Trump's Card

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

So the Republicans are trying to push through a supreme court nominee while keeping 90% of his record a secret. what did he have to say that needs to be kept secret until he can't be removed?

I must say that this is probably the key moment in the end of the American republic. This is the thing that definitely can't be repaired by voting out trump.

[ursus arctos]

They want to establish precedents for ridiculously overbroad claims of Executive Privilege in advance of any investigations by a potential Democratic majority.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Let's talk about polls.

McCaskill and Nelson tied in their races in today's polls. Real Clear Politics rate 9 senate seats as toss ups- 4 GOP held.

Small Dem lead in Florida Governor race.

[San Bernardhinault]

So, a marginally weaker than expected Democrat turnout could mean a 56-44 Republican Senate?

[ursus arctos]

Don't encourage him

[Tubby Isaacs]

Manchin's been shifted to Lean Democrat, so they'll probably get at least 45. But yeah.

[Femme Folle]

Have we learned nothing from 2016 (regarding polling)?

[ursus arctos]

Some of us have.

[Femme Folle]

I know, but some of us seem to have not.

[San Bernardhinault]

It depends what you think we should have learned. Hopefully people learned a bit of understanding of stats, probabilities, confidence intervals, systematic errors, and data collection, because that would be pretty useful outside of the world of politics, too.

[Femme Folle]

I've learned that they can't be trusted, especially if votes are being manipulated by hackers. I don't trust the American election system right now. At all. (ergo, polls are meaningless to me).

[San Bernardhinault]

The 2016 polls were mostly right, though, within the margin of error. The national polls were almost exactly correct at the end. RCP average a 3% Clinton lead; the reality was a 2% Clinton win. The polls generally have an error of about 4%, and almost all of the ones on the last couple of days were in the spread of Clinton +6 to Trump +2.

The state polling was less accurate - but then the samples are much smaller. Even so, if the Democrats had actually bothered to look at the polls in Pennsylvania or Michigan, they might have changed their strategies.

The polls were - basically - fine. People just over-interpreted them with a lot of wishful thinking, and decided to blame the polls when it turned out that a 2% lead for Clinton actually meant a Trump victory.

[ursus arctos]

But we aren't talking about a presidential election.

We are talking about midterms, and just had a Florida Gubernatorial primary where none of the established polls gave more than 14 percent to the guy who won the Democratic nomination with 34+

[San Bernardhinault]

The question was "what have we learned from 2016?", and mostly 2016's presidential polling was fairly accurate.

Mid-term polling and state level polling is obviously worse (and district level and primary polling worse than that). I don't think a failure in primary polling tells us anything except that it's very hard to get a good sample in a primary poll with a self-selecting and small electorate.

[ursus arctos]

That's fair.

I was viewing the 2016 experience in the context of broader issue.

[ursus arctos]

https://twitter.com/nycjim/status/1037152902698229760?s=21

https://twitter.com/nycjim/status/10...698229760?s=21

[Femme Folle]

My point about the polling is that it's a lot like reading tea leaves. I'm not going to get my hopes up because Dems are polling well. All it takes is one well-placed Russian hacker and the polls are rendered meaningless.

[Amor de Cosmos]

So who's going to win the Nike vs Trump (sorry, that's NFL) battle?

[Femme Folle]

Nike has already won that battle. People are burning products they already paid for. trump won't speak out harshly against Nike because they are one of his tenants (even though they said they were moving, I believe they are still paying rent in trump tower). By my count, that's Nike 2 0 trump.

[Gerontophile]

Michael Avenatti (lest we forget, Stormy Daniels lawyer) has called for the Supreme Court to be expanded to 11 judges, and any 2020 Democrat nomination should commit to this.

Nice idea, but he probably should have waited until December to say it, in case it gives certain people certain ideas.

[Sporting]

Michael Avenatti (lest we forget, Stormy Daniels lawyer) has called for the Supreme Court to be expanded to 11 judges, and any 2020 Democrat nomination should commit to this.

Nice idea, but he probably should have waited until December to say it, in case it gives certain people certain ideas.

But what are the chances of this happening?

I don't know if the constitution stipulates that there should be a certain number of Supreme Court judges, but even if the Dems win back the House (and much less likely, the Senate) what's to say that the measure wouldn't be ruled inconstitutional by the existing judges (with their probable future conservative bias)?

[Flynnie]

The Constitution has no stipulation against adding more justices, and the President's perogative to appoint justices is explicitly stated in the Constitution.

[Sporting]

So in theory he/she could appoint 100 more?

[ursus arctos]

FDR tried to pack the Court

It didn’t go well for him.

The Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937 (frequently called the "court-packing plan") was a legislative initiative proposed by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt to add more justices to the U.S. Supreme Court. Roosevelt's purpose was to obtain favorable rulings regarding New Deal legislation that the court had ruled unconstitutional. The central provision of the bill would have granted the President power to appoint an additional Justice to the U.S. Supreme Court, up to a maximum of six, for every member of the court over the age of 70 years and 6 months.

. . .

Contemporary observers broadly viewed Roosevelt's initiative as political maneuvering. Its failure exposed the limits of Roosevelt's abilities to push forward legislation through direct public appeal. Public perception of his efforts here was in stark contrast to the reception of his legislative efforts during his first term.

Court-packing has long been thought to be a political Third Rail that would incinerate anyone who attempted it, but then tat was that kind of norm has never stopped 45. I can’t see the Democrats seriously consider it.

My favourite Nike bit was the guy who torched his trainers while wearing them and then tweeted out photos of his badly burned feet from hospital.

[beak]

As pointed out on a recent episode of Chapo they could, and really really should, appoint approx. 330,000,000 more. It'd be great.