@bigheadtales conspiracy theories like that are never particularly compelling

@bigheadtales sure, because the people that we chose to elect determined her to be qualified.

That's how the US system works.

@volkris
I would suggest your take is, at best, facile and suggests a lack of awareness of what Republicans have done to cripple the process of selecting judges to serve on the courts at all federal levels.

@bigheadtales cripple the process? No, the people we elect are actively involved in approving those judges.

We should probably stop electing idiots.

But until we do, well, we elect these people.

We get the Congress that we vote for.

@volkris
Do we though? The process was blocked and corrupted by a vast minority of representation.

Today's Congress is unrepresentative of large parts of the populace due to both structural design and from racial and partisan gerrymandering and voter suppression. So not really the Congress "we" elect.

Two different issues, but ignoring the issue doesn't address it.

@bigheadtales you keep talking about blocking but that's not how the US system works.

Judges are only approved with the active involvement of the people we elect. It's not like they just get out of the way; instead they have to actively consent to the appointment.

So no, it's not that the process was blocked. It's that the process moved forward considering these nominations and determining that they were qualified.

And remember that the Senate is not subject to gerrymandering. That's the House.

@volkris Yes the GOP senate blocked consideration of Democratic candidates at all levels including SCOTUS until they managed to gain majority and change the rules to install their puppet candidates.

The nominations were prevented from consideration.

Perhaps Democrats should have done the same? But then we would have two fascist parties in power.

Our government is designed based on assumption of best intentions by all, this is no longer a viable assumption.

@bigheadtales again, that's not how the process works.

It's not about blocking; it's about affirmatively moving forward.

And no you are completely wrong about the government being designed based on assumption of best intentions by all. In fact the folks that designed the constitutional system wrote about this explicitly in the famous men are not angels paper, maybe by Hamilton himself.

No the government is absolutely not designed based on assumption of best intentions. Rather it is designed with the assumption that people won't have the best of intentions, and so they will guard their authorities and keep an eye on each other.

The whole point of the design of the US government is that we can't assume the best of intentions from politicians.

@volkris
A candidate cannot affirmatively move forward if they are prevented from consideration. Call it what you want.

I guess we have vastly different opinions on the stability of the US Constitution. It has proven to be extraordinarily weak and fragile, open to attacks from within, and lacking any real redress against those in power corrupting it for their personal gain.

The US is at a tipping point and is in peril of falling to a fascist dictatorship.

@bigheadtales the Senate is free to consider any candidate the president cares to nominate.

There is no prevention from consideration. There's merely a procedure saying that the president has to put forward a good enough candidate to get the approval of the people we elect to the Senate.

I call it a critical element of how the US government works, and misunderstanding that is a huge problem because it prevents us from holding powerful officials accountable for their actions.

What in the world are you talking about the Constitution having proven to be extraordinarily weak and fragile? I think everything we see around us shows how durable it is.

But then if you don't even understand how federal judges make their way through checks and balances, I don't think you understand current events enough to have a fair judgment of that anyway.

@volkris
Tell me what I'm missing (short version)...

1. President appoints a nominee.

2. Review by Judicial Committee.

3. Judicial Committee passes approved nominee to the Senate.

4. Senate may hold hearings.

5. Nominee is passed to the Senate for a vote by simple majority.

The #GOP blocks step 5. There is no consideration. There is no vote.

Majority, Republicans refuse to bring Democratic nominees to a vote.

When in minority Republicans filibuster requiring unattainable 2/3 vote.

@bigheadtales first, step one, president names a nominee. Doesn't appoint.

I think you might be missing that steps two through five are optional.

If the president names a compelling nominee the Senate doesn't have to do any of that, it can just simply approve the nominee any time our elected senators want to.

So it's not that the GOP blocked step 5. That's not how the process works.

The Constitution requires the president to nominate somebody that the Senate is willing to approve. It's not about blocking, it's about approving.

Any time that a vacancy goes unfilled it's because the president failed in his job to put forward a nominee that our elected senators would feel like showing up for voting for.

To put it a different way, when you describe it as the GOP blocking a nominee it's like Taco Bell complaining that I blocked to my purchase of a taco today: no, I just didn't want a taco so I didn't go there.

It's not blocking. It's that the system of checks and balances requires the president to put forward somebody that our elected officials would feel compelled to approve.

Same as how with the way the world works if Taco Bell wants my business it has to make the food that I feel compelled to eat.

@volkris
As I said, short version, but yes, nominates.

Yes, the senate isn't required to go through committee.

But the Senate cannot choose to consent or choose to not consent if they are prevented from doing so.

Frame it however you like, the #GOP is blocking the consent portion of the Appointments Clause.

The process was not stopped in committee nor in any hearing, the nominees were not withdrawn or otherwise disqualified.

Republicans prevented the vote.

@bigheadtales and I choose to frame it as it is factually, that it's not about blocking but about approval 🙂

You talk about the GOP blocking the consent, but that's PART OF the consent, if you want to put it that way.

If the president proposes a nominee that doesn't have enough votes for approval then the nominee is not being blocked, it's just that the nominee isn't a good enough nominee and the president is required to propose a better one.

The process was not stopped at all. This is the process.

The president is required to put forward a nominee that can get Senate approval.

Republicans did not prevent the vote. The president failed to propose a nominee good enough to get a vote.

@volkris
Ah an apologist, it appears. Yes, everything is fine.

But here's the thing, the nominees likely had the votes for approval (one never knows until the votes are actually cast) yet Mitch McConnel decided to not bring the vote to the floor (blocking it) or decide that his party would filibuster (blocking it) knowing that although the nominee had the votes to pass, enough Republicans would follow Party orders to prevent the 2/3 majority needed to move forward with consideration.

@bigheadtales apologist? Where in the world do you get that?

I'm emphasizing the blame that presidents with open vacancies hold and I am quite frustrated that presidents aren't held accountable for those failures.

Apologist? No! I am as fired up with blame as I could possibly be!

As for McConnell, under Senate rules the majority leader can be overridden at any moment so I hate to see McConnell scapegoated like that.

If the Senate wanted to approve a nominee it could regardless of what the majority leader thought about it. But unfortunately the stories out there play into that mythos about the all-powerful leader when in reality the Senate in general simply isn't interested in passing the nominee.

The Senate just wasn't in to the nominee.

The Senate just wasn't consenting to what the president wanted.

@volkris Given that judicial nominees don't receive a House referral, there appears to be no way they could override the Speaker's decision to block the nominee from consideration without a 2/3 majority.

Again, how can you say the Senate wasn't consenting to a nominee when prevented from the ability to render said consent (or withhold it)?

@bigheadtales It has absolutely nothing to do with the House

Any senator can make a motion by walking down to the floor and proposing it, as per Senate rules.