And — here’s the mean part — if you don’t want that, you deserve what you get.
Liberals in deep blue states have been getting what they asked for and it is an epic failure every time.
$20 minimum wage for fast food workers. - Companies close on them
“Bail Justice” reform - crime goes up. They lie and say it isn’t but NYC has the military in their subways.
Open borders - Democrats losing black and Hispanic (ironically) working voters after white democrats said don’t send them to our neighborhoods and make it our problem. We support it in voice only.
The best thing that can happen FOR liberals is they DONT get what they ask for. Getting what they ask for just makes Trump look better and better.
From other metrics such as crime, outflows to other red states, etc blue states are clearly starting to experience the consequences of their decisions.
Crime is higher in blue states because crime is higher in cities, and blue states are more urban. I don't think it's too much more complicated than that, though I'm open to some other causal suggestion.
That's a good question. I'll say I don't know, but given that this generally holds true across many different countries I don't think "democratic governance" is a very satisfying explanation.
Without seeing the data, your assertion that the rural-urban per capita crime gap is universal is worth scrutiny.
But even if true, my question would be: what makes the average urban dweller more likely to commit crime than the average rural dweller?
I suppose that lots of guesses could be made. Economic conditions will be blamed. But a sound study of the data would probably show that even the rural poor are less likely to commit crimes than the urban poor.
There are some truths at the end of my questioning but the data is out there. My personal opinion is that no one wants to study the data because they are afraid of the conclusions that can only be drawn.
Why do you think I'd place a bet on something I believe is random? Or put another way, what structure of bet do you envision that would give me an advantage if it is random, and give you the advantage if it is not?
I think a good sports player will tend to beat a weak one. You believe the outcome to be random in a way that is not subject to narratives, which rules out the possibility that we could learn that a player is better because he wins more often, i.e. that we could ever know whether a player is better than another (that would be a narrative). The bet structure seems fairly clear.
California has more poor people per capita living under the poverty line then any other state but go on keep explaining how you cannot even keep up with the data.
Correlation is not causality. Consider the old canard that Blue states subsidize red states. That all depends on what counts as payment, and what counts as a subsidy. Is social security a subsidy? I don't think so? How about a military base? What about SALT deductions? In short, it all depends on the opinion of the person doing the analysis.
Bringing out good old "correlation is not causality" is a kind of pointless for the vast majority of social science discussions. If you don't accept it than can you point to the controlled experiment that shows that "liberal policies in deep blue states" lower their GDP and other metrics raise it?
You don't dispute they have higher GDP. Do you dispute they have higher life expectancy?
One of the closest ways to controlled experiment in social sciences is studying medicaid expansion, comparing similar/nearby states that did the expansion to those that did not. That "liberal policy" had a clear impact on improving health.
Arriving at a data-driven conclusion is nearly impossible with the interactions between the tens of thousands of economic interventions that result from millions of pages of laws, regulations, and tax code.
Instead we use Ockham's Razor. It's really quite simple. For example, if you give people free money via welfare, they are less likely to seek work as a source of money, all else equal. Welfare NEVER works in the long term favor of its recipients. We know this not because we have data but because it's common sense. No one ever went from poor to financially stable on welfare. Ergo, welfare doesn't solve poverty.
Similarly...
You are less likely to be killed by someone with a gun if you yourself legally own a gun.
You do not need a vaccine if you recovered from Covid easily.
Higher taxes will cause people to either flee to lower tax locales or engage in more sophisticated schemes to reduce what they owe.
The entire tax burden falls on consumers and individual taxpayers, even when those taxes are assessed to and paid by corporations and businesses.
I'm surprised at how many people are so politically invested in leftism that they ignore common sense in favor of waiting for some impossible-to-obtain conclusion through messy data.
It might seem nearly impossible to you, but people well versed in statistics and science realize it is achievable. And thus they use the scientific method to test ideas, see what works, and build on that. It's a great system!
Quantum mechanics, special and general relativity are wrong according to common sense, and were extremely difficult to test when they were first proposed. Luckily we didn't sit back and rely on common sense, and there's a strong tradition of not relying on common sense continuing to this day.
The problem is that human behavior is notoriously unpredictable and often irrational. I've worked in data science for 20 years. Physics and most natural sciences can be explained and even predicted with data. The reason, as you know, is that both individual humans and large groups of humans can be faced with multiple identical scenarios, all controlled, and yet still respond in different ways across repeated observations.
But the real problem is that leftists don't approach problems from a neutral position. To a leftist, the goal is control and expansive government. (There is no room in leftist policymaking for less government control.) So any data analysis by left-leaning people will always be biased in favor of expansion.
I've never seen any policy research from a left-leaning organization that calls for less government control over people based on the findings. Which defies logic obviously.
Your medicaid example highlights exactly my comment below. Improving health is indeed the upside. But Medicaid is a massive financial burden that transfers an individual's responsibility for his or her own health to strangers. Since the cost is so enormous, that is a morally tenuous approach. This is one of two weaknesses in leftist thought. The other being this: when the scheme doesn't deliver the intended benefits, who is on the hook for repaying those that it cost? (The answer is no one because leftists aren't about accountability, just control.)
Medical care is a great example of free market failure; a classic case of incomplete information causing pricing mechanisms to fail, and a great case for collective action. Of course it would be easy to miss this if you're just taking a purely philosophical approach; that's why it's important to use data and analysis.
I don’t necessarily agree with the person you are responding to, but that causation could easily be working the other way where blue policies are silly luxury policies that are only tempting to people in well off states.
The higher GDP doesn’t necessarily tell you a lot. Especially since if it was the other way around blue people would just scream “profit and dollars over human lives”.
Blue states also have the worst cost of living and economic inequality. Red states also have their own list of faults, but clearly GDP isn't everything. Most importantly, people are migrating from blue to red states, so they are voting with their feet. Curious to know if that will end up changing the red states to be more blue in the long run, though.
Geez, are you really arguing that cities are successful because rich people live there? Seriously? I would suggest focusing on how many poor people are becoming rich and comparing it over time. Many other metrics are budget deficits, crime statistics, public education cost and performance, housing affordability. Yeah, cities are great if you're living in a penthouse. Yes, and migration statistics are the citizens objectively voting with their feet. Enough of the self-serving arguments.
It's not as big of a gap as I had imagined, but if you walk down the list, there is always one or more blue states that has higher GDP then the next set of red states:
You do realize those big blue states have a massive debt problem right and the feds calculate GDP as Increasing when you take out loans and debt right ?
Yeah. The National Guard and several state agencies are in NYC subways because crime is down.
Cities in California, Illinois, Maryland, New York, Massachusetts, Oregon and Washington state have eliminated response to “non priority calls” for police departments during certain hours because crime is down.
Business are closing due to massive retail theft because crime is down.
And Trump wasn’t talking about the auto industry when he said bloodbath.
I’m stupid enough to believe all of that. (Just kidding. I’m not that stupid)
So many words to say so little. All you are doing is regurgitating tired rhetoric in ways that support you pre-established worldview. I live in NYC. Crime is not spiraling out of control, crime is down.
Maybe get your NYC DA to actually charge criminals with the crimes they were arrested for and the crime rate is not going down. If I beat my neighbor but tell you I didn't, that doesn't mean I didn't. But nice try there in your fantasy world.
Crime is down if you stop reporting, you know, actual crimes. When liberal DAs refuse to prosecute tens of thousands of suspects or lower the charges, it might look like crime is down. But that doesn't mean anything to all the victims. Crime is only down in your fantasy world.
Murder is down. Did people stop reporting murder? When the facts don’t fit your thesis you make up mirror reality. How has that been working out for you?
Full employment, crime is down and Blacks and Latinos don’t vote Republican, at least not yet. So you are 0 for 3 on your claims here. The best thing that can happen for Conservatives is to continue to live in mirror reality and continue to be confused why the world doesn’t go the way they expect it to.
There's no evidence of bail reform causing crime to go up. There wasn't a spike after NYC implemented the reform. An increase started later, but the obvious explanation is the pandemic. It went down last year.
You're advocating for an idea that keeps innocent people in prison due to being poor without anything to back up your fear.
Well when the left controls the studies and the media and the definitions of words they can make reality whatever they want.
Crime is down in NYC but the NYPD, NYSP and National Guard have occupied the subways for some random reason.
Crime is not down. It is down from 2020 maybe when it hit record numbers but it is definitely up over the last decade. Even white liberal manipulation can’t hide that fact.
Just ask the victims how bail reform is working. If they are alive to answer.
How about try winning elections campaigning on your ideas rather than relying on judges or the administrative state to impose your agenda undemocratically?
If your ideas are not popular enough to win large majorities and pass legislation then a partisan justice or two is just a band-aid. Your ideas are the problem.
Saying "I would just win all the elections moving forward" is not a realistic strategy because that's just not how elections work. It's like saying "If I were Alabama's coach I just would have beaten UConn and then beat Purdue and become national champs. Why don't they just do that?"
But maybe you’re right- Alabama shouldn’t focus changing its gameplan and developing a more competitive and winning team (I mean, what’s the point of that?)but instead try to get a commissioner appointed who will just award Alabama the throne by fiat. That’s the way the game should be played! No need to change anything on a losing team.
God forbid you have the consent of the governed if you can just find a judge who’ll make up the law from the bench. Screw that stupid “democracy” thing, amirite? 🤡
1. People are dumb. And democracies at least pretend to give people what they want. Running on ideas that are good is tantamount to failure, and running on ideas that win is tantamount to having bad ideas and thus failing long-term.
2. The current US system is built in such a way that, even if you control _everything else_, Supreme Court is a serious opponent with very slow change, because, in principle, they could shoot down every law.
LOL, if you're approaching this from a 2-party partisan dynamic, then I've gotta say you have no self awareness, and massive hypocrisy.
If you're approaching this from an idealistic non-partisan way, then you're hopelessly naive.
What is right does not happen without power. What is wrong happens if there is sufficient power to accomplish it. I'm not actually a fan of any of the 9 justices. I think all of them are misguided, and not actually fulfilling their responsibilities. I doubt anyone Biden nominates would be appreciably better. However, the merit of one's ideas has little impact on how popular those ideas are, and how popular ideas are has little impact on whether people who agree with them gain power in a democracy. Whether people who agree with something actually do it when they have the power to... is far from a given. There are so many degrees of separation between your idealistic principles and actual changes to policy, that I can't see how you think there's much but hot air in your statement.
I don't know what kind of fictional society you think this is, but if you actually believe what you said, then you don't understand our system, or power. Good luck to you.
Popular ideas that win majorities and get legislation passed can be deep-sixed by partisan justices from the other side. Therefore, if you want to accomplish anything, you need to appoint enough justices over time that the courts will not actively block you.
It'd be nice if the parties could come together and agree to appoint justices who stick to their Constitutional role and defer to the elected branches on matters of policy. But then, both parties *say* they do that already.
You have to take in to account the stupid voters of America. The economy is horrible. GDP growth is slowing. Inflation is rising and there are people stupid enough to vote for Democrats again.
Winning elections is about playing on stupidity not the issues.
People are dumb enough to believe Trump is a threat to democracy after Democrat judges and prosecutors have taken Trump to court in an election year over a “crime” that happened in 2015.
Democrats are literally trying to take the candidate of choice off of ballots.
That is literally fascism according to the Merriam Webster definition but really stupid people say Trump is the fascist and Democrats are trying to save Democracy by doing the opposite of democracy.
Economy seems to be doing OK as long as you bought your car and your house before 2022.
Control of BS narratives definitely helps the Dems. The narratives Trump pushes would be at least as outlandish, but he’ll never get the chance to have them featured
The problem with that argument is people are mostly stupid. For instant bail reform sounds like a good thing. It has the word reform in it. But criminals are criminals because they are bad or defective people. They belong isolated from society.
Lowering taxes on corporations sounds unfair but when companies have lower taxes they can lower prices and increase wages.
Most voters left or right are stupid people. Policy is irrelevant when running unless it’s a cultural issue.
I don’t know the cure but policy is probably not the answer unless you eliminated parties. Just 2 people this is what I support is probably the best solution. Vote blue no matter who is the problem (or vote red).
Eliminate party and make it only about issues and I agree. Right leaning politicians would win 100% of the time and it wouldn’t be close.
A decidedly Conservative Supreme Court will be needed to unwind many of the bad decisions by decades of liberal majorities that inevitably led to the situation we currently find ourselves in. The Constitution has been a matter of convenience for liberals - only honored as needed. A 40 year conservative majority will go a long way toward restoring respect for our founding precepts.
We'll soon see if they take the 1st Amendment seriously. But I actually think Missouri v. Biden is not as important as I once thought/hoped. This is because I now believe Facebook, Google, the NY Times, etc. don't need anyone from the White House or Surgeon General's Office pressuring them to censor unauthorized "misinformation." All the key players already know what speech they are supposed to censor ... They haven't stopped and they won't in the future either.
This is another reason I think these companies somehow know who is going to win the presidential election of 2024. Question: How do they know?
I, too, worry about how confident Democrats seem in the face of large majorities who disapprove of or disagree with their most horrendous policy decisions - e.g. border, crime, inflation. What do they have up their sleeve?
If you're worried about inflation you can probably save some money by switching from Reynolds Wrap to a cheaper store brand when making your tin-foil hats.
Two possibilities (1) H5N1 Pandemic. The labs already have the virus ready. Its presence in nature gives plausible deniability. (2) Color Revolution after the election if Trump wins. They don't let him take office.
You’d have to be more specific. In any case, I don’t remember all this talk of changing the rules during the Douglas or Brennan Courts when much of the damage was done.
Specifically, the 4th, 5th, and 9th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. No Supreme Court has appeared to care much about them, whether they are coded conservative or liberal.
I don’t disagree that the amendments that comprise the Bill of Rights have often been ignored - “penumbras” and such. But the 10th Amendment is the major casualty of the growth of the administrative state. Federal power has overwhelmed the vision of the Founders who sought to keep it in check. Of, by and for the people.
If you care about "of, by, and for the people," then shouldn't you care more about the 9th Amendment? The 10th Amendment concerns the rights of states, the 9th concerns the rights of people.
I would point out the most common outcome on SCOTUS is still 9-0, or 8-1. In short, regardless of party affiliation, they agree far more than they disagree. So that tends to weaken the importance of SCOTUS, relative to other institutions.
I don't agree with all the outcomes SCOTUS decides, but I abide by them. It's the least political branch of government.
Not on controversial decisions and then some are 9-0 on procedural decisions and no standing. But in the last few years very few of the major decisions are not 6-3. Facts matter.
No, the facts do not matter to you. I argued the facts, employing SCOTUSblog's database of decisions. It you ever read it, you'd see 9-0 is the most common outcome. What you're wanting to do is to cherrypick data to support your opinion.
It's fine to have an opinion, but don't pretend it means anything more than that.
BTW, by definition, we would expect split decisions on cases involving disagreements, what you label controversial. Duh! What percent of those disagreements, relative to the overall case load is the question.
Most of the 6-3 decisions were constitutionally correct. Liberal justices tend to side step the constitution in their decision making now a days.
Other than the Roe v Wade error they made previously they were actually very protective of the Bill of Rights when they have the majority. They were true liberals. Now they are marxists.
Only communist/marxist countries have abortion with no limits. Even super progressive European nations have common sense laws with limits on abortion.
The Constitution is very clear on the right to form militias and bear arms.
I hate calling 2020s Democrats liberals. It’s like calling Trump a conservative when he’s actually a classical liberal. Today’s liberals are just Marxists lite.
Thank you. This is yet another reason I'm convinced the entire system is captured. Everyone with a still-functioning brain KNOWS Biden has dementia, that's steadily getting worse.
Still, they ignore this and we're not supposed to talk about this. This proves the system is completely captured - and that a brain-addled person is desirable to The Deep State puppet masters as president. If this is indeed the case, these same people and organizations can surely rig another presidential election. I mean, Who's going to stop them?
Seemed fine on the state of the union to me. I think the argument that Biden has dementia is dumb, when you can just talk about inflation and immigration. Maybe some republicans don’t want to win? Especially those hoping for 2028.
Yes. Trump successfully avoided your strategy in the debate. Every answer was about immigration and inflation. Biden showed how he was behaving, just as he did in the stage of the union. Trump just had to stay on message and not point it out. Very smartly done.
And he will continue to do this. Not mention dementia. Mention immigration and inflation because he’s a smart politician (whatever you say about him).
"And — here’s the mean part — if you don’t want that, you deserve what you get." What I actually want is relief from commentators who view Supreme Court decisions as simply another data point for Republican/Democrat axes. I am far more concerned as to how Supreme Court decisions comport with protecting our Constitutional form of government than I am with how the decisions appear to commentators who can't see past the typical zero-sum game approach. I hope Nate stays away from this in the future.
Nate, can you reply? What is your vision for the Supreme Court? I don't want to put words in your mouth. We hear progressives constantly complain about the court. What should your guiding principles be? Intersectionality? Feelings?
I've never a progressive complain about a ruling based on the law? Its always outcome based?
What stupid, but typically leftist comment. Nate published his thoughts in a public forum. You think he can do a drive by and not defend what he wrote? Of course you do. Leftist hate free speech and debate. You hate debate because it would force you to defend your ideas. Debate is not the sweet spot of leftists. Their sweet spot is censorship.
James, you need to develop this thought to completion. Your first sentence is a fragment. Your second sentence is a non-sequitur. We can't judge whether your idea has any merit if it's form is this disjointed.
Such a stupid and condescending reply can only be the work of a leftist.
This is why leftism is going to get destroyed in November. Leftist have no ideas other than the complete deconstruction of America. They want open borders,
race war, trans"ing" children, and pointless wars. The tsunami is coming.
Most of these replies don't make any distinction between what SCOTUS is "supposed" to be (ideological analysis) and what it "actually" is (material analysis). SCOTUS is a second legislature. It's not some arbiter of the constitution the way people here seem to think. There is broad consensus on this among political scientists. The only ones who don't know that seem to be the commenters on this blog...
Nate didn't formulate any argument. He just bemoaned the right controlling the court. He never explains why conservative justices are bad or why leftists would be better justices. It just an appeal from emotion.
Maybe it's even worse than that. A 7-2 majority will bring the liberals to despair and cause them to try to implement the "pack the court" plan. This, in turn, will collapse the constitutional order and lay the groundwork for the disintegration of the United States and the secession of states.
I can't believe it. Someone else is not afraid to utter the S-word.
I think the Censorship Industrial Complex - and "messages" like those sent to the J-6 protestors (and to Snowden and Assange) - are designed to make the would-be Patrick Henry's and Thomas Paine's keep their mouths shut.
If Justice Sotomayor does retire this year, there's one Biden-appointed judge who could probably cruise through: Ana Reyes. She has shown that she is no bond-servant of Biden or the Democratic Party when she blasted the DOJ for ignoring a subpoena. Now, I'm fine with it if there becomes a 7-2 conservative majority; but if they want to keep the seat in liberal hands, with a female Hispanic Justice who won't be too controversial, I think Reyes is the one.
To the best of our knowledge, they adhere to it, sometimes even too closely (the "textualist" principle). But that's secondary. "Is-ought" is primary - you can also say that Putin should stop the Ukraine war, return all territories including Crimea, pay reparations, and submit to Hague, but that won't happen, so the influence must be applied where it can have an effect.
Chief Justice Roberts took powers not awarded by the constitution and rewrote Obamacare to make it pass. He treats SCOTUS like a super-legislative body from which there is no appeal.
Even if it were true that it was not within his constitutional mandate - again, this is secondary. The fact of the matter is that the system at large won't change its workings or, at least, won't change them quickly enough for the Trump-endangered elections (plural because, if he fails in 2024 and is alive by 2028, he'll almost certainly retry). Thus the focus for short-term actions is on what can be changed short-term, and the replacement with a younger justice is, unlike reforming the system in large by November, within reach.
Progressive political outcomes through SCOTUS rulings? Isn't that what has destroyed faith in jurisprudence today? Judges don't make policies, legislatures do. The left has made judicial appts so crucial because they can't pass their policy agenda through democratic legislatures. May they continue to fail gloriously, led by the likes of Nate Silver and Sonia Sotomayor.
I would push back on your premise. Dems are passing plenty of things as per their agenda in state legislatures they control.
They don't in the federal legislature because of anti-democratic features we've built into it all (overrepresentation of conservative rural states in the senate, filibuster in the senate, etc.)
Yes, well, of course one-party states of both extremes can pass legislation, but we're talking about national politics here. There is no overrepresentation of rural states in national politics - that's a complete Democrat canard to explain away their failures. The Senate balances the House, which is based on population, so the large high population states hold greater sway over the House of Reps; the Senate merely balances that with equal representation of states' interests across the nation. Filibusters work for both parties to ensure a supermajority for veto overrides, as it should. The structure of our Federal Republic is designed to force consensus and compromise and "conservative" stability. It's NOT designed for "progressives," and that's what irks them. Party extremists are the real problem not the electoral system or governing structure.
This article is exactly what is awry in America. The Supreme Court has one and one job only: To determine if what the federal (and state and local) governments are doing is Constitutional. Not if it agrees with some feminazi idea about reproduction or DEI or affirmative action or using the forces of the executive branch (or Congress in the J6 "Committee") to atack and jail Americans. That it doesn't function that way is what is wrong and is likely unfixable. Particularly in a nation that still has over 1,000,000 abortions a year, has had 65 to 70 million "legal" abortions since 1973, and as a result has the largest single voting bloc in America somewhere between 45 and 50 million women who have had abortions. Felonious murder is a crime. Abortion is murder. Convict those women of murder which in all states will remove their right to vote. You don't even have to lock them up for long, say 6 weeks in the blackest male prisons in America. Problem solved. Think of the fun they'll have. America saved. Liberal scum go byebye.
The inability of leftists to inflict their ideology on society through legislation only highlights the importance of their controlling the supreme court so it can be used to do so.
An interesting spin on it. One might simply say that the complete dysfunction of congress means that the relative power of other sources of authority grows comparatively greater. I see no danger of leftists controlling the supreme court in my lifetime. Though, I do confess, the definition of "leftist" is so malleable, that I'm not sure exactly what you're talking about. By some standards, Ronald Reagan was a leftist. By other standards, he was far-right. These terms are so relative and imprecise, that I'm not sure they're useful to any kind of consistent understanding.
I would like to see 9 originalist judges serving together on the Supreme Court... not "conservative", not "liberal"... Originalist. The idea that we need a balance of conservatives and liberals has nothing to do with the actual role. We need judges that interpret law... not legislate from the bench.
The abject cynicism of this is breathtaking. The reason the Constitution sets Supreme Court Justices' terms at life (assuming "good behavior") is to ensure the Justices remain as insulated from transient political pressures as possible. I cannot think of a more blunt, partisan ploy than pressuring a Justice to go now and die a day later. Pressuring a Justice to become a partisan over one or another case is bad enough, This is forcing her to be a partisan in a more fundamental way. If for no other reason, I hope Sotomayor resists this pressure as a principled stand in favor of the independence of the judiciary. I wish her well, and a long life into and beyond the next Trump presidency. Here's to Sonia Maria Sotomayor, the Notorious SMS.
Personally, I think this is real s***ty. I’m not a fan of Justice Sotomayor, but let her make the decision as to whether she wants to continue or not. I didn’t know until last week she was diabetic. And, if the elected elite looked around, they’d see plenty of people with medical conditions working in high and low stress jobs. Only goes to show how corrupt these politicians really are.
And — here’s the mean part — if you don’t want that, you deserve what you get.
Liberals in deep blue states have been getting what they asked for and it is an epic failure every time.
$20 minimum wage for fast food workers. - Companies close on them
“Bail Justice” reform - crime goes up. They lie and say it isn’t but NYC has the military in their subways.
Open borders - Democrats losing black and Hispanic (ironically) working voters after white democrats said don’t send them to our neighborhoods and make it our problem. We support it in voice only.
The best thing that can happen FOR liberals is they DONT get what they ask for. Getting what they ask for just makes Trump look better and better.
Epic failure every time explains why deep blue states have higher GDP than deep red states
From other metrics such as crime, outflows to other red states, etc blue states are clearly starting to experience the consequences of their decisions.
Crime is higher in blue states because crime is higher in cities, and blue states are more urban. I don't think it's too much more complicated than that, though I'm open to some other causal suggestion.
And why exactly would the per-capita crime rate be higher in the cities? Are urban dwellers simply more violent or more inclined to break the law?
That's a good question. I'll say I don't know, but given that this generally holds true across many different countries I don't think "democratic governance" is a very satisfying explanation.
Without seeing the data, your assertion that the rural-urban per capita crime gap is universal is worth scrutiny.
But even if true, my question would be: what makes the average urban dweller more likely to commit crime than the average rural dweller?
I suppose that lots of guesses could be made. Economic conditions will be blamed. But a sound study of the data would probably show that even the rural poor are less likely to commit crimes than the urban poor.
There are some truths at the end of my questioning but the data is out there. My personal opinion is that no one wants to study the data because they are afraid of the conclusions that can only be drawn.
Extremely bad off people flock to cities because there are more services for them there, and extremely bad off people cause most day-to-day crime.
So to be clear you're looking at tiny fluctuations in the last few years and attributing them to liberal policies that have been in place for decades.
There's something worse than mistaking correlation for causation, and that's coming up with fanciful explanations for noise.
https://xkcd.com/904/
If you think sports are just a random number generator then I would like to place some bets with you.
Why do you think I'd place a bet on something I believe is random? Or put another way, what structure of bet do you envision that would give me an advantage if it is random, and give you the advantage if it is not?
I think a good sports player will tend to beat a weak one. You believe the outcome to be random in a way that is not subject to narratives, which rules out the possibility that we could learn that a player is better because he wins more often, i.e. that we could ever know whether a player is better than another (that would be a narrative). The bet structure seems fairly clear.
Where do the richest Americans live and have the huge gaps between the rich and the poor been normalized for the stats your explaining?
Does it really reflect on blue state policies effectiveness when billionaires become bazillionaires?
California has more poor people per capita living under the poverty line then any other state but go on keep explaining how you cannot even keep up with the data.
Imagine a population of 100 people.
Let’s see if you can do the per capita calculation. Consider a population of 100.
95 make 100 a year that’s 95,000
5 make 11,981,000 that’s 59,905,000
What’s the per capita income of this population?
(hint: 60,000,000/100)
Well you did fail to multiply 95 by 100 so let's not go about casting too many stones ;)
Correlation is not causality. Consider the old canard that Blue states subsidize red states. That all depends on what counts as payment, and what counts as a subsidy. Is social security a subsidy? I don't think so? How about a military base? What about SALT deductions? In short, it all depends on the opinion of the person doing the analysis.
Bringing out good old "correlation is not causality" is a kind of pointless for the vast majority of social science discussions. If you don't accept it than can you point to the controlled experiment that shows that "liberal policies in deep blue states" lower their GDP and other metrics raise it?
You don't dispute they have higher GDP. Do you dispute they have higher life expectancy?
One of the closest ways to controlled experiment in social sciences is studying medicaid expansion, comparing similar/nearby states that did the expansion to those that did not. That "liberal policy" had a clear impact on improving health.
Arriving at a data-driven conclusion is nearly impossible with the interactions between the tens of thousands of economic interventions that result from millions of pages of laws, regulations, and tax code.
Instead we use Ockham's Razor. It's really quite simple. For example, if you give people free money via welfare, they are less likely to seek work as a source of money, all else equal. Welfare NEVER works in the long term favor of its recipients. We know this not because we have data but because it's common sense. No one ever went from poor to financially stable on welfare. Ergo, welfare doesn't solve poverty.
Similarly...
You are less likely to be killed by someone with a gun if you yourself legally own a gun.
You do not need a vaccine if you recovered from Covid easily.
Higher taxes will cause people to either flee to lower tax locales or engage in more sophisticated schemes to reduce what they owe.
The entire tax burden falls on consumers and individual taxpayers, even when those taxes are assessed to and paid by corporations and businesses.
I'm surprised at how many people are so politically invested in leftism that they ignore common sense in favor of waiting for some impossible-to-obtain conclusion through messy data.
You're only proving the old adage that common sense is neither.
Owning a gun actually makes you much *more* likely to be killed by someone with a gun. It's not a close thing, either; it more than doubles your odds.
It might seem nearly impossible to you, but people well versed in statistics and science realize it is achievable. And thus they use the scientific method to test ideas, see what works, and build on that. It's a great system!
Quantum mechanics, special and general relativity are wrong according to common sense, and were extremely difficult to test when they were first proposed. Luckily we didn't sit back and rely on common sense, and there's a strong tradition of not relying on common sense continuing to this day.
The problem is that human behavior is notoriously unpredictable and often irrational. I've worked in data science for 20 years. Physics and most natural sciences can be explained and even predicted with data. The reason, as you know, is that both individual humans and large groups of humans can be faced with multiple identical scenarios, all controlled, and yet still respond in different ways across repeated observations.
But the real problem is that leftists don't approach problems from a neutral position. To a leftist, the goal is control and expansive government. (There is no room in leftist policymaking for less government control.) So any data analysis by left-leaning people will always be biased in favor of expansion.
I've never seen any policy research from a left-leaning organization that calls for less government control over people based on the findings. Which defies logic obviously.
Your medicaid example highlights exactly my comment below. Improving health is indeed the upside. But Medicaid is a massive financial burden that transfers an individual's responsibility for his or her own health to strangers. Since the cost is so enormous, that is a morally tenuous approach. This is one of two weaknesses in leftist thought. The other being this: when the scheme doesn't deliver the intended benefits, who is on the hook for repaying those that it cost? (The answer is no one because leftists aren't about accountability, just control.)
Medical care is a great example of free market failure; a classic case of incomplete information causing pricing mechanisms to fail, and a great case for collective action. Of course it would be easy to miss this if you're just taking a purely philosophical approach; that's why it's important to use data and analysis.
Newsflash: it is not a free market if the government controls prices.
I don’t necessarily agree with the person you are responding to, but that causation could easily be working the other way where blue policies are silly luxury policies that are only tempting to people in well off states.
The higher GDP doesn’t necessarily tell you a lot. Especially since if it was the other way around blue people would just scream “profit and dollars over human lives”.
https://mises.org/mises-wire/no-red-state-economies-dont-depend-gravy-train-blue-states
Blue states in fact have not subsidized red states for more then a decade but thanks again for showing you cannot even keep up with current data
It's funny because I didn't bring up anything about subsidies, but you immediately made the mistake that I did. Why is that?
Blue states also have the worst cost of living and economic inequality. Red states also have their own list of faults, but clearly GDP isn't everything. Most importantly, people are migrating from blue to red states, so they are voting with their feet. Curious to know if that will end up changing the red states to be more blue in the long run, though.
Geez, are you really arguing that cities are successful because rich people live there? Seriously? I would suggest focusing on how many poor people are becoming rich and comparing it over time. Many other metrics are budget deficits, crime statistics, public education cost and performance, housing affordability. Yeah, cities are great if you're living in a penthouse. Yes, and migration statistics are the citizens objectively voting with their feet. Enough of the self-serving arguments.
No not true. If you hand pick them you get that.
It's pretty clear from this table that the blue states are consistently higher than the red states:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_GDP
It's not as big of a gap as I had imagined, but if you walk down the list, there is always one or more blue states that has higher GDP then the next set of red states:
CA > TX
NY > FL
IL, PA > OH, GA
NJ > NC
WA, MA, VI, MI, CO > TN, AZ, IN
MD, MN, WI > MO, SC, LA
You do realize those big blue states have a massive debt problem right and the feds calculate GDP as Increasing when you take out loans and debt right ?
Crime is down, stop lying to make weak political points.
Yeah. The National Guard and several state agencies are in NYC subways because crime is down.
Cities in California, Illinois, Maryland, New York, Massachusetts, Oregon and Washington state have eliminated response to “non priority calls” for police departments during certain hours because crime is down.
Business are closing due to massive retail theft because crime is down.
And Trump wasn’t talking about the auto industry when he said bloodbath.
I’m stupid enough to believe all of that. (Just kidding. I’m not that stupid)
So many words to say so little. All you are doing is regurgitating tired rhetoric in ways that support you pre-established worldview. I live in NYC. Crime is not spiraling out of control, crime is down.
To misquote Stalin: those who define the crimes determine who are criminals.
Maybe get your NYC DA to actually charge criminals with the crimes they were arrested for and the crime rate is not going down. If I beat my neighbor but tell you I didn't, that doesn't mean I didn't. But nice try there in your fantasy world.
Imagine writing this and being serious?
🤣🤣🤣
Keep voting blue no matter who, the nice parts of the country are very entertained watching "The rotten apple" collapse into a 3rd world country...
Yeah the military is in NYC subways because crime is down. It’s much safer since bail reform. They just put them down there in case Russia invades.
Crime is down if you stop reporting, you know, actual crimes. When liberal DAs refuse to prosecute tens of thousands of suspects or lower the charges, it might look like crime is down. But that doesn't mean anything to all the victims. Crime is only down in your fantasy world.
The numbers complaints, not arrests or charges. Do you understand what that means?
lol crime is down because it’s down and has been going down since the 1990s. It did go up under trump though
Murder is down. Did people stop reporting murder? When the facts don’t fit your thesis you make up mirror reality. How has that been working out for you?
Great comment, even better profile name ;)
Full employment, crime is down and Blacks and Latinos don’t vote Republican, at least not yet. So you are 0 for 3 on your claims here. The best thing that can happen for Conservatives is to continue to live in mirror reality and continue to be confused why the world doesn’t go the way they expect it to.
There's no evidence of bail reform causing crime to go up. There wasn't a spike after NYC implemented the reform. An increase started later, but the obvious explanation is the pandemic. It went down last year.
You're advocating for an idea that keeps innocent people in prison due to being poor without anything to back up your fear.
Well when the left controls the studies and the media and the definitions of words they can make reality whatever they want.
Crime is down in NYC but the NYPD, NYSP and National Guard have occupied the subways for some random reason.
Crime is not down. It is down from 2020 maybe when it hit record numbers but it is definitely up over the last decade. Even white liberal manipulation can’t hide that fact.
Just ask the victims how bail reform is working. If they are alive to answer.
https://www.police1.com/arrests-sentencing/articles/police-man-was-out-on-bail-when-he-murdered-ex-girlfriend-her-7-year-old-daughter-ZV0m3aSOKs4WXAP2/
How about try winning elections campaigning on your ideas rather than relying on judges or the administrative state to impose your agenda undemocratically?
If your ideas are not popular enough to win large majorities and pass legislation then a partisan justice or two is just a band-aid. Your ideas are the problem.
Saying "I would just win all the elections moving forward" is not a realistic strategy because that's just not how elections work. It's like saying "If I were Alabama's coach I just would have beaten UConn and then beat Purdue and become national champs. Why don't they just do that?"
Oh- is that what I said? 😂
But maybe you’re right- Alabama shouldn’t focus changing its gameplan and developing a more competitive and winning team (I mean, what’s the point of that?)but instead try to get a commissioner appointed who will just award Alabama the throne by fiat. That’s the way the game should be played! No need to change anything on a losing team.
Exactly, just always win all the time forever, what's so hard about that?
Horrible thing, democracy. 🤪
God forbid you have the consent of the governed if you can just find a judge who’ll make up the law from the bench. Screw that stupid “democracy” thing, amirite? 🤡
Conservatives are the ones doing all the judge shopping these days....https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/01/politics/judge-shopping-northern-district-texas/index.html
So, just take them? Use an unelected judiciary to impose your agenda? Wowwww! By any means necessary.
1. People are dumb. And democracies at least pretend to give people what they want. Running on ideas that are good is tantamount to failure, and running on ideas that win is tantamount to having bad ideas and thus failing long-term.
2. The current US system is built in such a way that, even if you control _everything else_, Supreme Court is a serious opponent with very slow change, because, in principle, they could shoot down every law.
LOL, if you're approaching this from a 2-party partisan dynamic, then I've gotta say you have no self awareness, and massive hypocrisy.
If you're approaching this from an idealistic non-partisan way, then you're hopelessly naive.
What is right does not happen without power. What is wrong happens if there is sufficient power to accomplish it. I'm not actually a fan of any of the 9 justices. I think all of them are misguided, and not actually fulfilling their responsibilities. I doubt anyone Biden nominates would be appreciably better. However, the merit of one's ideas has little impact on how popular those ideas are, and how popular ideas are has little impact on whether people who agree with them gain power in a democracy. Whether people who agree with something actually do it when they have the power to... is far from a given. There are so many degrees of separation between your idealistic principles and actual changes to policy, that I can't see how you think there's much but hot air in your statement.
I don't know what kind of fictional society you think this is, but if you actually believe what you said, then you don't understand our system, or power. Good luck to you.
Popular ideas that win majorities and get legislation passed can be deep-sixed by partisan justices from the other side. Therefore, if you want to accomplish anything, you need to appoint enough justices over time that the courts will not actively block you.
It'd be nice if the parties could come together and agree to appoint justices who stick to their Constitutional role and defer to the elected branches on matters of policy. But then, both parties *say* they do that already.
You have to take in to account the stupid voters of America. The economy is horrible. GDP growth is slowing. Inflation is rising and there are people stupid enough to vote for Democrats again.
Winning elections is about playing on stupidity not the issues.
People are dumb enough to believe Trump is a threat to democracy after Democrat judges and prosecutors have taken Trump to court in an election year over a “crime” that happened in 2015.
Democrats are literally trying to take the candidate of choice off of ballots.
That is literally fascism according to the Merriam Webster definition but really stupid people say Trump is the fascist and Democrats are trying to save Democracy by doing the opposite of democracy.
You can’t make this stuff up. 😂
Economy seems to be doing OK as long as you bought your car and your house before 2022.
Control of BS narratives definitely helps the Dems. The narratives Trump pushes would be at least as outlandish, but he’ll never get the chance to have them featured
That ship sailed many decades ago.
Are you taking about Republicans or Democrats here? Or both?
The problem with that argument is people are mostly stupid. For instant bail reform sounds like a good thing. It has the word reform in it. But criminals are criminals because they are bad or defective people. They belong isolated from society.
Lowering taxes on corporations sounds unfair but when companies have lower taxes they can lower prices and increase wages.
Most voters left or right are stupid people. Policy is irrelevant when running unless it’s a cultural issue.
I don’t know the cure but policy is probably not the answer unless you eliminated parties. Just 2 people this is what I support is probably the best solution. Vote blue no matter who is the problem (or vote red).
Eliminate party and make it only about issues and I agree. Right leaning politicians would win 100% of the time and it wouldn’t be close.
Yep!
A decidedly Conservative Supreme Court will be needed to unwind many of the bad decisions by decades of liberal majorities that inevitably led to the situation we currently find ourselves in. The Constitution has been a matter of convenience for liberals - only honored as needed. A 40 year conservative majority will go a long way toward restoring respect for our founding precepts.
I'll believe that as soon as any conservative justices start taking the 4th, 5th, or 9th Amendments seriously.
We'll soon see if they take the 1st Amendment seriously. But I actually think Missouri v. Biden is not as important as I once thought/hoped. This is because I now believe Facebook, Google, the NY Times, etc. don't need anyone from the White House or Surgeon General's Office pressuring them to censor unauthorized "misinformation." All the key players already know what speech they are supposed to censor ... They haven't stopped and they won't in the future either.
This is another reason I think these companies somehow know who is going to win the presidential election of 2024. Question: How do they know?
I, too, worry about how confident Democrats seem in the face of large majorities who disapprove of or disagree with their most horrendous policy decisions - e.g. border, crime, inflation. What do they have up their sleeve?
If you're worried about inflation you can probably save some money by switching from Reynolds Wrap to a cheaper store brand when making your tin-foil hats.
Two possibilities (1) H5N1 Pandemic. The labs already have the virus ready. Its presence in nature gives plausible deniability. (2) Color Revolution after the election if Trump wins. They don't let him take office.
You’d have to be more specific. In any case, I don’t remember all this talk of changing the rules during the Douglas or Brennan Courts when much of the damage was done.
Specifically, the 4th, 5th, and 9th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. No Supreme Court has appeared to care much about them, whether they are coded conservative or liberal.
I don’t disagree that the amendments that comprise the Bill of Rights have often been ignored - “penumbras” and such. But the 10th Amendment is the major casualty of the growth of the administrative state. Federal power has overwhelmed the vision of the Founders who sought to keep it in check. Of, by and for the people.
If you care about "of, by, and for the people," then shouldn't you care more about the 9th Amendment? The 10th Amendment concerns the rights of states, the 9th concerns the rights of people.
Gorsuch might be the single most passionate 4th Amendment defender on the whole court.
Why not just win elections?
Easier said than done. Especially these days.
I would point out the most common outcome on SCOTUS is still 9-0, or 8-1. In short, regardless of party affiliation, they agree far more than they disagree. So that tends to weaken the importance of SCOTUS, relative to other institutions.
I don't agree with all the outcomes SCOTUS decides, but I abide by them. It's the least political branch of government.
Not on controversial decisions and then some are 9-0 on procedural decisions and no standing. But in the last few years very few of the major decisions are not 6-3. Facts matter.
No, the facts do not matter to you. I argued the facts, employing SCOTUSblog's database of decisions. It you ever read it, you'd see 9-0 is the most common outcome. What you're wanting to do is to cherrypick data to support your opinion.
It's fine to have an opinion, but don't pretend it means anything more than that.
BTW, by definition, we would expect split decisions on cases involving disagreements, what you label controversial. Duh! What percent of those disagreements, relative to the overall case load is the question.
Apparently, only facts that agree with one's biases matter.
Most of the 6-3 decisions were constitutionally correct. Liberal justices tend to side step the constitution in their decision making now a days.
Other than the Roe v Wade error they made previously they were actually very protective of the Bill of Rights when they have the majority. They were true liberals. Now they are marxists.
Only communist/marxist countries have abortion with no limits. Even super progressive European nations have common sense laws with limits on abortion.
The Constitution is very clear on the right to form militias and bear arms.
I hate calling 2020s Democrats liberals. It’s like calling Trump a conservative when he’s actually a classical liberal. Today’s liberals are just Marxists lite.
If by “controversial decisions” you mean the non-unanimous ones, what you’ve constructed is a circular argument.
Exactly most judges agree
Oh please. Sonia Sotomayor is 12 years younger than Joe Biden. The wrong person is being asked to resign.
Be fair: Nate has already been outspoken in calling for Biden to stand down.
Obviously Kamala Harris has early onset dementia and needs to step down.
No. She is just a very dumb person.
Or just very inarticulate.
Thank you. This is yet another reason I'm convinced the entire system is captured. Everyone with a still-functioning brain KNOWS Biden has dementia, that's steadily getting worse.
Still, they ignore this and we're not supposed to talk about this. This proves the system is completely captured - and that a brain-addled person is desirable to The Deep State puppet masters as president. If this is indeed the case, these same people and organizations can surely rig another presidential election. I mean, Who's going to stop them?
Seemed fine on the state of the union to me. I think the argument that Biden has dementia is dumb, when you can just talk about inflation and immigration. Maybe some republicans don’t want to win? Especially those hoping for 2028.
Do you still think that argument is dumb?
Yes. Trump successfully avoided your strategy in the debate. Every answer was about immigration and inflation. Biden showed how he was behaving, just as he did in the stage of the union. Trump just had to stay on message and not point it out. Very smartly done.
And he will continue to do this. Not mention dementia. Mention immigration and inflation because he’s a smart politician (whatever you say about him).
Fixed the spelling error for you:
Everyone with a still-functioning brain KNOWS Trump has dementia, that's steadily getting worse.
"And — here’s the mean part — if you don’t want that, you deserve what you get." What I actually want is relief from commentators who view Supreme Court decisions as simply another data point for Republican/Democrat axes. I am far more concerned as to how Supreme Court decisions comport with protecting our Constitutional form of government than I am with how the decisions appear to commentators who can't see past the typical zero-sum game approach. I hope Nate stays away from this in the future.
Nate, If you don't like court rulings change the laws. The role of the court isn't to re-write laws that aren't convenient to leftist outcomes.
Nate, can you reply? What is your vision for the Supreme Court? I don't want to put words in your mouth. We hear progressives constantly complain about the court. What should your guiding principles be? Intersectionality? Feelings?
I've never a progressive complain about a ruling based on the law? Its always outcome based?
Why?
Nate doesn't owe you any explanation. You don't deserve one.
What stupid, but typically leftist comment. Nate published his thoughts in a public forum. You think he can do a drive by and not defend what he wrote? Of course you do. Leftist hate free speech and debate. You hate debate because it would force you to defend your ideas. Debate is not the sweet spot of leftists. Their sweet spot is censorship.
James, you need to develop this thought to completion. Your first sentence is a fragment. Your second sentence is a non-sequitur. We can't judge whether your idea has any merit if it's form is this disjointed.
Such a stupid and condescending reply can only be the work of a leftist.
This is why leftism is going to get destroyed in November. Leftist have no ideas other than the complete deconstruction of America. They want open borders,
race war, trans"ing" children, and pointless wars. The tsunami is coming.
Most of these replies don't make any distinction between what SCOTUS is "supposed" to be (ideological analysis) and what it "actually" is (material analysis). SCOTUS is a second legislature. It's not some arbiter of the constitution the way people here seem to think. There is broad consensus on this among political scientists. The only ones who don't know that seem to be the commenters on this blog...
Nate didn't formulate any argument. He just bemoaned the right controlling the court. He never explains why conservative justices are bad or why leftists would be better justices. It just an appeal from emotion.
Maybe it's even worse than that. A 7-2 majority will bring the liberals to despair and cause them to try to implement the "pack the court" plan. This, in turn, will collapse the constitutional order and lay the groundwork for the disintegration of the United States and the secession of states.
I can't believe it. Someone else is not afraid to utter the S-word.
I think the Censorship Industrial Complex - and "messages" like those sent to the J-6 protestors (and to Snowden and Assange) - are designed to make the would-be Patrick Henry's and Thomas Paine's keep their mouths shut.
If one side packs the court, the other side will do it too - and we will have a court with 30 Justices.
Yes, just another political assembly. Disastrous.
If Justice Sotomayor does retire this year, there's one Biden-appointed judge who could probably cruise through: Ana Reyes. She has shown that she is no bond-servant of Biden or the Democratic Party when she blasted the DOJ for ignoring a subpoena. Now, I'm fine with it if there becomes a 7-2 conservative majority; but if they want to keep the seat in liberal hands, with a female Hispanic Justice who won't be too controversial, I think Reyes is the one.
Stop using SCOTUS as a super-legislative branch from which there is no appeal.
Would be nice, but isn't happening short-term.
every person who, like you, gives them latitude to not adhere to the constitution, is part of the problem.
To the best of our knowledge, they adhere to it, sometimes even too closely (the "textualist" principle). But that's secondary. "Is-ought" is primary - you can also say that Putin should stop the Ukraine war, return all territories including Crimea, pay reparations, and submit to Hague, but that won't happen, so the influence must be applied where it can have an effect.
Nonsense. Example:
Chief Justice Roberts took powers not awarded by the constitution and rewrote Obamacare to make it pass. He treats SCOTUS like a super-legislative body from which there is no appeal.
Even if it were true that it was not within his constitutional mandate - again, this is secondary. The fact of the matter is that the system at large won't change its workings or, at least, won't change them quickly enough for the Trump-endangered elections (plural because, if he fails in 2024 and is alive by 2028, he'll almost certainly retry). Thus the focus for short-term actions is on what can be changed short-term, and the replacement with a younger justice is, unlike reforming the system in large by November, within reach.
Progressive political outcomes through SCOTUS rulings? Isn't that what has destroyed faith in jurisprudence today? Judges don't make policies, legislatures do. The left has made judicial appts so crucial because they can't pass their policy agenda through democratic legislatures. May they continue to fail gloriously, led by the likes of Nate Silver and Sonia Sotomayor.
I would push back on your premise. Dems are passing plenty of things as per their agenda in state legislatures they control.
They don't in the federal legislature because of anti-democratic features we've built into it all (overrepresentation of conservative rural states in the senate, filibuster in the senate, etc.)
Yes, well, of course one-party states of both extremes can pass legislation, but we're talking about national politics here. There is no overrepresentation of rural states in national politics - that's a complete Democrat canard to explain away their failures. The Senate balances the House, which is based on population, so the large high population states hold greater sway over the House of Reps; the Senate merely balances that with equal representation of states' interests across the nation. Filibusters work for both parties to ensure a supermajority for veto overrides, as it should. The structure of our Federal Republic is designed to force consensus and compromise and "conservative" stability. It's NOT designed for "progressives," and that's what irks them. Party extremists are the real problem not the electoral system or governing structure.
This article is exactly what is awry in America. The Supreme Court has one and one job only: To determine if what the federal (and state and local) governments are doing is Constitutional. Not if it agrees with some feminazi idea about reproduction or DEI or affirmative action or using the forces of the executive branch (or Congress in the J6 "Committee") to atack and jail Americans. That it doesn't function that way is what is wrong and is likely unfixable. Particularly in a nation that still has over 1,000,000 abortions a year, has had 65 to 70 million "legal" abortions since 1973, and as a result has the largest single voting bloc in America somewhere between 45 and 50 million women who have had abortions. Felonious murder is a crime. Abortion is murder. Convict those women of murder which in all states will remove their right to vote. You don't even have to lock them up for long, say 6 weeks in the blackest male prisons in America. Problem solved. Think of the fun they'll have. America saved. Liberal scum go byebye.
+
“the largest single voting bloc in America somewhere between 45 and 50 million women who have had abortions”
A very useful observation.
The inability of leftists to inflict their ideology on society through legislation only highlights the importance of their controlling the supreme court so it can be used to do so.
An interesting spin on it. One might simply say that the complete dysfunction of congress means that the relative power of other sources of authority grows comparatively greater. I see no danger of leftists controlling the supreme court in my lifetime. Though, I do confess, the definition of "leftist" is so malleable, that I'm not sure exactly what you're talking about. By some standards, Ronald Reagan was a leftist. By other standards, he was far-right. These terms are so relative and imprecise, that I'm not sure they're useful to any kind of consistent understanding.
Anything can happen. If the coming H5N1 pandemic is anywhere near as deadly as predicted, there will be lots of vacancies on SCOTUS.
I would like to see 9 originalist judges serving together on the Supreme Court... not "conservative", not "liberal"... Originalist. The idea that we need a balance of conservatives and liberals has nothing to do with the actual role. We need judges that interpret law... not legislate from the bench.
I'd like that as well. I'd also like Christmas to come twice a year.
The abject cynicism of this is breathtaking. The reason the Constitution sets Supreme Court Justices' terms at life (assuming "good behavior") is to ensure the Justices remain as insulated from transient political pressures as possible. I cannot think of a more blunt, partisan ploy than pressuring a Justice to go now and die a day later. Pressuring a Justice to become a partisan over one or another case is bad enough, This is forcing her to be a partisan in a more fundamental way. If for no other reason, I hope Sotomayor resists this pressure as a principled stand in favor of the independence of the judiciary. I wish her well, and a long life into and beyond the next Trump presidency. Here's to Sonia Maria Sotomayor, the Notorious SMS.
Personally, I think this is real s***ty. I’m not a fan of Justice Sotomayor, but let her make the decision as to whether she wants to continue or not. I didn’t know until last week she was diabetic. And, if the elected elite looked around, they’d see plenty of people with medical conditions working in high and low stress jobs. Only goes to show how corrupt these politicians really are.