Democrats just confirmed lots of Trump's judges so they could skip town

[babylonsister]

I'd love to hear a good reason because there isn't any.


Democrats just confirmed lots of Trump's judges so they could skip town

HuffPost US
Jennifer Bendery
Aug 29th 2018 6:43PM


WASHINGTON ― Senate Democrats just gave a huge gift to President Donald Trump: They agreed to expedite votes on 15 of his nominees to lifetime federal court seats because they wanted to go home.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) had lined up votes for all those district court nominees last week. Normally, Senate rules require up to 30 hours of waiting time for each nominee ― something Democrats typically take advantage of to delay action on confirming Trump judges. But Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) cut a deal with McConnell on Tuesday to bypass the wait times and let them all get through.

Why? So Democrats could get back to campaigning and focusing on winning re-election in November. The Senate is now out of session until next Tuesday.

Of the 15 nominees, six were confirmed by voice votes on Tuesday. Another one was confirmed on a recorded vote. The remaining eight will get quick votes next week.

It’s a major win for Trump and McConnell, whose No. 1 priority is filling up federal courts with conservative judges ― many of whom are incredibly anti-abortion, anti–LGBTQ rights and anti–voting rights. Trump has gotten 26 circuit court judges confirmed, more than any other president at this point in his term. Another way of putting it: 1 in 7 U.S. circuit court seats is now filled by a judge nominated by Trump.

Add that Trump put Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court and is poised to get another justice through, Brett Kavanaugh, and you’ve got a president drastically reshaping the nation’s courts for generations.

more...

https://www.aol.com/article/news/2018/08/29/democrats-just-confirmed-lots-of-trumps-judges-so-they-could-skip-town/23512171/?a_dgi=aolshare_facebook

[Meadowoak]

1. This is why people don't bother to vote!

[Me.]

2. REally...Schumer Has To Go

So ineffective.

[peekaloo]

4. He's very effective

for the Republicans.

Otherwise we agree.

[PoliticAverse]

10. Schumer is actually most effective at fundraising. n/t

[LenaBaby61]

5. Really...Schumer Has To Go.

I can see Dems capturing the House, and Cummings, Waters, Swalwell wanting to go all in with investigations and seeing Schumer saying "Let's cut down on the investigations and do the people's business."

I swear, I could hear him saying this to Dems who head the various committees in Congress

[Me.]

7. I Have To Admit

I still haven't forgiven him for turning his back on PBO to favor Netanyahu. THe leadership was between he and Durbin and even though Schumer is my Senator I wish Durbin was our leader. As far as I can tell Schumer hasn't put up any kind of a advocacy for his constituents or DEms as a whole.

[oasis]

11. Durbin was my 1st choice after the departure of Sen. Harry Reid.

Schumer has a razor sharp mind but is too easily slickered.

[kimbutgar]

3. They should have slow walked these nominees.

[Hoyt]

6. Had they stayed, could they have stopped confirmation?

[GulfCoast66]

13. Of course not. But we all know that. Just another reason to attack democrats not on the right team

While ignoring that the deal allows at risk Democratic Senators a chance to go home and actually try to win re-election.

Had he not done so the same people criticizing him would lambast at risk Senators, like my Senator Nelson, for not being on the campaign trail.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

[Hoyt]

16. Thought I might be missing something, other than obvious. We are going to gripe no matter what.

You put it very well.

[uponit7771]

24. ***NO !! ***, good question

[Kaleva]

8. Here's a discussion about a very good reason

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100211068678

[Takket]

9. would delaying the votes have bought us anything?

because if the rethugs were just going to push them through anyway, after we lost the campaign time, would that have actually helped us?

[triron]

12. The idea would be to delay the Kavanaugh hearings..

Guess Schumer wasn't too keen on that.

[GulfCoast66]

14. You'd love to hear a good reason because there isn't any?

Pretty open mind you’ve got there.

How about this one: to allow Senators like mine in Florida, Bill Nelson, to come home and campaign to win a tough re-election battle. Or does that not matter to you? But let me guess...you can’t stand Nelson anyway?

Love the Passive Agressive way you attack Democrats.

Are you suggesting we could actually prevent the Senate from confirming these judges?

[Bluepinky]

17. We don't have to make it easy for them and hand them a win while getting nothing back.

Don’t forget the Repubs want to leave Washington to campaign too; delaying the vote on these judges will prevent Repubs from campaigning in home states. I think Repubs need to fight for everything they get, and the Democrats need to be the resistance party.

[babylonsister]

21. Please get over yourself.

I am not attacking Democrats but I am allowed to question them, correct? I first read this from The American Prospect and none of it sits well with me.

http://prospect.org/article/schumer-surrenders
Schumer Surrenders
David Dayen
August 29, 2018
The Democrats’ Senate leader lets Mitch McConnell pack the courts.


snip//

Schumer has simply been far more accommodating in the minority than his Republican counterpart was—and is.

It’s true that McConnell has carried over that tactical skill to the majority, canceling the month-long August recess and imposing some politically tough votes on the ten Senate Democrats running for re-election in states Trump won in 2016, who would rather be home campaigning. But Schumer has simply been far more accommodating in the minority than his Republican counterpart was—and is.

For example, under this week’s McConnell-Schumer deal, the Senate mass-confirmed seven judges Tuesday and scheduled eight for next week. In exchange, Democrats appeared to get this: a couple of the judges who were former Obama appointees, the re-nomination of Mark Pearce to a Democratic seat on the National Labor Relations Board, and the release of 85,000 documents from Brett Kavanaugh in advance of his Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

Democrats were already entitled to much of this: They had filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the Kavanaugh documents, and a re-nomination for the NLRB seat doesn’t guarantee a successful vote. Trading a couple of middle-of-the-road Obama judges for more than a dozen hardline Trump ones—including one rated “unqualified” by the American Bar Association—doesn’t make this much better.

If Schumer instead took the methodical approach that McConnell once employed, as former Reid staffer Adam Jentleson explained, making McConnell produce votes twice and using all debate time in between, it’s unlikely that all 15 judges would be confirmed between now and the end of the year. A determined majority can eventually confirm an individual judge, but between midterm elections, holidays, and many Republicans off to John McCain’s funeral—the real reason for yesterday’s deal—there just isn’t a lot of Senate floor time available. The result would be fewer of Trump’s judges getting confirmed. The power they will wield once they’re on the bench will be vastly more consequential than Schumer’s one-sided display of collegiality.

Before you suggest that the red-state Democrats needed to leave Washington to campaign, Schumer could have let them all go home and still pulled this off. Jentleson points out that you merely need one Democrat on the Senate floor at all times to object to fast-tracking nominations. The Senate operates entirely on unanimous consent of all members. A rotating cast of individual Democrats scrolling through their smartphones and saying “I object” at opportune moments is all that’s needed to grind the Senate to a halt. McConnell ought to know; it’s what he often did.

And, alas, there’s more. Schumer also botched a Securities and Exchange Commission nomination, with consequences perhaps even worse than his judicial lapses. By law, federal regulatory commissions with a five-member board can contain no more than three members from the president’s party. The opposite-party leader in the Senate—in this case, Schumer—has wide discretion to recommend minority-party commission members, whom the president then nominates. Uncharacteristically, Trump has actually kept to this norm: Several Schumer recommendations have been confirmed.

For some time, it’s been clear that two seats were opening up on the securities regulator: a Republican seat vacated by Michael Piwowar, and a Democratic seat that progressive Kara Stein must give up by the end of the year. Within a few weeks of Piwowar’s announcement, Republicans had ready a replacement: Elad Roisman, chief counsel to Senate Banking Committee Chair Mike Crapo, an Idaho Republian. This has become a trend for Republicans, setting far-right Senate staffers loose on the regulatory state. But a Democratic nominee has yet to emerge.

more...

http://prospect.org/article/schumer-surrenders

[uponit7771]

25. The stalling tactic is based off senate rules which the KGOP would just simply change as they have

... changed so many to this point.

That stalling tactic of "making McConnell produce votes twice and using all debate time in between" is not a law, its senate rule ... an agreement between senators ... that the KGOP has been keen to get rid of them by the boat load.

Bottom line, anything NOT a law is going to be changed because the KGOP can.

Then

Dem senators who are in the bubble can't go home and campaign because McConnell holds the senate open.

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

15. WTF!! What happened to the resistance?!

[Recursion]

23. The resistance just got Mark Pearce reappointed to the NLRB

In exchange for not delaying judicial appointments it ultimately couldn't stop anyways.

[DeminPennswoods]

18. Chris Coons was on one of the MSNBC shows

last night and explained that over half the judges confirmed were completely non-controversial and had bipartisan support. It was reported in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, one of the confirmed judges was an Obama nominee from 2015 for a seat in NW Pa that had been vacant since 2013.

[GulfCoast66]

19. Don't interrupt their fit of outrage with things like facts.

[DeminPennswoods]

28. Maddow and O'Donnell

annoyed me last night by both doing the outrage dance at Schumer. And O'Donnell's the same guy who spent most of one show explaining how there was nothing Dems could do to stop Kavanaugh (or any other judge) from being confirmed.

[Angry Dragon]

20. Not good at all

[Recursion]

22. It was part of a deal that got Mark Pearce a third term on the NLRB

It was actually a much better deal than I thought Schumer could have gotten; all he gave up was that he agreed not delay appointments he didn't have the power to stop anyways.

[GoCubsGo]

27. Please stop with your pesky facts.

It's getting in the way of all of the knee-jerk hand-wringing and teeth-gnashing over misguided outrage.

[bahrbearian]

30. One term , for 7 life time appointments , what a deal.

[Recursion]

31. Yeah, it's actually a really good deal. We had zero real leverage

But Republicans are spooked enough about the mid-terms that they gave in on it.

[bahrbearian]

32. Is "zero real leverage" the same as "zero resistance"

[Recursion]

33. Having zero leverage means we can't resist

I mean, yes: Schumer could have delayed the appointments a couple of weeks. Big fucking deal.

[stonecutter357]

26. #facknews !

[treestar]

29. They have to win the elections

That is the only way to stop future Orange Judges. The elections are the only way around all this stuff; stop pretending there is some other way.

[marlakay]

34. Its headlines like this

That make young voters say both parties are the same.

I was disgusted myself when I read about it. Its like they don’t even try any more.