A new study published on Thursday and led by my colleague Chelsey Davidson found that since the 2012–13 term, more than 80 percent of election-related cases on the Supreme Court’s hand-picked docket could move the law only in a direction that degraded fair elections.

In that time, the Supreme Court accepted 32 cases involving core democracy issues such as redistricting, ballot access, campaign finance, and VRA enforcement. In 26 of them, the lower court had issued a pro-democracy ruling. This means that the best-case scenario at the court was affirmation of the status quo, while a reversal of the lower court would restrict voter participation. By contrast, the justices picked just six cases where they might reverse anti-democracy rulings.

  • circuscritic
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    1 year ago

    The Democratic Party, as it exists today, is structurally incapable of what your suggesting. Their entire power structure is based on suppressing the left, and NOT activating / mobilizing their base for real political or societal changes towards leftist goals, or projects.

      • circuscritic
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        1 year ago

        Oh, my bad. Guess that isn’t the case, as evidenced by… what exactly?

        Or is it just that pesky parliamentarian always getting in the way?

        • cogman@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Or is it just that pesky parliamentarian always getting in the way?

          Mostly just the constitution.

          • You can’t impeach without a 50/50 vote in the house.
          • You can’t convict (remove from office) without a 2/3s vote in the senate.

          You are blaming democrat structure for something that is out of their control. Be mad at the dems for a lot of other things, but not the lack of ability to impeach supreme court justices. You aren’t wrong in your assessment that Dems suck when it comes to progressive politics. The last progressive president was a republican (FDR).

          • circuscritic
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            1 year ago

            You might want to scroll up to the comment I first replied to, and reread it.

            Edit: took out the snarky bits. I’m tired, and thought you were a different user.

            • SoylentBlake@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              I’m with you. Dems are pro-corporate, socially conciliatory, meaning they’ll never rock the boat ever.

              Which means they’ll never produce a real leader. They will never make JFK capable of giving the nation a direction. They’ll squeak the loudest wheel and continuing to sell out the everyday Americans estates for end of Life health care, ensuring all money ends up at the top within a single lifetime and where you’re born is the caste where you’ll 99% of the time stay.

              Entrenched oligarchy. Neo-fuedalism behind corporate slogans absolving shareholders of guilt and culpability.

              They’re takind everything of worth before they lock themselves away, prob down on the soon to be one of the last temperate climes of the Antarctic peninsula.

              There’s a military plan for climate change. It involves a lot of guns pointing out from around the richest and the “elites”. If you aren’t in those circles now, you ain’t getting there.

              I used to think there’s no way America would lock its borders down to the ~500mill in Central America and Mexico, now I’m less naive. Not only will we lock it down, we got enough bullets to make the Colorado reach the ocean again, AND live up to it’s name.

              Solve a problem or sacrifice the poor? Hmm. How has society treated every problem in the past 50 years?

              …oh it’s gonna be bad.

            • cogman@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              The comment chain as I see it:

              There’s enough to impeach Kavanaugh and Clarence if the Dems had the presidency and congress.

              To which you responded

              The Democratic Party, as it exists today, is structurally incapable of what your suggesting. Their entire power structure is based on suppressing the left, and NOT activating / mobilizing their base for real political or societal changes towards leftist goals, or projects.

              (which, is the primary comment I’m referencing.)

              After a snark comment, you further responded with

              Oh, my bad. Guess that isn’t the case, as evidenced by… what exactly? Or is it just that pesky parliamentarian always getting in the way?

              Which is where I dropped my comment.

              I may have lost the trail, but it seems from the 2 comments you are suggesting that the Dems aren’t doing anything about the supreme court because they are trying to undermine progressives. I don’t really agree with that. (Hence my response).

              I agree with you that dems tend to undermine progressives.

              • circuscritic
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                1 year ago

                Reread the first comment I replied to, again:

                There’s enough to impeach Kavanaugh and Clarence if the Dems had the presidency and congress.

                Your comment implied that I was talking about something the Democrats could do at the moment, but wouldn’t, for the reasons I mentioned. At least, that is how you worded it.

                The comment I was replying to was imagining a near term future scenario where Kavanaugh and Thomas were still on the court, but that Democrats held all necessary levers of power in Congress and Executive, which is what I was responding to when I said the party would be structurally incapable/unwilling to act.

                • cogman@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  And, as I pointed out, they don’t need the executive. They need 2/3s of the Senate. That’s just a scenario that’s not going to happen.

                  The best we could hope is packing the court, but that won’t remove the conservatives on the court, just lessen their power.

                  We came pretty close to doing just that, but sinama and manchin blew it up.