@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.

@volkris So you're suggesting they ask the Speaker blocking the nomination to suddenly allow it? Sure, they can do that.

Otherwise, a Senator and a second can only compel a debate.

@bigheadtales Speaker? Are you thinking of the other chamber again?

But no, any time the Senate is in session any senator can walk to the floor, motion to approve a nominee, and with a simple majority it can be done.

All rules of the Senate are based on simple majority consensus. That's a core part of the philosophy of that chamber, the idea that since there are only 100 of them they will be able to work things out personally.

Every once in a while you will see this happen on c-span if you watch the raw video. But obviously senators would rather pretend they don't have this ability so they try to pass the buck to majority and minority leaders.

We need to refuse to let them escape accountability like that.

@volkris
Sorry, Majority Leader.

A Senator can only motion to approve a candidate that is already on the calendar. Effectively asking to vote now instead of later.

If the Majority Leader refuses to put it on the calendar, the motion is moot.

@bigheadtales any senator can walk to the floor and propose a privileged motion that would basically set the calendar aside and immediately take up the motion to approve a nominee.

And it has nothing to do with majority leader.

The calendar is respected by consensus. Senators are free at any moment to ignore the calendar and move on to different business.

@volkris
Nope, a privileged motion can only be used on a question that has already been voted upon and decided.

For example, a Senator could use a privileged motion to ask for reconsideration of a nominee already voted upon.

Since the Republicans are blocking the vote for consent, no decision was made, therefore a privileged motion is invalid.

@bigheadtales actually I think you really put your finger on it when you phrase it as blocking the consent portion.

Yes! This really does make me think of really toxic behaviors where a person might blame another for not wanting to give them attention, as if they were owed it.

It really is about consent, exactly. The president is required to get the consent of the Senate, and it's not that the people we elected blocked the consent, it's that they just didn't consent because what the president had to offer wasn't good enough.

Yes it really is a matter of consent.

It's not that consent is blocked. Is that consent has to be earned, and sometimes presidents don't do the right thing and earn that consent.

@volkris
One cannot consent if one is prevented from the mechanism to give said consent or withholding it.

Had the votes not been blocked and the candidates not approved, there would be no argument.

But keep making excuses.

@bigheadtales and the Senate was not prevented from the mechanism to give consent.

That is just not factually what happened.

At any point, had our elected senators wanted to approve the nominee, they could have motioned on the floor, and gotten it over with.

The mechanism was always available to consent.

They just weren't in to the president's nominee, so they didn't motion to move forward, and that's up to the president, the requirement that he get consent, for the stability of the constitutional system.

And again if you don't understand how the constitutional system works maybe that's why you think it's so fragile. These sorts of things are critical to the foundation of the US government, but if you're not familiar with them then you might not understand the structures that provide such durability.

If you're not familiar with how this works then you might be misunderstanding it and seeing it as fragile, because you don't appreciate the structure that makes it so strong.

@volkris
Since you're a Constitutional scholar, you would know that a motion to move forward only forces a debate on the floor.

It would require a motion of cloture with a 2/3 vote to force a vote. Something that is impossible without a supermajority as the Senate GOP will always block.

By effectively changing the Consent Clause from a simple majority to a supermajority, consent cannot be given. Consent is blocked.

Make all the excuses you like.

@bigheadtales as a constitutional scholar (ha) I know that Senate rules are not constitutional issues 🙂

The Senate makes its own rules.

And on one hand, you're missing that the Senate is free to bypass that process with a simple majority vote.

And on the other hand, even if it wasn't, you're describing the process for granting consent per tradition.

So you're really just painting yourself into corners here.

@volkris
Yes, the Senate can remake its own rules at the beginning of each session by a simple majority.

And perhaps you're right, the Democrats should embrace authoritarianism and ignore centuries of democratic tradition and precedent.

Republicans have no such compunction.

The Democratic Party was unprepared for the GOP's unethical power grab. That's their failure.

It's interesting you place no responsability on the GOP that ignored precedent and democratic norms to force their agenda.

@bigheadtales I place responsibility on all of us who voted for these senators, for all of us that keep re-electing these idiots.

They serve at our pleasure.

And as far as I can tell most of them are morons, but we keep reelecting them, so I emphatically say we should stop doing that.

But if we're going to keep reelecting morons then this is the government we get.

So, we elected a president that failed to secure consent from the senators that we also elected to fill vacancies in his government.

I don't care one bit what letter is in front of a politician's name. What I care about is that we elected all of these people, we elected a president who couldn't work with Congress and we elected a Congress that wasn't interested in the nominees proposed by the president.

If you don't like it fine. Let's talk about not continuing to re-elect the same type of politicians.

But here we are.

I definitely don't want to let the politicians off the hook by letting them scapegoat the Senate majority leader, though. That's not how the Senate works and it lets our elected people off the hook for their decisions if we pretend that it is.

@volkris
We definitely agree on not electing morons, regardless of party. That is a much larger problem with the populace, the media, the lack of education, and the inherent racism infecting much of the country.

But one of the parties is clearly working against the interests of the populace and the country.

POTUS was prevented from obtaining consent (or not) because the process to do so was blocked by the Republican Speaker. But you're right, it was the entire #GOP blocking the process.

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

But it seems like you keep circling back to that one false statement.

@volkris
And you seem to keep circling back to the excuse that blocking the process somehow equates with a failure to obtain consent.

That's like saying that I must obtain a license for my car by going to the one and only available DMV but the manager of the DMV refuses to unlock the door because he doesn't like Fords, so therefore it is my fault for failing to obtain the license.

Republicans are blocking the door for consent.

@bigheadtales except, again, that's factually not what happened, and given the processes behind a pointing judges, it could not have been what happened, because no such authority exists in the federal government.

I don't know how to put that any simpler.

You are mistating events, and not only are you mistating them, but what you claim happened would be impossible given the rules of government.

That's simply not how the federal government works, it is not in line with the rules of the Senate and it is not in line with the constitutional rules of appointing a federal judge.

You might as well be saying that Bigfoot showed up and along with the Loch Ness monster prevented the confirmation of the judges, and oh hey it was really easy for them to get together seeing as the earth is flat and we might as well throw in some alien stuff while we're at it.

No, what you're describing did not and could not have happened, but you keep circling back to it, despite basic civics knowledge of how the federal government works.

@volkris I guess we're at an impasse.

You seem to believe that no processes were impeded and that circumventing the roadblocks were as simple as saying please.

The proof is in the proverbial pudding with the most corrupt and compromised puppet SCOTUS in living memory.

And yes, both sides hold some blame, but only the Republicans are openly and cravenly corrupting the bench.

So, I hope you have a great rest of your day and happy holidays, if you celebrate any of them.