President Biden: The NEW one and only politics thread

Not all alike. The Republican party has become particularly ruthless and immoral in its means.

But all of this has pretty deep roots, in which the seperation of powers were destroyed by people who empowered courts to be able to strike down legislative outcomes they ideologically didn't like, and gave them very unbalanced powers now that make our democracy more unstable. This was not the role a judiciary plays in the balanced government we are predicated on. It effectively makes those state courts (as well as the Supreme Court) into something more powerful than the elected legislatures, and in the case of lifetime appointments (like the Supreme Court), it gives those courts superlegislative power.

What are you seeing from those Republicans is a consequence of the barn doors opened in the 60s, 70s and on, where those with different ideological agendas took the "by all means" approach to make those courts all powerful and more legislative than judicial in scope. It was a perversion that is now leading to even bigger perversions (the threat of impeachment to stack courts to get the overriding legislative outcomes they want), and it is sort of a natural, but unfortunate consequence, for the erosions to our system that people have encouraged and allowed for their ends for decades. The people who were doing that didn't take into account that the short-term ends they were "winning" in different moments in time, were upping the stakes by making courts all powerful (in an ideological way). ... and that has now brought about even more pervervsions to how the legislature and judiciary are now going to interact. It's more, "by any means to get what you want"

We're reaping what we sowed with all of this.

I don't know how we undo that and turn our judiciary back into what it should have always been. . ... and keeping it so that elected legislatures make the laws. Institutions try to expand their powers, and once they are successful, they don't just give it back, so you can't just expect things to roll back.

But it is testing democracy in this country.

The one thing I come back to is that the Republicans in that state have a supermajority. ... because that is who people have voted for. My guess is that most people pulling those levers aren't immoral cartoon characters who want to see impeachments overriding election results. But they have been left with only bad choices. They don't want to see a party they think is destructive to the country in power, and judges who act as unelected superlegislators taking more and more power and legislating by decree. Even if the other party is now fighting back in very undemocratic ways. So I'd guess there are a lot of people who feel stuck between a rock and a hard place.

 

When you erode institutions and cut corners to get the results you want, you are opening a barn door. ... that usually ends up leading to a stampede.

At that moment it pays to understand the roots (and yes, your role in it) that brought us to the moment in time. ... or you can just be glib and entirely self unaware.

You can't just pull a few bricks out of a foundation when it suits you and be surprised when others do the same thing for what suits them, leading to the inevitable of the stakes getting bigger, to the point that eventually you get some real shits saying fuck it and bringing the entire foundation down.

You reap what you sow.