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Comment by rectang | Hacker News Reader

The proper response to this cynical argument is to pack the court.

How is it “cynical” to point out that where a split senate/presidency exists in an election year, the senate has historically used its confirmation authority to postpone filling the vacancy?

And the response is to demand something that actually would be unprecedented: packing the senate? Which only Democrats have done before, under circumstances where it was obviously to coerce the Supreme Court into deciding cases differently. Acting like Democrats hold the moral high ground here is utterly absurd.

So if norms don't matter (as you, McConnel, and Trump seem to argue), the Democrats ought to pack the court, no?

So would you be ok if Republicans won this election and then packed the Supreme Court?

No. I would not be happy about it. But I fully expect them to do it. There are no longer norms. Screw the country. It is every man for himself.

The republicans had the opportunity to do it, and haven’t...

Why would they need to pack the court? They already have a political majority, do they not? No need to break a norm when it confers no additional benefits (as the breaking of the previous norms did).

They didn’t have majority until recently, and according to Vox and many left leaning sites, they’ve voted quite liberally since.

Further, there’s this: https://thehill.com/regulation/454463-ginsburg-dismisses-cou...

The Republicans don't generally vote as a bloc on most things. And many of them hate the President as much as the Democrats do.

For the record I was refuting the person above me. I don’t think they’d pack the court.

I don't think either side would actually do it. It's a political talking point, but it's just a bridge too far.

"the senate has historically" means that is literally the "norms"

There are lots of things to argue but that isn't one of them.

If the Democrats don't hold the moral high ground, why is McConnell lying about his rationale? He didn't say "The majority can do what ever it wants, and that's moral", he made up rationales that change to as the facts do.

The idea that a Supreme Court opening should never be filled when the President and Senate are opposing parties is utterly absurd.

It's true that the Constitution wasn't written like Ethereum to preclude all attempts to undermine it with bullshittery like refusing to even put matters up to a vote. That doesn't mean it's at all moral to ignore it.

Also, was "Packing the Senate" a typo? FDR threatened but did not pack the Court. "Packing the Senate" is a Republican tradition (not that the parties mean much consistently, going back centuries), which even a blatant partisan couldn't avoid admitting:

https://www.newsmax.com/michaeldorstewitz/democracy-republic...

And slaveholders (the spiritual inspiration of modern Republicans) had manipulated the Court to themselves since the beginning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_Circuits_Act

Any Democrat who accepts a lecture about the "moral high ground" on the subject of the Supreme Court is the Republicans' useful idiot.

The Roberts Court disenfranchised millions of Democratic voters by gutting the Civil Rights Act. The fight over the Supreme Court's composition is a fight over pure electoral power.

It shouldn't be this way, but it is.

I totally concur. Double the seats on the bench.

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