U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer to Retire
npr.org
npr.org
It's so frustrating that Republicans can just ignore law and continue to get elected. Meanwhile they call themselves the party of law and order, apparently that's only law and order for outsiders.
The risk is that Sinema and Manchin have shown very little party loyalty. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if they say we should bring back the filibuster for judicial appointments.
Perhaps you don't feel you owe an opposing party better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
Dems are going to get slaughtered in '22.
Facts is facts and the Dems are positioning themsleves in a way to mitigate and prepare for the loss.
What makes it worse is that Biden likely won't be the one to run and Kamala being abandoned will embarrass the party almost more than keeping her.
Why is this likely?
And things could change by the end of his term. For instance, he might accomplish something. (Ironically, losing the midterms might be the best way to do that. He's tried to govern as though he had a large majority in Congress, when in reality he has a 50/50 Senate, and he can't pass anything further to the left than Manchin will go along with. If he clearly lost the Senate, he might stop trying to govern that way.)
When he was elected he was 4 years older than the oldest sitting president (who preceded him). What makes you think the second term will be any different?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FJ6AtM-WQAA4aVn?format=jpg&name=...
and a lot of these are nitpicky nickles and dimes.
Like seriously 1 billion for headstart...whoopdie doo...
My wife wanted to teach for headstart, then found out it only pays like $20k for a teacher. I mean that's pathetic pay and we really need to do better by teachers, etc.
Biden promised to legalize marijuana, and fix healthcare and the only positive thing was maybe the child tax credit which is honestly the only time I've ever gotten a $ from the govt or any sort of oh wow the govt does do good sometimes...
Biden could wipe out student loans for millions of Americans, but chooses not to.
Biden could wipe out the filibuster (he has pressure he could put on Sinema and Manchin) but he does nothing.
I'd say Bernie has literally done more for us as the Budget Committee Chair this past year and a half than Biden has done.
He could probably even do an executive order banning congress from investing in stocks and self-enrichment, and a number of other anti-corruption things. But of course corruption is par for the course for most politicians...
Can't stand the GOP either but at least they don't pretend to be on your side then stab you in the back...they stab you in the front.
There is a lot to fix, he's only been in position for 12 months. Politics and bureaucracy takes time man... and there is some seriously unprecedented shit happening that he walked into. he's not magic. he can't just click his fingers and fix everything that you want.
Isn't that true for every president? Presidents love to claim all sort of "victories" for all sorts of things, or lambast their opponents for things, but in reality, it's really congress and the house that's are the legislative power in the system, not the office of the president. It should be them that enact the most changes.
A lot of these things you mention are quite literally outside of the scope of what the president can realistically do, or should be able to do. Sure, he can set the agenda to a significant degree, has a lot of control over his own party, has quite extensive executive powers, but in the end, congress really is much more powerful.
The way I head Americans talk about the president sometimes makes me feel like they are confusing "president" with "almighty ruler of the country" and don't understand their own political system.
He’ll be 86 at the end of his second term.
In an election year that conservatives are expected to sweep, Manchin/Sinema voters could be upset if their representatives lose them the ability to seat a justice of their choice. It is my belief that Obama is the only nominee that would have widely bipartisan unconditional support.
The last decade has destroyed my sense of irony, so I really don’t known if you’re being serious or not.
I think it is impossible after having lived through the Obama administration to think that Obama would get bipartisan support. (EDIT: It turns out @meepmorp said the same more pithily: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30088921#30089293 .)
For that matter, obstructionist opposition is not about the nominee; it's believable that the GOP would have refused to seat Kavanaugh or ACB, if they had been nominated by Obama.
Sure, Obama might get 50+% support from voters, but it’s not a popular vote and no single Republican Senator would vote to confirm him, McConnell would make sure of it. He’s made a career out of trying to stop Obama.
Plus, Obama’s entire presidency would be used to show political bias. With an unknown judge name, there’s a slight veneer of impartiality. With a past President, there isn’t.
For sure, but did you see Democrats do anything different with Trump's agenda? They fought him just as hard or harder than Republicans fought Obama. Nobody gets a pass in my opinion.
I believe that the difference is that some in the Republican party—McConnell, for example—explicitly advanced the position "whatever Obama does, we will oppose." Whereas I am aware of no mainstream Democratic politician who stated a blanket opposition to anything Trump might do; it just happened that they very often disagreed with him on the things he did do.
I think bad-faith accusations come from opposing a person's positions ad hominem, because of who holds them, rather than from simply disagreeing, even consistently, passionately, and vociferously, with many or all of the positions that a person happens to hold.
They literally tried to impeach him before he took office. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efforts_to_impeach_Donald_Trum...
Notice that the Wikipedia article you cite itself cites two sources for the claim of talk of impeachment before election, and, as far as I can tell, neither of these quotes any Democrat by name as calling for impeachment before he held office. This is, again, a far cry from McConnell, who very much went on record from his leadership position as opposing anything Obama might do; and, for that matter, from the Republicans who, on the record, called for Biden's impeachment before he held office.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/04/donald-trump...
(I find on re-reading that my parent post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30095537 said "neither of these quotes any Democrat by name as calling for impeachment before he held office." I meant, though I see now that I did not say, any mainstream Democratic politician. I apologise if this seems to be moving the goalposts; I can say only that I misspoke, rather than trying intentionally to change the debate mid-stream. I will certainly grant that there were everyday Democratic voters who would have been happy to see Trump impeached before office, and who maybe even explicitly called for it, but I think such on-the-street voices cannot reasonably be compared in prominence or impact to McConnell's actions.)
Did you miss the entire Russian Collusion Conspiracy Theory that they promulgated during his entire time in office? I happen to think Trump was an ineffective President who repeatedly shot himself in the foot, but it's delusional to act like the Democrats didn't fight him from day one on literally everything.
Amy Coney Barrett is 49, for example.
100%. Ever since O'Connor they've been leaning heavily toward younger nominees.