Senate Democrats made another mistake on abortion policy this week by pushing through an overly ambitious and purely symbolic package that went a lot further than Roe and also overturned the Partial Birth Abortion ban, the Hyde Amendment, and superseded any state regulation that would have been permitted under the Roe and Casey formulae.
While it is laudable that this ambitious bill, the Women’s Health Protection Act, garnered 49 votes in the Senate, including the previously anti-Roe Bob Casey (D-PA), it also gives cover to right wing attacks that the Democrats are further left of the public on this issue while changing the conversation from the draconian policies Republicans are rapidly pursuing at the state and even the federal level. It also left pro-choice Republicans like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski out in the cold, while their own more moderate bill restoring the status quo could have at least been put up for a vote as well which would have attracted bipartisan support.
A majority of Americans are pro-choice and support Roe and Casey, but they are not pro-abortion and their support for the procedure becomes more ambivalent the later in the pregnancy one goes. The Partial Birth Abortion Ban received bipartisan backing in 2004 including from then Sen. Joe Biden. The Hyde Amendment also enjoyed similar support and both bills enjoy the support of a majority of voters.
I happen to disagree with the existing late term abortion ban since it is vague and lacks critical exceptions to protect the health of women while I also support federal funding for first trimester abortions which Hyde prohibits. I am grateful to live in a state that has not only codified abortion rights in the event Roe is overturned but also provides aid to women who cannot afford the procedure. That said, I recognize I am on the left of the median voter on this issue and so should Democrats as we face a critical midterm where our very democracy and the very right to choose is on the line.
Highlighting the extremism of the GOP can win us critical crossover voters, but taking extreme left wing positions as Beto O’Rourke, Raphael Warnock, Tim Ryan, Mark Kelly, and John Fetterman have taken could end up backfiring in purple states that are more lukewarm in their support for abortion rights. As the GOP continues its drift to the far right across the board, our party should remain a Big Tent that is open to anyone committed to preserving democracy, civil liberties, and the right to privacy.
Pro choice does not and should not mean being pro-abortion as some are now arguing, it should mean ensuring as President Clinton put it that the procedure remains safe, legal, and rare. Legal abortion is safe abortion and the Democrats have secured both while actually reducing the rate to the lowest it’s been in decades. We have to continue this both/and formula since it’s where the majority of voters are.
Whether it’s this or BBB, I don’t understand why the obvious next step for Dems isn’t try a bill that can actually pass, then shout from the rooftops about what we have accomplished rather than wring our hands over what we haven’t.
The only bill that would actually pass offers NOTHING to shout from the rooftops about. It would leave in place ALL of the horrendous assaults on women’s rights.
We have nothing to shout about — the game is already lost.
I think that’s somewhat hyperbolic. The Collins-Murkowski bill ratifies Roe and Casey status quo. That’s good enough for me and way better than whatever Leader McConnell, Speaker McCarthy, and President Trump/DeSantis are going to pass. Granted, Collins, Murkowski, and Sinema are feckless since they won’t exempt their precious filibuster to restore Roe, but that is a different conversation we could have if their bill were up for a vote.
It’s too easy for a guy like Ron Johnson to say we favor aborting live babies and his citizens can just drive to IL after Roe. He’s an a$$hole, but the reality is we have to be twice as good as him to win. It’s just the reality of our skewed electoral landscape and rather than deny that reality, I want to fight back on the strongest ground. I want to win, and if that requires moderation, so be it.
I disagree with your use of the term “moderation”.
There is nothing “moderate” about forcing a victim of rape or incest to carry her bay to birth. NOTHING.
When have I argued that is either my own position or those of the moderate voters we need to win over? When pollsters ask about Roe or right to a legal abortion you get 60-70% of the public, a class majority.
When you get more granulated data you see that there is a spectrum where the position advanced by 49 Democratic senators-abortion on demand at any time in the pregnancy paid for by the taxpayer-is only supported by about a quarter of the public at most. I’m in that quarter by the way, despite a lot of wavering over the years on this site. A lot of Americans are still wavering and I think it is imperative that we can convince them to protect Roe and Casey in the near term. That is a much better ground to argue this on than insist on an absolutist position on abortion as the extremist right wing has done.
I don’t mean to suggest or imply that you advocate this position, and I apologize for being unclear.
I understand your argument, and I understand the political calculus. I even understand the use of “moderate” as a term-of-art to describe something between two ends of a spectrum.
I’m saying that “moderate” MEANS something outside the political spectrum. An aspect of white privilege is that whites use vocabulary that reinforces white supremacy without realizing it. I think this use of the word “moderate” has similar import — it serves to normalize something that is absolutely outrageous.
A rape victim who is forced BY LAW to carry her baby to fruition is essentially being raped again. The overwhelming consensus among various experts is that rape is an act of power, rather than sexuality. Those who force a rape victim to carry the rapist’s baby are essentially raping her again.
I’d like us to find a better word than “moderate”.
Again I am not arguing that people who are anti-choice are the moderates. About 40% of the country is anti-choice to a degree, about 60% of the country is pro-choice to a degree. Within that 60% you’ll find people comfortable with a 15-20 week ban on the more conservative end and those that favor unlimited subsidized abortion on the liberal end. We need that entire 60% to vote like their very rights were on the line and it’s easier to hold a coalition like that together by focusing our fire on the right rather than one another.
Not everyone who is pro choice is morally comfortable with abortion, but they are morally comfortable with the choice and this is why leaning into choice makes more sense than insisting we all have to be pro-abortion. That talking point alienates our allies and helps the right win converts. Safe, legal, and rare may no longer be intersectional or woke enough for the Twitter crowd, but it wins elections and holds a pro-choice majority together. Nobody on the anti choice side could be described as a moderate.
I suggest that anyone who opposes an exception for rape and incest victims is misogynist.
Perhaps we might reframe the debate as misogynist vs anti-misogynist. Just kidding. Hillary Clinton was crucified for calling these people “deplorable”. I doubt that more than 30% of today’s electorate even knows the meaning of the word “misogynist”.
I’m basically out of patience with these ignorant, racist, sexist, bullying thugs.
People forget that many boomers like myself already fought these battles — literally. It is depressing and infuriating to have these arm-dragging mouth-breathing limited-gene-pool-products controlling the conversation in 2022.
These deplorables are all too familiar to me.
I thought you pushed back whenever I said you sound like the game is lost, but that is exactly what you say above. Neither party now has, nor likely will anytime soon, the votes it would need to lock in its preferred abortion policy at the federal level.
I fear you don’t see what’s happening.
One party — the GOP — eagerly changes the rules however it likes whenever it likes, and shows utter contempt for them when that is not possible.
It takes exactly 51 votes in the Senate to end the filibuster. Between legitimate vote counts and state-by-state election tampering, a GOP majority in 2022 will almost surely make abortion illegal nationwide. That same majority is very likely to do the same with artificial contraception.
The reversal of Roe v Wade is the beginning, not the end, of the GOP war on women.
What’s your take on the significant number of Republican women in the GOP who are excited to see the end of Roe?
I think when things get real the Republicans will discover how many of their own women actually like to make their own decisions after all.
Or as Paul Begala put it, Republicans are for exceptions for rape, incest, or if their daughter or mistress gets in trouble.
My take is that they are a tiny fraction of the number of women in America. The GOP is still today a minority party, and it is dominated by men.
You are again forgetting the presidency won’t change hands until at least 2024. There’s no way the Republicans get a veto-proof majority. Also, McConnell has already said he’s not inclined to ditch the filibuster over this.
I agree that a nationwide abortion ban might take until 2024 to become law.
Mr. McConnell changes his “inclination” by the hour depending on his perception of the prevailing white supremacist wind.
McConnells word is worthless, I think anyone who should know that by now. He violated his own rule to ram ACB through the Senate knowing his party would lose the presidency, he outsourced impeachment to Democrats twice, and was almost gleeful that we would make his job easier after Jan 6 by impeaching Trump without his hands being in it. He’s probably the most nakedly self interested partisan hack in Washington, and that’s a big competition to win.
There are not presently 51 votes on our side of the aisle to end the filibuster, there may well be on their side of the aisle after this midterm. This is why it’s imperative to pass a bipartisan bill codifying Roe now and to donate to swing state Democrats like Kelly, Warnock, Cortez Masto, Ryan, Fetterman, and the winner of the Wisconsin primary. This bill made doing both of these things harder and is yet another example of the Democrats swinging for the fences and committing an own goal.
I fear we’re in dangerously shifting sands.
My issue with passing a bill to codify Roe is that such a bill can — and I suspect will — be reversed the next time the GOP takes a majority.
When the right-wing was first ramping up its bigoted assault on immigrants, a favored talking-point was to demand that the federal government legislate English as the national language. The argument that demolished that particular canard was the observation that in a few short election cycles, that legislation would be cited as precedent for federal legislation mandating Spanish as the national language.
Abortion rights — and privacy rights in general — will be under savage attack for the foreseeable future. This is a cultural war that will take generations to resolve — if it is ever resolved at all.
It stands a better chance of passing than this symbolic vote did, and unlike that vote, most voters agree with the provisions of this bill and you could wage a successful pro-choice campaign against anti-abortion extremism rather than insisting Democrats adopt pro-abortion language and maximalist litmus tests as some advocates are right now. I’d rather win elections and keep majorities. That’s what protects Roe. Not the pink hats or hashtag activists costing Democrats seats in the swing districts. I am completely on board with your fears that the 24-26 Congress with a Republican President will eviscerate the right to privacy and whats left of majority rule in this country. All the more reason to make compromises now that make that outcome less likely.
I agree 100% with your first paragraph. Your second paragraph, however, I could not disagree with more. Six months is an eternity in politics. The assault on women’s rights sets up a perfect scenario for the Democrats to buck historical trends and keep both houses of Congress… If we play it right.
I agree, though, that this latest offering by the Democrats is empty theater. I’m weary of endless reruns of the same tired show from Mr. Schumer, Ms. Pelosi, and Mr. Biden.
I disagree that the position offered by Ms. Collins and Ms. Murkowski is “moderate”. If Democrats did that, then it would at best leave half of the women in the US at risk just as they are already at risk today. There is nothing “moderate” about the Hyde Amendment. There is nothing “moderate” about the patchwork of laws that make life miserable for half of the women in the US.
The political system has failed. The Supreme Court is corrupt and out of control. An entire party of shamelessly corrupt and flagrantly criminal GOP elected officials and leaders flaunts the rule of law with utter and complete contempt — and with NO consequences.
Whatever happens next is, sadly, going to be bloody. I turn 70 this year, and I plan to begin taking Social Security after that milestone. All of the indicators are that Social Security and Medicare will be bankrupt by 2030 — only 8 years from now. I see no evidence that ANYBODY has the will or ability to take the straightforward steps needed to restore its financial foundation.
The America I grew up with is dead. It died in 2016, and is being cremated now.
I don’t care whether Christopher thinks I am too bleak or not. We Democrats failed to meet the challenge presented by Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, and an utterly corrupt GOP.
From here on, it’s just a matter of which floors of the building collapse first.
Hyde Amendment has been in place since 1983 and it doesn’t violate Roe or Casey. I think we have to fight back on the most strategically advantageous ground possible, and that’s where President Clinton was. Safe, legal, and rare. Which the modern abortion rights movement is trying to censor, but that formulae wins majorities which protect the right to choose.
Other formulae put us on the defensive where we are much weaker. MA is cool with taxpayer funded late term abortion, most of America is not. But most of America is also not cool with arresting pregnant women and their doctors. I think we can beat their extremism with our moderation, not with our extremism. Bill Clinton’s formulae won two national elections that Cori Bush and AOC never will.
And to be clear I hate Hyde, but if Roe is on the chopping block, we ain’t got time or capital to waste on overturning a bill we don’t have the votes to overturn.
I’m not as opposed to Hyde as some. It seems to me that if abortions are publicly funded we are forcing many taxpayers to fund what they morally oppose. How can we complain that one side is forcing their morality on everyone if we do the same thing? It’s the same way I feel about private K-12 education. You have all the right in the world send your child to a private school, but don’t expect the rest of us to pay for it through vouchers.
That is Pandora’s Box.
Millions of Americans are morally opposed war. The government has LONG held that that does not exempt them from paying taxes that support war.
Americans “morally oppose” a long and growing list of things. Tens of millions of Americans morally oppose homosexuality. That group of people violently opposed spending ANY government money on HIV/AIDS prevention and research when HIV/AIDS was primarily a disease of gay men.
Lifesaving medical research, especially in rare genetic disorders, has been set back decades by “moral opposition” to stem-cell research. The result is that embryos that, for whatever reason, are not going to be implanted are discarded into rubbish rather than being used for research.
In an earlier time, medical students were prohibited from using cadavers during medical school — because people were “morally opposed” to such “abuse of the dead”.
The list goes on and on and on.
America should NOT be a theocracy. The separation between church and state should be, if anything, increased rather than eroded.
People who are morally opposed to abortion do not have one — irrelevant for a huge majority of the anti-abortion extremists because they are male.
I don’t necessarily agree with the argument I presented above, but there are enough sincerely held beliefs on both sides that I would prefer some mutual respect. OTOH I don’t respect moral opposition to scientific fact. Only a government can wage war and sometimes it has to, but even there I would hope that the moral reservations are taken into account when deciding whether such a course of action is necessary. To be clear, I am not suggesting that there is a court-enforceable exemption to paying taxes for such things, but it can and should be a political consideration.
We agree that moral opposition to the proposals of a given candidate or party is central to politics and political consideration.
That’s good enough for me.
The closest we have come to a factual measure of when terminating a pregnancy has moral consequences is “viability”. If the anti-abortion extremists would live with a “viability” restriction, then we’d be 90% home.
Another scientific fact is that fertilized eggs fail to implant ALL THE TIME. The science (cf https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5443340/) suggests that:
That suggests that something between 46-76% of fertilized ovum do not result in live births.
Each IVF procedure routinely fertilizes about 10 eggs (give or take, depending on physiology and age of the woman) — only one will be implanted (in the past, it was common to attempt to implant 2-3. This often result in twins and triplets — MUCH higher risk pregnancies).
Anti-abortion extremists are morally opposed to using these non-implanted fertilized eggs for stem-cell research or anything else. The result is that they are discarded.
In my view, each voter and candidates makes their own personal decision about what is moral and what is not. A candidate whose personal views are out of alignment with those the constituents has a relatively simple choice: advocate for what constituents want or step down/recuse.
I do not believe that government should be in the business of legislating morality.
I wouldn’t go as far as your penultimate paragraph as a committed Burkean. Advocating contrary to your constituents is where we get Profiles in Courage. The voters, of course, can always decide to what extent that impresses them at election time.
I agree. Your last sentence is the most important.
I don’t mean that an elected official must always stay in lockstep with their constituents.
I think an elected official has an obligation to separate his or her personal beliefs from public policy. I’m perfectly OK with an observant Christian or Jew scrupulously attended Mass or services every week. I’m not OK with that same person making it a crime to not attend Mass or services.
That’s a clearer point, and I agree that it’s politically unwise to focus on repealing Hyde when overturning Roe itself is on the line.
This analogy does not hold since those same people morally opposed to abortion are also are very vocally opposed to modern public education and they do and should not get a taxpayers veto over whether taxes will fund schools that teach things they disagree with. That would be a huge step backward for the country.
My taxes pay for my fellow citizens healthcare, and while I think it was the height of hypocrisy that President Trump got experimental treatment on my dime for a disease he failed to take seriously, I am glad that coverage was there. If anything, I wish far more citizens had access to it, and if we want poor women to access abortion we will have to pay for it. The right has no plan to pay for all these unwanted children they are would be forcing women to carry against their will I might add.
Now I’m with you that electorally it’s dumb to wage this fight on taxpayer abortion when the extremist right is proposing jailing women and doctors, but I do think it’s a fight worth having down the road after Roe has been firmly secured.
I’m not suggesting a taxpayers veto, just that this is why we will and should keep having these debates.
I will say it’s high time for term and age limits across the board. Nobody under 70 should be holding public office, that should be an automatic retirement cutoff. I respect the legacy of RBG and Feinstein, but the reality is, they should have retired decades ago. Feinstein messed up the Kavanaugh confirmation because she is too senile to do her job. It’s well documented at this point and a big reason Durbin (no spring chicken himself) took her spot at Judiciary. Pelosi and Schumer are far too out of touch with the political realities of today and what young voters want. RBG had eight years to retire under a Democrat and squandered it to give Trump the votes to overturn Roe. Horrible way for her legacy to be defined, but it’s fair and true.
18 year terms for SCOTUS solves for the hyper partisan confirmation process. An age limit combined with a term limit for speaker and Senator would also help. 10 years seems like a good cap for speakers local and national, and 18 for a Senator makes a lot of sense. Long enough to make a difference, not long enough to be staring into space during committee meetings. House terms I’d raise to 4 years and give them a 20 year limit. Long enough to make a difference, but not too long. Most principals and superintendents only last four years tops. Most teachers retire now after 25 years. It makes sense. You want fresh blood with new ideas.
First, I assume you meant to say over 70 rather than under 70 in your second sentence, but I do not have the words to express how strongly I disagree. That loses us a lot of great people, as does artificial term limits for elected officials. Let the voters decide. I might be open to mandatory senior status for judges at a certain age, which is the only way to not require a constitutional amendment, but I do not want them leaving the bench young enough to take another job as that could compromise their decisions if they have an eye on their next gig. I do favor term limits for leadership positions within legislative bodies. You also want experience, institutional memory, and stability. I also don’t want to play with the fine balance of two years for Reps, four for the President, and six for Senators. Every Congress has some new members to infuse new ideas, but it’s not always just about what young voters want (an age bias you often demonstrate, BTW).
I share Christopher’s profound disagreement with your explicit age bias.
It is no less offensive to say “Nobody [over] 70 should be holding public office” than to say “No blacks should hold public office”, “No women should hold public office”, or — for that matter — “No Irish should hold public office”.
Ageism is pernicious and wrong, just like racism, sexism, and xenophobia.
This attitude cost us Roe v Wade as RBG arrogantly held onto power instead of passing the torch to someone equally as able with similar views such as Kentanji Brown Jackson. It cost us Roe v Wade as Feinstein stayed well past her prime and bungled the Kavanaugh hearings. The voters sent her and Strom Thurmond and Robert Byrd back to office well past their prime. Charles Grassley is about to run for re-election as he hits his 90’s. If he had not been tragically cut down by brain cancer a little earlier than I expected, I do not doubt our own Senator Kennedy would be exiting in a pine box. Perhaps he would be serving in his 90’s today.
The voters two years ago had two equally liberal equally Irish equally Catholic candidates and picked the older one over the younger one, including a majority of young voters for reasons that still escape me. Markey has spent his career trying to make daylight savings time permanent and has finally succeeded. Time for him to go home when this term is over. Biden is stuttering and stammering and clearly does not have the energy to manage Ukraine and the economy, not to mention fight the political fight he has to have to save his flagging presidency.
Perhaps I have a bias seeing my own parents on a daily basis and seeing my mother feel trapped by my fathers physical decline, but they are both younger than the major figures running the country and that should frighten us. Bernie is talking about making another run if Biden bows out! When he is 80! We used to laugh at the Soviets, French, and Japanese cycling their dying premiers and now we are doing the same thing.
When I read the obits for Bob Dole I was shocked at how much younger he was compared to todays leaders. A good decade younger when he retired than Pelosi, Schumer, Biden, and McConnell. And I’m old enough to remember people making fun of him for being an out of touch old man when he was a veritable whippersnapper compared to todays federal leaders. Reagan in the dementia addled haze of his second term was younger than Biden or Trump were at the start of their first terms.
Ageism and ableism are problems, but they are also some jobs old people in cognitive and physical decline can’t do. My dad lost his job since he could not longer perform the restraint training needed to keep himself and his co workers safe on his job. Many jobs including mine, the military, and most other civil service and public safety jobs have mandatory retirement ages between 65-70. It is time our elected leadership faces a similar limit.
Anyway I know the constitution is practically set in stone and we can’t change these fixed terms or impose term limits or age limits, but I think it is important we hold our leaders accountable and toss them out when they are past their prime. Even the ones we love. I’m glad my parents are retired and no longer working, it gives me peace of mind to know they can at least focus on their health and what time they have left together. Why do politicians in a democracy insist on lifetime tenure? Why do voters reward them with it? The Roman’s rotated positions on a monthly basis as did the early legislators in our own country. It may be time to go back to the ideals of public service rather than public office. It’s a service not a job.
When an elected official shows clear deficits, then I enthusiastically agree with you that we should seek to replace them with candidates who do not have such deficits.
It is the focus on age itself rather than deficits that is offensive. Ronald Reagan was an ignorant and incompetent fool even before his Alzheimer’s.
What could a Democrat have done different that would have changed the outcome of the Kavanaugh hearings? I am aware of no evidence that Ms. Feinstein had deficits that interfered with her participation in those hearings.
The sharpest criticism I’ve seen of Ms. Feinstein during the Kavanaugh hearings was her delay in publishing the allegations of Ms. Ford. Ms. Feinstein has repeatedly stated that she did so at the explicit request of Ms. Ford — and so far as I know, Ms. Ford has never said otherwise.
Would you have had Ms. Feinstein disregard that explicit request? Seriously?
There was a time where being black or female was an automatic and explicit disqualification for a number of jobs. You would do the same for those over 70 — regardless of their actual capabilities.
I know this is hard for you to imagine, but I promise you that your tune will change somewhere after your 60th birthday.
I wish you would please criticize the actions, utterances, and policies of elected officials and candidates rather than their age.
I think Feinstein, Pelosi, Schumer, and Biden are all past their prime.
I thought Markey was which is why I ultimately voted for Kennedy after going back and forth on that race. I think Warren and Hillary, older women I have supported for president, are still sharp. Although the latter was still under 70 when she became the Democratic nominee. The former clearly has the energy of a woman 20 years younger.
The issue with RBG has more to due with her failure to retire when we still had a Democratic trifecta capable of replacing her. Was serving in the minority on the court another six years worth giving up the opportunity to have a 5-4 progressive majority? I would argue it was not.
Feinstein had a younger primary challenger and he lost, perhaps due to Republicans voting for Feinstein in the jungle primary. It’s becoming a real problem now and there is no real remedy to fix it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/02/us/politics/dianne-feinstein-memory-issues.amp.html
Although I would be far
more reluctant to vote for Hillary or Warren in 2024 than I was in 2016 or 2020.
I apologize for seeming oppositional, I’m just still stuck on this. When you write “… past their prime”, that phrase strikes me as just another euphemism for “too old”.
Regarding RBG, I certainly agree that her death came at an unfortunate time. I see no evidence, however, that she was any less capable from 2016 to 2020 than she was earlier.
Is it likely that Merrick Garland or Katanji Brown Jackson could have written a majority opinion similar to Sessions v. Dimaya, 2018 (https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/15-1498_1b8e.pdf)?
If an elected official is having “memory issues”, then I agree that they should be replaced. I much prefer words like “Diane Feinstein should be replaced because her ongoing memory issues are a real obstacle” over “Diane Feinstein should be replaced because she is past her prime” or “Diane Feinstein should be replaced because she too old”.
Under the age restriction you propose, Ms. Feinstein would have been forced to step down in 2004, when she turned 70. I think that’s a worse outcome than what has transpired. I think its very unlikely that a different Senator from CA would have made any difference at all in the Kavanaugh confirmation.
In my view, fair and effective elections provide a FAR better mechanism than term or age limits.
My point with RBG is that a younger liberal would have been confirmed under a Democrat and we would not have the 6-3 majority we have because she died within months of the end of the Trump administration. Had she lived just six more months Biden could have confirmed her replacement and it would remain a 5-4 court. Stephen Breyer is just as capable today as he was ten years ago, but he has the good sense to pass the baton to someone younger with a different background who will have a more far reaching impact on inspiring more young women if color to choose the law. I love Sonia Sotomayor, but with her diabetes it might be better for her to retire now while there is still a Democratic trifecta than wait out several years of GOP control.
I do agree that we should impose term limits on Supreme Court justices. I think that should be accompanied by strict restrictions on what justices may do after leaving the Court (to address Christopher’s very legitimate concern).
Expected lifetime in the US in the late 1700s was 35-40 years (depending on the source) — about half what it is today. That makes lifetime tenure VERY different when the Constitution was written than in the 21st century.
I’m not sure the founders contemplated Supreme Court justices routinely sitting on the court for periods exceeding twenty years.
The only thing like this I would support, and probably the only thing like this that could avoid a constitutional amendment, is mandatory senior status at a certain age. Justices Kennedy and O’Connor, for example, can still perform judicial functions in certain cases. While they no longer have a vote on SCOTUS they are not “former” Justices, but rather “retired” Justices. I’m pretty sure this is how it works in MA.
I’d be fine with that. It would make vacancies more frequent and regular and help untangle some of the partisanship of the court and ensure justices are in touch with the realities of today.
Well, it’s not like Justices don’t know what’s going on in the world. I should have said I’d be OK with senior status, but not necessarily going to affirmatively advocate for it. I want to expand the Court to one Justice per circuit, but otherwise I’m fine with the status quo. I think we also have to step back and ask what problem are we really trying to solve here. The answer to that question definitely should not be we don’t like their rulings. The Justices are the High Priests of our system whose interpretation of the Constitution and laws is supposed to be walled off from mere popular sentiment. Often that means being a voice a bit from the past and saying hold on a minute. The other reform I’d be more willing to affirmatively advocate for is a strong code of ethics for the Supreme Court just as there already is for lower courts.
Totally agree here. I like an 18 year term and a mandatory senior status at 75. That seems fair. I’ll also concede 65 and 70 may be too early of a cut off point, although it would still be older than the rest of the industrialized world which usually has 65-70 as its retirement age for judges.
It’s 80 for Roman Cardinals. I’m still not on board with any term limits.
I thought SS going bankrupt soon was a myth or “zombie lie”. Remembering that politics is the art of the possible, what would you have Dems do?
I fear you are sadly mistaken. It takes only a moment with Google learn the truth.
Consider, for example, the 15-Oct-2021 report of the “Congressional Research Service” — hardly a source of mythology or “zombie lies” (https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/RL33514.pdf). Here are the first two paragraphs of the “Introduction” (emphasis mine):
I became eligible to collect Social Security benefits when I turned 66, in 2018. I waited until this year because my benefits are substantially higher by waiting until I turn 70 (this year). I foolishly and naively relied on the government’s commitment to pay these benefits to which I am entitled.
In 12 short years, my benefits will be cut by TWENTY TWO PERCENT unless Congress acts to address the shortfall.
I would have Congress do the following:
It ought to be entirely possible to find a mix of the above three that solves the problem.
This is no myth. This is a direct frontal assault on my retirement benefits. I don’t care whether it’s Democrats or Republicans — if the government can’t fix this, the government is broken.
I’ve favored your 1 and 2 for a while. My what would you have Dems do question was relative to abortion policies.
I misunderstood your question, I apologize — I thought you were referring to Social Security.
The sad reality is that I think we are looking taking decades — generations — to somehow push back against the superstition, bigotry, and will ignorance that has become so dominant in American culture.
I think it will get MUCH worse before it gets better. I think several generations of Americans will have to fight to regain the freedoms we lost between 2000 and 2020.
The majority does not matter.
The filibuster, the Electoral College, and the allocation of senators that provides the 600,000 citizens of Wyoming the same power in the senate as the 39,000,000 citizens of California all trump the majority.
If your football team scores five times with field goals and mine scores three times with touchdowns, I still win even though you scored the majority of times. Democrats need to start playing by the rules.
And the rules allow our current president and senate to re-calibrate the US Supreme Court so that it is more aligned with the American People. It is what the American People deserve. It protects democracy.
The simple evidence that the majority of the court today has a legal interpretation that is out of sync with the vast majority of the American People is concrete proof of this. Our founders, in their wisdom, possibly their foresight, provided a Constitutional remedy. President Biden and the senate need to add a minimum of two and hopefully four more judges to the court.
Anything else ignores reality.