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Comment by anemoiac | Hacker News Reader

I was responding to the request, "Please tell me the last time a democrat-controlled senate confirmed a Supreme Court justice for a republican president in an election year."

If you're trying to be thorough, though, you should probably mention that Reagan's first selection for that seat was controversial because of his involvement in the the post-Watergate "Saturday Night Massacre," as well as the general suspicion that he would try to reverse Roe v. Wade and other civil rights-related rulings of preceding decades. Reagan's second selection withdrew his name from consideration before even being nominated, so I'm not sure why he's even relevant here.

I get that you're trying to make a political point, but there's simply no evidence that Democrats would have behaved like McConnell's GOP (perhaps more aptly described as the post-Gingrich GOP) did in 2016.

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Democrats blocked Bork for an article he wrote 25 years before, which raised the libertarian argument of whether Congress should be able to regulate racial discrimination by private parties. It is to this day a challenging topic for even liberal libertarians, because those laws rest on a sweeping interpretation of the interstate commerce clause. But Democrats used that article to defame Bork as a segregationist. The second nominee withdraw his nomination after it came out he used marijuana, after what happened to Bork. So yes, Democrats were not in a position to play that cars a third time against a wildly popular sitting President.

There is ample evidence that Democrats would have behaved like McConnell did. For example, their threats to pack the Supreme Court in 2019. (After their threats to pack the Supreme Court under FDR gutted large parts of the constitution.) The fact is that Democrats don’t perceive conservatives as legitimate players in the political process. That’s why they continually raise alarm about conservative Supreme Court nominees, even though in 40 years of a conservative majority on the court, not a single major liberal precedent has been overturned.

The Democrats didn’t block Bork for writing an article.

Democratic “threats” made in 2019, post-Merrick Garland, have zero bearing on their hypothetical behavior in 2016, pre-Merrick Garland and the shattering of norms that his (non)hearings represented.

I’m not a Democrat, but, from the outside looking in, it doesn’t seem like they have a real problem with right-leaning politicians or judges. I can understand why they might not view those who seem to be pursuing a return to the pre-Civil Rights era as wholly legitimate, but they’ve adopted plenty of relatively conservative positions over the years (just look at the record of their current presidential candidate!). The American Left has only recently begun to show its face again, for example, after decades of absence, and the Democratic Party has long seemed to harbor more resentment toward that group than moderate conservatives.

I’m also not a demographer, but I don’t think many would consider a potential 6-3 conservative majority on the SC to be at all representative of the US population. To me, that seems like the real legitimacy crisis here, not whether Democrats think of conservatives as legitimate political actors (spoiler alert: I think it’s safe to say they view conservatives about as favorably as conservatives view them).

You’re mixing up legal versus political conservatism, which are two very different things. I agree Biden is very moderate politically. But no Democratic Justice is meaningfully conservative legally (though Kagan displays a streak of it). In close decisions, the conservative justices routinely break ranks. (Roberts in the ACA case, Kennedy in Obergefell, Gorsuch in Bostock, Scalia in many 4th amendment cases, and in the video game first amendment case.) The Democratic appointees always vote as a block.

You’re wrong to say that Republicans hate democrats as much as democrats hate republicans. There is pretty much no liberal opinion you could say that would get you personally attacked at a federalist society meeting. There are a wide range of mainstream conservative views you’d best not say in a similar context among liberals.

I’ve been hearing right wing talk radio call liberalism a mental illness for at least 20 years.

Sure, that’s right wing radio. I’m talking about fairly ordinary people at ordinary people. You see this even within the Democratic Party itself, which has come to demand strict ideological purity. Everyone just pretends that 50% of Black people don’t oppose same-sex marriage, and that the 30% of the party that’s pro-life doesn’t exist.

Who is "everyone"? This has been known fact for a long time within Democratic circles. https://www.pewforum.org/fact-sheet/changing-attitudes-on-ga...

You must have some very interesting "ordinary" friends. You're also trying to compare the federalist society, a high-brow legal organization composed of highly educated lawyers, with ordinary, likely much less educated people. Try going to a Trump rally and holding up a black lives matter sign. I'm sure you'll have plenty of intellectually stimulating conversation.

I think you'd get the same or better reception than if you held up a blue lives matter poster at an aoc rally.

Black Lives Matter.

Constrain the operational gamut of law enforcement (aka “defund the police”).

Abortion is a medical health issue and a woman’s right to choose.

I dunno, there’s plenty that will get be undue attention at a Federalist meeting, and some things I could say that would put my life on the line (remembering home invasions, fire bombings and an assassination of a surgeon involved in abortions).

I’d say any of those things at CPAC much less Fed Soc. Last Fed Soc meeting I was at before COVID, we had a vigorous debate over Bostock. The room was split 50/50. Likewise, there are enough libertarians to get a good amount of support for constraining the operational gamut of police or eliminating qualified immunity. More than a third of Republicans support making abortions always or mostly legal, and among Fed Soc, which leans a tidge libertarian, it’s probably half. Meanwhile, I wouldn’t address any of the nuances of those issues at an ABA meeting, much less in a partisan liberal organization.

> Last Fed Soc meeting I was at

That explains a lot :)

I've only voted straight democratic ticket for my entire life. And I feel more comfortable sharing my views with trump supporters than my liberal friends.

Just last night I had to walk away from a conversation because the other party got so heated just because I suggested it's very likely the new supreme court won't overturn roe v wade.

The GOP have been trying to overturn Roe vs Wade since at least the Reagan era, if not from the day the decision was made.

What was your reasoning for your side of the argument? Were you arguing based on the GOP history of not successfully overturning RvW, or were you challenging the other side's assumptions about GOP wanting to overturn RvW? Were you playing the ball or the player?

I didn't even get to my argument.

Which is basically two fold. Roe vs wade is very popular. Last pre research poll I found said even among Republicans less people wanted to overturn it than not overturn it. 49 to 48.

If the Republican justices fall along these same lines it won't get overturned.

Which brings us to our next argument Which is basically the supreme court is very reluctant to overturn major constitutional court cases that have stood for almost half a century.

So will the supreme court throw out 50 years of precedence to overturn an issue that 70-80% of the population and 50% of Republicans disagree with overturning?

It's not impossible but doesn't seem likely.

> The Democratic appointees always vote as a block

I think this behavior could very possibly be caused by there being more conservative justices. If there were 6 liberal justices and 3 conservative ones you'd probably see the 3 vote as a block and the 6 break rank.

The supreme court is going to mostly issue opinions that are close to it's median member. And the more liberal or conservative justices on the supreme court the more liberal or conservative that viewpoint will be. And thus the more likely the more moderate members will be to break rank.

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