Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died.

[Caliga]

I've heard rumors to that effect and it wouldn't shock me, McCain and Lieberman always liked each other. But I think Lieberman may have even been a worse pick (politically) than Palin, McCain actually did need someone to help him with the more extreme elements of the party, which Palin ostensibly did. A McCain-Lieberman ticket I think would've had serious issues with the Republican base, because you already had a portion of the GOP base that wasn't entirely enthusiastic for McCain (remember a lot of them supporting figures like Huckabee and Santorum in the 2008 primaries, long after their viable path to a delegate majority was gone), and then he goes and nominates a former Democrat / independent Senator who was previously the running mate of Al Gore.

Lieberman also oddly for a bipartisan type person, was deeply unpopular with Democrats by the time 2008 rolled around, so not only would McCain risk alienating some of his own voting base with that pick, he likely wouldn't have materially changed his standing with the Democrats. To them, Lieberman's willingness to be on a Republican Presidential ticket 8 years after appearing on the Democratic Presidential ticket would be broader confirmation he was a DINO that isn't to be trusted.

I dunno, I always liked Lieberman and I thought Palin was a complete crackpot, so had he picked Joe I think I would have voted for him.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I think so, I think it's possible if a non-Obama Democrat had won in 2008 that the simmering issues in the GOP would've remained at a high simmer instead of boiling over, long enough that demographic changes may have forced some moderation and behavior change. But Obama's election caused it to boil over for too big a portion of the GOP base, and we can clearly see the party which admittedly had sheltered white grievance voters for many years become a white grievance party. I think a black President made it a certainty. I do not know if it would have happened under say, a President HRC who won in 2008, but it may still have frankly, it's hard to say.

If any of you followed Stuart Stevens--he's a former party insider/Republican operative who made media rounds a few months ago talking about the ideological failure of the party and its degeneration, he actually pointed out that the party leadership can help cool off the worst sentiments of the party and shape the party's direction. But they collectively chose to not do that, instead they fanned those elements of the party because they became enthralled with how those voters were showing up at rowdy protests and seeming really 'activated', and by fanning those flames they unleashed a conflagration. Now it's too late, and they no longer have the power to shape what they've unleashed.

I think there is some evidence he is correct, party leadership, and I use that term broadly to include its actual leaders at the RNC, high ranking members of congress, and Republican "influencers" have a big impact on what the base cares about and gets riled up about. Notice how the party basically quit talking about gay marriage, they realized this issue was a long term loser and not worth pursuing. But they could've kept fighting about it, it could've become like a "mini-Abortion" issue where it was long decided in the courts but still a part of the grievance messaging of the party. Instead the party decided to move on, and the base doesn't talk much about gay marriage now either. I think you could have had more responsible Republicans in leadership push the party away from white grievance, 10-15 years ago, and I think it would have had a real impact on the direction of the party.

I think at least part of the reason this hasn't happened can be traced directly to Fox News. A lot of their opinion programming is based on stoking paranoia and fear, and racial dog whistling and things of that nature, and I think that was just too attractive for them to give up because it was creating some of their most popular programs, and the outsize influence of those opinion programs and the prattle they talk about on the direction of the party, especially when party leadership is working in lock step with them, was significant.

[Sheilbh]

I think that's putting credit where it isn't due. I feel like the Tea Party movement and its crazies would have come to the fore even if McCain had picked a different running mate.

Yeah - as I say I'm not sure and there may be the sort of structural causes happen.

My view is she tapped into it and enabled what we see now. I'm not sure if it wouldn't have happened any way - I'm far less certain about that, I have no idea. It might have happened anyway. But I just wonder, in a world where there was an establishment Republican ticket, let's say McCain-Ridge, what happens. So Palin doesn't become the star of that campaign for conservatives, there isn't someone who spent the campaign doing the "palling around with terrorists"/Obama just doesn't love America the way we (white people in the heartland do) routine and drawing bigger and more enthusiastic crowds than McCain. If someone doesn't tap into that, do the GOP decide to or know to tap into the Tea Party - or is the Tea Party just like a 2010s version of Pat Buchanan, because those weren't "our" voters in 2008 in they were they actually were.

Now maybe there are enough political entrepreneurs in the GOP who realise in 2010 that there's a market for a specific type of politics and those voters can make a difference in the GOP if they're sufficiently enthused.

Basically I don't know if it all still happens anyway, but I sort of think that in sort-of post-truth, barely dogwhistle politics, Palin is the Goldwater to Trump's Reagan.

[alfred russel]

Yeah - I don't really understand what you think I'm saying about Palin because I more or less agree with all of that.

That she was consequential (beyond her direct impact on the 2008 presidential race).

My take is the current populist takeover in the GOP has its foundation in the tea party movement, which arose as a more or less grassroots reaction to early Obama initiatives, stoked by talk radio and the conservative echochamber. Sarah Palin showed that the establishment republican edifice was weaker than it had been, but that is all.

Even giving the tea party credit for trumpism's foundation may be too much. His campaign was effectively a hostile takeover of the GOP--he got very few endorsements and never really bothered to organize. He just said stupid stuff every day and that got him nonstop media and big crowds at rallies.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Yeah, I tend to take the view that Palin benefited from the Tea Party movement, in terms of marketing herself, getting TV time, become a conservative "celebrity" (meanwhile her political standing as a viable politician ended completely), like she probably personally made significant amounts of money from the Tea Party movement. But I do not think she was much of a driver of it, I think she's basically Ann Coulter, Coulter didn't "drive" anything really, she just found herself in the right place at the right time to make money off of a right wing movement.

[alfred russel]

Sheilbh, I hate the card "I live here so I know better" but I'm going to play it anyway.

The "Tea Party" as a collection of people wasn't new in 2010. I went to high school in the early 90s and when we got to vote on what radio station to listen to during lunch, Rush Limbaugh won 2 days a week (though the school nullified that vote). The right wing talk radio faction has been massive for a very long time. Rush Limbaugh gets a lot of flack, but if you go one click down on the right wing talk radio spectrum, a lot of the popular local guys are much more open to race baiting and conspiracy theories.

What changed isn't the size of that audience. What changed is that the GOP had been getting that audience to reliably vote for whatever Romney type candidate they put up, and at the time of the tea party they revolted. I'd summarize it more as, "you guys told us we needed to be moderate to accomplish our goals, and here we are with a democratic house, senate, and president and horrors such as obamacare are being enacted."

[Sheilbh]

Sheilbh, I hate the card "I live here so I know better" but I'm going to play it anyway.

The "Tea Party" as a collection of people wasn't new in 2010. I went to high school in the early 90s and when we got to vote on what radio station to listen to during lunch, Rush Limbaugh won 2 days a week (though the school nullified that vote). The right wing talk radio faction has been massive for a very long time. Rush Limbaugh gets a lot of flack, but if you go one click down on the right wing talk radio spectrum, a lot of the popular local guys are much more open to race baiting and conspiracy theories.

What changed isn't the size of that audience. What changed is that the GOP had been getting that audience to reliably vote for whatever Romney type candidate they put up, and at the time of the tea party they revolted. I'd summarize it more as, "you guys told us we needed to be moderate to accomplish our goals, and here we are with a democratic house, senate, and president and horrors such as obamacare are being enacted."

Fair.

I'm not saying she created it or anything like that. My point is she's the sort of political entrepreneur here. Deliberately or otherwise she discovers this market in the electorate that you can play to. And you're absolutely right that they probably voted occasionally and unenthusiastically for the GOP, generally. But Palin is the first politician who explicitly targets them rather than through dog whistles or "respectable moderates"/Romneys with the smart hair who want their votes but sort of look down on them. Palin leaves the election as a VP candidate with more enthusiastic crowds and more excitement on the base than she started (when she was unknown) or than the Presidential candidate. To me that's kind of exceptional - I can't think of anyone else who achieves that - Ryan, Edwards, Kaine, Leberman etc.

After Palin there are a slew of politicians who, like her, explicitly pander to that part of the electorate which turn out more for those candidates and begin to realise they actually have enough way that they don't just have to accept the thin gruel that "respectable moderate Republicans" dole out. So you get your Joe Millers and your witches in Delaware. There's no candidate who really panders to them in 2012 and you end up with Romney and I think at the same time the Republican establishment realise they might not have the grip on their party that they'd hope.

Then in comes Trump who, in Martin Amis's phrase, as the "defining asset: a crocodilian nose for inert and preferably moribund prey." Someone who can sense an entity that isn't strong or lithe enough to resist him. In this case the GOP. I just think there's a line from Palin clocking this underserved market, to Trump leveraging it for his hostile takeover.

Edit: So in a way this is what I mean by the barbarians are in the gates. There's this group that have been feeding off the conservative media but there was like a line between them and the GOP (though they were in some weird symbiotic relationship). Palin is the start of the takeover.

Edit: And I'm unsure if she's consequential or if it happens anyway, or if she's just sort of indicative she is the best example of what happens later on a bigger scale.

[alfred russel]

Sheilbh--what do you think about this premise?

Donald Trump is just George Wallace in 1968, but rather than running 3rd party, used those third party voters to win the republican primary. He won the general with a coalition of those third party voters plus republican die hards and those that couldn't stomach a democrat/Hillary Clinton.

[Sheilbh]

Sheilbh--what do you think about this premise?

Donald Trump is just George Wallace in 1968, but rather than running 3rd party, used those third party voters to win the republican primary. He won the general with a coalition of those third party voters plus republican die hards and those that couldn't stomach a democrat/Hillary Clinton.

I think there's something to it-ish and I think there are definitely echoes, but there's a big difference of 50 years so it's no those voters. It's the people who might be those voters now (which is probably slightly different). But I think the interesting part is what happens to those George Wallace "third party voters" between 1968 and now because I think a big chunk of that sort of bloc became part of the GOP electorate, but they were sort of the ginger step-child of the Republican Party.

So you want them riled up and on side and you throw them the odd dog-whistle/Neshoba County "states' rights" speech, but you don't let them sit at the grown up table and you always want plausible deniability. I think some Republicans were probably uncomfortable with any of those voters supporting them, and I think McCain was in that category.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Moving back to the Supreme Court--I think things we as a society and Democrats as a party should pursue before resorting to court packing would be:

1. Expanding all of the lower courts. This isn't court packing, this is governance. The number of lower court judgeships generally do get increased every so often, and the reality is caseloads in the Federal courts have increased 30% since 1990--the last time we significantly increased their number. The Judicial Conference of the United States (a rarely reported on body made up of the Chief Justice, the Chief Judge of each of the circuit courts, Chief District judges from a selection of judicial districts, and the Chief Judge of the Court of International Trade) has regularly issued recommendations for increasing judgeships. Their most recent recommendation was to create 65 new district judges and 5 new circuit judges. Due to the fact this conference operates relatively apolitically, and is headed by the current Republican Chief Justice and has many other Republican judges on it, its recommendations would serve as a strong basis for implementing what is actually just a needed process. It would have the obvious additional effect of giving the Democrats a number of unexpected new judgeships to fill in addition to the ones that will naturally open up during a hypothetical Biden term.

2. We need to have a broad national reckoning that judges were not intended to settle our most contentious issues. The fact that it's even a big deal that a 87 year old four time cancer survivor died, with huge impacts across a range of important national policy issues, is a grave defect in the system. One of the most significant reasons it has gotten to this point is a 40 year drought in serious legislation on many matters of consequence in the United States. The supermajority nature of the U.S. Senate is the single biggest reason for this, and the legislative filibuster simply needs to go, period. When you have figures like Barack Obama bothering to mention this as a former President, I think the writing is on the wall this needs to happen.

3. Above and beyond that, we've basically come to gradually accept what I call "judicial supremacy" in the United States. The idea that not only is the judiciary able to review and reject and reshape our laws, but that they are the only valid interpreters of our laws and our constitution. I actually think this is far out of step with the text of the constitution and the historical practice in the United States. Certainly the courts have a major role to play in this area of governance, but the idea that their ruling on any issue is always and must always be final, and that there are no valid political or legal alternatives to that state of affairs is broadly out of step with our history as a country, and really only became accepted almost universally from the 1950s and onward (coincidentally or perhaps not, right around the time the courts started issuing important touchstone liberal legal decisions, prior to that the courts were almost always seen as regressive barriers to progressive change and were actually the most unpopular with progressive movement types, going back to the earliest days of the republic.) There's actually a lot of ways to work around, counter, and dismiss the idea that the court has unlimited authority on any issue that makes it into its halls.

[OttoVonBismarck]

On point 3 I just made--frankly--the court needs its balls clipped much more than it needs packed.

[DGuller]

On point 3 I just made--frankly--the court needs its balls clipped much more than it needs packed.

Agreed.  The Supreme Court is not supposed be some kind of super Senate with a veto power over everything of substance.  Is there anything the SC can do in response to open defiance?  For example, what will happen if the SC rules Obamacare unconstitutional, but no one in the federal or state governments does anything different after the decision?

[celedhring]

On point 3 I just made--frankly--the court needs its balls clipped much more than it needs packed.

Agreed.  The Supreme Court is not supposed be some kind of super Senate with a veto power over everything of substance.  Is there anything the SC can do in response to open defiance?  For example, what will happen if the SC rules Obamacare unconstitutional, but no one in the federal or state governments does anything different after the decision?

Besides the constitutional crisis bit, you have the fact that ultimately you can't enforce a law that the courts have struck down. Nobody will be punished for flouting it.

Our Constitutional Court, incidentally, has punitive powers to enforce its rulings (from fines to disqualification from office). Does the SCOTUS have something like that, too?

[OttoVonBismarck]

Virtually none. Brown v. Board is one of the most famous supreme court decisions but is a good example of this, a few black students were (with the support of the military) enrolled in a few colleges in the immediate aftermath of Brown. The vast majority of southern school districts continued what was then unconstitutional race segregation for another decade. It took legislation from Congress and a Justice Department willing to really go at the States to force the issue.

[OttoVonBismarck]

The Supreme Court specifically has almost no defined constitutional powers (it has some, I said almost), most of the powers of the judiciary have evolved out of historical practice / norms and statutes empowering them to do specific things.

A huge portion of court rulings that go beyond just the issue before the court, and for example make broader constitutional pronouncements, are often not "self-enforcing", meaning the court is arguably just giving advice to the political branches about what's acceptable. Take for example if the Supreme Court quashed the entire ACA, but the executive continued to fund Medicaid expansion and the states continued to participate, and the exchanges continued to operate. The court cannot "create" criminal law, it would be difficult to go after any of the officials criminally (not least because you would need a lot of executive help to do so--a big part of why the Trumpers have gotten away with a lot of bad behavior is the President actually controls to a significant degree the Federal law enforcement apparatus, even though by "norms" the DoJ is supposed to lean towards being apolitical.)

What you could have is people suing as individuals basically saying they don't want to pay into this unconstitutional system, but even that would be hard to enforce.

It would obviously create levels of chaos, but it would also depend heavily on what we're talking about. On a case by case basis ignoring the Supreme Court could have anything from "national catastrophe" to "nothingburger" consequences.