The Presidency of the Joes: more like INFRASTRUCTURE WEAK

The $12,000 number being bandied about is 1400x4 +3600x2 (child tax credit). The child tax credit was already $2,000 though so the real amount a family of 4 sees as a result of this bill is closer to $8,000 unless I am missing something. Still a lot of money and very good thing.

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This upcoming voting rights bill seems like a real do or die moment for the Dems.

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Agree 100% on this. It’s probably the whole ballgame longer term.

Even with the givebacks, if the bill was in a vacuum it would be good and the Dems should hammer all the good that the bill does and that zero Republicans supported COVID relief. Hard to look at this process and think that anything like HR1, filibuster reform, etc. is getting done though. Honestly we probably knew this anyways, just hard not to be frustrated because the game looks like it is rigged and getting more rigged and this bill, well helpful, is probably the high water mark.

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I’m confused by the voting rights bill. I thought states got to make those decisions and aren’t all the trump judges going to kill it instantly even if it passes?

There has already previously been a Federal voting rights bill passed. As to what the Supreme Court does, who knows. Obviously the current construction isn’t favorable.

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Nah the 14th amendment is super clear that the federal government can stop states from denying people the right to vote. It was added specifically to stop southern states from doing exactly what they’re doing.

The voting rights act passed based off this. The current court killed it because some of the language and stuff was outdated.

I mean they will try to weaken it but it would take time, and by then hopefully we can build up some big advantages and at least threaten to pack the court if they start striking down laws.

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They literally ruled that racism is over so we don’t need any voting rights protections anymore.

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That judges part may end up being true. If that is the case and no HR1 is possible, then Dems have to figure out a way to government control without GA, AZ and possibly PA as possible electoral votes or Senate seats and probably needing to win the popular vote by 4-6 points (as a rough metric) to control the House post the next round of gerrymandering.

I’m probably risking my unending pessimism streak here but the Supreme Court so far has not been a total disaster. By far the best play is to pass the bill and then fight it out in court. If cases banning abortion and the like had been fast tracked in the last couple of months I would be much more worried. To me it seems like we may fade the outcome we were envisioning when RBG died where the court is used to constantly do stuff like that.

Then again it may just not have happened yet and I may be hopelessly naive here.

Shelby County v. Holder basically said “Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional because it is based on data that is 40 years old.” It expressly said “if Congress wants to intervene they need to pass a new coverage formula (this is basically a formula for who has to get Federal sign off on any voting rights stuff).” If they overturn the new voting rights act it will be full mask off, which is reasonably likely given how crucial this issue is for the GOP.

Similarly, their last gerrymandering decision said “welp, cant do anything, if you dont like it vote for people who will do something.” Which is what Democrats did, so again, would just be full mask off fuck you democracy is over type-stuff to overturn.

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Can’t they just make the new one something like “Any laws that make voting more restrictive in any state have to be signed off on”?

The last episode of Amicus was making the point that ACB has been surpassingly centrist so far.

Yeah their excuse was iirc that the type of voter suppression they used back in the 60s wasn’t used anymore so the bill wasn’t needed.

I think a take that’s both more cynical and correct on that guy’s narrative is not that Manchin’s shenanigans are good, like he says, but they are very good news… FOR JOE MANCHIN. And, like, things that are good for Joe Manchin are actually pretty good (even if strictly from a VORS perspective) because the difference between McConnell and Schumer, no matter how shitty Schumer is, is enormous. But I’ll believe that Manchin is in favor of filibuster reform when it actually gets reformed, and we get HR1 passed. Not until then.

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I mean at the absolute best she is another John Roberts pretending to be good in cases that aren’t super important and then will pull the rug out from under us in important cases.

They know court packing is on the dems mind so they’re being very political about it, but make no mistake they will be fucking us over big time. They’re especially waiting for Reps to get the senate back too.

I have no idea about HR1, they know that would be a huge blow to the party, but as Riverman said killing it would be a massive power grab and full mask off.

They got a LOT of time to fuck us over if the court isn’t packed so they aren’t in a rush, but no way I believe they don’t have a ton of evil planned.

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Agreed. This is almost the exact take from Amicus.

I think a lot of judges actually do try to be neutral as much as they can. I bet the percentage of 5-4 decisions is smaller than people think. 9-0 is more common than 5-4.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/06/28/those-5-4-decisions-on-the-supreme-court-9-0-is-far-more-common/

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lol no way dude. The conservatives just save their partisanship for cases that make a big impact on their ideology and party. A ton of their arguments don’t make any logical sense, they contradict themselves constantly.

If neither of those things are affected sure, they’ll follow the law. Otherwise no way.

Splits get all the attention because they’re almost always the big society/political changing cases.

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Like congress reauthorized the VRA 98-0 in 2006 and had tons of studies and thousands of pages proving voter suppression was still a big issue and conservatives still nuked it 7 years later saying it wasn’t needed lol.

They aren’t neutral, it’s all about power.

Fuck WaPo not even going to read that article.

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