The Pete Buttigieg/Justice Kennedy story shows how manipulative Twitter can be

[Otto Lidenbrock]

The other thread on this subject regarding Mayor Pete raised a significant problem I have with this primary. We're seeing people getting thousands of retweets and likes for cutting passages, even sentences out of context to smear a candidate they don't like.

Link to tweet

You notice there is no link provided. Just a screenshot of a paragraph. And a user added *gotcha* caption.

Here is the link to the full story: https://www.cosmopolitan.com/politics/a29565248/pete-buttigieg-supreme-court-restructure-president/

Mayor Pete has been open about wanting to restructure the Supreme Court. He is weighing up a number of proposals.

Going into the 2020 Democratic presidential race, Pete Buttigieg made reconsidering the Supreme Court’s structure part of his presidential agenda in what some have called an “overhaul” plan, despite other candidates not discussing it much. Therefore, it was only natural that Cosmo’s entertainment editor, Emily Tannenbaum, brought that topic to the forefront during Buttigieg’s recent visit to Cosmopolitan’s offices.

“As a bisexual woman, the structure of the Supreme Court is a real concern to me, and you’ve proposed pretty drastic changes with the way it’s set up and how many people are on the bench,” she said to the presidential candidate. “What specifically is the first thing you’d change and how would you do it?”

Buttigieg’s answer? Well, he’s very worried the Supreme Court is becoming “yet another political body,” and he wants to depoliticize it ASAP. First things first, he would appoint a commission to make the Supreme Court “less political.” It’d be their job to give a “road map,” and based on their recommendations, Buttigieg said he would go to Congress with a proposal.

“When I look at the Supreme Court, I can’t help but remember that my marriage only exists by the grace of a single vote in that body,” he said, emphasizing the importance of keeping the court as independent as possible.

Now naturally justices are nominated based on their closeness in philosophy to the president of whichever party. There is no way to rid the court 100% of having political bias in some way or another because there are going to be more liberal justices working with (or against) more conservative justices.

The obvious answer people think of is to add more numbers to the court. But the obvious fallacy of this is whichever party is in control at whatever time will be at advantage and when the hands of power switches so does the advantage. It could ruin the credibility of the court.

He then proposes two more ideas before saying he's still thinking about it and reiterates a commission will ultimately be needed.

From there, he said he’s got options, depending on what ideas the commission recommends. “One of them would be to have 15 members, but 5 of them can only be seated if the other 10 unanimously agree,” he said. “The idea here is you get more justices who think for themselves.”

Another idea is rotating judges on and off the bench. Yet another is term limits, which have come up among the Democratic presidential primary candidates already. “You know, Supreme Court justices, they used to just retire like everybody else,” Buttigieg said. “But now, we have these strange scenarios of people clinging, almost seeming to cling on for dear life because they want to make sure that they leave the bench under the right presidency.”

If all else fails, though, Mayor Pete is open to having a “conversation about an amendment.”

“The reason I’m introducing these very bold ideas is to elevate our imagination about them,” he clarified. “But I’m not arriving in office saying I have the answer on this one.”

That first idea is where the Justice Kennedy part comes from. The process now is your nominee needs to get through the senate and if your party holds the senate there should be no problem no matter how much of an ill-character the nominee is. However this idea says he needs to get through the senate and then approved unanimously by the other ten justices. Now a flaw with this idea is that if a nominee is voted through the senate the justices should have no objection since *again* they're not supposed to get involved in the politics. But someone who has a record of being a moderate voice is clearly the type of justice that works for this idea.

Kennedy might not be the right example but since same-sex marriage was decided by one vote and Kennedy voted for it, it's a bit more understandable why Pete brought his name up.

Ultimately he does not want the court packed with more Justices like Kennedy. It's just in this particular idea to make the court more independent he is saying it's not just about getting as many of your ideological picks. The five justices who make this idea unique would need to be ideologically fitting for the party that holds the majority of the senate (liberal or conservative) even if the other side doesn't like it, but independent enough to get a yes from each of the ideologically split supreme court (liberal and conservative). That's the story.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. Thank you for your thoughtful analysis.

You have stated it clearly and fairly.

Now, let's hear from all those folks who were piling so happily on Pete in the earlier post.

[SergeStorms]

2. "Social" media.

I guess "social" means lying now. Crap like this is why I refuse to have anything to do with "social" media.

[TidalWave46]

3. There is a bright spot to the attack.

Buttigieg has the third place contenders attention. I think he will take the spot well before voting begins.

[kacekwl]

4. Thank you

for the Whole story.

[left-of-center2012]

5. Pete is now becoming a major target

Even here on DU there's more anti-Pete posts.

Is it spontaneous or organized?

He's in someone's way.

[angstlessk]

6. Buttigieg brings to mind, Paul Wellstone

Like Buttigieg, the first time I heard Wellstone I sat up straight.

Smart, passionate, dedicated, caring..and many other attributes I can't think of..I would LOVE to see him as president.

[MBS]

10. Yes!

I totally agree.

[herding cats]

7. People want an edge over their perceived competition, sadly.

I love Buttigieg and hate to see him smeared falsely from within the party. He's a good guy and I'd happily vote for him in the GE.

Thank you for this.

[Celerity]

8. +10000

Link to tweet

These chop quote hit jobs or outright misrepresentations (like the outright bullshit lie that Zuckerberg was closely advising his campaign) are almost almost always pushed HARD (and often started, even if not started in this case) by the Sanderite social media sphere, to the point where the shit gets into a trending position, then the mainstream media helps spreads the distortion.

This whole repetitive modus operandi and the Sanderite smear job artists (NON DU) who are the masters of the it are becoming so tiresome. They do it to Pete, Warren, Harris, Biden, etc etc, basically anyone not named Sanders or Gabbard.

[seaglass]

9. Thanks for diving into this. I admit I just read the headline on Twitter and I'm sure I'm not the

only one. I'll promise to do better.

Ideas about changing SCOTUS de-politicizing really, is one of my top priorities along with a review and restructure of our government to maybe change "norms" into actual laws and more.