The U.S. Supreme Court

let's smash all the accepted decorum, given current bachelor party at Hooters standards

generally getting p tired of "here's what he's gotta do" style punditry (looking at you ross douthat)

― goole, Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Here's the deal: shut up.

also i am kind of shocked obama hasn't nominated someone already

eh I would think politically it would be best to have this timed to come to a head over the summer, just ahead of the election. there's no hurry.

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, February 23, 2016 5:12 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yea i wasn't sure, i was thinking the closer we actually get to the election the more "legitimate" (obv not that i think it is legitimate) the GOP's argument that obama is a lame duck who shouldn't be picking nominees this late in his term. (also super fucked up huh how the "lame duck" designation, which i always thought was reserved for those couple of months between election day and inauguration day, are now being applied to obama's entire final year)

j/k goole

obama's term was effectively over when the new campaign season began.. in late november 2012.

who runs the world? gabbneb

The closer this gets to the end of the year, the better the chances of the GOP obstruction succeeding. It's hard to keep up a siege for 11 months, easier for 11 weeks.

hmm yeah that makes sense. so Obama nominates someone, and then they just never let the nom out of committee? lol I suppose Obama could go through cycles of nominate/withdraw

it's never going into committee

so Obama nominates somebody and the Judiciary Committee just... doesn't hold any hearings/meetings?

McConnell's calculus must be that the prospect of a GOP president replacing Scalia will drive up GOP voter turnout, but idk that seems kinda goofy

No hearings, no votes, nothing -- not even meeting the nominee.

i think they're gonna cave eventually

i think so too? that's why i was surprised obama hasn't nominated anyone yet, the GOP obstruction will look more ridiculous when there is a qualified nominee awaiting consideration

it will be harder to sustain the obstruction once there is a nominee

Yeah, for practically a year! Especially if the nominee is someone the GOP has supported in the past.

i'm not so sure. this is more or less what the senate republicans have been doing to obama's federal court appointees for years now

SCOTUS justices are more visible, press cares more

No hearings, no votes, nothing -- not even meeting the nominee.

it's in line with their racist "no matter what the black guy says, we're not hearing it" stance of the past 8 years but it's especially brazen here imo

it does seem like the combination of press + prez campaign + high profile cases being sent back to lower court/not being decided put this in a different context from the federal court appointees

That 'official' letter full of Republican Senatorial signatures is just trying to get out in front of when Obama sends down a nominee's name, so they can retort "because he knew we wouldn't schedule hearings on his nominee, his naming one is just a barefaced political gambit to try to make us look bad." This might play well to the base, but I'm guessing it won't wash with independents.

I told y'all they would obstruct. You're way overrating their concern for the electoral effects of this and probably overrating the electoral effects too. They know this is way more important than a couple of seats in the Senate (at most). And democrats sole concern should be whatever most effective measure they can take to force a nomination, if there is any such thing, or else to extract as big a price as possible. No time for playing the optics game.

tbf i think obama needed to wait at least a certain period of time. scalia just had his lying-in-state thing on friday, and if obama really wants to sell the "here's a perfectly good, qualified, seriously-chosen candidate" it can't look like he just flipped to a name and threw somebody out there. even though we all know that there are long-in-the-waiting lists of very carefully chosen people, i think there is a performance element of the statesmanly decision made with solomonic care.

which is why we've learned the nomination's coming in weeks, not months

I like this making the rounds
http://giphy.com/gifs/26FPOxoL14J6VbbJS

http://giphy.com/gifs/26FPOxoL14J6VbbJS

Just a n animated illustration of "Every Supreme Court nominee in US history has received a vote within 125 days."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/02/24/brian-sandoval-republican-governor-of-nevada-is-being-vetted-for-supreme-court-vacancy/?postshare=971456337532370&tid=ss_tw

:|

wtf

srsly

give me a fucking break

I'm kinda confused as to why Sandoval is a Republican

with that last name how can he be

how can that be surprising to yall

hopefully a trial balloon? I assume whoever is the nominee knows theyre signing up for a suicide mission.

yeah I thought I'd seen his name floated immediately.

he doesn't seem totally terrible, apart from his whole GOP thing of hating teachers, which will never be cool with me

if the point is to make the republicans look ridiculous, then floating sandoval's name seems like a fairly shrewd idea.

i know, shame on me for giving a shit about this, we good liberals should just cheer whomever obama nominates*, clearly he knows better than we, but yeah sorry i'd 100% rather take the risk of waiting a year for hillary to appoint someone better than have obama appoint a republican, sorry

*and yes i understand this is a report about him being vetted, not a report about him being named the nominee

waiting a year for hillary to appoint someone better

I'm not sure this would happen tbh

altho odds are probably better w a Dem Senate

right. and she'll have the "mandate" republicans have seemingly invented

waiting a year for hillary to appoint someone better

I'm not sure this would happen tbh

Yeah especially when there's still the possibility of a Bernie presidency.

No but seriously folx.

mandates only occur when republicans win

yeah everyone knows that, even Democrats.

Sandoval is disliked by Grover Norquist and the Tea Party, perhaps they will also express disgust with him and thereby show the White House that nominating a centrist Republican to the Supreme Court might not even work as a strategy

consider Obummer goin' Repug as a strategy a "callback" to Bubba and a preview of Hil

Callback to himself on secdef tbh

Was the Toobin post mortem in the New Yorker linked yet? Pulls no punches. First few sentences:

Antonin Scalia, who died this month, after nearly three decades on the Supreme Court, devoted his professional life to making the United States a less fair, less tolerant, and less admirable democracy. Fortunately, he mostly failed. Belligerent with his colleagues, dismissive of his critics, nostalgic for a world where outsiders knew their place and stayed there, Scalia represents a perfect model for everything that President Obama should avoid in a successor.

This also OTM:

This Republican intransigence is a sign of panic, not of power.

Pierce going with the "clever trap" theory

"There's been this dramatic betrayal," says the staunchly anti-tax Republican Assemblyman Ira Hansen, a Ted Cruz supporter who has become a public face of conservative opposition to Sandoval. "Sandoval went totally moderate liberal on us. If there was a referendum tomorrow, you'd find a dramatically different result among the Republican party base."

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a42431/brian-sandoval-supreme-court-nomination-rumor/

pretty sure sandoval is only being "vetted" to send the message that the administration is "serious" about a pick that, if not for senate GOP intransigence, "should" have bipartisan consensus. really do not expect him to actually be put forward as nominee.