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Mitch McConnell shares GOP's ‘worst nightmare’ scenario of a Harris-Walz White House
(www.rawstory.com)
So his main objection is a loss of power
this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2024
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Die mad about it.
I thought someone finally destroyed McConnell's phylactery. Did he have a second one hidden away somewhere?
During his speech, Spectrum reports that McConnell called the Walz-Harris ticket “the far left of the Democratic Party.”
“And by the way, that’s most Democrats today,” McConnell said, according to Spectrum.
I didn't realize the Dems were the far left party I'd been asking for. In this country, you can just say whatever and nobody checks. Apologies for multiple main-thread posts.
Everyone looks like a leftist when you're an avowed fascist.
You know, if the orange shithead is such a liability, maybe you should have condemned his actions leading up to J6, you melted bastard. Then maybe he wouldn't be the guy running the show.
During his speech, Spectrum reports that McConnell called the Walz-Harris ticket “the far left of the Democratic Party.”
“And by the way, that’s most Democrats today,” McConnell said, according to Spectrum.
Oh, no! Harris and Walz are representing the will of the majority of the people! Whatever the fuck is to be done about democracy?!
It's also not possible for most democrats to be on the far left of their party (unless the remaining minority are on average even further to the right of their party). If everyone's further left than you're expecting, that's just the party's new average center position.
Majority of Americans: Support policies X, Y, and Z.
Democrats: Put policies X, Y, and Z into their platform.
Republicans: Extreme socialist Demoncrabs want to destroy America!!!
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Flatly wrong about packing SCOTUS. It's probably a bad idea--as is ending the filibuster--but it's not unconstitutional.
As to why it's a bad idea - Republicans haven't increased the size of the court when they've held the legislature and presidency; packing the court would encourage them to do the same the next time they have power--and they will eventually, because that's the way politics have gone in this country--and we'd quickly end up with a court that's even more unwieldy than it is now.
The same principle applies to ending the filibuster; if it's ended now, then Dems can't use it when they are out of power in the Senate. Because, again, Republicans will win again at some point--possibly even this fall--and giving absolute power to a single party is a bad idea.
And that's how we keep scooting to the right.
People think there's a sense of fair play involved here and a dislike for hypocrisy, but it isn't the case. Look at what happened for appointments to the supreme Court under Obama vs trump as an example. I understand why you might feel this way considering that the nuclear option for ending cloture wasn't used by Republicans until Harry Reid did it, but 20 years later honor and decorum are no longer foundational to government.
Anymore, I think the best thing to do is use tools available to terrible effect, then with any luck all the "honor system" stuff can be written into law.
Bring back the talking filibuster, and pack the court to fix it's rules, ethics, and enforcement (the court doesn't even respect stare decisis anymore), add states, expand the cap on the house, blow the electoral college. No more gentlemen's agreements.
At least that's how I see it.
I'm absolutely fine with the talking filibuster; I love it, and think we should do it. Killing it entirely? No.
Packing the court? Also no. If anything, I think that the size should be reduced. I'd be fine with term limits on judges (say, 16 years), along with a code of ethics and mandatory financial disclosures and recusals for conflicts of interest. But packing the court is not a good idea.
People think there’s a sense of fair play involved here and a dislike for hypocrisy, but it isn’t the case.
I think that if we're ever going to get back to a point where we aren't hyperpartisan, we need to operate in good faith, even if the other side isn't. Constantly escalating ends up hurting us in the long run. And, again - as soon as you create the tools to get your way, those tools will be used against you; a hammer doesn't care which ideologue is swinging it.
expand the cap on the house,
Bad idea. Getting 400+ people to stop arguing long enough to vote on a thing is already hard enough. You'd just be adding more layers of bullshit.
add states
Eh. Last I knew, PR didn't really want to be a state; I recall that under 50% of the island population wanted statehood. D.C. might, but I'm not sure that making a city a whole-ass state--particularly since most of the city is actually in Virginia and Maryland--is a good idea. That would have the effect of ensuring that voters in D.C. would be far more powerful than any other voters, since you would have a fairly small number of voters selecting two senators. (I can't find exact populatino data for D.C. alone; all population figures I can find are for metro D.C., which counts large parts of Virginia and Maryland; those voters already have representatives and senators.)
blow the electoral college
I oppose this for the same reason that I oppose getting rid of the Senate and going to a direct democracy; an electoral college balances the interests of the states as a whole against the population, because they're not always the same. An electoral system forces candidates to try and balance a message, rather than focusing solely on the most populous areas. Rather than eliminating the electoral college, I'd rather see some form of ranked-choice voting, which would tend to eliminate candidates that had the most extremely unpopular platforms. (E.g., Trump consistently won about 30% of the votes in the 2015 primaries, but a strong majority of voters would have selected him as their last choice. Some form of ranked choice in the Republican primaries likely would have resulted in a candidate like Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio instead of Trump.)
All of this is a balancing game of competing interests and priorities. Steamrolling people and hammering them isn't going to make anything better. Yes, I hear what you're saying about the Overton window, but frankly, that's a messaging problem that the left has created. If the right is able to move the Overton window, it's because the left is doing a really shitty job at meeting voters where they are, while the right is doing a damn good job at outreach.
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Too bad polio wasn't a better shot.
Did he almost die of polio or something?
My dad did. Almost died from it, I mean. I assume this is just about polio being rampant at the time. But if McFuckface got it and recovered, sucks for us.
I see the man behind "making election day a national holiday is a power grab by the democrats"^[1] is rolling out some new hits. Never ceases to amaze that he can get away with saying this stuff out loud.
Well, of course. Consider your own reference. Mitch knows they are wildly unpopular, and making it easier for the common folk they've been fucking over for years to vote would be disastrous for them.
By the way, on packing the Supreme Court ... you may know this already. It's unconstitutional.
Every word uttered by a conservative is deception or manipulation.
Fun fact, Congress can change the size of the Supreme Court at will for any reason.
They SHRUNK the court in 1866 from 9 to 7 because they just fucking hated Andrew Johnson THAT MUCH and they wanted to deny him a nomination.
After Johnson was out, they raised it back up to 9 in 1869, Granting 2, and it stayed that way ever since.
https://www.history.com/news/supreme-court-justices-number-constitution
"The Supreme Court had just ruled that paper money was unconstitutional, which would have 'wreaked havoc' with the U.S. Treasury, says Marcus. But Grant and Congress quickly confirmed two new justices who reversed the Court’s decision in the earlier case, saving the Republicans from having to undo the nation’s entire system of legal tender."
They also shrank the court to 8 in 2016.
That was a little different, they didn't actually change the size of the court, they just maintained the vacancy.
In 1866 they actually went and said "Nah, 7 is good." Which not only kept Johnson from filling a vacancy, it bounced someone else out.
The Supreme Court had just ruled that paper money was unconstitutional
Jesus and I thought our court was making the most dumbass decisions. Wierdly gives me hope that the Harris administration can fix a whole bumcha bullshit though.
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Don’t threaten me with a good time, you creepy old shirtball!
If this were true, I'd be tempted to drop everything and volunteer for the Harris campaign.
GOD if only they were RIGHT about how "dangerous" democrats were. IF ONLY THE DEMOCRATS WEREN'T COWARDS and would actually do this shit
Man, that's the worst nightmare scenario? Fucking weaksauce. They'd still be breathing, instead of, y'know, put up against a wall and shot, like SCOTUS has ruled is perfectly legal now. As always, every word out of his mouth is self-serving bullshit.
Hahaha, I had almost forgotten how good that face is. The eyes, the lip, the ears.. perfection.
It's weird just how many things that are a Republican's nightmare are also in my dreams.
By the way, on packing the Supreme Court ... you may know this already. It's unconstitutional.
The only things the constitution has to say on the matter of the supreme court are: there has to be one, the supreme court judges should be paid, and the president can appoint supreme court justices with the advice and consent of the senate. It is completely silent on matters of how many supreme court justices there should be, or how long their terms should be.
For all his many, many faults, Mitch McConnell is not a profoundly stupid man, so I'm sure he knows this. Since he very likely knows this already, he probably has a reason for lying to the public on the matter. If the president does appoint several more justices, it's not like the Republicans can sue: no lower court would take the case, and the supreme court would already be packed with people who will actually be faithful to the constitution. So legal threats are a complete non-starter. That just leaves non-legal threats, which is what I think this is. I think Glitch is previewing the Republican strategy in the case of Harris getting more justices hired, which is they'll stoke up the fear and hatred of their idiotic, mouth breathing supporters. It's a thinly-veiled threat of treason.
Is that a promise?
McConnell continued. "By the way, on packing the Supreme Court ... you may know this already. It's unconstitutional."
Alternative headline 'McConnell Admits Packing Supreme Court Unconstitutional'.