Oh, Now You Believe in Norms

[dalton99a]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/13/opinion/barrett-biden-mcconnell.html

Oh, Now You Believe in Norms
The G.O.P. blocked Obama and quick-pitched Amy Coney Barrett. Democrats must fight fire with fire.
By Jamelle Bouie
Oct. 13, 2020

...

Graham is right. There is nothing unconstitutional about the hearing, nor is there any law that says Republicans can’t put Barrett on the court during or after an election. In fact, Trump and Senate Republicans could fill any vacancy that emerged before the seating of a new Congress on Jan. 3 and the inauguration of a new president on Jan. 20. There is nothing in the rule book to say otherwise.

This view — that if it’s allowed, it’s allowed — has been the dominant ethos of Republicans and their conservative allies going back at least as far as President Obama’s second term. It’s how they justified their blockade of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, filibustering Obama’s nominees and denouncing as “court packing” — a familiar refrain — his attempt to fill the vacancies. It’s also how they justified the subsequent obstruction of Merrick Garland’s path to the Supreme Court, arguing outright that the Senate’s constitutional power to “advise and consent” also included the right to deny a hearing altogether.

Of course, what’s good for the goose is also good for the gander. Once you reject the constraints imposed by norms in favor of an instrumentalism bound only by the text of the Constitution — an “originalist” politics, perhaps — you cannot then turn to those norms to protest an escalatory response or reprisal. Or rather you can, but no one has to take you seriously when you do.

The same Constitution that says Republicans can confirm Barrett weeks before the election, that allows them to retroactively impose a new and novel partisan requirement (same-party control of the Senate) on judicial confirmations, also says Congress can add as many seats to the Supreme Court as it wishes. It says Congress can strip the Supreme Court of its jurisdiction to hear certain kinds of cases. It says the judiciary is as subject to “checks and balances” as any other institution in American government and that the people through their elected officials have the right to discipline a court that works against their will.

If the Republican Party and its conservative defenders are going to operate according to a narrow, legalistic parsing of the rules — if they’re going to do anything and everything that isn’t expressly forbidden by the text, all in service of minority rule on an already counter-majoritarian playing field — then the only rational response is for Democrats to do the same. To adopt forbearance would be to accept defeat.

[Catcar]

1. The New Norms. The Republicans have put forth a set of new norms, we will simply honor them.

[captain queeg]

2. I like it. Time to take off the gloves.

[wryter2000]

3. If we win the Senate and end the filibuster

We need to act like Republicans and do whatever is allowed by the constitution.

An enormous stimulus package to help people and small businesses through the pandemic. With strict regulation to make sure the money gets to the right places.

A public option for the ACA, which would essentially be allowing people to buy into medicare. That would result in medicare for all intelligent people. Under current rules, no senior has to sign up for medicare. You have to ask for it.

Raise the income limit to pay social security tax so people would have to pay that tax on, say, the first $300,000 of income. Plenty of money for SS there.

Add justices to SCOTUS and/or disallow it from hearing cases on reproductive rights and health care.

Not sure how statehood for Puerto Rico and DC is done, but that would be good.

Republicans have been strong-arming legislation and judges through on behalf of their own power and for their rich donors. We'd be doing these things for the good of the people of the US.

[dugog55]

7. And a step further I believe is in order. A Constitutional Convention to correct

what should have been done after the Civil War. The Second Amendment was was worded as such because James Madison wanted the South to be able to still use their "slave patrols" labeled as a Militia. Their sole purpose was to check on plantations and to hunt down runaway slaves. The 2nd could be rewritten to allow hunting equipment and out law all fully automatic and semi-automatic rifles, and automatic handguns. Madison also had his hands in the Electoral College fiasco, that too should be completely eradicated.

Also, concerning Puerto Rico, possibly Samoa and if legal, Washington DC making them states. The number of Senators, once determined should then be doled out according to State populations. There is no way when creating the Constitution that the framers would possibly conceive that one state, California, would have three times the population of their entire current United States. California has more people than the bottom 10 states added together. Wyoming has under 800,000 and yet gets the same two Senators that California gets for 38,000,000. That is ridiculous. The bottom ten or so should have one, California five, Texas and Florida, New York four, and so on down the line.

[roamer65]

11. If there is a Constitutional Convention, I want a secession formula added for the blue states.

Just like Article 50 of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty.

[wryter2000]

12. Riiiiight

And I'd lose my social security and medicare? Don't think so.

[roamer65]

14. Eventually the dollar is going to be near worthless, so I wouldn't worry much.

The Federal Reserve is monetizing ALL of this debt. Inflation is going to be hell in a few years.

$27 Trillion and climbing.

[roamer65]

10. THIS.

[underpants]

4. 👀

Marking to read later

[CrispyQ]

5. If We the People vote in a democratic WH, Senate, & House, the dem congress better go BOLD.

They better be ready to play hardball & throw some punches & pass some serious legislation that codifies some of the norms and traditions that the repubs have shattered. No more allowing a majority leader to refuse to put the other chamber's bills up for a vote. WTF? One person should not have this kind of power obstruct.

Our country is a wreck and eleven million people haven't turned out to vote early in a pandemic so a dem congress can work their colleagues across the aisle in order to heal the nation. You want to heal the nation? Put the republican party in a fucking time-out corner. Pass some kind of universal health care, secure social security & other social programs by taxing the rich, and do something about the white supremacy that has infiltrated our police departments. And that's just three items. There's so much to be done, if the dems try to work with the repubs, they will obstruct & very little will get fixed & the People will give at least one chamber back to the repubs in 2022 & maybe the WH in 2024. I've seen this movie before.

[Catcar]

9. Yes! "Go Bold" should be our new Mantra

[standingtall]

6. republican are probably betting Democrats are going to do what they usually do

after republicans violate the norms. Which is Democrats take their case to the American people and hope voters are going punish republicans in the next electing cycle. That approach did not work for us during the Obama years in fact republicans were ultimately rewarded for the bad behavior it's is time for us to take procedural actions.

[Catcar]

8. That's what they're betting not what they're getting

[DFW]

15. This is the only Norm I believe in

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=norman+ornstein