In 2000 the GOP SCOTUS members literally decided to stop counting ballots and make GWB President, so there was a good argument there, but even so, Gore and a vast majority of elected Dems said it was over and Bush won shortly after the SCOTUS decision.

Looks like Psaki is going to be headed to MSNBC for a new gig at some point in the next month or two.

And I haven't successfully hit on a coworker since Biden became president!

Going to miss her destroying Doocey

One thing that bothers me about Democrats is they never choose the narrative at elections. They are terrified to ever take a stand on something. We know the midterms will be about CRT or LGBT or El Salvadorian gangs. Whatever culture war issue the Republicans choose, it will be what Democrats have to talk about throughout the campaign.

Which got me thinking about the marijuana bill that passed the House today. What if the Democrats took a hard stand? What if they made the midterms about this? There are a ton of angles for it too. It generates tons of revenue, it reduces the power of gangs, it's a reform of the criminal justice system. Play the freedom card for all I care.

Support for legalization is incredibly popular (68%). It's at 71% among independents. Heck, even Republicans are 50/50 on the topic. You'd crush with young people at the polls and people who don't normally come out to vote. You would be moving the narrative away from all the failures of the previous 2 years. It would put the Republicans in a position where they have to defend an unpopular position.

The only time in recent memory I can remember Democrats picking an issue and running on it was the Georgia Senate. Both candidates really slammed home "if we win, we're getting a big stimulus check". It worked. People supported the guys who took a stance on a very popular position.

I know the bill will bomb out in the Senate. It'll be swept away and forgotten in a couple weeks. They'll sit back and get slaughtered in November and maybe that's what they want in the end. But if they ever had an ounce of courage, this would be a fascinating issue to run on and something the Democrats could actually make gains with. Not saying they'd win, but I think it might save a few seats and help in downballot races where you need some motivation to come out and vote.

Yeah, there have been a number of studies of the ballots that showed if they kept counting, Gore would have won under every conceivable scenario. The justices of the supreme court who love states rights decided that states rights didn't quite apply in this case for some reason.

They lost in 2004 and 2016. Maybe you could argue that 8 hour voting lines and such hurt them enough to swing an election. But they ran some shitty candidates who proceeded to run shitty campaigns. And 2016 falls more on the fact we have a moronic system where the 2nd place person wins because we really loved slavery back in the day.

Nope, nothing to *remotely* the same degree. Yes, there were people who said that. There will always be people who say things like that, but not 'many Democrats' in the sense of anything close to a majority of them. There weren't widespread completely groundless lawsuits to throw out certified electors in multiple states.

Bush-Gore is a completely different scenario in terms of how close the election was, but even there you had one push in one state. You did not have groundless lawsuits in many different states trying to throw out evident results. Nothing in 2004 or 2016 is even remotely comparable to 2020. After Bush-Gore you didn't have anything like January 6 of '20.

There was far more of 'ugh, I can't believe so many people voted Dubya' - in other words, I accept that they did, but they're idiots etc. Now we have 'no way 80 million voted for Biden' 'the election was stolen' etc. It's a completely different animal.

Americans have never thought that logically collectively. See Obama and the 'fierce urgency of now', with a mandate to fix the economy (never mind that no President has the power to do that, never mind logical assessments of why/how it broke).

Presidents get blamed and credited for situations they don't control all the time. It's dumb, but it's also fairly equal-opportunity. Modern democracy has no answer to this problem.

The GOP made it clear today that if they are in the Senate majority they won't ever even hold hearings for a Dem SCOTUS nominee.

I guess it won't be long before you see direct placement where the advise and consent portion is simply ejected. That would be the next logical step in that situation, would it not?

Dems have never placed a nominee on SCOTUS while the GOP has held the Senate. The only difference now is that the GOP admits it. (GOP presidents have gotten 12 Justices confirmed by a Dem Senate since 1900).

No Senator is going to give up the opportunity to grandstand in front of the cameras.

It's all for show now, anyway. When was the last set of hearings to have an impact on the final vote? Bork's? Miers never made it to hearings before having her nomination withdrawn.

And Miers was a really weird one. She was nominated by a GOP President and then forced to withdraw due to GOP Congressional pressure. So it wasn't an inter-party dispute.

You could make the argument that the president, who we know is responsible for putting people on the SC, could simply bypass the Senate, sending them to the Senate for hearings could be argued as 'optional' and then you simply have direct appointments. is that better? No, it's not, because now the SC becomes completely and totally political, and that pretty much is the final nail in democracy in the US. But it is the next logical step on the way there, imo.

Don't know what the legalese is but don't think Senate approval is optional?

As someone else posted, up until Brandeis, there were no hearings. I'm not sure exactly what went on, but given the short timings from nomination to approval back in those days, it sounds more like a quick consultation than anything, maybe to push back on obviously unqualified candidates (like, ironically, what happened with Miers)?

Student Loans: White House extends payment pause through August

I'll bet anyone $100 that this payment pause will be extended again until at least after the election.

Obama referring to Biden as Vice President was some next level trolling. Well done.

Who could have seen this coming?

NEW: Congressional Democrats had a 12-point generic ballot lead over the GOP in December among recipients of the expanded child tax credit.

That benefit has dried up, and now congressional Republicans have the advantage with this group of voters. https://t.co/IDFTls4Cc7 pic.twitter.com/tQxKkWIGSn

— Eli Yokley (@eyokley) April 6, 2022

Of all the debates, including within parties, about student loan cancellation, I don't remember anyone coming up with Biden's solution - just put them in forbearance indefinitely and keep extending the deadline. I wouldn't be surprised to see him do this through the next presidential election. It's a very Biden-esque solution that has avoided, so far, a big court battle that they might lose.

I paid on mine a little in the last two years, but, I think I'll just let them sit there until I have to pay now. Inflation reduces the effective balance every day, it makes more sense to put money into retirement accounts and home improvements, and it keeps that hedge in case of actual cancellation wiping them out someday. And at this rate I'll probably die with a student loan balance without ever having to pay them off completely, so, that's nice too.

One of the best solutions would be to allow student loans to be discharged in bankruptcy like every other debt. I know Biden spearheaded that rule because he loves predatory banks, but he could do a 180 and propose eliminating it.

Our country really is fucked. We literally have hours of Trump saying the dumbest most nonsensical shit on tape yet the right will cling to a 13 second vide to show faux outrage over Bidens "cognitive decline"

Brutal.pic.twitter.com/fhXGcgcutu

— Michael Knowles (@michaeljknowles) April 5, 2022

Is that really brutal? That is me at like any social function.

Yeah, that looked more like, "I'm going to go talk with Obama...oh, he's busy, I'll come back later."

I guess the "cognitive strong" approach would've been for him to bogart his way into the group and start talking?

It really is completely stupid, some on that side eat up every dimwitted, non-sensical thing Trump says, yet they find a short clip that they can use to reflect Biden as being in a confused state and blow it up as
"proof" he has lost his ability to think. Pretty sure everyone of us who has been at a large social function has had a moment like this.

I find that the awkwardness of those moments is mitigated if you're carrying around a snack or drink.

JD Vance accused of racism over new campaign ad in which he asks ‘Do you hate Mexicans?’ | The Independent

If you haven't seen JD Vance's new ad its...something...

The ad is embedded in the article and if you didn't know better you'd think it's satire.

Isn't it better to just say it instead of using a bunch of dogwhistles?

If you see the next ten seconds of video it's clear he's perfectly normal.

This is really weird.

https://apnews.com/article/us-secret...b7c52794d202b2

The big questions are who were they working for and why?

How in the living fuck are you a Secret Service agent and have some random person offer to pay for your apartment and that does not raise any red flags?

They posed as Homeland Security but yeah, you would think Secret Service personnel would know better for sure. And article said it was some USPS investigation unit that broke it, weird.

Ha!

Imagine sitting in federal prison and someone asks who busted you.

Was it the FBI? Secret Service? CIA? ATF? IRS?

And then you cry as you respond

Nope, it was the Post Office.

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

Ask for your raise if you haven't already. This is probably the best labor market you've had in your life and might ever have again.

Lindsay Graham taking off his tie so he couldn't go onto the floor to vote gainst Judge Jackson is just too perfect.

Congrats to Biden on a nice SCOTUS win.

I guess but it is a pretty sad day in our nations history. She should have been a unanimous vote instead she was attacked for no other reason then to score political points.

Have to go back to the Reagan days.

What's sad to me is not just the partisanship but trying to score political points about Biden promising to choose a woman over other qualified candidates when Trump and Reagan did the same. It's as if history - even recent - doesn't exist or can be rewritten and instantly believed in real time.

For those of you interested in the history: U.S. Senate: Supreme Court Nominations (1789-Present)

dola, interesting that up until Nixon a lot got confirmed by a voice vote only.

Perhaps Rand Paul and Lindsay Graham were just honoring the old voice vote system by hiding in the cloakroom instead of being on the floor to vote no.

They had ties to Pakistani intelligence and had traveled to Iran. Prosecutors said the secret service agents had been compromised as well. At first I thought it was just some rich guys who wanted to cosplay as secret agents, but this might be a bit more dubious than we thought.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md...ecret-service/

Also in the Ohio Senate primary we have Mike Gibbons running on the "middle class doesn't pay enough taxes" platform.

Unanimous vote is a pretty darned extreme expectation. In a country as polarized as ours where we don't even agree on what the proper function of law is, what the job of a judge or justice should be, that's just not happening even if everyone in Senate was a responsible statesperson.

his last name is appropriate.

These guys are probably going to get a slap on the wrist, likely because the Secret Service tipped them off before the DOJ could investigate them thoroughly. This look like a train wreck, and possibly a straight cover up.
A Tipoff By The Secret Service Blew Up The Federal Probe Of Alleged Imposter Duo | Talking Points Memo

DeSantis wasn't happy with the congressional maps proposed by state legislature so the state legislature gave Destantis the authority to create his own map.

This is what a lot of GOP want. One person to pledge fielty to while they sit in an easy job with little responsibility or authority.

Being homeless doesn't have to be bad. It worked out okay for Hitler.

TN GOP state senator uses Hitler as an example of how people can make something of themselves after being homeless.

This is absurd. pic.twitter.com/bhyTWIz6C1

— The Republican Accountability Project (@AccountableGOP) April 14, 2022