BarryP wrote:
Bernie fans who wouldn’t vote for Clinton. The court would be 5:4 liberal instead of 6:3 conservative. RBG for not retiring.
Breyer is 83 years old. Is he going wait until the GOP win before he dies? Or will he retire, preferably before the midterms so that we don’t have another pick stolen.
Clinton herself was the problem, the poster child for how the Democrats allowed this to happen. It's honestly sickening to hear people trying to blame Sanders or his supporters as somehow being the problem. How about instead of blaming perhaps a few % points of likely voters who were Sanders supporters who would not vote for Clinton, instead of Clinton herself being so uninspiring she couldn't muster another 50,000 apathetic people (unlikely voters) to come vote for her? That whole narrative is that Clinton isn't actually to blame for her failure to win an election against the most reprehensible candidate to ever have a major party nomination. Sorry, she and those that got her nominated are 100% to blame and the fact that this is even a point of debate is why the Democrats continue to lose at everything important. Excuses are for losers, which the mainstream Democratic party clearly is. Maybe if Clinton had offered something meaningful to Sanders he would of had a reason to rally support for her, instead Clinton and the party offered him nothing in recognition of his influence, and that pure arrogance is part of the Clinton (mainstream Democratic party) problem.
Absolutely agree on RBG. As much as people love RBG (for good reason) her failure to step down during the Obama administration is absolutely critical to the current situation coming to pass. What I would like to know more about, is was there any kind of Democratic party strategist who even tried to talk RBG into stepping down, or is the party just so hapless they didn't understand the liability of not replacing her under Obama? How seriously was this discussed inside the party and with RBG, I would be very interested to know what discussions did or did not take place.
As far as the "stolen appointment", at the time I said the Democrats should have done anything (shut down the entire government indefinitely) to prevent the Scalia seat not being filled Garland or some other Obama nominee. It was this important and what the Republicans were attempting simply had no precedent, they had no legs to stand on if they were forced to sit in the spotlight. The Democrats gave lame excuses about decorum and were perhaps overconfident Clinton would win, and here we are. Likewise for the RBG replacement. I could perhaps accept the Republicans getting away with one of these, but it is 100% the Democrats fault they both happened. Based on what happened this week, how can anyone say the Democrats tried hard enough to stop one or both of these?
The Republicans basically endorsed an attempt to overthrow the election to get what they want and the Democrats were not even willing to shutdown the government (which has been done many times and is absolutely in bounds under the current political paradigm) to keep balance in SCOTUS.
So I put 90% of the blame on the left. The Republicans did this in plain sight, over many years and the Democrats didn't stop there.