Harris was a prosecutor, and a successfully I hear, there was never any chance Trump would risk debating her on live TV. He maybe able to fire hose lies against Biden, but Harris would rip him apart, and the best part is, he knows it. He has nothing to gain from debating her, so he will come up with excuse after excuse to avoid it.
Trump is easier to debate for democrats who don’t care as much about decorum as Biden. A primary debate requires much more delicacy, because you can’t all out attack the others without potentially prejudicing voters against your party’s eventual nominee, should you lose.
Biden did well in the latter scenario, because he’s very good at politicking. I think Harris would do better in the former because of her greater willingness to openly mock trump. Hopefully we get to see.
Did she do terribly during the debate? I remember watching and thinking she seemed smart and articulate, but didn’t have the name recognition and backing to get very far in the primaries.
Add 2 seats to the bench, and then add 13 total judges. 11 of 22 judges are selected at random to determine the case. The non voting judge opinion becomes part of the case law, as well as an intercollegiate constitutional scholar opinion
This matches the broad strokes of the approach I favor as well.
There are 13 Federal circuits. Expand to one justice per circuit, then double that.
But the core of the approach, regardless of the exact number, is to shift to having cases heard by randomized panels of judges. The amount of power wielded by individual justices right now is just insane. Dilute it down so that the power rests with the body rather than individuals.
Further, randomizing who hears any given case would help curtail the current environment where test cases get tailored to the idiosyncracies and pet theories of individual judges.
SCOTUS should be deciding cases based on rational reading of the law, not entertaining wing nut theories that Thomas or Alito hinted at in previous decisions. That sort of nonsense becomes a lot less feasible if there’s no guarantee a case will actually end up in front of Thomas or Alito.
So what happens when the judges chosen for a case interpretation end up being 7-2 in one party’s favor? Conservatives would be sitting at the slot machines in a diaper pulling the lever until they hit a jackpot. It’s not like making them sit out of some cases based on a lottery is going to make them any less hypocritical or prone to power tripping and bribery. They’ll just wait their turn.
Appointees should just be subject to term limits and yearly affirmation votes by members of the BAR association to renew or revoke their qualifications. That way members of the public that are still well versed in law are able to hold them accountable.
As things stand now, you get cases that are tailor made to the whims of specific people because there’s a 100% chance it ends up in front of those specific people. That’s an absolutely massive problem.
The point is that you’re less likely to have cases that are specifically aimed at stroking any given individual’s brand of crazy when there’s only a ~1 in 3 chance they’ll even hear it. A panel of 9 from a pool of 26 means that you go from a 100% chance that, say, Alito and Thomas, hear a case together to around 12%. That’s a huge gamble when it takes years and a massive amount of money to get a case in front of SCOTUS.
No, it doesn’t solve all conceivable problems with the court. But it’d help address the fact that SCOTUS justices are entirely too powerful as individuals and it can be done via simple act of Congress.
Appointees should just be subject to term limits and yearly affirmation votes by members of the BAR association to renew or revoke their qualifications
Not going to happen. SCOTUS terms are life appointments constitutionally. That means you’ve gotten into amendment territory which just plain is not realistic right now.
Honest question: Could all of the other stuff you’ve suggested happen without getting into amendment territory? I honestly don’t know almost anything about where all these SC things are defined in law, but changing the way the entire SC operates sounds pretty extreme when compared with simply adding term limits. It’s hard to believe it wouldn’t also stray into some constitutional territory.
Article III only lays out there there will be a supreme court and a Chief justice and makes Congress responsible for establishing them. It does not lay out the makeup or structure of that court. The current body of 9 justices is set by federal statute and could be changed by a simple act of Congress.
Article III also explicitly states that whatever Justices are appointed hold their office as long as they maintain good behavior (I e., as long as they haven’t been impeached) and that Congress cannot reduce their pay.
Term limits are explicitly unconstitutional.
Setting the number of judges is explicitly within Congress’ constitutional powers.
Randomized panels would probably be challenged just because it’s never been tested, but the language in the Constitution re: Congress establishing the Supreme Court is vague. That said, Congress has already established inferior Federal courts that operate in this manner, so there’s precedent.
Supreme Court function is a hot button topic right now because of Roe v. Wade. The vast majority of Americans agree that at the very least SCJs should have term limits, so start there and force a vote on an amendment. Then if it fails, you have votes on record for the next election. Many Republicans have pro-choice, pro-union, anti-lobbying stances that aren’t aware that their representative in congress would vote against because it never comes to their table in the first place. Some(not all) would change their vote from red to at least 3rd party if we were able to highlight those issues in voting records during campaign season.
And even if you feel that isn’t worth the time or energy for only speculative shifts in the public vote, the opinion you’re expressing is that the constitution should remain unchanged until some undetermined date in the future which may never come. And that is more damaging to the bureaucratic system than a proposed amendment failing because definitions shift over time. It wasn’t too long ago that property was determined to include black people because it suited the interest of wealthy land owners in the south. Then because of that we ended up fighting a civil war.
The problem is that the process for amending the Constitution is heavily, structurally biased in favor of the Republicans now. The GOP would absolutely rally around this issue because it’s one of the primary things allowing them to hang on to power right now.
I don’t believe in engaging in theatrics with a zero percent chance of success when there are real, feasible steps that could be taken to make things better.
Appointments are for life, but I’ve seen arguments it’s possible to “retire” justices to powerless seats so they technically keep the job and title. Or rotate them out of SCOTUS cases to the federal circuits, so they still keep their title but have the role and power of regular judges.
If you triple instead of double that you could have a three judge panel (like federal districts do) that could rule on smaller cases that come out of that circuit. Then, if needed, they could call a full 9 - 11 judge panel if it’s a larger topic. This would also allow them to hear many more cases than they currently do, which has been a problem for decades.
I’d be in favor of more. 26 is just because I think there’s a very easy argument to make for “every circuit gets direct representation on SCOTUS” and it’s not a huge leap to go to two per circuit from there.
Increasing throughput is definitely one of the reasons I’d support doing this as well. Thanks for highlighting that since I didn’t.
Biden’s campaign blamed their lack of donations and falling well short of their projections on it being “summertime.” Thank goodness summer is over now.
Summertime before a fall election? Yeah, that's a bad excuse. I was called by a local non-profit I occasionally donate to just today in order for them to be able to ramp up operations in advance of the election. It's prime donation seeking season.
This guy’s brains only spilled out because someone hit his ear. He hasn’t changed he’s still the same dickhead. He wants to lock up anyone who opposes him.
He feels “persecuted” because his crimes are catching up to him. Don’t fall for it he literally only cares about him self and surrounds himself with criminals and dickheads.
I think she and her fellow insider traders have a different perspective of what is or isn’t a ‘good look’. Will the news affect her negatively? No. Could it affect her positively? Absolutely, within her circle. Good look.
Professional portfolio managers, who do this for a living, with teams of intelligent and educated people working for them, struggle to consistently outperform the market in any meaningful sense.
if you’re willing it risk it and use leverage (borrow money to multiply your return, but also multiplies the down sides) sure she could’ve aimed for the moon. but theres no need to be risky when you’re her age and already rich and have a crystal ball.
It’s no real secret. Her husband has been buying tech stock LEAPS this whole time. Her portfolio took a huge hit during the tech sector downturn a few years back. Paul doubled down on the tech stocks which have all shot way back up. He put a bunch of money on Nvidia during the GPU shortage well before all this bullshit AI run. Nvidia is up something stupid like 800% since then.
If anything I’d bet it’s because she’s connected in Silicon Valley. Nancy has the same info everyone in Congress would. But since her district is in the bay area she gets to rub elbows with the right people.
I think most Dems, especially those who are highly politically engaged and closely follow election news, are going to vote blue no matter who. So, I think Bernie is preaching to the choir here. I think the Dems who are worried about Biden are worried he doesn’t have enough support among independents, and they feel independents are much less likely to just vote for the Democrat, no matter who it is.
Now, could just any candidate replace Biden and automatically win back any of the independents he is believed to have lost? I don’t know. A lot of Dems seem to think that just about any other candidate would do better than Biden among independents right now, but I’m not so sure.
Hillary, much like Trump, is a symptom of what is wrong with the Democrats. “It was her turn” spat in the face of people who were excited about a progressive candidate and made the whole primary a sham.
She was a terrible candidate. She was a bitter pill that many independents said “enough is enough” and voted third party or not voted at all.
I am deeply concerned that as the Republicans move more toward fascism, the left are not going to have great candidates. We’re going to get established, wealthy-class friendly candidates who are willing to throw crumbs at the working class. They’ll bitch and moan about how they are losing voters, never looking at themselves, never realizing that we are literally voting to just survive.
This election will be just like 2020. We aren’t voting for Biden. We’re voting against fascism.
And I’m personally getting fucking tired of Democrats seeing that as a win.
I think the other concern is voter turnout/enthusiasm. The last presidential election had extremely high turnout. Even if voters (in swing states) don’t switch candidates but opt to stay home instead that could translate into a significant electoral problem too.
You do have a point that turn out Is important, but a potential replacement candidate isn’t guaranteed to increase turn out, they could be worse. And they would only have 4 months to try to fix things, which isn’t a lot of time.
Turnout is literally everything. It is literally more turnout = Democrat win literally every single election in america. Low turnout in 2016 still resulted in trump losing the popular vote. America’s voting system is messed up, but then so is UK’s parliamentary first past the post system and Belgium’s 6 governments.
Those highly politically engaged Dem voters who will vote blue no matter who are bickering about whether Biden is the right choice, and the swing voters are paying attention.
To an undecided voter, it doesn’t inspire much confident to see that Biden’s own supporters don’t think he can do the job.
The bickering amongst those who will vote blue anyway is costing the votes from the undecideds that Biden so desperately needs.
Hey, corporate news - why don’t you treat this like it’s some kind of outlier that will surely ‘go back to normal’ to tomorrow, and not the first stages of the entire planet-wide ecosystem breakdown because we let corporate news not hold big oil accountable?
It’ll all be fine, we just have to ignore it, right?
[June] marked the 12th straight month that the world was 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than pre-industrial times, the European climate service Copernicus said. Most of this heat, trapped by human-caused climate change, is from long-term warming from greenhouse gases emitted by the burning of coal, oil and natural gas, scientists say.
Harder to get a hold of those assholes while they’re not in home soil. They’ll flee to [random tax heaven] on their private jets or yachts before we can even properly mobilize, all while drinking champagne.
And if Biden decides not to run, Hawaii Gov. Josh Green told The Associated Press on Saturday that he believes the president will designate Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him on the ticket.
If that happens, prepare to see the narrative of certain people switch from “no one should vote for Genocide Joe” to “no one should vote for pro-cop Harris.” Anything but tell people to stop the dictator from gaining power.
I think beyond a few very liberals (like myself), a law and order message will do well with voters. Even Oregon recently voted for stricter drug laws. What makes you think such a message won’t do well nationally?
This is the question that everyone saying Biden should drop out can’t seem to answer.
I don’t like our choices here either, but I’m not so foolish as to think having the party choose another candidate for us is gonna save us.
This is the party that consistently won’t listen to its own voter base and keeps putting up unpalatable centrists like Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris.
People think the party that keeps snatching defeat from the jaws of victory will somehow make a good choice this late in the game? As if.
Also, who is really going to be happy with the party choosing for us anyway? The best they could give would to be allow delegates to choose a new candidate at the convention but delegates are not regular voters, they are party apparatchiks. They will only choose another bland centrist corporate-friendly Democrat, like always. It’s a big club and we ain’t in it etc. There is no progressive lightning rod that will excite ALL Democrat voters waiting in the wings. There just isn’t and we need to stop pretending there is.
Biden is who we have, and we can accept it, even if we don’t like it or we can accept that this is our last real “free” election ever.
He was given answers and decided to move the goal posts onto something else. If Trump gets elected again, the blame is going to fall on party leadership and the sycophants who blindly support them.
Definitely not Kamala fucking Harris, the most hated VP in decades.
Say what, now? All this tells me is you’re too young to remember Dick Cheney, or the other guy who failed the spelling bee. (In fairness, though, Quayle wasn’t so much hated as he was ignored, like your little brother.)
With a four month campaign runway, no less. I’ve been asking that since the debate. Calling for him to step aside without a better candidate is just reactionary sensationalism. Show me credible and sizable polls that take Trump by a landslide and I’ll be calling for him to step aside too. Until then, this intermittently confused old man did a lot better with his four years than Trump.
Most people just don’t know that much about Kamala, she’s fairly new to politics and hasn’t been in the limelight very often.
Usually just a small handful of speeches and interviews, maybe. She’s largely an unknown though. A Presidential race would change that quickly, though its hard to predict exactly how.
Notably, the right has used her largely unknown status to smear her for years now, not too different from how they got an early start smearing Hilary.
That’s my point. Four months is not enough time to get through all of the mud-slinging and come out with a clear impression of a candidate. The candidate and their policies would have to already be well known by US citizens to ensure a win in that time. She’d have a much better chance campaigning in 2028 with a longer runway.
For those that actively seek out news, probably. Most Americans only consume the news that is fed to them. She’s currently not polling any better than Biden as an alternative.
There are exceptions to that, anything fairly novel will drive a spike in interest, and answer-seeking behavior. I’m really on the fence with this one.
The one thing that’s almost guaranteed (if she’s on the ballot for POTUS) is she’ll bring out the Black vote en masse. That in and of itself could turn the tide for the Dems.
That’s one reason I think she’s an awful replacement pick. She’s definitely a better candidate than Biden but I’m uncertain if she could actually win the election.
I don’t want to replace a probable loser with a possible loser - this maneuver is dangerous and we should make sure it’s being used for someone who is actually capable of winning.
I used logic rather than emotion to determine my opinion that we should have a suitable replacement before asking to remove our candidate. That may be an unfamiliar concept to you.
what the media bandwagon is doing is similar to the plan trump had in his first term:
repeal the aca
develop a plan
implement the plan
except the time period between steps 1 and 3 could not just be years but could be DECADES. meanwhile, the aca is still repealed and people would suffer.
any plan that calls for removal that also doesn’t simultaneously install a replacement is a bad plan. so far the only viable plan is for kamala to take over since she has the legal access to the campaign warchest and already has a ground infrastructure in place. and if kamala takes over biden immediately makes him an immediate lame duck as president since it would be signalling that he can’t do the job now. and there is a lot more fantasizing of probable picks as a ticket that do not include kamala harris. which makes all of those fantasy tickets illogical.
this is not sticking with biden because we like him. it’s about sticking with biden because making any kind of change to the ticket historically guarantees another trump term.
He’s taxing corporations and reducing wealth for their shareholders too.
Increasing the corporate minimum tax rate to 21% to align with the global minimum tax rate. Implementing a Billionaire Minimum Tax of 25% on the wealthiest taxpayers to ensure the top 0.01 percent pay taxes on their income as they go, just like everyone who earns a paycheck.
Raising the tax rate on corporate stock buybacks from 1% to 4% to reduce the differential tax treatment between buybacks and dividends and encourage businesses to reinvest profits in their workers and in the company’s growth.
Denying corporate tax deductions for employee compensation in excess of $1 million paid to any employee by both publicly and privately owned C corporations.
So your plan is to ignore all the valid criticism until it’s too late to do anything about it and then when Biden loses you’ll blame the people who’d been warning you about it for years?
Who’s ignoring criticism? I’m saying calling for him to step aside without a replacement who would do better is not constructive. They should be poll testing candidates and proposing a candidate that could do better. Criticism without suggestions for improvement is just whining.
the republican party has ignored valid criticism of trump for 8 years. unlike biden, trump’s valid criticism is far more serious than biden looking and sounding old for one night.
What makes you think any of them want to run for president when they didn’t even take part in the primaries?
Also, why do you assume Sanders would do it when asked? He’s 82. He’s a lot sharper than Biden, but he’s still 82. His energy is going to be limited. I would be very surprised if he even sought re-election to the Senate at this point. He probably wants to spend his last years with his grandkids in Vermont (or wherever they live), not arguing with people in D.C. And I’d say he deserves that happy end to his life rather than spend what may be his last four years dealing with a bunch of hostile bullshit.
There is absolutely no reason to assume an 82-year-old man would be willing to be president. It is a lot more work than Senator. And I personally think he deserves to say no if he doesn’t want to. It sort of sounds like you don’t.
I don’t know if you’ve ever met Sanders in person but if you asked him and he wanted to say no you can bet your ass he’d decline without hesitation.
Senator is usually a much more cushy job than president but Sanders puts a lot of effort into being a senator. He’d certainly put more effort into being a president but I think he’d get a lot out of it.
They were so mad about a black man as president that a black woman will just bring out the misogynistic element along with the racism. It’s nothing new. Ask your local republican how they feel about Whoopi Goldberg for practice.
Some people are upset that in the face of fascism, this is the best the American ‘left’ can do. They claim the entire country is on the line, but I haven’t seen them act like it. I’ve seen them say we need to vote for Biden, because abortion!! Roe V Wade was undone under his leadership and he has done nothing about it. He adopted extremist conservative border policy. The Supreme Court decision everybody is clamoring about happened while he was in the big chair. So why does he deserve my vote? Why would voting for him change anything when some of the most consequential and damaging legislation of the 2000s has happened under him?
The Republicans really got just what they wanted out of people like you with what they did in Congress with the border. There is a legit crisis down there now. And there was an agreed-to, bipartisan border bill ready to go, and at the last moment Trump said to tank it because it will reflect well on the Democrats. So they tanked it, leaving Biden’s executive branch with very limited options to do anything. So he is doing one of the crappy few things he can do, and people like you just pin it to Biden, which is just what Trump and the GOP hoped for.
If January 6 wasn’t enough to convince you the future of this country is on the line, and if Project 2025 isn’t enough, I just don’t know what to tell you.
The Democrats stink on ice, sure. They’re a bunch of ineffectual morons, and they only show it more and more every time they push the responsibility to fight this threat onto the voters. But that doesn’t change the fact that the threat is real, and even if the Democrats won’t act like it is, we must. If we want there to be a 2028 election, we must make sure the Republicans lose the 2024 one.
With a wannabe fascist dictator who wants to create a Christian nationalist country on the one hand, and abortion rights on the ballot, in one way or another, in many states on the other, it’s possible for a lot of states to become swing states this time around. A lot of people who might not otherwise vote may show up to vote for pro-choice candidates and ballot measures. That could be enough to turn some red states purple. Please don’t waste your vote on a third party Presidential candidate even if you think your vote doesn’t matter.
If you want to support third parties, do it at the state and local levels. You might find that hard to do though, since most of them, including West’s Justice for All party and RFK’s we the people party don’t have any other candidates running for any other offices at any other level.
These people are only running to siphon votes from other candidates and sway the election. West even has Republican operatives working for his party in North Carolina and Arizona to help him get on the ballots. We only know that because those states require signature gathers be registered with the states. You can bet your bottom dollar that they are helping him, RFK, and Stein in other states too.
none of those candidates will get enough popular votes to win a state’s electoral votes and 2 out of 3 aren’t on enough ballots to total 270 votes. the only message a person who is on the left side of politics teaches the democratic party is that your vote isn’t worth pursuing since you aren’t going to vote for a democrat anyway. instead they will pursue the votes they have the possibility to get. often those people are much more centrist or right wing. you’re taking yourself out of any potential influential position of influence.
this is a binary choice. the winner will either be trump or biden. any vote not for biden is an indirect vote for trump because it’s not going towards the only other viable candidate. this is how our system works and it’s far too late to change it for this year.
Pushing Kamala is one way I see to guarantee a loss. People don’t like Joe, but people fucking HATE Kamala. We would be so fucked if she was the ticket
She’s a marginally better candidate if he endorses her enthusiastically. She’s deeply flawed and unpopular but if Biden gives her credit for everything he accomplished she’d be trading “absolutely ancient” for “former uncharismatic prosecutor”.
the problem is that none of them decided to primary the incumbent successful democratic party president.
so it’s biden at the top of the ticket. if you didn’t want biden to be the 2024 candidate, you should have worked harder to get another democrat nominated in 2020.
Yup. Not only that, but the attacks from the GOP and media won’t stop. They will simply change from “Biden is too old” to racist garbage like “Harris might be our first DEI president” (That’s an actual headline from the NY Post, which I refuse to link to).
No matter what happens, Democrats will need thick skin.
I’m not worried about Republicans. I’m worried about the people below who have already decided “don’t vote for Harris” before she’s even nominated. No candidate will be good enough for them because no candidate could ever pass the purity test. It could be a Bernie Sanders/AOC ticket and they’d find a reason to say you shouldn’t vote for them.
If Joe Biden drops out the orange felon will definitely win, says the guy who has an impeccable track record using an amazing methodology that he developed from earth quake prediction.
Glad Project 2025 is becoming public knowledge, it’s not hyperbole, people really are going to die if Trump is re-elected. That’s not a threat, that’s an acknowledgement of what the GOP plans to do.
I remember when “Race war now?” was just an edgy 4chan meme… Better days, used to on the internet when someone was being racist it was a comedy routine mocking the absurdity of racism, nowadays… people actually mean that shit.
Sadly I remember the “Bugaloo” movement, because everything has to be a joke now, even repeating the Civil War…
But number three, let me speak about the radical left. You and I have both been parts of faculties and faculty senates and understand that the left has taken over our institutions. The reason that they are apoplectic right now, the reason that so many anchors on MSNBC, for example, are losing their minds daily is because our side is winning.
And so I come full circle on this response and just want to encourage you with some substance that we are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.
When they’re saying this about Joe Biden and mainstream pro-corporate media like MSNBC…
It’s really hard to take people seriously when they say AOC is too extreme to be president.
They’ll always say moderate Dems are far left radicals, they can’t say it anymore about AOC. The main difference is moderates try to argue that they’re actually conservative which pisses off Dem voters. And progressives like AOC use it as an opportunity to talk about why the policy works, which grows the Dem voters base.
We can’t keep meeting them halfway.
We need to 100% fight fascism, and we need to keep fighting. Because the fascists never stop.
I’m guessing you don’t live in a city. My opinions are to the left of most of my Democratic friends. The amount of times I’ve defended Biden’s tuition reimbursement against “I had to pay, so why don’t they?” claims is bonkers. Yes, you paid against a subsidized or 2% fixed-rate simple interest loan, not a predatory 5%+ variable-rate compound…
I hope he gets on a private jet with 5 other justices and some of his billionaire buddies for a trip to some tropical resort only for the plane to get shot down through a president’s official act suddenly go down, totally unexpectedly.
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