Rachel Maddow: SCOTUS and 2016

[MBS]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/reshaping-the-supreme-court-our-most-disruptive-branch-of-government/2015/06/23/bdaf3e8c-18ff-11e5-93b7-5eddc056ad8a_story.html

THE reason to support the Democratic nominees for president and senate in November 2016:

. . .On everything from the states’ systems for drawing legislative districts, to the Affordable Care Act, to voting rights, to the tear-down of campaign finance laws that has supercharged the leverage of the politically inclined super-rich, this court has shown a voracious appetite for finding cases with the potential to disrupt settled policies. The Supreme Court always matters, but under Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., with the court so enthusiastic about shifting the direction of the country, it really (really!) matters who is on that bench.
. .
Congress has degenerated into an institution whose best days are when it simply avoids disaster. Thanks mostly to Congress, the powers of the presidency have evolved to become almost limitless in matters of national security and purely administrative on domestic issues.
But whoever is elected our next president will likely have the ability to reshape the most robust, intact and occasionally ferociously aggressive locus of power in our government.
. ..

But with the Supreme Court basking in center-stage glory (or ignominy), poised to potentially take health coverage away from millions of families, to issue a sweeping civil rights rebuke or advance and to decide the fate of the legally and logistically beleaguered system of lethal injection, it would be naive to think that in this election the Supreme Court will be only an elite political concern.

Watch the debates this year. Choose your candidates wisely. When the justices rule on all of the huge cases to be decided this month, think about what kind of court majorities you want, for the rest of your life. As goes the next president, so goes the court.

[Scuba]

1. This is one very key issue, and makes electing Bernie Sanders even more critical.

[PDittie]

2. Exactly!

I grew weary of the SCOTUS excuse from Clintonites long, long ago. What makes them think Clinton's nominees are going to be better than Sanders'? Why, it's because Bernie isn't electable, doncha know.

[AndreaCG]

3. So you're weary

That doesn't make Rachel's point any less valid. It's not who Bernie would nominate versus who Hillary would, it's who would either appoint as opposed to Jeb, Scottie or the rest of the callow dangerous dim bulbs running on the other side. If you can't remember 2000 and the next eight years you need a shot to the brain. (Not a bullet, a memory boost)

[PDittie]

5. Well, thanks for the medical advice

Dr. Know-It-All, but I'm fully cognizant of Rachel's premise, long before she so expertly articulated it.

My point -- maybe you missed it, maybe you ignored it, doesn't matter -- is that people who say "Supreme Court" in voting for Hillary Clinton in the primary are the ones who are demonstrating early onset dementia. IMHO.

I hope you aren't one of those.

[AndreaCG]

11. You're welcome you charming soul

I will vote for whichever Democrat wins the nomination. Because who is nominated to the Supreme Court matters

[PDittie]

12. That makes you more enlightened

than some.

[AndreaCG]

14. I don't follow all the Hillary vs Bernie threads intensely

Because it depresses me to witness democrats bicker so, but it is my impression that the majority of the Hillary voters will cast a ballot for Bernie in November should he be the nominee, they just feel for various reasons that need not be specified now that he will not be able to win the general. Whereas a fairly high percentage of Bernie voters state flatly they will not vote for Hillary in the general. Scotus isn't the only reason I think this mindset is foolish but it's an easy one to frame.

[PDittie]

15. I think most of those are generalizations

in the extreme. But there's no point in quarreling about your impressions.

If you were here in 2008, you know that this is child daycare compared to that time. Democrats bicker with each other as a ritual and as a routine, in every election, right down to city dogcatcher. It's just what we do.

I don't think it's unhealthy. It might not be pleasant but it does seem to be the only way that the sausage gets ground, cased, and cooked.

[AndreaCG]

16. I've been on DU for a long time

Though I'll go long periods just lurking. I don't remember 2008 which makes me suspect the Hillary/Barack battles wearied me too (and to my chagrin I was an Edwards supporter) did a big percentage on either side state that they'd sit out the election if their candidate didn't get the nod? I doubt it but I could be wrong

[PDittie]

18. I share your weariness

as posted at the beginning. And I was also an Edwards supporter. One of about 233 at my precinct convention (all the rest Obama or Clinton, with most of the Obama supporters young and new to the process, and some African Americans among the Hillary caucus who thought the country just wasn't ready for a black man to be president).

I thought Edwards was a man of decency, integrity, and who understood the plight of the middle class. Laughable now, yes? One out of three ain't a passing grade.

As time and the primary season passed, some Clinton supporters -- they called themselves PUMAs; see also here -- held a grudge, but I feel certain most of that melted away by November of 2016 (though this recent New Repub article takes exception with that premise). I can recall being at the Texas Democratic Party convention in May of 2008 on that Saturday afternoon when Hillary Clinton conceded the nomination to Obama. I saw grown men cry -- older white rural gimme-cap men in blue jean overalls.

The next day I saw some delegates wearing T-shirts that said "NObama" on the back.

So yeah, we Democrats have some mitigating to do with each other (especially in Texas, where we fight with each other over 40% of the statewide vote).

[AndreaCG]

19. Yes now I recall the PUMA phenomenon

I was suspicious of Obama because a good friend had interviewed him prior to declaring and said of all the politicians he had ever dealt with only one had been more arrogant (my friend is black so he can use that word). That suspicion lessened as the campaign progressed, and Obama must have improved his temperament because when I had the privilege of spending 45 minutes in his presence with only three other guests present he could not have been more forthcoming and gracious.

[PatrickforO]

17. I don't state that flatly, and have not seen a majority of Sanders supporters saying they would not

vote for Clinton if she's the nominee. To me a vote for Clinton in the general election would be the lesser of two evils, should she be the nominee, because anyone the Republicans run will be the greater evil.

Should Sanders be the nominee, a vote for him will be a vote for a better future.

But, either way, I'll still vote.

[MBS]

6. + 1000 n/t

[cab67]

4. It's not a matter of Bernie vs Clinton.

I will be caucusing for Bernie Sanders. His views and values mirror mine more than Hillary Clinton's. I will work hard to help him win the caucuses in my state.

But if, for whatever reason, Hillary Clinton wins the nomination, I will work just as hard to make sure she is elected president. She's not, to borrow a phrase from Molly Ivins, my kind of Democrat, but she's a Democrat.

I get alarmed every time I see someone say there's no difference between Hillary Clinton and most of the Republicans in the candidate pool. That's objectively untrue. I realize it sounds like extortion when I state the obvious - that voting for a third-party or independent candidate over the Democratic candidate will help the Republicans - but that's how our system works. And I don't buy "it has to get worse before it gets better;" 2000 should be lesson enough against that.

Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are more corporatist than I'd like, but they still made enlightened nominations to the SCOTUS.

[MBS]

7. my thoughts exactly. n/t

[PDittie]

10. I might get to vote for Bernie in the Texas primary in March of 2016

I certainly hope so. I am hoping he goes on a long way past that... all the way to the White House.

I find the SCOTUS argument effective personally, but there are many who don't. One case in point would be the 250,000 registered Florida Democrats who voted for George W. Bush in 2000. Apparently they had more important reasons not to vote for Al Gore, or to vote for Bush, or maybe they were brain damaged and/or blahblahblah.

I suspect that low information voters who are undecided until the very end of the cycle make some impulsive, not well-thought-out decisions about who they are voting for. I doubt future potential Supreme Court appointees make their cut.

And I believe this is why the GOP uses so many dog whistles about black people and gay people, and yells about guns and God so much. Because they better understand the voting bloc that is motivated mostly by fear.

[cascadiance]

20. The problem is that most Americans are having a bigger problem with corporatism now...

And that I believe includes Democratic, Republican, and independent voters alike. They dislike feeling like they don't have any choice but a corporate candidate either on the Republican side (if they are Republican) or on the Democratic side, or independents that are having more of a problem of trying to choose between two corporate candidates of parties they aren't members which they have less of a problem with.

Where in the past, who people vote for would have been determined on social issues, now I believe it is how corporatist they are.

I think Bernie has the opportunity in this climate to win over many independents and Republicans who want someone who's less corporate than the Republican candidate, where in the past, a Democratic Party candidate's social issue stances would determine if they got votes from Republicans or Democrats.

I think that is why in this climate, Bernie has a greater opportunity to win over non-Democrats than someone like Hillary does, when voters will see her just as corporate beholden as the Republican, and therefore then fall back to social issues or others to perhaps vote against her in many instances, where they might have voted for someone like Sanders who they perceive more apt to stand up to the banksters and corporate lobbyists.

[MillennialDem]

8. Yes, though I will go vote for whoever the democratic nominee is come hell or high water.

[greenman3610]

9. and exactly why, when, in 2000, we heard, "There's not a dime's worth of difference..

....between Al Gore and George Bush."..

a lot of us took severe exception.
Has anyone here learned anything from that?

[NewJeffCT]

13. Not only the activist court

but, on election day 2016, Anthony Kennedy and Antonin Scalia will both be 80, Ruth Bader Ginsburg 83 and Stephen Breyer 78 or 79. Four potential appointees