The Special Hell of Trump's Supreme Court Appointment

[dalton99a]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/22/opinion/trump-supreme-court-appointment.html

The Special Hell of Trump’s Supreme Court Appointment
With a nonexistent mandate, he does extraordinary damage.
By Frank Bruni
Sept. 22, 2020

It was almost inevitable that President Trump would get one Supreme Court appointment during this four-year term. It was always possible that he’d get two.

But three? Seldom has a president’s impact been so inversely proportional to his warrant. Trump, with his nonexistent mandate, reaches extra far and wreaks extra damage. That’s what makes his reign so perverse. That’s the special hell of it.

And this particular bit of luck, like his presidency, illuminates a serious and possibly unsustainable flaw in the American political system. We’re increasingly a country where the minority is not merely protected from the tyranny of the majority, as the nation’s founders intended. We’re a country where the minority rules, and under Trump, it rules tyrannically.

McConnell is in a position to make Trump’s third court appointment happen because Republicans have a Senate majority, but they have that majority not because they command the support of a larger number of Americans than their Democratic counterparts do. They command the support of fewer.

In 2018, Democrats won 22 of the 35 Senate elections, with candidates who got roughly 17 million more votes than the Republican candidates got. (And I’m not even counting, among those 22, two independents who caucus with Democrats, Angus King of Maine and Bernie Sanders of Vermont.)

But the structure of the Senate — in which less-populous states get the same say and sway as much more populous ones — favors Republicans. As Philip Bump of The Washington Post observed this week, “The Senate has since 2014 been controlled by Republicans who cumulatively represent less than half of the country — the longest such stretch in a century.”

[regnaD kciN]

1. "...a serious and possibly unsustainable flaw in the American political system..."

Indeed. I'm increasingly coming to the conclusion that the U.S. Constitution, despite its admitted glories, is fatally flawed...and, although it took almost 250 years, the current Republican party has found the way to "game" it.

[pfitz59]

2. Trump's Presidency is a nail in the coffin of our great Democratic Experiment.

The nation is ruled by a handful of oligarchs and their lackeys. Supported by hordes of illiterate, superstitious naïfs. I see no easy way out. A New Constitution might do it, but I see that as a violent under-taking. Every manifesto-writing, shit-flinging crackhead in the nation would descend on the conference demanding to be heard. We might have stood a chance if a mere 4 GOP Senators had the balls to do the right thing. Nope. The nation is dead.

[King_Klonopin]

3. Any chance that his nominee will decline or defer as a matter of principle?

[radius777]

4. Agree, something we've known for years,

and will continue to get worse. We have to make systemic reform a central part of our agenda going forward. It will take time and having big majorities (because red and purple state Dems likely won't vote for it) but we must do it eventually. Things like expanding the court, making PR and DC states, repealing the Reapportionment Act of 1929, etc.

[OhioTim]

5. Call Them What They Are

Trump appointees should forever be called "the justice who was appointed by a criminal".