With the news of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's fall... A few predictions.

[johnny9fingers]

With the news of poor Ruth Bader Ginsburg's fall we can now see that 45 will soon have yet another nomination for SCOTUS to appoint; which will be his third.

This will make a tidy difference to SCOTUS. With Trump's two appointments so far it sits at five Republican nominations to four Democratic ones. After this, it will be six-three to the Republican's favour.

When commenting in general about gerrymandering in the US a Harvard constitutional law professor, Laurence Tribe, said this:

"...Especially with a sitting president who won a majority in the electoral college [in 2016] while receiving roughly 3m fewer votes than his opponent, and a supreme court five of whose nine justices were nominated by Republican presidents who collectively received fewer popular votes than their Democratic opponents and were confirmed by Senates similarly skewed."

SCOTUS is one of the cornerstones of the US constitution. The Dems appear to have ignored it as being consequential for years. They have never sought to find the tempo or be on the beat when it came to timing nominations or delaying them; well, either that or luck naturally favours the GOP. The "gentleman's agreement" between the two parties about nominations and approvals came to an end with Obama the victim of an outstanding set of delaying tactics by the Republicans, intent on playing the long game.

Now we can see the full extent of Hillary's loss; and how that loss will resonate, via SCOTUS, through the next decades. And we have also seen how women can make a difference in an election. But when it came to the president, many American women elected Trump over Hillary. And many American women elected anyone but a Dem for the last two mid-terms. All of which will enable SCOTUS to reconsider Roe vs Wade with a 6 - 3 majority should the time come.

Interesting times in the formation and gestation of the Republic of Gilead. Birth pangs, even. As a person with an opinion about political systems, I'd suggest anything showing similar symptoms to Republic of Gilead needs termination before birth, alas; it is too crippled and deformed to lead a meaningful existence. Those few mediæval polities remaining in the modern world hide their deformities as much as they can, but it is obvious they are crippled, at least morally. (But at least Saudi has begun to let women drive, alongside other less noble and more murderous policies. Did I praise them with faint damns? I think the term I'm looking for is litotes or meiosis, but the old noggin ain't what it was.)

As soon as 45 has gotten another SCOTUS member approved, he will have done his job. Then the party can throw him to the wolves and wash their hands of him, all of them declaiming him for the sleazebag he is, and some of them secretly hoping they can play the victim when Mueller's investigation bears fruit. I can just hear the quotes "He hijacked the party to his own agenda..." and "We didn't credit that the Russians owned him lock, stock, and barrel" etc, and etc.

Expect the GOP to turn on him soon after the Senate has approved his nominee, because they know they can lose once immediately after Trump has been impeached, much like with Carter after Ford/Nixon, but know they will come again strongly; especially with a Dem POTUS working against a Republican dominated Congress and SCOTUS; and with Congress and SCOTUS onside when they win they can reset the game rules again. They have proven remarkably good at this, which is why the Dems are always pushing uphill.The Dems will only get better results when they start to think strategically as well as tactically. Deep strategy seems to evade them, the Dems being happy in the noble causes of enlightenment and justice, and thinking the world will come to them because other folk pay lip service to the same ideals. And that is why they get kicked in the crutch time and time again. I think it will take someone from the GOP to take down Trump, and I have a feeling the GOP will get the timing right on this one; it is what they are good at.

That's all right I suppose,
As it goes.

Comments

[asthfghl]

DW cut, please?

[johnny9fingers]

Done.

[asthfghl]

Thanks.

[mahnmut]

Long story short: the US society is fucked for a long time ahead, especially women. Quelle surprise.

[johnny9fingers]

And all dependent on one pivotal point; the election of 2016.

[kiaa]

What, the Dems are bad at deep strategy? The party of Soros is not good at forging elaborate plots!?

There goes my fave conspiracy theory.

[johnny9fingers]

Oh well, I'm sure there are other ones.

Sometimes I think it would take a true grandmaster of a chess-player to plot these things, and then I realise that it is the same sort of nonsensical argument as intelligent design.

I'd guess the random accumulation of idiocies and insanities exhibits as great a complexity as assuming an extrinsic ordering hand of significantly greater magnitude and puissance. That would explain it just as well. I can't reduce it to pointing a finger at one person and saying it's his/her/its fault.

[mikeyxw]

My take is that anyone expecting either party to think past the next election is probably going to be disappointed.

[oportet]

Without Trump, that soon to be 6-3 advantage would've been a 5-4 disadvantage.

Republicans know this - so it probably isn't a good idea for the GOP to make them choose between them and Trump - they may not like the result (Dems might though!).

As for Dems - putting all their eggs in the Russian collusion basket hasn't worked out yet. How long are they going to hold on to this dream?

[johnny9fingers]

Disagree. The GOP thinkers know they need the woman's vote, even if SCOTUS is in the GOP's pocket.
Let the bad man do the good work, then uncover his badness for the world to see, distance yourself from him, and watch the women's vote trickle back.

Approx 51% of human adults in the US are women. At the moment they have the vote; and while that is still the case, they have to be considered.

[garote]

As a trickle, apparently. :D

[johnny9fingers]

Ooh, you are awful...

[mikeyxw]

The GOP is still winning a majority of the votes of white women, the biggest group of women out there. Of course, it's very different in different age groups and areas, and in fact varies from individual to individual. Treating women as members of a group who either vote democratic or need to be educated about their true interests so they will do so kinda misses this.

[johnny9fingers]

Treating women as members of a group who either vote democratic or need to be educated about their true interests so they will do so kinda misses this.

You're right, of course. I'm sure women's rights are perfectly safe in the hands of the present GOP. As are other significant rights etc.

I guess the composition of SCOTUS will guarantee such things. It's not as if they have to re-interpret a random amendment like the Fourteenth or something, because executive decree doesn't quite cover it. Obviously I'm just flinching at shadows.

[mikeyxw]

Depends on what you mean by women's rights. About half of women in the US identify as pro-life for example. Appointing a pro-life SCOTUS justice isn't likely to make such women flee the GOP. Taking the stance that such women need to be educated about their true interests or that they somehow failed by voting for Trump isn't going to win them over for next time.

[johnny9fingers]

I think most women already know where their interests lie. And I think they will vote accordingly from here on in. The Me Too movement has shaken out some of stuff they have had to put with since the dawn of time. The demographic breakdown of an unusually high turnout midterm (despite 50% identifying as pro-life) seems to indicate that they are beginning to vote differently from previously. I, or anyone else for that matter, don't have to win over the opposition; people just tend to respond to policies which affect them negatively. While they can, of course.

Ginsberg herself stated that Roe vs Wade was open to re-interpretation given the nature of the original ruling in the mid '80's.

Sometimes when you look at your choices, and the consequences which follow them, you backtrack. In the UK the polls now show that if we had a second referendum Brexit would be stopped by a large majority. We won't get a second bite at Brexit, however, unless we are offered one, which is unlikely. Ergo we can do nothing about the UK's situation now, but it doesn't alter the fact that folk would change things if they could, given the realisations of the complexity of Brexit: the probable logistical difficulties shown up, the damage to the economy, and the revelations of the misinformation they were fed previously.

Eventually, after all the other options are worked through, people will pin the blame on the perpetrators, albeit posthumously. It's called history; and try as we might, we can't beat it, nor can we write it now hoping for some false future posterity as reality conforms to our opinions and we cover-up our sins and suppress alternative viewpoints. We have entered a lossless information age; the AIs sifting through our digital remains will judge us. Not that such will bother us much, of course.

[johnny9fingers]

As for the Russian thing, well I think we actually have to await the results of the investigation before making significant comments: it depends on how many of Trump's folk have to testify I suppose. And the GOP can always blame the Dems for the actual impeachment proceedings.

Trump is looking increasingly like a candidate ripe for political sacrifice on the altar of the greater GOP good. But much of this is foreshadowing a disastrous analysis with chapter-and-verse from Mueller. If that doesn't happen, the GOP is stuck with the Donald.

[oportet]

What has Mueller accomplished? Decade old tax fraud from a former advisor? How does the left pull hope out of that?

'Wait and see' is getting old for the people who aren't already convinced of the outcome.

[garote]

The results are/will be sealed anyway. Just the demand to unseal them will be, itself, decried as a witch hunt and political pandering. If the results exhonerate Trump, they will be shouted from the rooftops for years. Dems lose either way.

[johnny9fingers]

Nothing as yet.
At a guess, and given the general Secret Service and Diplomatic Service opinions of Donald the man, rather than the office of POTUS 45, no stone will have been unturned.

But I doubt that they will use any unverifiable evidence from abroad, if that's what you mean. Or any unverifiable evidence at all really; the man is POTUS.

[asthfghl]

Gotta suck to be Ginsburg. Every tumble you make is met with mass speculations and bets about the date of your imminent demise

[johnny9fingers]

Well she's a lass who has given long service to her nation, and is, to put it bluntly, a venerable old lady.

I hope she gets better quickly and is in good health for a very long time. May she live longer in good health, and prosper. But I fear for her, and America too.

[asthfghl]

It's not very good testament for the quality of a democracy when the fate of a nation rests upon the shoulders of a handful of appointees.

[johnny9fingers]

But just under half the voting public in the US think that they are the ones upholding American values. Democracy is just a side-issue, there are borders to protect, and the fifth column of the Fourth Estate amongst us to neuter.

Rarely has an orchestrated, wedge-issue driven polarisation of opinion been so complete and so successful. It really does harken back to the '30's