politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
I thought I read that the decision was unanimous. If the liberals and conservatives on the court agree, it seems unlikely that packing the court would change the decision.
Also, as much as I'd love to see Trump excluded from ballots, we all know that states like Texas would turn around and do the same to Biden, just out of spite. It would change the nature of democracy, in a bad way, if individual states could just randomly decide to exclude candidates they don't like. Heck, what would stop them from excluding ALL candidates of a particular party, except perhaps some token losers or quislings no one ever heard of?
The liberals dessented by essentially saying the law should be "self executing" (a fucking joke) in that if he was part of an insurrection then he's just as ineligible as a 30 year old running for president. You simply can't run if you're under 35, so in some fantasy reality those judges live in Trump just wouldn't be able to be on the ballots automatically, as if no one has to actually ENFORCE that law (see: judges actions in removing him)
It's astounding how utterly deranged our laws are.
Trump has well earned the name "Teflon Don."
The ONLY thing that man has not lied about is "I could shoot someone on 5th avenue and not lose any supporters (and he'd walk away into the sunset with 0 repercussions whatsoever)"
This is a strange situation, for sure. The age requirement you bring up is a good comparison. Age is something you are, not something you've done, possibly done, or definitey not done, so there isn't as much to argue about.
However, what if some 33 year-old decided to run and had the support of one of the two big parties, and just lied about her age? Presumably, that would require a finding of fact and would be adjudicated by the federal courts, not Congress or each state legislature or Attorney General.
Your example makes it pretty clear that even something supposedly "self-executing" still needs a back-up plan. Another interesting example is the 2000 election, where it was the Supreme Court that arbitrated the final vote, which decided the winner of the presidential election (incorrectly, it seems, based on later statistical analysis). Nasedon these two examples, I don't entirely understand their reasoning for pushing the decision about eligibility to Congress. While an election is for a political office, the process of running an election is supposed to be apolitical.
What the US really needs is a non-partisan, apolitical, independent federal electoral commission.
They most certainly did not. The liberal justices wrote concurring opinions. They very explicitly did not write dissenting opinions.
There is a remedy for that actually. If a state gets too far out of line with it's elections Congress can refuse to certify results from that state. This is what Trump supporters were hoping Congress would do in 2020 and why they rioted when it didn't happen.
And if we can't bar proven bad faith actors from office then our democracy is already dead. It just doesn't know it yet, like a person who overdosed on Tylenol. Furthermore the longer we push this confrontation with anti-democracy forces back the bloodier the resolution gets. We've seen this handled well and handled poorly in history. Handled well are cases like Bismarck and handled poorly are cases like the French Revolution. (Which if you think was just rich people dying, you really need to actually read about it.)
Right, but Congress votes along party lines so that isn't much of a remedy. The remedy is just as flawed as the process that leads to political bad acting in the first place. That's why people look to a (supposedly) non-partisan body like SCOTUS to resolve the issue, and why SCOTUS becoming partisan is such a big deal.
But your larger point that the system has broken down is well-taken. Much of how government functions successfully is based on unspoken conventions and norms of behavior. When a large proportion of the population actually WANTS someone like Trump, you have a very serious problem. No democratic structure or form of government can save the people from themselves forever. Sure, gerrymandering and other dirty tricks make a difference, but at the end of the day Trump really will get almost half the vote. He's not the representative of some small fringe party who managed to ride a crazy set of circumstances to power, like Hitler did. Trump represents one of only two major parties and will legitimately get support from right around half of those who vote, which is just crazy when you think about it.
What the actual fuck happened that we stand on the precipice of such madness?
We repealed the fairness doctrine; didn't obliterate Fox News when it was obvious they were party propaganda fraudulently representing themselves; gave social media a license to be neither publisher nor public utility under regulations; and made bribery legal in Citizens United.
Please, anyone who reads this, stop posting links to the mobile version of Wikipedia. It doesn’t switch automatically on PC, and I see it happen all the time. Just take the half a second to remove the “.m” from the beginning of the link, save everyone else from the pain of having to be surprised by it and taking the time to do it themselves.
As far as section 230 goes, that is by far the least problematic, and take note how the vast majority of efforts to remove it come from conservatives who appear to me to be annoyed that their views are being called out as harmful or hateful.
It seems that way but they couldn't use algorithms the way they do without section 230 to shield them.
And yeah I didn't realize it was the mobile link. I'll keep an eye out for that in the future.
Yeah, content algorithms aren't great, but revoking section 230 isn't the way to solve that.
I don't think just repealing it is the answer either. But the way it is written and implemented is absolutely a part of the problem.
Can I just watch les mis? Does singing wolverine miss anything important?
Lol. Just a few things. Some mass murder, partisan politics, and a system that failed so thoroughly they went back to having a monarch after trying to murder all of the monarchists.
If the Supreme Court became a race to the bottom I seriously do not care. 150 justices represents 500 million better than 9 ever could. Cripple the courts, they're only famous for dealing out racism for the past 300 years.
I see that the decision is unanimous and that goes back to my original point. The court is showing they can supersede the constitution in this case so why not others where the constitution is failing? I don't pretend to know high level con law, I really don't. I do know stories about how some of the first justices struggled to pass down rulings that would effect so many with only their limited view. Not our current justices, though. If I remember correctly the constitution says very little about the scope of the Supreme Court other than its the highest court. It wasn't even till years after the founders had came and went that it started getting into this interpretating the constitution shit.
Yeah, the Supreme Court's record on key issues is not great. Citizens United, for example, is at the root of a lot of the current troubles.
But a big part of the problem is actually the structure of US democracy itself. US democracy was set up primarily to prevent tyranny, and it does that through separation of powers. And it has been successful in that regard. However, the structure the founders created also causes gridlock on key issues.
In the US, it is relatively rare for one party to be fully in charge for any length of time. In a Westminster-style parliamentary system, on the other hand, a majority government usually gets a chance to implement their program and then they deal with the consequences in the next election. The role of the opposition is to point out all the stupid things the government does. When something goes poorly, it is clear who is to blame.
One of the problems with the US system is that the parties can legitimately blame each other when nothing gets done, which means they can avoid accountability.
In parliamentary systems, the government of the day bears the blame for fuck ups, whereas in the US system there is a tendency to blame the institutions. Perhaps that's why you see surveys in the US where people strongly approve of their local representative, but have very low approval of Congress overall. This lack of power and accountability for the government is also why the Supreme Court is such a huge force in the US. Gridlock doesn't change the fact that decisions need to be made, so more and more key decisions are being made either by the Supreme Court or by presidential decree.
Also, having a President is just a bad idea. I believe the US only has a President because Washington was so revered at the time. Having such a singular, king-like office with actual power inevitably creates a cult of personality. In contrast, parliamentary systems turn the king or his representative into a powerless ceremonial position that stays silent on political issues.