Thursday, October 4, 2018

Kavanaugh Odds Looking Better

21 comments:

  1. They were always pretty good.

    --Hiram

    ReplyDelete
  2. I never thought his odds were all that poor to begin with, and since it now appears the FBI investigation was designed to avoid a real search for information (for instance, they apparently did not interview a single one of the 20 people that Deborah Ramirez offered as persons who could corroborate her story) that would imperil the nomination, it's just a matter of time.

    It will be interesting to see what comes out next year after Democrats (hopefully) take back the House and give a full airing to the accusations.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sorry, I am not feeling any sympathy for the DEMs on this one

    They delayed the reporting of these supposedly horrible allegations for months and then complain that the investigation was not complete enough...

    Hopefully it is over soon, no matter whatever happens Friday and Saturday.

    Then again, I am thinking that Tribe Conservative would like Team Liberal to keep the noise going right up to election day.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Republicans delayed the Merrick Garland hearings for months, and I didn't hear much complaint.

    Brett Kavanaugh, if confirmed, will hold one of America's least accountable and most powerful jobs for decades to come. His nomination will affect who you can marry, what you can do in the privacy of your bedroom. It will have huge impacts on the medical procedures you have access to. It will affect how you vote and whether you will even be allowed to vote. In that larger scheme of things, the delay in looking into the allegations against him seems insignificant. And for gosh sakes, why be in such a hurry to fill an immensely important job requiring a decision we will never, never, be able to reverse?

    --Hiram

    ReplyDelete
  5. I am fine turning him down, but what conservative justice will the DEMs accept without all this drama?

    Does this 30+ year old stuff define him today?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Neil Gorsuch faced a relatively uneventful hearing. Of course, he hasn't been credibly accused of sexual assault.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Good Point. Or since this nomination shifts the balance and their is a small chance of them seizing the Senate... Are they more hopeful/desperate?

    Collins keeps us waiting

    ReplyDelete
  8. The slim chance that the Dems win the Senate is irrelevant to this discussion. If Kavanaugh goes down, Trump and McConnell will ram somebody through in December.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Oh come now. The DEMS have drug Kavanaugh out of months. I am sure there are political operators like Feinstein who would welcome a chance to try and do it again.

    This is what their voters want from them, obstruct as well as you can and push something through whenever possible....

    The GOP operatives were no different when Obama was in the White House.

    ReplyDelete
  10. The length of Kavanaugh's consideration has not been abnormal. What has been abnormal is the fact that 90% of his records from his time in the Bush White House were not revealed to the committee and the fact that he faced credible accusations of sexual assault.

    ReplyDelete
  11. what conservative justice will the DEMs accept without all this drama?

    I don't think any party will accept a justice nomination from the other party in the foreseeable future. That's the consequence of what happened to Merrick Garland. I also think that the next Democratic president with a Democratic Congress will find a way to render the Supreme Court irrelevant in our future. In these times, it simply doesn't make sense to give so much power to lifetime federal employees who are not politically accountable.

    --Hiram

    ReplyDelete
  12. Sean,
    Here is the other perspective pretty well defined.

    Hiram,
    Apparently to weaken the SCOTUS Justice tenure system, we would need to amend the Constitution. I just don't see that happening with Tribe Liberal and Tribe Conservative at each others throats.

    ReplyDelete
  13. "Here is the other perspective pretty well defined."

    There are a lot of specious assertions in there.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Kavanaugh and Gorsuch are the only two Supreme Court justices in history to be both nominated by a President who lost the popular vote and confirmed by Senators representing a minority of the country's population. Congratulations democracy!

    ReplyDelete
  15. As I always say... The rules of the game have been the same for a LONG TIME.

    How can the DEMs adjust their platform to attract people from more regions of the country?

    We are a BIG DIVERSE country. We need BIG Diverse policies.

    Just making the urban dwellers happy is not good enough.

    ReplyDelete
  16. How can the DEMs adjust their platform to attract people from more regions of the country?

    Greater emphasis on protectionism, I suppose.

    --Hiram

    ReplyDelete
  17. Do you mean like "protecting" American workers from competition by:

    - Illegal Workers

    - Products made in places where they do not have our plethora of expensive regulations, minimum wages, intellectual property rights, high taxes to pay for a welfare state, etc.

    Now I prefer free trade, however asking American workers to compete while our government and those foreign governments work against them seems cruel.

    ReplyDelete
  18. "The rules of the game have been the same for a LONG TIME."

    The rules of the game have actually changed quite a bit over the years. As an example, the Electoral College as it exists today is not as the founders envisioned it. Hamilton and Madison, for instance, envisioned one elector being *actually elected* from each Congressional District, and these electors would be free to choose as they saw fit to be President. We've constrained the Electoral College over the years to be more reflective of popular opinion.

    ReplyDelete
  19. So in summary, they have gotten better from the perspective of the majority rules folks?

    And by long time I meant many decades, not necessarily back to the founding. :-)

    ReplyDelete