I’ve been wondering for a bit why during the time the Democrats controlled the legislature, executive, and judicial branches during Obama’s first term in 2008 more wasn’t accomplished. Shouldn’t that have been the opportunity to make Row V Way law and fix the electoral college? I understand the recession was going on but outside of Obamacare getting passed which didnt go far enough it seems like they didn’t really do much with all that power. Are there other important accomplishments from this time that didn’t get the news they deserved? It seems like the voters have done their job in the past to elect people to fix things and yet we are still here begging people to vote to fix issues like abortion rights.
Also a very important point here was how much more non-political the supreme court was then. No one would ever consider Roe vs Wade could be overturned or even want it. There were generally agreed upon rules that the supreme courts and courts in general were populated with the most qualified people. Judge appointments were scrapped by gentleman agreements if the Senator from the state where the judge was from didn’t support the nomination. Same if any of the non-partisan law associations said the person wasn’t qualified enough. So most judges were well qualified and if they were more conservative or liberal wasn’t as big of a consideration. There were plenty of “conservative” judges appointed judges nominated by democratic and vice versa. This all change with Mitch McConnell blocking Merrick Garland appointment to the supreme court who was suggested as the more moderate alternative. This lead to the hyper partisanship of the supreme court we see now with the trump appointees. This is why trust in the organization has eroded so fast. Since it all happened so fast and judges are acting much more politically instead of following law and precedent
Looks at the current SCOTUS roster, notices both Alito was appointed to the court in 2006, and Thomas was appointed in 1995 (after a huge sexual harassment fiasco no one seems to ever bring up any more). Finds their records are even worse than the Trump appointments.
Nope, sorry doesn’t line up…
The gross politics of the GOP started with Nixon, and was driven to overtime after they lost power when Clinton took office by Rush Limbaugh, Murdock, and the like. That was the real turning point. Where we are is a progression to the GOP going more and more radical, but the seeds were always there. Honestly, I think Roe stood for so long because they weren’t stupid enough to actually appeal it back then.
To me, making political appointments for the judiciary always made this a possibility. It happened in the old days, and it might happen again. And it did.