SCOTUS at risk? Ruth Bader Ginsburg had two cancerous nodules from her lungs removed.

[deepwatersolo]

www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/12/rbg-cancer/578869/

This development very much puts the Supreme Court balance at risk. If Ginsburg has to step down before 2020, Trump will nominate another conservative judge. If the Democrats lose in 2020, which I think they may, she would need to remain healthy enough for the position til 2024. Not good. It may not be kind, but I am starting to think she should have stepped down in the first half of Obama's second term. The Senate had a Dem majority and Obama could have found a fitting candidate to replace her.

I feel for the poor woman - one side eager for her to kick the bucket, the other on 24 hour standby with a defibrillator. It's not exactly an edifying spectacle.

Her plan is to stay alive until Trump is out of office. So far, so good.

The doctors say they found no trace of the cancer after surgery, and she has been involved in court decisions even now from her hospital bed.

So, this one side wants her on standby with a defibrillator is nonsense. It's all hope from that side that she's made of iron.

As for replacing her in the 2 years, maybe, but it would have been better to note that

1. McConnell should have been censured, and removed from his position if not the office entirely, for failing to bring Merrick's name before the Senate, and

1. SCOTUS has been teetering for some time, and that's far more consequential than whatever people protest vote/nonvote over

(look up the history of Plessy v Ferguson if you think this corporations are immortal supercitizens is a new phenom).

Cheers.

Well, I will not contest that the SCOTUS is in a bad place also because Obama was not a fighter, nor inclined to nominate people who did not put corporate interests first.

The anti-abortion agenda is basically an exclusively Republican one. And Trump may well throw that bone to the Evangelicals, because it means votes and he does not give a shit.
And considering that the Mainstream Democratic agenda since Trump entered into office is to constantly criticize him for not bombing enough, for withdrawing troops and for negotiating with NK, while shooting down any grass roots efforts for Medicare for all, I think it is safe to say, Ruth will have to make it to 2024 to stem the tide against a socially conservative SCOTUS. Corporation wise the US have been sold down the river a long time ago, no doubt.

and whooosh, right over your head, innit?

Nope. But thanks for asking.

I think one side was more offering to carry her everywhere wrapped in bubblewrap, and offer any spare body parts she might need...

I still can‘t get over Geek thinking the spilled milk regarding Garland is more relevant than who will replace Ginsburg. It is not like anyone has a time machine. (And I acknowledged Obama was pathetic there. But still, spilled milk).

And then thinking on a feminist board Citizen United is more of an Issue than Roe vs Vade?

Also: insinuating I don‘t get it, why, because I believe a planned stepping down by Ruth would have made more sense than banking on Scalia‘s death (way younger than Ruth, no one saw it coming) which Obama then couldn‘t even convert into a judge, or what were his issues? Or hers. Sounded like mansplaining, though.

No, let me be precise, or Geek will come back with his mansplaining stick: Scalia was way younger when he died in 2016, than Ruth will be if she survives Trump, be it 2020 or 2024. We‘re talking about a decade in age difference here.

Hardly, deep.

There are the rules of the road, and they don't include screaming about how a Democrat didn't do things perfect when Republicans violate the Constitution. The wording is "The Senate SHALL" not "The Senate shall if it pleases his high and mighty and the president is of the same party."

The other rule is vote your fucking lungs out. Sum total of your personal civic responsibility. If you're inspired, get others to vote to. Some people are finally getting it. The people who voted for the midterms did in 2018, but the conservatives understood it in 2010, and gerrymandered /voter suppressed for their future.

If you don't like the house / senate candidates, you either run yourself or you still get your ass out and vote for the party you prefer because the party totals up the votes. (And since we don't have proportional representation or a prime minister, you either vote main party or throw your vote away).

The recent history of SCOTUS is a rarity. This is the same court that declared a black man had no rights a white man would respect, and that a railroad had the right to separate blacks and whites into separate but equal compartments. That took 100+ years to overturn, and the GOP has been looking to roll it back for 60 years.

Another example, if you want to keep women's health care available, you vote because these assholes are also coming for birth control and the local center that provides pap smears.

Nice misgendering there faints, but I'm a woman who holds a poli sci degree from an "elitist" university -- not Ivy, just a degree before things went to shit with the "we need to be trade schools" in the 80's / 90's.

And nice throwing in the gratuitous Hillary mention, but there IS demographic shift happening EJ, but there are no rules against a party holding the WH for more than 2 terms. Last time was in the 1980's - 1990's.

GHB lost because the economy. HRC lost because we have a slavery inspired electoral college but won the popular vote by a fucking landslide. There's little similarity between the 2.

EJennings I very much agree with this analysis. This idea that they are entitled to your vote appears to have become a tenant of faith among the Dem leadership. That they reject Medicare for all (which 70% of the electorate would want), that they are now going full neocon foreign policy wise (even though being the ‚peace candidate‘ has been an election winner for ages) - no matter.
It will bite them in the behind, but I have come to the conviction that this is a conscious choice, and the Dems prefer losing elections to losing Big Donor money. (I am obviously excluding progressive candidates here, who do go against the Partyline advocating Medicare for all, being critical of interventions, advocating reinstatement of Glass Steagall... but they are not what the party wants, and how they are treated shows it).
And because they are beholden to the donor money they can‘t really do what the people want them to do and all they have left are empty nice phrases, not concrete policies.
How party bigheads speak about healthcare in townhall meetings vs someone like Tulsi Gabbard speaks volumes (there are YouTube vids contrasting the two).
You‘ll find the same in Europe, sadly. What was once social democracy is fully beholden to corporate money. Any left wing populism is smothered from within, antiwar movements denigrated (you don‘t want war? You must be a right wing Putin puppet! Same goes for fracking. Same goes for neoliberal trade agreements). With no left representing the people, right wing populism is the only alternative on offer.
It is a scary development. But as long as the Democrats would rather have Trump win than, say, Bernie, that is where we are heading.

The fact of the matter is that the Democrats do not work for the people but for their donors (smite Glass Steagall reintroduction, smother Medicare for all campaigns, find another country to bomb. Just don‘t call it war). Expecting votes for that ‚because the other side is worse‘ Is not a winning strategy. And bemoaning the electoral college just cause you can‘t win against the most ridiculous presidential candidate ever to walk US soil, is pathetic. (I must have missed that grand, sustained efforts of the Dems to do away with the electoral college.)
Not sure why we are talking education here but I have no degree in political sciences, just a PhD in STEM, but as Steve Keens points out, the only people who don‘t seem to get why economic models that do not explicitly model debt can‘t foresee debt crises (like 2008) are university trained economists. (Krugman still doesn‘t get it, judging from his exchange with Keens). Considering that as a post-doc I regularly passed the Hoover Tower I can’t say elite Unis are untainted sources of wisdom when it comes to politics (just like with economics). So much for that.