@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 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.

@bigheadtales I know for a fact that no processes were impeded since the process that you think was impeded played out exactly as it was designed.

Again this was about seeking consent. Consent was not given even though the elected senators had every chance to give consent had the president nominated a compelling candidate.

The president did not do his duty to nominate a compelling candidate. And so the senators we elected didn't bother giving their consent.

It's like you're yelling about the lady at the bar that didn't consent to going home with you. Yeah she obstructed you. She didn't comply with your wishes. No, that's not how that works, you just should have showered before you showed up and tried to pick up a date.

The president was required to put forward a nominee that could get the consent of the Senate, and he failed to do his job.

You can talk all day long about why the Senate didn't grant that consent, but at the end of the day, the simple fact is that the president didn't do his job to get consent to fill the vacancy.

Personally I even consider that an impeachable offense. It's one of the primary jobs that the president has to do. And if the president is so unable to work with Congress then I would have liked him booted out and replaced with another president who was willing to do the job. But that's just me.

But no, with the design of the US government it is ridiculous to say that Republicans blocked consent just as it would be ridiculous to say that the lady at the bar blocked your advances.

She just wasn't that into you. And the Senate we elected just wasn't into the president's nominee.

It is rightly called out as toxic behavior to blame the one not giving consent when consent is so important.

@volkris
Yes, you are correct, I don't know how I could have been so wrong. Thank you for your perspective.

I missed all those floor votes where the nominees approved out of committee were voted down. (apparently in super secret)

And Trump was robbed, he totally won the 2020 election with more votes and the entire Electoral college except for that dastardly Brandon.

@bigheadtales turns out they don't want to vote forward nominees that aren't compelling!

Like I don't know why you think that's weird. Turns out people don't want to vote for things they don't want to vote for, so they don't.

That's just how the Senate works.

When the president proposes a nominee that people don't want to vote for then people don't vote for them.

It makes perfect sense.

@volkris
Even weirder, we'll never know as they were prevented from voting on the matters at question.

Same circular reasoning, there was no vote, therefore they must not have wished to vote, because there was no vote.

@bigheadtales The rules allowed a vote.

They would have voted if they wanted to.

But the president's nominee was not judged to be worth voting for so they didn't vote.

That's just how the senate works.

@volkris
OK, I'll bite, who decided the nominee wasn't worth voting for? Don't say "the Senate" as there was never a vote.

And we aren't talking about nominees who didn't make it out of committee or were withdrawn or were disqualified.

Nominees who never received a vote. Who decided.

(Republicans blocked votes on over 200 nominees under Obama, a record)

@bigheadtales it's like you're complaining that nobody went home with you from the bar, and who decided that?

Who decided that you weren't worth a date?

Well nobody decided that. You just weren't worth the date. Nobody was into you. Sorry.

And so it was any time the president had a vacancy to fill but he didn't propose a person worth voting for.

Sorry, the Senate just wasn't into the nominee.

It could have voted for the nominee at any moment, but it just wasn't into that person.

It's really ridiculous to talk about the GOP blocking the nominee when it's just a matter of the nominee not being worth the time to vote.

Again, at any moment any single senator could have started the vote on the floor, and as per Senate rules the majority leader could not have stopped it if most of the senate wanted to move ahead with the vote.

The members of the Senate just weren't interested.

@volkris
Now you're just lying.

No. Any Senator can't just walk onto the the floor and start a vote any more than they can walk onto the floor and declare themselves Senate Majority Leader, of King. Or anymore than you saying it makes it true.

So, you don't have an answer.

But thanks for the insults. Can't say it's surprising. My social life is fine though, I appraise your concern.

@bigheadtales Oh yeah they absolutely can, and occasionally they do, again if you watch c-span you see this play out occasionally.

No it's not common because of how the Senate conducts itself, but it does happen every once in a while.

Any senator can rise for recognition, and the pro tempre (If not the president) will recognize the senator, who can then make their motion, get a second, and proceed with their business if they have the support of the rest of the chamber.

The parliamentary procedure continues from there.

The reason it's rare is because it would make such a mockery to rise with such a motion without guaranteed support from the rest of the chamber.

But yeah, it's definitely a thing. And we need to hold them accountable for how they use it, and for how the president uses it.

@volkris
And, again, that is only to call a debate, not force a vote.

Waiting on that answer.

Who decided?

@bigheadtales no a senator can call for a vote or unanimous consent anytime they want.