Quick take: A bill to pack the Court

 Well, this is finally happening.  Or... not.  As you may have read by now, a bill is being introduced to add seats to the Supreme Court.  Alas, I can no longer link to my original post from The Unmutual Political Blog, but I have been telling you that this has been coming since the day McConnell put a blockade on the vacancy created by Scalia's death.  (And of course, anyone who believed that McConnell would follow the "no confirmations in an election year" rule that he invented in 2016, with a Republican president... well, such people lack the requisite intelligence to read, so there is no point addressing them.  Nevertheless, his entirely predictable response to Ginsburg's entirely predictable bucket-kicking reinforced Democrats' strategic incentives.)

So what's-a-gonna happen?  This will fail.  The probability that the sponsors get this bill passed is zero.  There is a higher probability that Donald Trump's next move will be to open up an office to help illegal immigrants navigate the asylum process.  I mean that literally.  After all, if Trump hides the office behind a few layers of phony non-profits, he can skim off the top, and that'd be a totally Trump thing to do, so yes, there is a higher probability that Trump will open an office to help illegal immigrants seek asylum than that the Democrats pass their Court-packing bill.

Today.

The thing is, McConnell ain't gonna stop.  What happens if another Justice bites the big one in about two years?  The 2022 election will be a midterm election with a Democratic president.  Generally, that means advantage-R.  McConnell gets his gavel back, and there ain't no way he'll confirm anyone.  Remember that "rule" about no confirmations in an election year?  Yeah, bullshit, but what about 2023?  Do you doubt that he'll make up some new bullshit rule about why they can't confirm anyone, no matter who?  Wanna bet?

Right now, we have a system in which a president only gets judges confirmed when he has a majority in the Senate.  Yeah, that's seriously fucked up.  And, since the GOP moved first in the escalation process, they got some seats on the Supreme Court through their escalation.  They'll keep escalating.  The only way the Democrats ever nullify those gains is by escalating beyond what the GOP has done.  Inevitably, at some point, this leads to court-packing.

The Dems don't have the votes.  This time.  They don't have the votes to do anything.  But this will happen.

Is it a good thing that it'll happen?  No.  But that ship has sailed.  Or maybe 1000 of 'em.  Mitch just has the kind of face that can launch that many ships.  Don't believe me?  Just look.  Look at this face.

I don't know about you, but I'd like some music.  Rising Appalachia, "Sail Away, Ladies," from Scale Down.