Liberals: you should hate Ruth Bader Ginsburg for her intransigence and stupidity

Do I have your attention?

I know there's this thing where you aren't supposed to speak ill of the dead, but I'm me.  You don't come to this blog for empty social niceties.

So here's the deal.  Yes, McConnell is a craven, shameless liar.  The stunt he pulled when Scalia died was completely disingenuous, and obviously so to everyone with a brain.  No Supreme Court confirmation votes during an election year?  Anyone who believed he would hold to that under a Republican president would have to be the greatest idiot in the history of idiots.  Trump will have his third nominee.  The Court will be solidly conservative, by the modern definition of "conservative."  Roberts had a few principles.  Roberts no longer matters.

If you were thinking that Roberts will be a bulwark against a 2020 electoral theft?  Yeah, that ain't gonna happen.  Thomas, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, Alito, and let's call him "Uber-Kavanaugh, the Re-Kavanaugh-ing" will be able to write a ruling to make Bush v. Gore look like Baker v. Carr.  (Trust me if you haven't studied election law.  That's a zing.)

And if you lefties want to blame someone?  You can blame Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  Yeah, she just died.  That's the point.  What, did you think she was going to live forever?  This is not some fantasy novel.  So let's take a trip through the wayback machine.

If The Unmutual Political Blog were still up, I'd just link back to my posts calling Ginsburg an idiot, pointing to this very likelihood, and explaining the history, but I can't, because I wiped that slate clean, so instead, I'll reconstruct what I wrote, in at least short form.

Ginsburg has been old for a while.  You've, you know, noticed that, right?  Well, from 2009 through 2016, there was actually a guy with a "D" after his name in the White House.  From 2009 to 2014, he even had a Democratic Senate.

Prior to the 2012 election, my position was that Ginsburg's best move, strategically speaking, would have been to retire, given that she couldn't be certain of an Obama reelection.  It was likely, but not certain.  She refused.  It is a lifetime appointment, but she chose her own ego over her own supposed cause.

And let's be blunt.  Not everything the Supreme Court handles is about ideological politics.  But a lot is.  Refresher:  the "attitudinal model."  This is the political science model that explains judicial behavior with the premise that judges are normal, ideological politicians in silly costumes.  That model has a lot of explanatory power.  And Ginsburg?  She is a liberal, in the modern American sense of the term.  Rather than seeking to further those goals, she chose her own ego.  She dug in, and said no I'm not stepping down because!  Stupid, stupid, stupid.  And egotistical.  And risky.

For 2012, that risk didn't have a cost.  She could have stepped down with a Democratic Senate and had Barack Obama name a replacement.  Then, though, we get to the tricky bit.  The Senate "went nuclear."

I've said this before, and I'll say it again.  When the epitaph for American democracy is written, it will read as follows:  "Murdered in cold blood by Mitch McConnell."

In 2013, Mitchy-poo decided that Barack Obama, unique in the history of all presidents, was not allowed to name anyone to fill vacancies to the DC Circuit Court.  The Senate Republicans would filibuster anyone, as the minority party, no matter who.  The DC Circuit Court is basically the second-most important court in the country.  This was after years of stepping up filibusters to an unprecedented degree.  Mitch McConnell single-handedly broke the Senate.

And he gave then Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) a choice.  Either give Republicans full, unilateral control of whatever court they demand, or use "the nuclear option."  The nuclear option went as follows.  Break the rules.  Assert, by a majority vote, that the rules permitting filibusters don't really say what they say they say.

Huh, you're thinking?  Here's the deal.  Cloture, according to the rules as written, require a 3/5 supermajority to end debate and permit a floor vote.  Period.  (Unless we're talking about certain carveouts, like budget reconciliation bills.)  But, what if the presiding officer of the Senate says, "yeah, no, I say that the rules don't really apply here... cuz.  As presiding officer, I say that it only takes a majority to invoke cloture.  So there."  The minority objects.  You know how many votes it takes to sustain the presiding officer's bullshit lie?  51.

When the nuclear option was previously proposed, by Republicans to counter a small handful of Democratic filibusters to minor positions back in 2005, they bothered to have the official presiding officer of the Senate issue the ruling, in the proposal.  That would have been the Veep.  Dicky.  When Reid actually went through with it, hand forced by Mitch, he pretty much said, oh screw it, if we're doing this, why bother with the charade of having... Biden issue the ruling.  We're breaking the rules anyway.  So, Reid issued the ruling himself, Republicans screamed and shouted... even though they were forcing his hand knowingly.... and the Senate went nuclear.

Here's the detail, though.  Reid's first use of the nuclear option was officially limited.  It applied to executive branch appointments and court appointments below the Supreme Court.  Nothin' else.

What happens then?  The GOP wins the Senate in 2014.  Scalia eats it, Trump promotes batshit crazy conspiracy theories about Scalia being murdered because he's Trump and everything he says is an insane lie, and McConnell does what he does.  He stomps on democracy.

Specifically, he says Obama doesn't get to name a replacement.  'Cuz.  So, no confirmation vote at all for Merrick Garland, we get Neil The Plagiarist Gorsuch, and...

Anyway.  Something else happened amid this story.  Something that, if you are a lefty, should make you hate Ruth Bader Ginsburg for her egotism, her intransigence and her political stupidity.  The result of which is now a dramatic shift in the Supreme Court.  And it is all the fault of Ruth.  Bader.  Ginsburg.

And her refusal to step down.

Why didn't she?

In 2014, Ruth gave an interview to... "Elle Magazine."  Here's the link.  She was asked why she didn't step down.  I'm just going to quote her answer, in full, because it is a complete disaster for lefties.  If you admired her... think about the grotesque stupidity of this.  You are in this mess because of Ginsburg.  Read:

Who do you think President Obama could appoint at this very day, given the boundaries that we have?  If I resign any time this year, he could not successfully appoint anyone I would like to see in the court.  [The Senate Democrats] took off the filibuster for lower court federal appointments, but it remains for this court.  So anybody who thinks that if I step down, Obama could appoint someone like me, they're misguided.  As long as I can do the job full steam... I think I'll recognize when the time comes that I can't any longer.  But now I can.  I wasn't slowed down at all last year in my production of opinions.

O...kay.  Let's just pick this utter crap to shreds.  I don't see how anyone can look at this woman and not see her idiocy.  Let's start with the basic observation that the pressure for her to resign, for basic, strategic reasons, was there before even the 2012 election!  She was sittin' there for that 2014 interview, acting like the question came about, suddenly, after McConnnell's DC Circuit Court stunt, which... no.

But that's not even really the point.  That doesn't even start to get at the grotesqueness of her mind-numbing cluelessness.

Do... do you notice how Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch are both on that Court?

How many votes did they get?  50-48 for the beer-swilling attempted rapist, and 54-45 for the plagiarist.  I suppose there's some mathematical sense to the ordering.  Plagiarism is a lesser sin than sexual assault.  Even as a professor whose life is dedicated to the eradication of plagiarism, I have perspective.  But... now I know that a lot of people have trouble with math, but here.  Let me spell this out for y'all.

50 < 60

54 < 60

But... but... how can that be?!  How can that possibly be?  Ruth, the great sage, the greatest human being who has ever walked the face of the Earth told us that nobody can ever be confirmed with less than 60 votes because the filibuster was only eliminated for lower courts!  I mean, we call her by... initials!  When someone is so great that we call her by initials she must be infallible!

Oh.  Oh, wait.  The Senate just used the nuclear option again.  I mean, who could have ever thought of that?  I mean, aside from me, and basically anyone else with enough neurons to form a synapse?

So let me explain.  If Ginsburg had stepped down in 2014, Obama would have named a replacement, McConnell would have filibustered, and Reid would have used the nuclear option again.  How complicated is this?

Ginsburg was not just wrong, but grotesquely, stupidly wrong.

Why did she stay on the Court?  'Cuz she wanted to.  In contrast, consider Anthony Kennedy.  Kennedy stepped down when he got a Republican president.  Why?  Because he was thinking.  He was thinking about the consequences of his decisions beyond himself and his own ego.

Ginsburg didn't.  And the result?  The result is that right now, Donald Trump gets to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  Do you not like the idea of what that does to the Court?

Well you know what?  This... this is actually a legitimate process.  There are a lot of things that happen that aren't legitimate, but this... this is.  This is 100% perfectly constitutional, nothin' fishy here.  This is the legitimate consequence of Ginsburg being a moron.

So if you are a lefty, stop admiring her.  She screwed you.  Anthony Kennedy did right by his own side, and as much of a... skidmark as Brett Kavanagh is, the result of Kennedy doing right by his side is that his side gets a guy voting their way.

Your side?  Your side is probably going to get... um... well, we go from plagiarist to rapist to... what's next?

Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore?

I've said for a long time-- in fact, when I first started The Unmutual Political Blog in early 2016-- that the only way the Democrats could respond to the Merrick Garland incident would be with court-packing.  The thing is, right now, I have a hard time seeing how the Democrats get Trump out of office.  Could Biden win a legitimate vote-count?  Sure.  But Trump has basically said that he's not stepping down, and with a Court on which he gets another appointee...

There are two paths.  Either Trump wins-- a real possibility-- or he loses, then files frivolous legal challenges, which are upheld by the Supreme Kangaroo Court.  He'll have not one, not two, but three Justices on that Court.  And the third will be the fault of Ruth.  Bader.  Ginsburg.

If she were smart, she would have stepped down during Obama's Presidency.  Stop admiring her.  She screwed you over.

My countrymen, I bury the dead, I don't praise 'em.