ofc Obama is to blame. Mr Hope and Change. Mr the Audacity of Hope was completely feckless about any change and defended the status quo at every turn while allowing the Republicans to run rough shod over him.

he had the power and even a mandate from the voters to actually deliver what he promised and instead he stacked the administration with establishment corporatist careerists who continued bombing the Middle East, continued stealing from the population, continued allowing Wall Street to plunder and continued getting cucked by the right.

but hey, he looked good and happy windsailing.

You know there was no hearing and therefore no process to 'consent' right ?

But if that's 'how it works' then no president has ever appointed a justice when the opposing party controls the Senate, right ?

The man had no pride.

Now these poor fools are making excuses for him. It's sad.

You can **** right off with this nonsense. Based on your posts, I am quite positive that I know 10 times as much about the SCOTUS, and the appointment process, as you do.

I'll ask you again. What exactly should Obama have done? And don't say, "he's the president", because that's no sort of answer.

GOP controlled the Senate. It is a norm, but certainly not set in the Constitution that they must vote on and confirm POTUS’ nominees. If you feel there was a way for Obama to circumvent this, I am all ears.

Exhibit A re the bolded.

Also, no one is pretending like judicial appointments are the only reason to prefer Biden to four more years of Trump. There are a million reasons why Trump is worse than any possible alternative.

He has no idea what Obama could have done that plausibly could have resulted in Garland (or someone better) ending up on the Court. He is just mad that it happened. I get that. I was furious too.

But giving McConnell and company a pass by pretending like Obama was the main problem is just absurd. I have no idea why that line of thinking is so seductive for people like RFlush.

I'm only riffing but maybe start by defunding Ft Campbell and working from there ?

It's not very hard to fight for something you think is important.

Of course it's easier to not fight for something you don't care about.

LOL

Because it was Obama's job to stop it.

I obviously blame McConnell for McConnell's actions. But OBama had a duty to uphold the constitution and he didn't even try. It's not at all seductive to think like this, it's just observing the plain facts.
Trust me, I'd much rather Obama have lived up to his hype. The fact that he proudly governed like a moderate Republican is on him. Not me.

That's a pretty random suggestion. And also not something that Obama could have done on his own initiative.

In any case, McConnell has made it crystal clear that there is nothing that he believes is more important than judicial appointments. In a rational world, GOP senators would have been punished at the polls in 2016 for this stunt and many others. But obviously that didn't happen. Maybe the poster who wanted to blame voters was more correct than either of us.

Stop implying I said something I didn't.

They needed to have hearings and vote as that is what advise and consent has come to mean.

You could be right and maybe a judge would laugh it out of court. But we'll never know because your hero was too lazy to file a suit.

And you're not all ears. You're mind is made up.

You probably told people they were going to vote for Hillary because Trump was so bad.

Be honest.....

Of course he could have done that. I'm not sure how quickly he could actually shut it down but he could put the heat on right away. That's what you do when you want something. We just have to accept the fact that he didn't care. And that lack of leadership made Trump all the more appealing to people who were frustrated.

But yes, it is the voters who are to blame. But voters are easily misled. I mean, to my amazement.....

Even in the midst of a pandemic Trump gets them to not wear masks.

Seriously, that is where the frustration towards Obama comes from. If he would have been a fighter we'd have a better outlook right now.

No idea what you are referring to. I did not imply anything, simply pointing out that it is not in POTUS' power to force the Senate to do anything in that spot. Again, the Senate does not need to do anything.

You use the phrasing that Obama should have fought to 'uphold the Constitution,' but the Constitution is not on his side in this fight. There is no timeliness requirement put upon the Senate for confirmations. In fact, Constitution explicitly states that the Senate decides its own rules of procedure. The only things that have bound the Senate are tradition and precedent, which McConnell has **** on. Is he an *******? Yes. Did he violate the Constitution? No.

POTUS doesn't unilaterally set the budget. Furthermore, GOP controlled both houses in 2015. I guess Obama could have tried some Trump-style fund misappropriation and fought it out in court, but to what effect? Bad PR and a motivated GOP constituency?

Personally, I don't think anything could have forced McConnell's hand short of intense public pressure from his base. Clearly the support within the GOP was there, or he wouldn't have done it.

LOL

It's funny that you and Roco never mention Obama rallying his base.
I guess you both understand that his corporate donors didn't care.

Democrats really do deserve another 4 more years of Trump.
I just don't think I do. But I guess it is what it is.

Agree that the corporations don't care. As previously mentioned, I think the Dem attitude at the time was basically 'McConnell's an *******, but there's no way Trump is going to win.' So I guess we all bear some responsibility for general complacency.

We can't say if he violated the constitution because no court gave an opinion.

All we can say is Obama bent over for Mitch and liked it.

You guys do.
I was beside myself at the time.

Those norms are important because they show the people that we actually do live in a democracy and there are rules that everyone follows.

But of course that's not true. We live in a third world type, semi-fascist oligarchy.

You really don't understand how this works. Obama had every inventive to get Garland confirmed. His corporate donors had no reason to be scared on Garland, and in case, Obama was in his second term and wasn't especially beholden to them at that point. But he didn't have the power to make it happen. It didn't matter what Obama did or didn't say to his base because Republicans controlled the Senate, and the Senate controls its own procedures. End of story.

It was an abhorrent expression of brute power with almost no historical precedent in the Senate. That's who McConnell is.

idk if specific details in Nevada make this case very different, but I think a good comparison here is a similar case from California, where churches whined about being shut down and the same lineup of judges told them 5-4 to STFU. In that case:

- California put a limit on church occupancy at the lower of 25% occupancy, or 100 people
- California did not put the same limit on business like grocery stores or banks, because they are fundamentally different activities: you enter a retail business, you buy ****, and leave, whereas in a church, you stand in close proximity to other people for hours while singing and projecting respiratory droplets
- John Roberts' opinion, very reasonably, talked about this, in the context of other activities banned by California's order:

Kavanaugh didn't care about the nature of the business at all, and didn't care that activities more like being in church (i.e. movie theaters, which are actually prob a bit safer than churches) were as or more restricted than churches. Kav thought that any business being more open than churches violated the First Amendment:

"QED" says Kavanaugh (joined by Gorsuch and Thomas), bred from a fetus in a Federalist Society laboratory to write opinions like this while straight-up lying about what is a "comparable business" as well as the arguments the State put forth.

It's possible that the Nevada case is a little different - in particular, casino allowances sound corrupt af, typical Nevada - but the California case showed that SCOTUS has 4 judges who don't really give a **** what the circumstances are, they will always show a theocracy-level amount of deference to churches.

There is a distinction. Gambling. The issue in the Nevada case is, gambling is allowed based on percentage of occupancy, where as Churches has a flat restriction, irrelevant of occupancy. I would agree the CA one can't overcome the compelling interest and differences in activities cited by Roberts. Can't make that same argument when it comes to gambling, which is a static activity. I don't know what the lower court used to make their decision that the SCOTUS apparently relied upon.

Yeah that all sounds fair, just rubs me the wrong way to see Gorsuch quoted since the CA case showed he and the other 3 are guided first of all by religious zealotry, and having any facts at all on their side is just a convenient bonus

I'm wondering if Nevada did not argue a compelling interest from an economic perspective.

Actually, it might be just technical issue the reason they denied the case:

As in, they decided not to preempt the SF court.