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I would disagree on this point. I believe the constitution and judiciary have been very effective against Trump's attempts to go around Congress. Lots of people

I would disagree on this point. I believe the constitution and judiciary have been very effective against Trump's attempts to go around Congress. Lots of people are criticising the USA's political system but remember it is the UNITED STATES. The federal system of government and the electoral college system are by built-in features. The senate system of 2 senators per state and the electoral college are fantastic features to provide additional stability across a vast and diverse geography.

bawolff 6y ago
As a non american, the way people describe american judges by their partisan leanings seems really messsed up to me. I would describe that as not how a judicary should work.
- marktangotango 6y ago
  Read up on Italian courts and prosecutors for some perspective.
  - bawolff 6y ago
    I'm not particularly familar with italy's judiciary and nothing popped out in a quick skim of the wikipedia article, but if you're saying that there are countries that are worse, i don't doubt it. Being not the worst is not the same as being good or being ok.
  - romanoderoma 6y ago
    Italian here. Could you explain what you actually mean? Our justice system is a sovereign power and doesn't depend on executive power, but is completely independent from it.
- akvadrako 6y ago
  Only the partisans describe judges likes that. Judges do have leanings, but it's mostly about jurisprudence, like more originalism, or believing the interpretation should consider the intent of the legislator, or lean towards where society in general is leaning. These are unavoidable aspects of being a supreme court judge, since you are also deciding what the law means and entails.
  - bawolff 6y ago
    There was literally a media freak out over the apointment of Amy Barrett because people thought trump was stacking the court in his favour. I don't know how true that is, but its clear that a significant portion of americans believe it (belief that the court is political is damaging in itself even if it wasn't true).
    - EamonnMR 6y ago
      If court picks weren't political, political parties wouldn't fight to their last breath for them.
    - Gunax 6y ago
      Most judges actually are non-partisan-decide-based-on-law type. But they simply are not favoured. Consider that sanders made it a litmus test for his supreme court nominees to overrule an unpopular court decision. Most judges would avoid at a politician demanding this, as it defeats the purpose of a judiciary.
- NateEag 6y ago
  People describe the judges that way, but in reality at least ones at the Supreme Court level tend to be apolitical. They may have very strong views on what framework a judge should use to interpret the law, but they usually will not push their own political agenda.
  - confidantlake 6y ago
    If that were true, there would not be such huge political fights over judges. As it stands, conservative judges tend to vote one way, liberal judges tend to vote another.
    - NateEag 6y ago
      That is not the impression my reading about various cases has left me with. I can't point you to specific cases - I can only say that what has really stood out to me is that the justices do mostly seem to have well-defined interpretive frameworks, and that they work from those. I can think of an exception, but my experience has generally been that it's the case.
jczhang 6y ago
Except he appointed a bunch of justices up and down the spectrum and will have influenced this for many years to come..
- skissane 6y ago
  I think Trump's picks for justices are no different than what some generic Republican President would have picked. In choosing justices, he basically just followed the advice of the conservative legal establishment (Federalist Society, etc). His choices were judicial conservatives, but generic judicial conservatives not Trumpists.
- opinion-is-bad 6y ago
  It was pretty shortsighted when Democrats removed the filibuster from judicial confirmations in 2014 to try and ram through judges in Obama’s final years.
  - throw0101a 6y ago
    > Democrats removed the filibuster Remember that Mitch McConnell, once he had the majority, stopped processing federal judge nominees from Obama for two years. * https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/how-mcconnell-and-the-senate-helped-trump-set-records-in-appointing-judges/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/how-mcconnell-and... * https://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/mitch-mcconnell-judges-225455 https://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/mitch-mcconnell-judge... This also assume that McConnell wouldn't have just done the same. Remember that this is the same fellow that said both "no appointments in an election year" to "we're appointing with less that 30 days until the election". McConnell is a political nihilist: > It was already becoming clear that, in the political world of Mitch McConnell, convictions and campaign pledges were fungible things, easily tossed aside. Throughout his career, as the Republican Party veered right, and then further right, McConnell moved with it. “It’s always been about power, the political game, and it’s never been about the core values that drive political life,” John Yarmuth, Kentucky’s lone Democratic congressman, told Alec MacGillis, author of the 2014 McConnell biography The Cynic. “There has never been anything that interested him other than winning elections.” * https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/mitch-mcconnell-man-who-sold-america-880799/ https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/mitc... > “Trump is about winning the day, or even the hour. McConnell plays the long game. He’s sensitive to the political realities. His North Star is continuing as Majority Leader—it’s really the only thing for him. He’s patient, sly, and will obfuscate to make less apparent the ways he’s moving toward a goal.” The two men also have different political orientations: “Trump is a populist—he’s not just anti-élitist, he’s anti-institutionalist.” As for McConnell, “no one with a straight face would ever call him a populist—Trump came to drain the swamp, and now he’s working with the biggest swamp creature of them all.” * https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/04/20/how-mitch-mcconnell-became-trumps-enabler-in-chief https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/04/20/how-mitch-mcco... Remember McConnell (and the GOP) were also all about austerity during Obama's terms (when economy could have used economic stimulus). Then, when Trump got in, it was all about tax cuts which caused all sorts of deficit/debt issues—when the economy did not need any help (2017).
cushychicken 6y ago
The senate system of 2 senators per state and the electoral college are fantastic features to provide additional stability across a vast and diverse geography. And yet, the United States does not preach this model when helping to propagate democracy abroad. Tellingly, they don't include: - first past the post elections, - bicameral legislative branches, or - electoral colleges. We're operating on a model that our own State Department discourages other countries from adopting.
- skissane 6y ago
  > We're operating on a model that our own State Department discourages other countries from adopting. Do you have a source for that? Especially the point about bicameralism? I think in a federal system, having something like the US or Australian Senate's is useful in it prevents the smaller states from being dominated by the bigger ones. Leaving smaller states feeling politically powerless can encourage separatist/independence movements and threaten the long-term viability of the country.
  - cushychicken 6y ago
    Sure do. Amanda Taub, for the NYT. https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oakv2?campaign_id=30&emc=edit_int_20200930&instance_id=22657&nl=the-interpreter&productCode=INT&regi_id=75187796&segment_id=39422&te=1&uri=nyt%3A%2F%2Fnewsletter%2F3b932a6a-7d83-5b6b-b99d-7a52140bd382&user_id=597d101a9fb76ff57b26d8e556b02a61 https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oa... Edit: here's a reprint in case that first link (from an NYT email newsletter) doesn't work: http://www.barcelonaradical.net/info/12380/the-democracy-reform-paradox-amanda-taub-max-fisher http://www.barcelonaradical.net/info/12380/the-democracy-ref... Leaving smaller states feeling politically powerless can encourage separatist/independence movements and threaten the long-term viability of the country. Do you have a source for that? Proportional representation does seem to solve for it. See also: far right parties gaining seats in Germany. Their views get heard (if not enacted), no one secedes, and the system remains stable.
    - skissane 6y ago
kelnos 6y ago
> The senate system of 2 senators per state and the electoral college are fantastic features to provide additional stability across a vast and diverse geography. It's interesting that you see it that way. From my perspective, it's something that was originally designed with fairly good intentions, that is now being abused by the minority to impose their will upon everyone. Let's not forget that Democrats have won the popular vote in all but one presidential election this century. And that the Senate's structure has allowed the party representing a minority of Americans to reshape the federal judiciary for years to come. (And unless a rabbit gets pulled out of a hat somewhere, they'll still have outsized control over judicial confirmations for at least the next 2 years.) I'm all for preventing the tyranny of the majority, but these features of US government haven't resulted in moderation, they've resulted in tyranny of the minority.
- GavinMcG 6y ago
  It wasn't even that well-intentioned. It was a necessary concession to Southern slaveholders. It's always been anti-majoritarian.
  - throw0101a 6y ago
    There's also an hypothesis/theory that the Second Amendment was similar in origins: * https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/the-origins-of-public-carry-jurisprudence-in-the-slave-south/407809/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/the-ori... * https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/24/opinion/second-amendment-slavery-james-madison.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/24/opinion/second-amendment-...
  - throwawaysea 6y ago
    Slavery wasn’t the only issue that mattered at the founding of the US, and this type of framing is the is revisionism found in things like the NYT’s 1619 project. The EC was well intentioned as a mechanism for federalism and forming a coalition of states that could retain their own self determination (and continue to do so today) while also being part of the union. It spans all issues and policies. And frankly it makes a lot of sense. Otherwise you will have lots of disenfranchised places and cultures and the union would fall apart.
mitchdoogle 6y ago
I don't see how anyone can argue for the electoral college as a feature in our modern times. Our Senate and the electoral college were designed in order to get support from colonies to form the new USA. It worked well for that purpose. We have entirely different goals now. We should be aiming for fair elections in which one person's vote is equal to any other's regardless of the state they reside. The electoral college is downright repulsive once you realize how unfairly it treats citizens in more populated states compared to those in less populated states. The electoral college now has the potential of pulling the union apart. If California and New York see a few more elections in which their citizens' votes are discounted, resulting in popular vote winners losing the presidency, then it would be logical for them to secede. They can take their massive economies and accompanying tax dollars and leave this system behind, as it should've been a long time ago.
- throwawaysea 6y ago
  The reality of the power balance the opposite of what you’re saying, in my opinion. Places like CA and NY have incredible influence and power even with the electoral college. The calls for one person’s vote being equal to others nationally is just a virtuous rhetorical argument to justify a power grab that would take power away from places which already have diminished influence. The reality is that different locations have different ways of life and culture and politics, and therefore self determination must be supported through some mechanisms (like the electoral college) for a federal union to make sense and for those peoples to feel represented. If we are undoing that we need to also give states the option to secede and go their own way, since this union would simply mean the end of their way of life.
  - mrtranscendence 6y ago
    This talk of disenfranchising areas feels bizarre to me. Areas can’t be enfranchised or disenfranchised; only people can. And right now people in more populous areas are less enfranchised than people from rural areas. That has led to minority rule and should not rightly be allowed to stand.
- throwaway201103 6y ago
dehrmann 6y ago
> The senate system of 2 senators per state and the electoral college are fantastic features to provide additional stability across a vast and diverse geography. What's interesting, and in defense of the electoral college, these three actually pick the winner in very different ways, making it harder for a single party to take control, and requiring some amount of compromise. If we just used popular vote for choosing the president, they're more likely to be the same party as the one controlling the House.
- yongjik 6y ago
  Other countries handle it just fine with popular votes. E.g., South Korea has a presidential election every 5 years, congressional election every 4 years, and gubernatorial(?) election every 4 years (staggered in the middle between congressional elections). In this way, a government losing popular support quickly finds itself surrounded by elected officers from opposing parties.
  - throw0101a 6y ago
    What happens at the federal level when the two elections sync-up every 20 years?
    - yongjik 6y ago
      Well last time it happened (2012) the conservative party won the congress in April 2012 and then went on to win the presidential election in December ... the elected person was Park Geun-Hye, widely considered the worst leader in decades, and was impeached among corruption scandal four years later. Maybe that's an argument for staggering elections even more regularly, or maybe it's just one of those coincidences pundits love to talk about, I don't know. :)
  - dehrmann 6y ago
    I'm not sure at what scale this makes a difference, but South Korea has a population somewhat larger than California in a landmass a little bigger than Indiana. The US constitution obviously wasn't designed with 300M people and 50 states in-mind, but it's larger and more diverse than South Korea, so it probably needs to be governed differently. It's like how having states in Singapore would be silly, just at a different scale. I do think what system of elected government makes the most sense for a given country based on size, population density, population concentration, and other factors is actually an interesting question.

bawolff 6y ago

As a non american, the way people describe american judges by their partisan leanings seems really messsed up to me. I would describe that as not how a judicary should work.

marktangotango 6y ago
Read up on Italian courts and prosecutors for some perspective.
- bawolff 6y ago
  I'm not particularly familar with italy's judiciary and nothing popped out in a quick skim of the wikipedia article, but if you're saying that there are countries that are worse, i don't doubt it. Being not the worst is not the same as being good or being ok.
- romanoderoma 6y ago
  Italian here. Could you explain what you actually mean? Our justice system is a sovereign power and doesn't depend on executive power, but is completely independent from it.
akvadrako 6y ago
Only the partisans describe judges likes that. Judges do have leanings, but it's mostly about jurisprudence, like more originalism, or believing the interpretation should consider the intent of the legislator, or lean towards where society in general is leaning. These are unavoidable aspects of being a supreme court judge, since you are also deciding what the law means and entails.
- bawolff 6y ago
  There was literally a media freak out over the apointment of Amy Barrett because people thought trump was stacking the court in his favour. I don't know how true that is, but its clear that a significant portion of americans believe it (belief that the court is political is damaging in itself even if it wasn't true).
  - EamonnMR 6y ago
    If court picks weren't political, political parties wouldn't fight to their last breath for them.
  - Gunax 6y ago
    Most judges actually are non-partisan-decide-based-on-law type. But they simply are not favoured. Consider that sanders made it a litmus test for his supreme court nominees to overrule an unpopular court decision. Most judges would avoid at a politician demanding this, as it defeats the purpose of a judiciary.
NateEag 6y ago
People describe the judges that way, but in reality at least ones at the Supreme Court level tend to be apolitical. They may have very strong views on what framework a judge should use to interpret the law, but they usually will not push their own political agenda.
- confidantlake 6y ago
  If that were true, there would not be such huge political fights over judges. As it stands, conservative judges tend to vote one way, liberal judges tend to vote another.
  - NateEag 6y ago
    That is not the impression my reading about various cases has left me with. I can't point you to specific cases - I can only say that what has really stood out to me is that the justices do mostly seem to have well-defined interpretive frameworks, and that they work from those. I can think of an exception, but my experience has generally been that it's the case.

jczhang 6y ago

Except he appointed a bunch of justices up and down the spectrum and will have influenced this for many years to come..

skissane 6y ago
I think Trump's picks for justices are no different than what some generic Republican President would have picked. In choosing justices, he basically just followed the advice of the conservative legal establishment (Federalist Society, etc). His choices were judicial conservatives, but generic judicial conservatives not Trumpists.
opinion-is-bad 6y ago
It was pretty shortsighted when Democrats removed the filibuster from judicial confirmations in 2014 to try and ram through judges in Obama’s final years.
- throw0101a 6y ago
  > Democrats removed the filibuster Remember that Mitch McConnell, once he had the majority, stopped processing federal judge nominees from Obama for two years. * https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/how-mcconnell-and-the-senate-helped-trump-set-records-in-appointing-judges/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/how-mcconnell-and... * https://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/mitch-mcconnell-judges-225455 https://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/mitch-mcconnell-judge... This also assume that McConnell wouldn't have just done the same. Remember that this is the same fellow that said both "no appointments in an election year" to "we're appointing with less that 30 days until the election". McConnell is a political nihilist: > It was already becoming clear that, in the political world of Mitch McConnell, convictions and campaign pledges were fungible things, easily tossed aside. Throughout his career, as the Republican Party veered right, and then further right, McConnell moved with it. “It’s always been about power, the political game, and it’s never been about the core values that drive political life,” John Yarmuth, Kentucky’s lone Democratic congressman, told Alec MacGillis, author of the 2014 McConnell biography The Cynic. “There has never been anything that interested him other than winning elections.” * https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/mitch-mcconnell-man-who-sold-america-880799/ https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/mitc... > “Trump is about winning the day, or even the hour. McConnell plays the long game. He’s sensitive to the political realities. His North Star is continuing as Majority Leader—it’s really the only thing for him. He’s patient, sly, and will obfuscate to make less apparent the ways he’s moving toward a goal.” The two men also have different political orientations: “Trump is a populist—he’s not just anti-élitist, he’s anti-institutionalist.” As for McConnell, “no one with a straight face would ever call him a populist—Trump came to drain the swamp, and now he’s working with the biggest swamp creature of them all.” * https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/04/20/how-mitch-mcconnell-became-trumps-enabler-in-chief https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/04/20/how-mitch-mcco... Remember McConnell (and the GOP) were also all about austerity during Obama's terms (when economy could have used economic stimulus). Then, when Trump got in, it was all about tax cuts which caused all sorts of deficit/debt issues—when the economy did not need any help (2017).

cushychicken 6y ago

The senate system of 2 senators per state and the electoral college are fantastic features to provide additional stability across a vast and diverse geography. And yet, the United States does not preach this model when helping to propagate democracy abroad. Tellingly, they don't include: - first past the post elections, - bicameral legislative branches, or - electoral colleges. We're operating on a model that our own State Department discourages other countries from adopting.

skissane 6y ago
> We're operating on a model that our own State Department discourages other countries from adopting. Do you have a source for that? Especially the point about bicameralism? I think in a federal system, having something like the US or Australian Senate's is useful in it prevents the smaller states from being dominated by the bigger ones. Leaving smaller states feeling politically powerless can encourage separatist/independence movements and threaten the long-term viability of the country.
- cushychicken 6y ago
  Sure do. Amanda Taub, for the NYT. https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oakv2?campaign_id=30&emc=edit_int_20200930&instance_id=22657&nl=the-interpreter&productCode=INT&regi_id=75187796&segment_id=39422&te=1&uri=nyt%3A%2F%2Fnewsletter%2F3b932a6a-7d83-5b6b-b99d-7a52140bd382&user_id=597d101a9fb76ff57b26d8e556b02a61 https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oa... Edit: here's a reprint in case that first link (from an NYT email newsletter) doesn't work: http://www.barcelonaradical.net/info/12380/the-democracy-reform-paradox-amanda-taub-max-fisher http://www.barcelonaradical.net/info/12380/the-democracy-ref... Leaving smaller states feeling politically powerless can encourage separatist/independence movements and threaten the long-term viability of the country. Do you have a source for that? Proportional representation does seem to solve for it. See also: far right parties gaining seats in Germany. Their views get heard (if not enacted), no one secedes, and the system remains stable.
  - skissane 6y ago

kelnos 6y ago

> The senate system of 2 senators per state and the electoral college are fantastic features to provide additional stability across a vast and diverse geography. It's interesting that you see it that way. From my perspective, it's something that was originally designed with fairly good intentions, that is now being abused by the minority to impose their will upon everyone. Let's not forget that Democrats have won the popular vote in all but one presidential election this century. And that the Senate's structure has allowed the party representing a minority of Americans to reshape the federal judiciary for years to come. (And unless a rabbit gets pulled out of a hat somewhere, they'll still have outsized control over judicial confirmations for at least the next 2 years.) I'm all for preventing the tyranny of the majority, but these features of US government haven't resulted in moderation, they've resulted in tyranny of the minority.

GavinMcG 6y ago
It wasn't even that well-intentioned. It was a necessary concession to Southern slaveholders. It's always been anti-majoritarian.
- throw0101a 6y ago
  There's also an hypothesis/theory that the Second Amendment was similar in origins: * https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/the-origins-of-public-carry-jurisprudence-in-the-slave-south/407809/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/the-ori... * https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/24/opinion/second-amendment-slavery-james-madison.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/24/opinion/second-amendment-...
- throwawaysea 6y ago
  Slavery wasn’t the only issue that mattered at the founding of the US, and this type of framing is the is revisionism found in things like the NYT’s 1619 project. The EC was well intentioned as a mechanism for federalism and forming a coalition of states that could retain their own self determination (and continue to do so today) while also being part of the union. It spans all issues and policies. And frankly it makes a lot of sense. Otherwise you will have lots of disenfranchised places and cultures and the union would fall apart.

mitchdoogle 6y ago

I don't see how anyone can argue for the electoral college as a feature in our modern times. Our Senate and the electoral college were designed in order to get support from colonies to form the new USA. It worked well for that purpose. We have entirely different goals now. We should be aiming for fair elections in which one person's vote is equal to any other's regardless of the state they reside. The electoral college is downright repulsive once you realize how unfairly it treats citizens in more populated states compared to those in less populated states. The electoral college now has the potential of pulling the union apart. If California and New York see a few more elections in which their citizens' votes are discounted, resulting in popular vote winners losing the presidency, then it would be logical for them to secede. They can take their massive economies and accompanying tax dollars and leave this system behind, as it should've been a long time ago.

throwawaysea 6y ago
The reality of the power balance the opposite of what you’re saying, in my opinion. Places like CA and NY have incredible influence and power even with the electoral college. The calls for one person’s vote being equal to others nationally is just a virtuous rhetorical argument to justify a power grab that would take power away from places which already have diminished influence. The reality is that different locations have different ways of life and culture and politics, and therefore self determination must be supported through some mechanisms (like the electoral college) for a federal union to make sense and for those peoples to feel represented. If we are undoing that we need to also give states the option to secede and go their own way, since this union would simply mean the end of their way of life.
- mrtranscendence 6y ago
  This talk of disenfranchising areas feels bizarre to me. Areas can’t be enfranchised or disenfranchised; only people can. And right now people in more populous areas are less enfranchised than people from rural areas. That has led to minority rule and should not rightly be allowed to stand.
throwaway201103 6y ago

dehrmann 6y ago

> The senate system of 2 senators per state and the electoral college are fantastic features to provide additional stability across a vast and diverse geography. What's interesting, and in defense of the electoral college, these three actually pick the winner in very different ways, making it harder for a single party to take control, and requiring some amount of compromise. If we just used popular vote for choosing the president, they're more likely to be the same party as the one controlling the House.

yongjik 6y ago
Other countries handle it just fine with popular votes. E.g., South Korea has a presidential election every 5 years, congressional election every 4 years, and gubernatorial(?) election every 4 years (staggered in the middle between congressional elections). In this way, a government losing popular support quickly finds itself surrounded by elected officers from opposing parties.
- throw0101a 6y ago
  What happens at the federal level when the two elections sync-up every 20 years?
  - yongjik 6y ago
    Well last time it happened (2012) the conservative party won the congress in April 2012 and then went on to win the presidential election in December ... the elected person was Park Geun-Hye, widely considered the worst leader in decades, and was impeached among corruption scandal four years later. Maybe that's an argument for staggering elections even more regularly, or maybe it's just one of those coincidences pundits love to talk about, I don't know. :)
- dehrmann 6y ago
  I'm not sure at what scale this makes a difference, but South Korea has a population somewhat larger than California in a landmass a little bigger than Indiana. The US constitution obviously wasn't designed with 300M people and 50 states in-mind, but it's larger and more diverse than South Korea, so it probably needs to be governed differently. It's like how having states in Singapore would be silly, just at a different scale. I do think what system of elected government makes the most sense for a given country based on size, population density, population concentration, and other factors is actually an interesting question.