Roberts and Kavanaugh are shrewd political operatives who have dedicated decades of their personal and professional lives to electing Republicans.

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.

  • cogman@lemmy.world
    4·
    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
      1·
      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
        2·
        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.