zlacker

I won’t claim it could never happen here, societies change and we could certainly drift to a place it could. The Dem candidates that advocated packing the Supreme Court scared me for this reason, that’s part of how Maduro seized complete power.

Trump now though? Nobody fears him, the majority disrespect him, government bureaucracy openly defies him. He doesn’t even have the House, nor enough Republican support to pass laws to enable a power grab, nor a Supreme Court loyal to him before the constitution.

>>dahdum+(OP)
Trump and Mcconnell have already packed the supreme court and the federal circuits.

It's no-longer a question of if the Democrats respond, it's a question of how.

>>NickNa+38
They didn’t pack the Supreme Court, it’s still the same number. They did appoint a bunch of textualists and originalists, not just die hard conservatives. That makes it harder to drive progressive change through the judiciary, but the legislative branch was always the better option.

Actual court packing is a terrible idea, last attempted by FDR, at great political cost. Hearing candidates actively propose plans for doing so boggled my mind.

>>dahdum+Me
> That makes it harder to drive progressive change through the judiciary, but the legislative branch was always the better option.

Maybe not so much. Didn't this court gut important parts of the the Voting Rights Act?

>>ardy42+ul
We also have Roberts to thank for Citizens United, which flooded the political landscape with dark money and made the current GOP strategy viable.