The series finale of the TV show Billions just dropped today. Its Metacritic score started at 69 in S1, peaked at 87 in S4, then ended at 62 in S7. I’ve enjoyed it especially as “competence porn” where I get to admire people who are very good at what they do.
Re: "no limits to what they’d do to tank a US presidential candidate they didn’t like"
I've always wondered if eroding norms of conduct are a one-way slide. For example the norms around filling empty US Supreme Court positions were altered by Republicans in 2016 and again in 2020, and one imagines this is likely a permanent change. (I can't imagine the Democrats will behave differently when the roles are reversed.) And a lot of the country now seems ok with sidestepping the democratic process on the basis of "it was rigged." Another norm broken, or at least weakened.
Is it possible that norms ever rebuild? Or is it like entropy, where they grind down inexorably until the system collapses and something new replaces it?
History in your universe apparently began in 2016, and no one ever violated or changed political norms around the court before that.
Harry Reid never eliminated the judicial filibuster. Teddy Kennedy never turned a confirmation hearing into a political referendum. FDR never tried to pack the court.
Here in this universe, political disputes over gun rights, abortion rights, and the limits of federal power have increasingly put the court in the position of affirming one party's political preferences and denying the other legislative recourse. Of course the fights over the composition of the court have become more contentious and more overtly political.
This is not a positive development, but let's not pretend that either party is solely responsible. Let us particularly not pretend that Democrats, who have generally been the earliest and most aggressive violators of norms, are pure as the driven snow.
This was not an instance of Republicans violating all norms, precedents, and standards of human decency. This was tit for tat removal of impediments to partisan judicial picks, with the Democrats making the first move.
I fully agree that Republicans have acted to increase the partisanship of the judicial nominating process. My objection is to Jack' pretense that they are solely, or even primarily responsible.
Reid eliminated the filibuster for non-Supreme Court nominees because the Republicans were using it to block seven of Obama's nominees, which was also a breaking of norms.
Here's what the republicans did to stack the Supreme Court.
1. Broke norms to refuse to hold a vote on Merrick Garland for almost an entire year, on the unprecedented pretense that it was an election year. No senate had ever refused to hold a vote to confirm a Supreme Court justice since the Civil War. Three times prior, a senate had voted on a nomination by a president from the opposing party, and all three times the senate had confirmed the nomination: in 1895 (Republicans voting to confirm a Democrat nominee), 1988 (Democrats confirming Anthony Kennedy), and 1991 (Democrats confirming Clarence Thomas). Furthermore, Garland was regarded as a neutral judge who would have won some votes from Republicans had the vote been held.
2. Eliminated the Supreme Court filibuster to confirm Gorsuch. (We've talked about that.)
3. In a show of absolute hypocrisy, with just over a month remaining in Trump's presidency, rushed through the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett, in express contradiction to the pretense by which they refused to confirm Merrick Garland.
The first use of a senate filibuster to block an Appellate Court nominee was by Democrats during the second Bush administration. You can't just declare that history starts with the Republican counterblow and use that to argue that the Republicans started it. It's simply inaccurate.
It also requires considerable chutzpah to point to the Thomas nomination as a reason for the Republicans to employ anything but scorched earth tactics in filling the supreme court. By contrast, McConnell's refusal to give Garland a hearing was quite straightforward: no character assassination – the Republicans had the votes, and they didn't consider Garland acceptable. If Obama had nominated the liberal equivalent of Kennedy (that is to say, someone who would have voted to repeal on the next relitigation of Roe v. Wade), we can be pretty sure he or she would have gotten a hearing. Barring that, McConnel was going to wait for the next President.
Lastly, I will point out that calling the current composition of the supreme court "stacked" assumes that the supreme court's rightward shift is ipso facto illegitimate. This is an especially odd claim given that, by the end of the Reagan administration, every single member of the Court had been nominated by a Republican president. (There were no vacancies during the Carter administration.) The big change wasn't in who did the nominating (unless you mean a shift that favored Democrats), but that with the end of the Cold War Republicans made the ideological composition of the supreme court a priority, and both parties stopped assuming that a protracted fight would necessarily be bad for the President's political health. Hence the escalating acrimony and parliamentary maneuvering.
The 1991 appointment of Clarence Thomas was a reason to employ scorched earth tactics? Are you kidding? They *did* hold a vote, and 11 Democrats voted for him. Whatever they said about him (some of it definitely justified, e.g. he would later vote to overturn Roe v Wade just as they said), that takes precedence. They acted in good faith, held a vote, and some even voted for him. That tells you what the norms were.
Garland was a centrist candidate. If Obama had nominated a *right-wing* candidate who would overturn Roe v Wade, then sure, McConnell would have held a vote, but that is no credit to McConnell and it would be unreasonable to demand that of Obama. (Overturning Roe v Wade is nationally unpopular among the voters, you know; any justice willing to do that is significantly to the right of center.) There was nothing objectionable about Garland. He was centrist and well-qualified.
Yes, the supreme court's recent rightward shift is *absolutely* illegitimate. Not because it is rightward but because of the hypocritical and norm-breaking tactics. It was illegitimate and unprecedented to refuse to hold a confirmation hearing for almost a year. It was a breaking of norms to eliminate the Supreme Court filibuster. And it was completely hypocritical to hold Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation hearing a month before the election after refusing Garland's for a year before the election. Proving that the stated reason for refusing to confirm Garland was a complete lie.
Yes, the Democrats broke with tradition by filibustering Estrada, and probably should not have. But that was not the supreme court; it's not a proportionate response to filibuster a supreme court nominee in response to filibustering a circuit court nominee. And the republicans had been blocking a large number of Clinton's judicial nominations prior to that.
I don't know the answer, but these norms in Congress are eroding because the voters have become more polarized so that they don't punish, and indeed approve of, norm-breaking behavior among their politicians as long as it hurts the other side. The voters are more polarized because of increasingly partisan right-wing media feeding them rhetoric about how the left wing is the devil and any transgression is permissible to defeat it.
So, norms won't be restored until the media changes track and the voters stop being so polarized. I don't see that happening.
The majority-of-the-majority rule is another example of norm-breaking in congress, again coming from the right wing in recent decades.
Under what circumstances do you think all the candidates for US president would consider a nuclear first strike? A nuclear first strike plausibly could escalate into a global thermonuclear war, which is one of the plausible ways that our entire civilization could end. What circumstances would be worth risking that?
Additionally, even if global thermonuclear war does not result, a nuke is indiscriminate and will kill millions of innocent civilians, and a willingness to do that speaks very poorly for the candidate's character.
Has any current candidate for US president *said* they would consider a nuclear first strike?
Nuclear First Strike was the default policy of the USA during the Cold War. Military plans called for the use of tactical nukes in Central Europe when Soviet tanks broke through the Fulda Gap in West Germany if NATO and the Warsaw Pact got in a shooting war.
In fact we consciously relied on nukes rather then try to keep conventional parody with soviet ground forces in Europe. It was part of a conscious decision to keep military spending down and avoid having to have consistent conscription (which the USSR did).
So yeah, it’s only been official US policy for most of the time nukes have existed.
If you don’t think the Pentagon has plans drawn up for a nuclear first strike as a way to prevent a Chinese takeover of Taiwan I think you’re pretty naive. There are likely plans for using nukes in the straight and on any landing zones. One day they will be de-classified just like the old Fulda Gap plans were. I suspect all sorts of nuclear first strike plans for many situations exist (example: to prevent Iran from getting or launching a nuke).
I don't doubt what you're saying. But that's all dumb as hell. Let's risk the global collapse of civilization to save some money in the budget or increase our influence overseas. No thanks.
Nukes haven't been detonated in war since Nagasaki, and let's keep it that way. To actually use them, even in an ideal scenario against purely military infrastructure in a country that doesn't have them, crosses a line. Once crossed, other countries will feel free to cross it as well, in that conflict or in any future conflict. Now you're in the game of nuclear escalation. That significantly increases existential risk to humanity.
It would be absolutely insane to nuke China to stop them from taking Taiwan. China has nukes of its own and would be very likely to nuke some US military base in retaliation. And then what's the US going to do in retaliation to that, and where does it stop? I'd be unsurprised if the Pentagon has a plan involving this but actually executing it would be nuts.
There's only one scenario where a nuclear first strike might be excusable: if the US mainland is being invaded by a conventional force that the US cannot repel conventionally, and that threatens to overthrow the US government. But that couldn't possibly happen with the US military as large as it is, and with the oceans separating us from Russia and China.
That was an awful lot of words to say "You're right, Garrett, the Democrats really did start the fight over the judicial filibuster."
The rest is you being outraged over the fact that the party that controls the senate has a veto over who gets to be on the Supreme Court. Republicans controlled the senate when Garland was nominated, which means they got to say no, and Republicans control the senate when Barrett was nominated, which means they got to say yes. If the Democrats wanted the president's judicial nominations to receive more deference, they probably should not have turned Bork into a verb.
> The sad message I see here is that some cultural elites are eager to make it very clear that there are basically no limits to what they’d do to tank a US presidential candidate they didn’t like
Isn't that what we should have always expected?
This isn't an anti-elite stance on my part, just a..."well yes, that's human beings for you"-stance.
Re: "no limits to what they’d do to tank a US presidential candidate they didn’t like"
I've always wondered if eroding norms of conduct are a one-way slide. For example the norms around filling empty US Supreme Court positions were altered by Republicans in 2016 and again in 2020, and one imagines this is likely a permanent change. (I can't imagine the Democrats will behave differently when the roles are reversed.) And a lot of the country now seems ok with sidestepping the democratic process on the basis of "it was rigged." Another norm broken, or at least weakened.
Is it possible that norms ever rebuild? Or is it like entropy, where they grind down inexorably until the system collapses and something new replaces it?
History in your universe apparently began in 2016, and no one ever violated or changed political norms around the court before that.
Harry Reid never eliminated the judicial filibuster. Teddy Kennedy never turned a confirmation hearing into a political referendum. FDR never tried to pack the court.
Here in this universe, political disputes over gun rights, abortion rights, and the limits of federal power have increasingly put the court in the position of affirming one party's political preferences and denying the other legislative recourse. Of course the fights over the composition of the court have become more contentious and more overtly political.
This is not a positive development, but let's not pretend that either party is solely responsible. Let us particularly not pretend that Democrats, who have generally been the earliest and most aggressive violators of norms, are pure as the driven snow.
Harry Reid eliminated the filibuster for most nominees, but it was Mitch McConnell who eliminated it for the Supreme Court. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/10/01/fact-check-gop-ended-senate-filibuster-supreme-court-nominees/3573369001/
Some useful context https://reason.com/volokh/2018/07/09/the-mythical-history-of-nomination-filib/
You are further proving my point here.
This was not an instance of Republicans violating all norms, precedents, and standards of human decency. This was tit for tat removal of impediments to partisan judicial picks, with the Democrats making the first move.
I fully agree that Republicans have acted to increase the partisanship of the judicial nominating process. My objection is to Jack' pretense that they are solely, or even primarily responsible.
Reid eliminated the filibuster for non-Supreme Court nominees because the Republicans were using it to block seven of Obama's nominees, which was also a breaking of norms.
Here's what the republicans did to stack the Supreme Court.
1. Broke norms to refuse to hold a vote on Merrick Garland for almost an entire year, on the unprecedented pretense that it was an election year. No senate had ever refused to hold a vote to confirm a Supreme Court justice since the Civil War. Three times prior, a senate had voted on a nomination by a president from the opposing party, and all three times the senate had confirmed the nomination: in 1895 (Republicans voting to confirm a Democrat nominee), 1988 (Democrats confirming Anthony Kennedy), and 1991 (Democrats confirming Clarence Thomas). Furthermore, Garland was regarded as a neutral judge who would have won some votes from Republicans had the vote been held.
2. Eliminated the Supreme Court filibuster to confirm Gorsuch. (We've talked about that.)
3. In a show of absolute hypocrisy, with just over a month remaining in Trump's presidency, rushed through the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett, in express contradiction to the pretense by which they refused to confirm Merrick Garland.
This is exactly what I'm talking about.
The first use of a senate filibuster to block an Appellate Court nominee was by Democrats during the second Bush administration. You can't just declare that history starts with the Republican counterblow and use that to argue that the Republicans started it. It's simply inaccurate.
It also requires considerable chutzpah to point to the Thomas nomination as a reason for the Republicans to employ anything but scorched earth tactics in filling the supreme court. By contrast, McConnell's refusal to give Garland a hearing was quite straightforward: no character assassination – the Republicans had the votes, and they didn't consider Garland acceptable. If Obama had nominated the liberal equivalent of Kennedy (that is to say, someone who would have voted to repeal on the next relitigation of Roe v. Wade), we can be pretty sure he or she would have gotten a hearing. Barring that, McConnel was going to wait for the next President.
Lastly, I will point out that calling the current composition of the supreme court "stacked" assumes that the supreme court's rightward shift is ipso facto illegitimate. This is an especially odd claim given that, by the end of the Reagan administration, every single member of the Court had been nominated by a Republican president. (There were no vacancies during the Carter administration.) The big change wasn't in who did the nominating (unless you mean a shift that favored Democrats), but that with the end of the Cold War Republicans made the ideological composition of the supreme court a priority, and both parties stopped assuming that a protracted fight would necessarily be bad for the President's political health. Hence the escalating acrimony and parliamentary maneuvering.
The 1991 appointment of Clarence Thomas was a reason to employ scorched earth tactics? Are you kidding? They *did* hold a vote, and 11 Democrats voted for him. Whatever they said about him (some of it definitely justified, e.g. he would later vote to overturn Roe v Wade just as they said), that takes precedence. They acted in good faith, held a vote, and some even voted for him. That tells you what the norms were.
Garland was a centrist candidate. If Obama had nominated a *right-wing* candidate who would overturn Roe v Wade, then sure, McConnell would have held a vote, but that is no credit to McConnell and it would be unreasonable to demand that of Obama. (Overturning Roe v Wade is nationally unpopular among the voters, you know; any justice willing to do that is significantly to the right of center.) There was nothing objectionable about Garland. He was centrist and well-qualified.
Yes, the supreme court's recent rightward shift is *absolutely* illegitimate. Not because it is rightward but because of the hypocritical and norm-breaking tactics. It was illegitimate and unprecedented to refuse to hold a confirmation hearing for almost a year. It was a breaking of norms to eliminate the Supreme Court filibuster. And it was completely hypocritical to hold Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation hearing a month before the election after refusing Garland's for a year before the election. Proving that the stated reason for refusing to confirm Garland was a complete lie.
Yes, the Democrats broke with tradition by filibustering Estrada, and probably should not have. But that was not the supreme court; it's not a proportionate response to filibuster a supreme court nominee in response to filibustering a circuit court nominee. And the republicans had been blocking a large number of Clinton's judicial nominations prior to that.
I don't know the answer, but these norms in Congress are eroding because the voters have become more polarized so that they don't punish, and indeed approve of, norm-breaking behavior among their politicians as long as it hurts the other side. The voters are more polarized because of increasingly partisan right-wing media feeding them rhetoric about how the left wing is the devil and any transgression is permissible to defeat it.
So, norms won't be restored until the media changes track and the voters stop being so polarized. I don't see that happening.
The majority-of-the-majority rule is another example of norm-breaking in congress, again coming from the right wing in recent decades.
Under what circumstances do you think all the candidates for US president would consider a nuclear first strike? A nuclear first strike plausibly could escalate into a global thermonuclear war, which is one of the plausible ways that our entire civilization could end. What circumstances would be worth risking that?
Additionally, even if global thermonuclear war does not result, a nuke is indiscriminate and will kill millions of innocent civilians, and a willingness to do that speaks very poorly for the candidate's character.
Has any current candidate for US president *said* they would consider a nuclear first strike?
I don't know what they've said IN PRIVATE.
Nuclear First Strike was the default policy of the USA during the Cold War. Military plans called for the use of tactical nukes in Central Europe when Soviet tanks broke through the Fulda Gap in West Germany if NATO and the Warsaw Pact got in a shooting war.
In fact we consciously relied on nukes rather then try to keep conventional parody with soviet ground forces in Europe. It was part of a conscious decision to keep military spending down and avoid having to have consistent conscription (which the USSR did).
So yeah, it’s only been official US policy for most of the time nukes have existed.
If you don’t think the Pentagon has plans drawn up for a nuclear first strike as a way to prevent a Chinese takeover of Taiwan I think you’re pretty naive. There are likely plans for using nukes in the straight and on any landing zones. One day they will be de-classified just like the old Fulda Gap plans were. I suspect all sorts of nuclear first strike plans for many situations exist (example: to prevent Iran from getting or launching a nuke).
I don't doubt what you're saying. But that's all dumb as hell. Let's risk the global collapse of civilization to save some money in the budget or increase our influence overseas. No thanks.
Nukes haven't been detonated in war since Nagasaki, and let's keep it that way. To actually use them, even in an ideal scenario against purely military infrastructure in a country that doesn't have them, crosses a line. Once crossed, other countries will feel free to cross it as well, in that conflict or in any future conflict. Now you're in the game of nuclear escalation. That significantly increases existential risk to humanity.
It would be absolutely insane to nuke China to stop them from taking Taiwan. China has nukes of its own and would be very likely to nuke some US military base in retaliation. And then what's the US going to do in retaliation to that, and where does it stop? I'd be unsurprised if the Pentagon has a plan involving this but actually executing it would be nuts.
There's only one scenario where a nuclear first strike might be excusable: if the US mainland is being invaded by a conventional force that the US cannot repel conventionally, and that threatens to overthrow the US government. But that couldn't possibly happen with the US military as large as it is, and with the oceans separating us from Russia and China.
Have you considered that in strategic contexts, a willingness to consider an option can be the reason it's never needed?
That was an awful lot of words to say "You're right, Garrett, the Democrats really did start the fight over the judicial filibuster."
The rest is you being outraged over the fact that the party that controls the senate has a veto over who gets to be on the Supreme Court. Republicans controlled the senate when Garland was nominated, which means they got to say no, and Republicans control the senate when Barrett was nominated, which means they got to say yes. If the Democrats wanted the president's judicial nominations to receive more deference, they probably should not have turned Bork into a verb.
> The sad message I see here is that some cultural elites are eager to make it very clear that there are basically no limits to what they’d do to tank a US presidential candidate they didn’t like
Isn't that what we should have always expected?
This isn't an anti-elite stance on my part, just a..."well yes, that's human beings for you"-stance.
Interesting use of this phrase: admirable competent usually-selfish characters. What compelled you to use these adjectives when watching the show?