U.S Election 2020

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

That's why I subscribed to Britbox - to watch Spitting Image.

Smug left-wing satire surely isn’t a reason to subscribe to anything ...

[Carth]

Originally Posted by Chris

Smug left-wing satire surely isn’t a reason to subscribe to anything ...

True . . . good job Twitter is free isn't it

[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by Chris

Smug left-wing satire surely isn’t a reason to subscribe to anything ...

You've lost me there.

[Carth]

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

You've lost me there.

Maybe you're trying to overthink it in complicated terms, if you're lucky someone may post a graph or retweet an analysts view complete with spreadsheet

[1andrew1]

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

That's why I subscribed to Britbox - to watch Spitting Image.

I think I may have to give it a go for that too!

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

You've lost me there.

Sorry, I always assumed you were old enough to have seen Spitting Image on TV first time round.

[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by Chris

Sorry, I always assumed you were old enough to have seen Spitting Image on TV first time round.

... and yes, I've got the VHS tapes. I just didn't understand your turn of phrase.

[jfman]

VHS? If it’s not on streaming it’s not worth watching

Channeling my inner OB there.

[Carth]

Betamax Matters Too

BREAKING: U.S Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died aged 87. R.I.P

This means President Trump’s new Justice Nominee will in all likelihood get a vote on the Senate floor when there is only six weeks to go until the U.S Election.

I assumed he would apply the same rules he did for Obama's nominee....

This is gonna be a massive fight. The Republicans and the President are perfectly entitled to nominate someone but they set their own precedient last time.

I also think this would give them the majority they need to ban abortion.

Originally Posted by Damien

I assumed he would apply the same rules he did for Obama's nominee....

This is gonna be a massive fight. The Republicans and the President are perfectly entitled to nominate someone but they set their own precedient last time.

I also think this would give them the majority they need to ban abortion.

February 13, 2016: “The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice,” McConnell said in a statement released after Scalia’s death. “Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.”

February 23, 2016: “I can now confidently say the view shared by virtually everybody in my conference, is that the nomination should be made by the president the people elect in the election that’s underway right now,” McConnell told reporters following Senate Republicans’ first closed-door meeting after Scalia’s death.

May 18, 2016: Reacting to a forum called by Senate Democrats to discuss the lingering nomination of Garland, a statement from McConnell’s office called it a “sham hearing” and claimed Democrats were being hypocritical about the need to confirm Garland in an election year: “It seems the more we hear from Democrats about the Supreme Court the more we’re reminded by comparison of how reasonable and common-sense the Republican position is today.”

America doesn’t run on precedents, we do, they have a written Constitution, we don’t. What McConnell said in 2016 is not in the Constitution. Obviously in 2016, it was Republican Senate and a Democrat President. This time it’s both a Republican controlled Senate and White House.

The other important factor is that the Supreme Court most definitely needs a full compliment of Justices in highly heated contest like Bush vs. Gore election, required Supreme Court intervention.

Also, McConnell should steam ahead, the way the pathetic Democrats have behaved this last four years, the hoax investigations and the crap they threw at an honourable man in Justice Kavanaugh, they do not deserve this seat at all.

Not entirely true. The Supreme Court’s rulings become precedent without then requiring legislation or constitutional amendment. Granted the court is interpreting the constitution in specific circumstances but their rulings can and do permanently alter the way public life is conducted. (Roe v Wade is a historic example which determined a woman’s basic right under the constitution to have an abortion). Lower courts’ rulings may set precedent or be regarded as ‘persuasive’ in subsequent cases.

I think what’s at issue here is what we in the UK would understand as convention rather than precedent. We often do stuff in government because that’s how it has been done before, and it is widely regarded as politically difficult (though not illegal) to behave differently without good cause. Giving parliament a vote on military involvement in Syria is a good example of this. Even though it was only done once, hard questions will be asked if the government moves to deploy armed forces to a foreign battlefield in future, without asking parliament first.

I suspect - though I don’t know for sure - that what’s at play in the US right now is similar to our unwritten system of convention rather than the legal process we would call precedent. Trump’s opponents are pointing out that he is not behaving conventionally. It’s not a legal claim, but a political one, which in the middle of an election campaign, seems a perfectly reasonable course of action.

I'm just concerned about all those women who could find themselves facing a further erosion of their reproductive rights if there isn't a careful choice made by whomever.