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Collins is publicly saying that the next president should pick the judge. That’s 3 presumable no’s, Dems only need one more to stall the vote.
 
I’m not sure we can count on the 6-3 court to prevent legislative wins from the Dems. Roberts, assuming he stays during a Biden term, is going to be very concerned about preserving the courts legitimacy. Gorsuch seems somewhat swing vote-y and at this point I’m not sure Trump has the votes to nominate someone much further to the right than Gorsuch. Amy Coney Barrett is the most talked about nominee, but I can’t see her getting through the senate.

I could see a situation in which the court refrains from taking on divisive cases that would overturn a precedent (similar to how they’ve been handling electoral and abortion cases this year). The court, conservative as it is, is much more concerned about preserving institutions than congress is. Roberts isn’t going to want to give Biden more ammunition to court pack.

I think Dems have the ability (and legal latitude) to accomplish most of what LC suggested without being stopped by the court. It also seems counterproductive to give Dems a reason to pack the courts when that probably could be avoided now.

I totally agree that nominating Merrick Garland would be a stroke of genius. Election winning even.

Edit: Lagoa also looks good. She could probably win over the republicans saying no and maybe win over some conservative Dems. Maybe it’ll even win Trump Florida.
 
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After a few days of Supreme Court reporting, i am becoming more convinced that Barbara Lagoa is the best choice politically and has the best chance of being confirmed before the election. She is Latina, she had bipartisan support for her circuit confirmation, and she is very young (she’ll be on the court for a long time). I think the GOP is also going to (successfully) spend a lot of money trying to brand her as a moderate/compromise pick in the vein of Merrick Garland and will paint Dems as hypocrites for opposing her. We’ve heard reports that Romney won’t vote before inauguration but haven’t heard from him directly, it’s probably this kind of decision he’s waiting on. Likewise, I can easily see Collins backtracking if Trump picks a “unity” justice. I think the media is overstating how much it will help Trump in Florida. Ultimately it doesn’t matter, but Lagoa is probably the most minimal damage for confirming a justice at this stage.

On the other hand, Josh Hawley is vowing not to confirm a justice who doesn’t explicitly state that Roe v Wade was wrongly decided. You lose Collins and Murkowski with this, but you might not lose anyone else. However, the bigger risk is losing someone like Gardner or even Romney and not getting confirmation before the election. Confirming someone like that could be political suicide for senators who are barely holding on. I also read that Mark Kelly will be sworn in immediately if he wins since it’s a special election, so confirming after the election will be even harder.

My only prediction is this: Trump probably doesn’t even know who he’s picking yet. His first justice confirmation went pretty smoothly. Gorsuch was a good pick, the GOP had a great messaging apparatus around the confirmation, and Democrats’ move ending the filibuster didn’t go down as well as it could’ve. The Kavanaugh confirmation, on the other hand, was a total disaster that can’t be repeated this close to an election. He needs this to be a Gorusch type of process, or they lose the seat. I imagine the McConnells and other corporate/politically calculated republicans are pushing for Lagoa, while the hardcore prolifers are pushing for Barrett. Trump loses two votes either way, the question is whether one justice loses more than the other and if anybody loses a senate seat over it.
 
Poll came out today with Biden up 5 in Ohio, which helped move the state to tossup status on 538. I imagine Trump will carry it, but Ohio being competitive is a really bad sign for him. I’d long thought Ohio would be comfortably red going forward.
 
No matter how this turns out in the end, USA is permanently damaged, or at least for many, many years to come. Pandora's box is open.
 
Yeah, the fragility of the Union is on display here. Like there's a non-zero chance of a coup attempt, and that's pretty scary.
 
America has real problems if the false equivalencies between Trump and “insert Democrat candidate” continue. This is not a lesser of two evils election. It’s a choice between someone who is qualified to hold office and someone who is using the office for personal gain and undermining democratic values in the process. I don’t have a problem with conservatives or conservative values, but if your brand loyalty is so strong that you can’t realize how much of an unequivocal problem Trump is, America is fucked. It would be a net gain for all Americans -Democrats and Republicans- if he got taken to the cleaners in November.
 
www.cnbc.com

Trump nominates Amy Coney Barrett to Supreme Court, setting up election year confirmation battle

Barrett's selection comes just a week after Ginsburg died from complications due to cancer found on her pancreas.
www.cnbc.com www.cnbc.com
  • President Donald Trump has selected Judge Amy Coney Barrett to fill the vacancy left by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court, NBC News has learned.
  • Trump’s announcement will come just 38 days before voters will decide whether he will hold the White House for a second term, and is bound to have profound reverberations on all three branches of government.
  • Barrett’s selection will come just a week after Ginsburg died from complications due to cancer found on her pancreas.
 
I’m not surprised that some significant subset of Americans are so uneducated or out of touch that they can’t be bothered to tell the difference between truth and fiction, and they think Trump is a genius. Let’s say that’s 20% of the population and just write them off.

I’m more surprised by establishment Republicans who have sold their souls to Trumpism in a naked attempt to hold onto power. Where the hell are the free traders, values voters, and deficit hawks, and how on earth can they support a president who is demonstrably hostile toward those views? Where are the strict constitutionalists who should be vomiting in the streets over the president’s behavior? Is it really worth selling out every single one of your supposed principles in order to pack the Supreme Court and try to keep power in the Senate?

What happened to the intellectual right — the scions of William F. Buckley? A handful of principled ones have opposed Trump, like Bill Kristol, but it seems like the rest have gone silent or fallen in line. Are their principles worth so little in the end?

Then you have the frustrated populists, anti-immigrationists, and anti-China folks who legitimately like Trump’s policies. It’s a little weird on the China front, because Trump is conspicuously silent on the erosion of freedoms in Hong Kong that violate the 50-year clause in the handover agreeements with the U.K., but they love the back and forth on tariffs. And the Democrats have legitimately abandoned the labor-class working poor who are in industries who can’t realistically compete with foreign companies anymore, as ever since Bill Clinton both major parties have been 100% free traders, leaving no option for these folks until Trump appeared in 2016. Not sure how many people are in this bucket.

And there’s the “what the hell do you have to lose” crowd, who figured an outsider was better than any establishment option. Gotta wonder how many of those will switch from Trump in 2016 back to Biden in 2020.

I don’t know, I think Trump underestimated just how much midwesterners dislike rudeness (I know that’s ironic coming from me, but I spent a number of formative years on the east coast). I think there’s an awful lot of buyer’s remorse in Michigan and Wisconsin on that point alone, and that’s probably enough to sink Trump. God, I hope so.
 
I think it was @Mosh, who predicted some sort of October bombshelll news that could have an effect on the election and well.... The New York Times have two articles regarding Trump's Taxes and how he paid something like $750 in income tax and his businesses show a long trail of losses.

I think the most telling thing is how much he paid in income tax, the business losses.... that's not THAT unusual. Also.... I don't think most people voting for him care. You guys think it could sway things?
 
He more or less admitted to this during a debate when Hillary suggested he doesn’t pay federal taxes and he replied by saying “that makes me smart.” None of this should be a surprise to anyone, but this story comes in time for the first debate.
 
His supporters won’t care, they’ll think he’s doing 3D chess accounting tricks to beat the system and they’ll see that as admirable.

I’m just crossing my fingers for Biden to avoid crashing and burning in the debates.
 
Jer said:
I’m more surprised by establishment Republicans who have sold their souls to Trumpism in a naked attempt to hold onto power. Where the hell are the free traders, values voters, and deficit hawks, and how on earth can they support a president who is demonstrably hostile toward those views? Where are the strict constitutionalists who should be vomiting in the streets over the president’s behavior? Is it really worth selling out every single one of your supposed principles in order to pack the Supreme Court and try to keep power in the Senate?
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Really what is the option then .. Biden is not really any of those things nor is the part he is running for?


I also do not get the left out there protesting with BLM voting for a candidate that authored many of the laws that at a minimum contributed to over policing and the part that has hired virtually every police chief in most major cities over several decades and negotiated the contracts with police unions and tolerated these things for years





The debates (along with who shows up to vote) will decide the election. Biden is clearly ahead, so he needs to be somewhere around break even in the debates and he is in good shape. Trump needs to win them to have a shot at this.
 
The takeaway here isn't that he doesn't like paying taxes. It's how indebted he is.

Edit: @bearfan do debates really matter that much though? It's mostly a show anyway. Do they really move the "undecided voters"/get people out to vote or is that done by other factors?
 
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bearfan said:
I also do not get the left out there protesting with BLM voting for a candidate that authored many of the laws that at a minimum contributed to over policing and the part that has hired virtually every police chief in most major cities over several decades and negotiated the contracts with police unions and tolerated these things for years
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I guess because they believe he might sign laws that move things in the direction they want, whereas they know Donald Trump won't.

Progress is often forced on presidents who had to moderate in order to win elections. See Obama's evolution on gay marriage, for example.
 
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