5 ms·

Sure, the Democratic-led Senate confirmed Reagan's appointment of Anthony Kennedy in 1988.

rayiner 6y ago
Except the vacancy opened up in 1987, not an election year, and it was Reagan's third attempt to appoint someone to that seat.
- anemoiac 6y ago
  I was responding to the request, "Please tell me the last time a democrat-controlled senate confirmed a Supreme Court justice for a republican president in an election year." If you're trying to be thorough, though, you should probably mention that Reagan's first selection for that seat was controversial because of his involvement in the the post-Watergate "Saturday Night Massacre," as well as the general suspicion that he would try to reverse Roe v. Wade and other civil rights-related rulings of preceding decades. Reagan's second selection withdrew his name from consideration before even being nominated, so I'm not sure why he's even relevant here. I get that you're trying to make a political point, but there's simply no evidence that Democrats would have behaved like McConnell's GOP (perhaps more aptly described as the post-Gingrich GOP) did in 2016.
  - rayiner 6y ago
    Democrats blocked Bork for an article he wrote 25 years before, which raised the libertarian argument of whether Congress should be able to regulate racial discrimination by private parties. It is to this day a challenging topic for even liberal libertarians, because those laws rest on a sweeping interpretation of the interstate commerce clause. But Democrats used that article to defame Bork as a segregationist. The second nominee withdraw his nomination after it came out he used marijuana, after what happened to Bork. So yes, Democrats were not in a position to play that cars a third time against a wildly popular sitting President. There is ample evidence that Democrats would have behaved like McConnell did. For example, their threats to pack the Supreme Court in 2019. (After their threats to pack the Supreme Court under FDR gutted large parts of the constitution.) The fact is that Democrats don’t perceive conservatives as legitimate players in the political process. That’s why they continually raise alarm about conservative Supreme Court nominees, even though in 40 years of a conservative majority on the court, not a single major liberal precedent has been overturned.
    - anemoiac 6y ago
      The Democrats didn’t block Bork for writing an article. Democratic “threats” made in 2019, post-Merrick Garland, have zero bearing on their hypothetical behavior in 2016, pre-Merrick Garland and the shattering of norms that his (non)hearings represented. I’m not a Democrat, but, from the outside looking in, it doesn’t seem like they have a real problem with right-leaning politicians or judges. I can understand why they might not view those who seem to be pursuing a return to the pre-Civil Rights era as wholly legitimate, but they’ve adopted plenty of relatively conservative positions over the years (just look at the record of their current presidential candidate!). The American Left has only recently begun to show its face again, for example, after decades of absence, and the Democratic Party has long seemed to harbor more resentment toward that group than moderate conservatives. I’m also not a demographer, but I don’t think many would consider a potential 6-3 conservative majority on the SC to be at all representative of the US population. To me, that seems like the real legitimacy crisis here, not whether Democrats think of conservatives as legitimate political actors (spoiler alert: I think it’s safe to say they view conservatives about as favorably as conservatives view them).
      - rayiner 6y ago
        You’re mixing up legal versus political conservatism, which are two very different things. I agree Biden is very moderate politically. But no Democratic Justice is meaningfully conservative legally (though Kagan displays a streak of it). In close decisions, the conservative justices routinely break ranks. (Roberts in the ACA case, Kennedy in Obergefell, Gorsuch in Bostock, Scalia in many 4th amendment cases, and in the video game first amendment case.) The Democratic appointees always vote as a block. You’re wrong to say that Republicans hate democrats as much as democrats hate republicans. There is pretty much no liberal opinion you could say that would get you personally attacked at a federalist society meeting. There are a wide range of mainstream conservative views you’d best not say in a similar context among liberals.
        jliptzin 6y ago
        I’ve been hearing right wing talk radio call liberalism a mental illness for at least 20 years.
- leptons 6y ago
  >third attempt to appoint someone to that seat. That's called compromise, and it is how a government should function, but Republicans have lost all ability to do that and so we have stalemate after stalemate, no covid stimulus, no attempt to compromise on anything. Democrats are fine with compromise, to a point, but the republicans have to meet in the middle, not take their ball and go home like they always fucking do.
  - beervirus 6y ago
    Compromise? Democrats are still trying to delegitimize the election they lost 4 years ago.
    - chipotle_coyote 6y ago
      Impeaching the president for an alleged offense committed while in office is not "trying to delegitimize the election," unless you're prepared to say Republicans were "trying to delegitimize the election" of Bill Clinton. Conversely, it is absolutely without question that there are Republican officials, like the president himself, trying very, very hard to delegitimize the 2020 election before it happens. And I would dearly like to see more Republicans, who used to be so damn concerned about preserving the rule of law, upset about that.
      - beervirus 6y ago
        Oh I’m not even talking about the impeachment.
- FireBeyond 6y ago
  So the issue was that Reagan put up an acceptable, suitable candidate finally. Whereas Mitch's philosophy is "no candidate will be entertained as being possibly acceptable or suitable". Trying to drawn parallels between the two is grasping at best, disingenuous at worst.

Except the vacancy opened up in 1987, not an election year, and it was Reagan's third attempt to appoint someone to that seat.

anemoiac 6y ago
I was responding to the request, "Please tell me the last time a democrat-controlled senate confirmed a Supreme Court justice for a republican president in an election year." If you're trying to be thorough, though, you should probably mention that Reagan's first selection for that seat was controversial because of his involvement in the the post-Watergate "Saturday Night Massacre," as well as the general suspicion that he would try to reverse Roe v. Wade and other civil rights-related rulings of preceding decades. Reagan's second selection withdrew his name from consideration before even being nominated, so I'm not sure why he's even relevant here. I get that you're trying to make a political point, but there's simply no evidence that Democrats would have behaved like McConnell's GOP (perhaps more aptly described as the post-Gingrich GOP) did in 2016.
- rayiner 6y ago
  Democrats blocked Bork for an article he wrote 25 years before, which raised the libertarian argument of whether Congress should be able to regulate racial discrimination by private parties. It is to this day a challenging topic for even liberal libertarians, because those laws rest on a sweeping interpretation of the interstate commerce clause. But Democrats used that article to defame Bork as a segregationist. The second nominee withdraw his nomination after it came out he used marijuana, after what happened to Bork. So yes, Democrats were not in a position to play that cars a third time against a wildly popular sitting President. There is ample evidence that Democrats would have behaved like McConnell did. For example, their threats to pack the Supreme Court in 2019. (After their threats to pack the Supreme Court under FDR gutted large parts of the constitution.) The fact is that Democrats don’t perceive conservatives as legitimate players in the political process. That’s why they continually raise alarm about conservative Supreme Court nominees, even though in 40 years of a conservative majority on the court, not a single major liberal precedent has been overturned.
  - anemoiac 6y ago
    The Democrats didn’t block Bork for writing an article. Democratic “threats” made in 2019, post-Merrick Garland, have zero bearing on their hypothetical behavior in 2016, pre-Merrick Garland and the shattering of norms that his (non)hearings represented. I’m not a Democrat, but, from the outside looking in, it doesn’t seem like they have a real problem with right-leaning politicians or judges. I can understand why they might not view those who seem to be pursuing a return to the pre-Civil Rights era as wholly legitimate, but they’ve adopted plenty of relatively conservative positions over the years (just look at the record of their current presidential candidate!). The American Left has only recently begun to show its face again, for example, after decades of absence, and the Democratic Party has long seemed to harbor more resentment toward that group than moderate conservatives. I’m also not a demographer, but I don’t think many would consider a potential 6-3 conservative majority on the SC to be at all representative of the US population. To me, that seems like the real legitimacy crisis here, not whether Democrats think of conservatives as legitimate political actors (spoiler alert: I think it’s safe to say they view conservatives about as favorably as conservatives view them).
    - rayiner 6y ago
      You’re mixing up legal versus political conservatism, which are two very different things. I agree Biden is very moderate politically. But no Democratic Justice is meaningfully conservative legally (though Kagan displays a streak of it). In close decisions, the conservative justices routinely break ranks. (Roberts in the ACA case, Kennedy in Obergefell, Gorsuch in Bostock, Scalia in many 4th amendment cases, and in the video game first amendment case.) The Democratic appointees always vote as a block. You’re wrong to say that Republicans hate democrats as much as democrats hate republicans. There is pretty much no liberal opinion you could say that would get you personally attacked at a federalist society meeting. There are a wide range of mainstream conservative views you’d best not say in a similar context among liberals.
      - jliptzin 6y ago
        I’ve been hearing right wing talk radio call liberalism a mental illness for at least 20 years.
leptons 6y ago
>third attempt to appoint someone to that seat. That's called compromise, and it is how a government should function, but Republicans have lost all ability to do that and so we have stalemate after stalemate, no covid stimulus, no attempt to compromise on anything. Democrats are fine with compromise, to a point, but the republicans have to meet in the middle, not take their ball and go home like they always fucking do.
- beervirus 6y ago
  Compromise? Democrats are still trying to delegitimize the election they lost 4 years ago.
  - chipotle_coyote 6y ago
    Impeaching the president for an alleged offense committed while in office is not "trying to delegitimize the election," unless you're prepared to say Republicans were "trying to delegitimize the election" of Bill Clinton. Conversely, it is absolutely without question that there are Republican officials, like the president himself, trying very, very hard to delegitimize the 2020 election before it happens. And I would dearly like to see more Republicans, who used to be so damn concerned about preserving the rule of law, upset about that.
    - beervirus 6y ago
      Oh I’m not even talking about the impeachment.
FireBeyond 6y ago
So the issue was that Reagan put up an acceptable, suitable candidate finally. Whereas Mitch's philosophy is "no candidate will be entertained as being possibly acceptable or suitable". Trying to drawn parallels between the two is grasping at best, disingenuous at worst.