Most of the below excerpt is from mid-item. Readers are encouraged to read the entire original item, " Primary Schumer To Guarantee Opposition To Trump’s SCOTUS Pick -- Schumer has power to try to stop Trump’s nominee, but he has previously caved to the GOP on judges. Announcing a 2022 primary challenge right now is the best chance to prevent that." Excerpting:
As Republicans are already promising a vote on a nominee from Donald Trump, the obvious question is: What can be done to stop conservatives’ full takeover of the nation’s high court for the rest of our lives?
We don’t have all the answers, but we have one answer among many: A serious New York Democratic candidate needs to step up and announce a 2022 primary challenge to Sen. Chuck Schumer — who already has a record of helping fast-track Donald Trump’s judicial appointments.
That primary challenge needs to be announced right now — and it needs to be clear that the primary challenge will be a referendum on Schumer’s record on Trump judges.
[...] Schumer needs to face maximum pressure every single day to use all possible power that his caucus has — and it has power — to stop a Trump appointment.
Not just pressure as in phone calls and protests — pressure as in you-will-be-voted-out-of-office pressure.
[...] You could argue that there was nothing Schumer could do to prevent conservative Democrats from voting the way they did, but that’s bullshit. Schumer controls the party apparatus and its fundraising machine — if his excuse is he can’t do anything, then he shouldn’t be the leader.
Schumer and Democrats have chronically mismanaged judicial appointments. Obama left office with a Supreme Court seat open and far too many district and court of appeals vacancies. Republicans have rushed to fill those seats, and Democrats have rubber-stamped most of their nominees with little fight. While House Democrats and Senate Republicans haven’t managed to agree on a new COVID relief bill since March, Democrats this week helped confirm eight new district court judges this week.
It’s true that if Republicans hold together, then they can vote a Supreme Court nominee through with a simple majority — that is, if they are able to force a vote, and it’s not a given they will be able to if Democrats use all of their power.
Grinding The Senate To A Halt
[...] if Arizona Democrat Mark Kelly wins his race against GOP incumbent Martha McSally (to fill the remainder of John McCain's term) he would be seated at the end of November, rather than in January. But continued obstructionist tactics might yet be needed to prevent them from using the lame duck session to ram a nominee through.
If Republicans still go forward with an appointment, then all of this becomes the justification for Democrats to immediately pass legislation in the new Congress to expand the court.
It would certainly be unprecedented, but we are living in unprecedented times — and this is what a Democratic leader must be forced to try to do, and the best way to force a senator to do something is to make clear they are risking their job if they don’t do that thing.
New York Has Plenty Of Dems Who Could Primary Schumer
[...]
[italics added] (Expanding the Court is NOT an unprecented idea. Roosevelt having New Deal counter-Depression steps voided step-after-step floated an intent to pack the Court; Justices noticed, and behaved better.) Credibly pushing to pack the Court if needed would require a new President with balls:
Biden?
Another Sirota post - by photographic implication - suggests women politicians may be the answer for progressives, at least short term, (and that does not mean Pelosi, but rather women with actual not feigned progressive consciences), Sirota posting:
This week was a long year, and now there are less than seven weeks until one of the most important elections in our country’s history.
Everyone is on edge from everything — climate disasters, a pandemic, an economic emergency and Trump’s endless effort to sow anxiety. We should acknowledge that things will get more turbulent before they get better. But I fear that we are reaching a point where too many are starting to conclude that things can never get better — and ignoring signs that things can get better, and in some cases actually are getting better.
I see the despondence in my own email box everyday: In the last month, some readers have suggested that there is no reason for any hope, because even if Trump is defeated, there is no way to ever move our government to do anything good at all, ever.
It’s an understandable feeling — year after year, decade after decade, it has felt like our country cares less and less about us, and that we are all on our own. Those feelings are backed up by cold, hard numbers: A new RAND Corporation study this week found that since the 1970s, about $47 trillion of national wealth that should have gone to the bottom 90 percent instead went to the top 1 percent. As New York Magazine put it: “If income had been distributed as evenly over the past five decades as it was in 1975, the median full-time worker in the U.S. would enjoy annual earnings of roughly $92,000 a year. As is, that worker makes just $50,000.”
There’s no way to sugarcoat those figures — they illustrate a breakdown of the basic social contract in America, a breakdown deliberately created by the oligarchs, politicians and corporations that are building their gilded careers and palaces atop the rubble of a once-vibrant economy. And day after day, the propaganda propping up this avarice is blasted at us by the corporate media, which indignantly tell us that a new president must represent Wall Street arsonists, not just the millions of people being set on fire.
[...]
[links and italics in original]