot to lose.
For starters, they'll be selling out what little remains of their party's soul to dictatorial fascism.
Factions within the GOP do indeed have contempt for democracy, but unlike many democrats, at least the GOP at large is not keen on overthrowing the American republic and installing a dictatorship.

Well, something tells me a typical Alabama Republican doesn't think the Democratic Party has a soul to begin with, with my citation being that over 90% of them voted for a literal pedophile just because he had the (R) next to his name and not the (D), so thanks for proving my point. Republicans who already despise Democrats and would never vote for them under any circumstances hating them even more doesn't hurt them much from a political perspective. From a moral perspective? That's a different argument.

And yeah, the GOP really loves democracy so much. I can tell from their theft of SCOTUS seats, hijacking of the powers of a democratically elected governor, impeachment of an entire state Supreme Court for partisan gain, their obstruction of a probe into foreign interference in our elections, their kowtowing to a strongman leader even when he espouses the exact opposite of their supposed "principles", etc. etc.

[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.

[ProudModerate2]

No (sane.) Unlike many of the Atlas Dems who support this, I’m not a rabid partisan stooge ...

LOL.
That's as far as I made it in your post, because you are a rabid partisan stooge.
Your pro-Confederate comments, in where you said that poor white southerners had it worse than the black slaves, is all the proof you need.

[136or142]

To the red avatars taking the porn lawyer seriously; what makes you think that republicans wouldn't just restack the court once they retook the whitehouse? I don't think this is a serious policy consideration as much as it is the left-wing desire to chnage the rules if you don't win, just like the Electoral College

It's already been answered. The Republicans already have de facto packed the court with their theft of Garland's seat, and it would surprise nobody if they did it again in the future. So what this accomplishes would be Democrats returning the favor, rather than letting the GOP walk all over them in perpetuity. Of course we'd expect them to pack it as well once they regained power, but they already have zero interest in democracy or functioning government as it is (see Garland, their reactions to the Mueller probe, among many other things) so we might as well have it all out in the open and fight fire with fire. Thanks to the GOP's nihilism, their contempt for democracy and American institutions, voter apathy, voter stupidity, and intense partisanship/polarization, the fact of the matter is that the Democrats have very little to lose from a political perspective (they think they do though because they have learned nothing from 2016, so this will never happen.)

They have a lot to lose.
For starters, they'll be selling out what little remains of their party's soul to dictatorial fascism.
Factions within the GOP do indeed have contempt for democracy, but unlike many democrats, at least the GOP at large is not keen on overthrowing the American republic and installing a dictatorship.

Well, something tells me a typical Alabama Republican doesn't think the Democratic Party has a soul to begin with, with my citation being that over 90% of them voted for a literal pedophile just because he had the (R) next to his name and not the (D), so thanks for proving my point. Republicans who already despise Democrats and would never vote for them under any circumstances hating them even more doesn't hurt them much from a political perspective. From a moral perspective? That's a different argument.

And yeah, the GOP really loves democracy so much. I can tell from their theft of SCOTUS seats, hijacking of the powers of a democratically elected governor, impeachment of an entire state Supreme Court for partisan gain, their obstruction of a probe into foreign interference in our elections, their kowtowing to a strongman leader even when he espouses the exact opposite of their supposed "principles", etc. etc.

Republicans "How dare they do to us what we did to them!"

[ProudModerate2]

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.

This! This! This!

[Yellowhammer]

No (sane.) Unlike many of the Atlas Dems who support this, I’m not a rabid partisan stooge ...

LOL.
That's as far as I made it in your post, because you are a rabid partisan stooge.

No, I'm not. I have principles, and I disagree with a lot, if not the majority of, the GOP platform.
And unlike you, I'm capable of thinking on a higher level than "Trump = Nazi."

[KingSweden]

No (sane.) Unlike many of the Atlas Dems who support this, I’m not a rabid partisan stooge ...

LOL.
That's as far as I made it in your post, because you are a rabid partisan stooge.

No, I'm not. I have principles, and I disagree with a lot, if not the majority of, the GOP platform.
And unlike you, I'm capable of thinking on a higher level than "Trump = Nazi."

Then why are you not an Indy or Libertarian?

[Greedo punched first]

You don't see California Democrats trying to pack their state's Supreme Court even though Republicans were the majority on the state's high court for decades. Republicans, however, packed the AZ Supreme Court. Jim Justice (R) will also pack the state's high court in WV.

[Hammy]

The number of yes votes tells me this country is lost beyond any hope of recovery and at this point not even worth trying to save. Republicans would love nothing more than for Dems to set this precedent and abandon democracy and create an even larger chaotic mess, and nothing good would come from doing this as you'd just have every following president adding more and more, until the court becomes too bloated to function.

The GOP has already abandoned democracy. See North Carolina and West Virginia. And the federal GOP is hardly any better after what happened with Garland. How exactly is forcing a vacancy until you can fill it yourself any better than packing the court?

I never said it was, and to me it's just as bad. But we know the GOP does not stand for democracy and is doing everything they can to destroy it. When the side that's supposed to be the last defense against this decides to adopt the same tactics, solely on the grounds that "because the other side already did it first" then you're essentially ceding moral authority to the GOP because all this does is say their way is the only correct way.

[IceSpear]

The number of yes votes tells me this country is lost beyond any hope of recovery and at this point not even worth trying to save. Republicans would love nothing more than for Dems to set this precedent and abandon democracy and create an even larger chaotic mess, and nothing good would come from doing this as you'd just have every following president adding more and more, until the court becomes too bloated to function.

The GOP has already abandoned democracy. See North Carolina and West Virginia. And the federal GOP is hardly any better after what happened with Garland. How exactly is forcing a vacancy until you can fill it yourself any better than packing the court?

I never said it was, and to me it's just as bad. But we know the GOP does not stand for democracy and is doing everything they can to destroy it. When the side that's supposed to be the last defense against this decides to adopt the same tactics, solely on the grounds that "because the other side already did it" then you're essentially ceding moral authority to the GOP because all this does is say their way is the only correct way.

From a purely political and cynical perspective it is the correct way, because you gain far more power in exchange for little to no loss, since American voters are too lazy/ignorant/stupid/partisan/polarized to hold you accountable for your actions. The GOP has already discovered this fact and is not shy about exploiting it.

[Hammy]

The number of yes votes tells me this country is lost beyond any hope of recovery and at this point not even worth trying to save. Republicans would love nothing more than for Dems to set this precedent and abandon democracy and create an even larger chaotic mess, and nothing good would come from doing this as you'd just have every following president adding more and more, until the court becomes too bloated to function.

The GOP has already abandoned democracy. See North Carolina and West Virginia. And the federal GOP is hardly any better after what happened with Garland. How exactly is forcing a vacancy until you can fill it yourself any better than packing the court?

I never said it was, and to me it's just as bad. But we know the GOP does not stand for democracy and is doing everything they can to destroy it. When the side that's supposed to be the last defense against this decides to adopt the same tactics, solely on the grounds that "because the other side already did it" then you're essentially ceding moral authority to the GOP because all this does is say their way is the only correct way.

From a purely political and cynical perspective it is the correct way, because you gain far more power in exchange for little to no loss, since American voters are too lazy/ignorant/stupid/partisan/polarized to hold you accountable for your actions. The GOP has already discovered this fact and is not shy about exploiting it.

Which goes back to my original point, that if this is truly the only way, then our society is already dead and not worth putting effort into saving.

[Yellowhammer]

No (sane.) Unlike many of the Atlas Dems who support this, I’m not a rabid partisan stooge ...

LOL.
That's as far as I made it in your post, because you are a rabid partisan stooge.

No, I'm not. I have principles, and I disagree with a lot, if not the majority of, the GOP platform.
And unlike you, I'm capable of thinking on a higher level than "Trump = Nazi."

Then why are you not an Indy or Libertarian?

I am not a big-L Libertarian because the LP is a semi-defunct joke party. I'm not into throwing away my vote.
I'm a Republican because voting Republican is one of the few options available for combatting the lunacy of the Democratic Party.

[IceSpear]

The number of yes votes tells me this country is lost beyond any hope of recovery and at this point not even worth trying to save. Republicans would love nothing more than for Dems to set this precedent and abandon democracy and create an even larger chaotic mess, and nothing good would come from doing this as you'd just have every following president adding more and more, until the court becomes too bloated to function.

The GOP has already abandoned democracy. See North Carolina and West Virginia. And the federal GOP is hardly any better after what happened with Garland. How exactly is forcing a vacancy until you can fill it yourself any better than packing the court?

I never said it was, and to me it's just as bad. But we know the GOP does not stand for democracy and is doing everything they can to destroy it. When the side that's supposed to be the last defense against this decides to adopt the same tactics, solely on the grounds that "because the other side already did it" then you're essentially ceding moral authority to the GOP because all this does is say their way is the only correct way.

From a purely political and cynical perspective it is the correct way, because you gain far more power in exchange for little to no loss, since American voters are too lazy/ignorant/stupid/partisan/polarized to hold you accountable for your actions. The GOP has already discovered this fact and is not shy about exploiting it.

Which goes back to my original point, that if this is truly the only way, then our society is already dead and not worth putting effort into saving.

Unless Americans wake up, then it is certainly on the way to ruin. I'm not very optimistic that they will. If anything their ignorance and frighteningly short attention spans seem to get worse and worse with every passing year.

[ProudModerate2]

No (sane.) Unlike many of the Atlas Dems who support this, I’m not a rabid partisan stooge ...

LOL.
That's as far as I made it in your post, because you are a rabid partisan stooge.

No, I'm not. I have principles, and I disagree with a lot, if not the majority of, the GOP platform.
And unlike you, I'm capable of thinking on a higher level than "Trump = Nazi."

Oh, but of course.
Your "capability of thinking on a higher level," involves the theory that "poor white southern Confederates had is worse than black slaves."
Accept my apologies ... that level of thinking is obviously superior.

PS: By the way, why did you cut that portion out of my post, when you quoted me?
Perfectly OK to do so, but just curious as to why.

[OSR stands with Israel]

This thread proves that the left just like the right have lost their minds.