Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died • Hacker News Board

Re: Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died

#631

Post by GavinMcG » Sat, Sep 19, 2020, 1:55 AM UTC

erichocean wrote: post #416

paxys wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He ideally should be able to, as long as the correct procedures are followed. Republicans, however, set the precedent by not allowing Obama to appoint one in his last year in office. My money, however, is on them ramming someone through anyways.

> He ideally should be able to, as long as the correct procedures are followed. Part of that procedure is having your party in charge of the Senate at the time of said nomination. Obama did nominate someone, he simply could not get him confirmed. That's on Obama (and Democrats more generally). Trump will also nominate someone, and because his party has a majority in the Senate, that nominee will likely be confirmed w…

> he simply could not get him confirmed

That's hardly the whole truth. McConnell refused to even hold hearings.

Re: Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died

#632

Post by stjohnswarts » Sat, Sep 19, 2020, 1:56 AM UTC

bonzini wrote: post #8

Of course a president should not appoint a judge on the last few months of his term, should he?

Trump most likely has had plans for this for months and knows who he's going to pick, expect a choice by the end of next week and confirmation within a month. They don't have much time to get a new person in there so they've had a plan for this for months, if not years.

Re: Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died

#633

Post by taurath » Sat, Sep 19, 2020, 1:56 AM UTC

blake1 wrote: post #628

erichocean wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He ideally should be able to, as long as the correct procedures are followed. Part of that procedure is having your party in charge of the Senate at the time of said nomination. Obama did nominate someone, he simply could not get him confirmed. That's on Obama (and Democrats more generally). Trump will also nominate someone, and because his party has a majority in the Senate, that nominee will likely be confirmed w…

McConnel had serious doubts that Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, would _fail_ to get a majority in the senate, so he forbade the nomination to come to a vote. So it’s a little different than you pose: you a pretending that Obama’s nomination came to a vote and lost (which would be entirely legitimate). The majority leader prevented that from even happening.

Sorry, if that were true, then obama could've nominated someone else.

Why would you need to block a vote you know you will win?

Re: Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died

#634

Post by p1necone » Sat, Sep 19, 2020, 1:56 AM UTC

3131s wrote: post #303

seibelj wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sad to say you may find the grass is always greener on the other side - government corruption exists everywhere that government exists.

If you are not an American it's hard to understand the extent to which there is a cultural vortex where everything around you feels manufactured. I left seven years ago and now live in a terrible third-world dictatorship actually. It's not that America is so bad to live in (if you have some money), but that things should be much better for young people especially and the justifications for why it can't be better are…

I see this on HN all the time - there will be some discussion about a problem that America has, and some one will suggest some solution. And then there'll be resounding cries of "that's impossible, too expensive, can't be done etc", but the suggested solution is something that > 50% of other western nations already do and there's plenty of evidence for it's effectiveness.

Re: Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died

#635

Post by erichocean » Sat, Sep 19, 2020, 1:57 AM UTC

blake1 wrote: post #628

erichocean wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He ideally should be able to, as long as the correct procedures are followed. Part of that procedure is having your party in charge of the Senate at the time of said nomination. Obama did nominate someone, he simply could not get him confirmed. That's on Obama (and Democrats more generally). Trump will also nominate someone, and because his party has a majority in the Senate, that nominee will likely be confirmed w…

McConnel had serious doubts that Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, would _fail_ to get a majority in the senate, so he forbade the nomination to come to a vote. So it’s a little different than you pose: you a pretending that Obama’s nomination came to a vote and lost (which would be entirely legitimate). The majority leader prevented that from even happening.

> [if] Obama had a Democratic Senate majority when he nominated Merrick Garland…

With a Democratic majority, Garland would have been confirmed. It's exactly because no Democratic majority in the Senate existed that Garland wasn't even voted on (and actually didn't even get a hearing).

Re: Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died

#636

Post by MoosePirate » Sat, Sep 19, 2020, 1:57 AM UTC

JacobAldridge wrote: post #505

bonzini wrote: post #8

Of course a president should not appoint a judge on the last few months of his term, should he?

At what point should a President, especially in their first term running for re-election, stop being able to fulfill parts of their duties? Declaring war? Responding to an attack? Talking to other world leaders? Advocating Congress to act on matters? Signing bills into laws? Naming post offices? Being allowed into the Oval Office? Independent of this specific situation, there has to be a line drawn somewhere. And tha…

Yes, the point is that Republicans violated the principles you are laying out here under the exact same situation. So violating this principle again in the exact same way would be the only non-hypocritical way to handle this situation.

Re: Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died

#637

Post by dang » Sat, Sep 19, 2020, 1:58 AM UTC

moate wrote: post #281

quickthrowman wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mitch McConnell and Trump will have a replacement confirmed by the end of October.

Absolutely not. Why would Trump eliminate one of the biggest draws to electing him? If he pushes someone through before November, he absolutely loses the senate (assuming you believe the polls). No way those purple states with senators up for election are going to carry Republicans who went from "we don't vote for the USSC during final term years" to "RUSH THROUGH THE FEDERALIST SOCIETY NOMINEE!" in 4 years. The move…

Please don't use uppercase for emphasis. If you want to emphasize a word or phrase, put asterisks around it and it will get italicized.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Re: Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died

#638

Post by edoceo » Sat, Sep 19, 2020, 1:58 AM UTC

abawany wrote: post #578

mrkstu wrote: post #566

For those so certain that the Republican Senate is going to ram though someone, there are a few moderates left, and they've already decided thing can wait until after the election: "So far the following GOP Senators have pledged that they will not consider a Supreme Court appointment until after the next inauguration. Susan Collins Chuck Grassley Lisa Murkowski" [0]: https://twitter.com/yashar/status/1307115333669580…

Hope you're right: https://www.axios.com/trump-ginsburg-supreme-court-10bf5f37-... . The threat of withholding money if they don't comply has got to be pretty effective to bring any independent thinkers in line.

Another case for removing big money from politics

Re: Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died

#639

Post by dang » Sat, Sep 19, 2020, 1:58 AM UTC

kwhat4 wrote: post #260

The republicans know how to win, and will do so by any means necessary. The democrats seem happy taking the high road to yet another humiliating defeat. This is why I'm done voting and pretending it makes a difference.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24523153.

Re: Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died

#640

Post by bleepblorp » Sat, Sep 19, 2020, 1:58 AM UTC

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #534

bleepblorp wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Understanding how modern societies fail was my professional field. The United States is following in the footsteps of many countries that transitioned from democracy to authoritarianism. The judiciary was the last remaining bulwark that had been slightly slowing the erosion of democratic rights. With the judicial balance of power now in the hands of a president who has both taken steps to conduct an unfair election a…

What do your studies say about creating new states to gain more votes in the senate? Something that's already been introduced in the house. Worse even its being created by shrinking the zone that was purposefully created to not be a state. Puerto Rico would undoubtedly also give 2 more democratic seats, but at least it's a large American territory, not something we're artificially creating for more votes.

The general problem with any kind of pro-democracy reforms is that the people who need to approve reforms are precisely the people who benefit from current antidemocratic policies. No one will approve reforms that will end their careers.

Some of the US' democratic problems could be helped by splitting up the more populous states so their populations have more representation in the Senate and Electoral College, but any such plan would need to be approved by flyover state Republican Senators who benefit handsomely from the status quo.

Given that the GOP party line--echoed by both McConnell and Trump--is that fixing US democracy would be a Democratic power grab, meaningful reforms are dead on arrival. This is especially true as any meaningful reforms would, by definition, remove the Republican party's disproportionate hold on power.

Sadly, I don't see a way out of this. With no route for peaceful reform, the usual escape route for irreconcilable differences within a country is civil war, but the human geography of the United States makes another civil war very unlikely. An inexorable slide into deepening authoritarian oligarchy/kleptocracy seems unavoidable.