Please. This misogynistic “it’s all RBG’s fault” shit got old when she was still alive.
Let’s just hope Manchin or Sinema don’t suddenly decide to switch parties now with a “boo boo my D colleagues keep hurting my feelers” excuse and give leadership back to McConnell. Then we won’t see a replacement until 2025 at the earliest.
I’m neither American nor an expert on the Congress, but AFAIK there’s absolutely no reason to expect this, beyond general doomsaying and reflexive pessimism.
No reason to “expect” it, true, but a reason to think it could happen is that both have in crucial situations sided with, you know, Republicans.
WOW. How is this the first I’m hearing about her second career??
Next: I need to see the list raunchy, Mike Pence-authored, BDSM titles.
It makes no sense because the new VP would require 2/3 confirmation from the House and Senate. It is a ridiculous suggestion from ridiculous people.
These fuckers truly believe that only white christian straight men are qualified…
I’m not sure who you’re quoting, but that’s not what I said or implied. McConnell and the Republicans are responsible for corroding our system, but I don’t believe that means Democratic leadership and/or Supreme Court justices with lifetime appointments get to remain free from criticism for the decisions they make (as your comment demonstrates).
And I don’t agree that it’s misogynistic to recognize that RBG’s decision to not retire when it was floated to her contributed to a disaster many hands in the making, any more than it’s misogynistic to criticize Sinema for holding progressive policy hostage. Our country and the issues RBG cared about would have been far better off had Ketanji Brown Jackson, or someone of her caliber, had been put on the bench in 2014.
Republicans have been pushing hard on Manchin to flip parties and have been offering up all kinds of incentives to do so (committee chairs, etc). I don’t think it will actually happen but with how razor thin the margins are and a Republican caucus that refuses to do anything, one flip is all it would take to change the balance of power such as it is and really fuck things up.
If RBG had retired in 2014 McConnell would have held up that seat just like he did Scalia’s seat and we’d be no different today - except now we’d still have no marriage equality. Maybe she should have retired and not died on the bench but she shouldn’t be blamed for it.
I’d really love it if we could all start putting the blame where it actually belongs, which is on the GOP…
Oh no, don’t mess this up:
I have no doubt Biden’s nominee will get appointed, I hope he picks a good one.
I’d also like to quietly hope that one or more of the other ancient trolls who currently occupy a seat on that court decide to retire as well. I won’t wish death on anyone, but statistics gonna statistic and some of them are not young. A couple of other quick changes might actually give the US a chance of surviving to the mid-century mark.
Aside from everything else, the fall elections will either be the starting gun for a massive campaign of bogus investigations, committees and other such targeting everything not GQP, or it will be the starting gun for another massive Big Lie campaign with attendant crazypants violence. This feels very much like the calm before the storm.
We’ve had a year to rest, we need to gear up and get out for 2021 elections. Keeping the house makes the GOPs Big Steal much harder, making the senate bluer would allow even more achievements for the people.
I understand the speculation as to what McConnell might have done if RBG had selected her replacement and Obama had nominated a Justice in 2013 or 2014, but we know what did happen when Trump got to select her replacement in 2020. I don’t necessarily agree that we live in the best possible timeline on this. At absolute worst, we’d be in the same situation we’re in now, but we’d at least have had a shot at getting someone like Brown Jackson.
Again, no one is suggesting that RBG bears anything resembling the responsibility of McConnell or the GOP in what happened. But, to be fair, when you rightly criticize Sinema for her actions, do you think it would be reasonable to respond with Please, this misogynistic “It’s all Sinema’s fault” shit got old a long time ago and we should place the blame on McConnell and the GOP? Of course not, because reasonable people can and do understand that recognizing someone made a wrong decision is not the same thing as absolving others who bear more responsibility.
RBG. She was Bader Ginsburg, not the other way ‘round. I also would have liked it had she retired on Obama’s watch but I won’t criticize her for choosing to go out with her boots on, as it were. She fought the good fight more than I have so I respect her decision even if I disagreed.
This is patently false. If RBG retired in 2014 and McConnell filibustered her replacement like he did with Scalia’s replacement we’d have no gay marriage, discrimination of gay and transgender persons would be legal, and Trump could legally ban all Muslims from entering the country. (Among many other things.)
I guess my counter-factual assumed that Obama et al would act with basic precaution and not have her retire officially before the confirmation was assured, but if one assumes utter incompetence one will seldom be disappointed by Democratic leadership, I suppose.
At the end of all this back and forth, do you honestly believe that any criticism of her decision to remain on the bench until death must necessarily be rooted in misogyny?
Dammit, we absolutely can’t assume that we’ve got 6 months available for this. We’ve got a whole lot of Democratic senators over 70, and Feinstein herself is 88 years old. If you are just going by actuarial tables the odds of someone in that group dropping dead over a 6 month period and flipping control of the Senate are way too high for comfort. We damn well better act like we’re running out of time.
Maybe yours isn’t intended as such, but by and large this criticism seems to be rooted in misogyny and antisemitism.
She didn’t decide to remain on the bench until death. She had every reason to expect that Clinton would win the election in 2016 (we all did) and then she found herself in a position where it behooved her to stay on the bench for as long as possible. She didn’t choose to die when she did, and she held out for as long as she could. Talking about her decisions in 2013 assumes superhuman foresight, when all we have to go on is hindsight.
