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Handwringing over Biden's age has Democrats worried about a repeat of Ruth Bader Ginsberg's refusal to step down
(www.businessinsider.com)
this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2024
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politics
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Yeah, I'm confused about this take. RBG should have stepped down because by not doing it she created the opportunity for Trump to tilt the majorities in the Supreme Court. Notably, nobody had the balls to criticise her for it, even after she died and made that exact thing happen.
If Biden dies in office Trump doesn't get to pick the vice president. And somehow he still gets constant crap despite the other guy being just as old.
We're doing "but her emails" again. I thought we weren't gonna do "but her emails" again.
I have a feeling that if Biden dies in office, suddenly there will be this concern whether Harris was born in Kenya and can't be president and the Speaker of the House should be elevated instead (assuming the GOP maintain their leadership).
I think a lot of the "concern" over Biden's age is really because they're terrified of a black woman getting the presidency. They hate her more than they hate him.
She's Indian, not black
She's also African American, according to Wikipedia at least.
Well, they can be concerned all they want, but ultimately things work how they work. So no, that scenario is complete fiction and there is no valid equivalence between a Supreme Court Justice and a President in terms of succession.
If the president dies in office, the constitution requires the vice president to become president. It doesn't matter if anyone has concerns, there is no mechanism to prevent the VP from taking over.
The constitution also requires that the vice president to meet all the conditions for a president. The constitution also requires that the president appoint judges and that the Senate confirms them.
Look, I'm not disagreeing with you. But at the end of the day, the constitution is just a piece of paper. Its power is in the individual people who swear to honor, uphold, and protect it. One party has definitely shown that they won't do that.
I'm not holding my breath that the Republicans will do the right thing if power is to be had.
Any claims of her ability to be president were satisfied the moment she was seated as vice president.
Their point is that Republicans will claim she doesn't. And they control the Supreme Court. Which means they are the final arbiters of this, not you, and not me. And not the plain text of Constitution either
This isn't about textual interpretation and this isn't about what the Constitution says. This is about power. That's it.
The Republicans will control the judiciary for a generation. That means they have sole authority over what the Constitution means and does not mean. Their rulings can be as arbitrary as they want and it won't matter. There is no oversight of the Supreme Courts rulings and there is no appeal from their orders.
SCOTUS has been captured by a domestic terrorist organization masquerading as a political party. That is a problem that needs to be solved before we ever start seriously talking about how process and procedure can save us. Hopefully law enforcement can prosecute some of the GOP Justices for their obvious corruption, but even that is unlikely as federal law enforcement has also been infiltrated by Trumpists.
This is a very bad situation. But you can't put your trust in the rule of law. Because Republicans control the rule of law, and they will achieve their desired outcomes by any means necessary
My point is that there is no opportunity for Republicans to do the right thing, wrong thing, or anything at all. Succession is automatic.
LBJ was sworn in only two hours after JFK died. While he was flying home on Air Force One.
Unlike appointing judges, there was no need for action on the part of Congress and therefore no way for the GOP to stop him. LBJ didn't even need the SCOTUS, a lower judge administered the oath and it was all over. If the GOP had a problem with LBJ's qualifications, the only recourse would be impeachment after the fact.
Not if SCOTUS disagrees
Precedent has no binding control over what they will do
The SCOTUS can't hear a case on two hours notice. So if they have anything to say, it would be after the succession.
Your making it sound like that strategy was a mistake and not intentional.
It's intentional from the Republicans, and that's fair.
It's the amount of slack and the "just asking questions" and the "it's reasonable criticism" from the centre and the far left that is the problem. Trump is running after having judges confirm that he raped a woman, committed fraud and tried to commit a coup, and the entire party and their base rallies around him against all evidence.
Biden is old and Clinton was moderately technically clumsy and the dem base is out there going "huh, maybe you make some fine points, actual fascists".
It is infuriating. It'd be funny if it weren't terrifying.
I think she was trying to wait out Trump before stepping down. And even if she stepped down before Trump took office the GOP would've tied that seat up, Obama couldn't even his pick in with a year left till election.
Biden is probably in a similar boat.
That's why she should have stepped down much sooner. Had she done it on the first year of Obama it wouldn't have been feasible to delay for that long. And yet you heard the mildest possible suggestion that this was the case before she died and barely anything at all after.
So why go so hard with Biden when the other guy isn't even four years younger and was already in a questionable mental state before he ran?
Because her emails.
You know what pisses me off the most? When all is said and done and democracy is a vague memory among the cave-dwellers, we'll all have to admit that the stupid combover and the orange spray actually worked. Dumb orangutan guy managed to hold the fiction that he's not decrepit by spray painting himself and shouting past his brainfarts, and it's actually gonna get him the election, with the cooperation of tons of well meaning "just asking valid questions".
I could see her staying on the court even through Obama's first term, but when he won his reelection, that was the time.
And that's not just hindsight either, there was plenty of discussion about it.
Of course there's also the issue of McConnell's shitty stunt in the Garland nomination (and the reverse shitty stunt for Barrett) and I will celebrate the day that piece of shit dies for those, but the first year of Obama's second term would have been plenty of time to get it done.
But yeah, in a just world, a senator from Kentucky deciding for the entire country that he's going to go against his constitutional duty and refuse to take up the Garland nomination for a year and a half?
That's when he's dragged out off the Senate floor, out onto the capital lawn, and hanged for attempting a coup.
After that's done, everybody goes back inside and whoever is the backup Senate majority leader is asked to take up the nomination. At that point it's unlikely they refuse.
Dragged out by whom?
Because we all watched and nobody did anything meaningful. The trumpies didn't even win the last election and were willing to overrun the Capitol to complain about it being stolen. At some point all the violent fantasies have to either trigger some action or get realistic.
For now with "everybody shut up about Biden's age and go vote when the time comes" I'd be just fine. Because, in case we forget in all the fervor, that stuff would also not have been a problem had Cinton won.