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Thorgi Duke of Frisbee
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  • 2 weeks later...

And now our president is openly saying on camera that he won't accept the election results unless he wins. When did we turn into Belarus? I'm watching democracy fail in real time and it has me depressed and stressed out on a level that is really starting to get to me. The only way I can see us getting out of this mess without an unprecedented crisis and possibly the destruction of the very concept of free and fair elections in the US is if Biden wins in a landslide so big that nobody but Trump can claim it's a fraud, and that seems like a remote possibility with where things stand right now. Jesus Christ.

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I actually feel like a landslide would make people more suspicious, because they'll go "there's no way he actually won by that much, it must be fake!" Like those dictatorships where the dictator always wins 95% of the vote.

 

He did apparently say he would accept the results if the Supreme Court rules Biden the winner, so that's something I guess. Although it's really sad that things have gotten so bad that I'm taking solace in that.

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Yeah, a Supreme Court that increasingly looks like it's gonna have a 6-3 conservative majority for who fucking knows how long. I can't say I have any faith whatsoever in that institution anymore. Hell, even if Biden does win I don't think he has the balls to rebalance the Supreme Court so it'll probably be another four years of nothing getting done. I would love to be wrong but I don't think I am.

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Yeah, I love the idea of the Dems packing the court* if the Republicans actually push through this nominee, but you know they won't have the balls to actually do it.

 

That said, I don't think the court is so corrupted yet that they would just rule in Trump's favor no matter what, they would have to have some kind of reasonably-defensible legal position.

 

*For those who don't know much about how the Supreme Court is set up, the justices get lifetime appointments, and there are 9 of them, so a president only gets to appoint justices if one dies or retires. However, the size of the court isn't actually set out in the constitution, it's set out in statute, so if the Democrats win congress and the presidency there's nothing stopping them from passing a law increasing the size of the court to 13, or 15, or any other number they want, and letting Biden appoint all the justices to fill all those seats. If they did that, of course, there'd be nothing stopping the Republicans from increasing it again if they took power, and then the Dems do it again, etc etc. It would basically destroy the integrity of the court, even more so than the Republicans have already done.

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RBG probably should've retired back in 2016 so with two seats out, it'd be... a usually reasonable tough sell to not fill those seats for 9 months. Then again it's the GOP we're dealing with and having a 7 judge court would make them think it's okay to let it sit even further. 

 

3 hours ago, Mister Jack said:

If they could at least push through term limits that would be something. Lifetime appointments are way too long nowadays because people are living to be older and older than they were back in 1789.

But yeah, I'm hearing about a 18 year term limit being floated around. That's basically a whole generation so would be fine... I guess?

 

4 hours ago, TheMightyEthan said:

I don't think the court is so corrupted yet that they would just rule in Trump's favor no matter what,

John Roberts has been surprising but he is more of a Lincoln Project Republican than say Tea Party+ Trump Cult. While Chief Justice Roberts has his issues, I feel that he tries to fit the ideals and traditions of the Supreme Court. Then again... Bush v. Gore in 2000. Hard to say we can't have something similar in Roberts' court. -sigh-

Edited by Mal
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On 9/25/2020 at 6:48 PM, TheMightyEthan said:

I actually feel like a landslide would make people more suspicious, because they'll go "there's no way he actually won by that much, it must be fake!" Like those dictatorships where the dictator always wins 95% of the vote.

 

He did apparently say he would accept the results if the Supreme Court rules Biden the winner, so that's something I guess. Although it's really sad that things have gotten so bad that I'm taking solace in that.

 

Quote

Lukashenka on November 23 acknowledged that he rigged the March presidential election. But he claimed to have stolen the vote from himself, not from the opposition. "Yes, we falsified the last election. I have already told the Westerners [about this]. As many as 93.5 percent of voters voted for President Lukashenka. But they said this was not a 'European' result. So we made it 86 [percent]. That is true," Lukashenka said. "If we were to start recounting ballots now, I don't know what we would do with them. The Europeans told us before the election that if there were 'European' figures in the election, they would recognize our election. And we tried to make European figures."

 

Source

 

 

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On 9/25/2020 at 7:08 PM, Mister Jack said:

Yeah, a Supreme Court that increasingly looks like it's gonna have a 6-3 conservative majority for who fucking knows how long. I can't say I have any faith whatsoever in that institution anymore. Hell, even if Biden does win I don't think he has the balls to rebalance the Supreme Court so it'll probably be another four years of nothing getting done. I would love to be wrong but I don't think I am.

 

What really blows my mind is the concept that a judge can be "republican" or "democrat" (I've used small letters as I understand they don't have an official party membership, more of a casual alignment).

 

UK Supreme Court by contrast has 12 Judges, usually only 5 sit on a case, though up to 11 can (to avoid a tie). While they are all old, white, and wealthy and therefore (probably) mostly centre right leaning (by which I mean right for the UK, which is waaaaay off to the left in the US), they are still perfectly happy to hand out a drubbing to our Conservative government when HMG are acting up.

 

I tend to agree with Ethan, I think the judiciary (in any democracy) try to stay out of Politics, and avoid following their prejudice as far as they are aware of it. Roe v Wade was 7-2 so I'm assuming that at least 2 "conservative" Justices were persuaded by the arguments on the day assuming the balance is usually fairly equal? 

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Well I say that's bullshit and there's no reason the same judge should be in such a high position for potentially 50+ years. The fact they're trying to hastily push through a conservative majority when the writing on the wall says there is a good chance of a liberal shift in a few months shows that it's a busted system prone to being exploited. If Biden/Pelosi/Schumer et al. don't want to expand the court for admittedly understandable reasons then term limits are the answer. Republicans have appointed 15 justices since 1960 and Democrats have only appointed 8 and a lot of it just comes down to dumb luck. It feels like the future of our legal system is just based on RNG and it's a bad way to run things.

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I think we would all do that for him if the worse happens. 

 

Anyhow, a breakdown by the head of UCSF doc. He know his stuff. I think we can add Conway into the figure above.

 

Pence is fine for now, probably, but Trump is in the hospital with supposed symptoms. If true then the 25th Amendment should be evoked which makes Pence in charge. If Pence gets it and goes to the hospital, guess we have Pelosi... 

 

Fun times. 

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