MichiganCardinal

The point wasn't to re-litigate Hillary's 2016 campaign or the 2016 primaries. Both are long dead, and the autopsy reports would be hundreds of pages long. The point was that Bernie supporters - rightly or wrongly - felt ostracized by the Party, when Hillary needed their votes. I think many stayed home and I'm sure some voted for Trump. You can blame that on whomever you want, Bernie certainly isn't blameless. In 2024 though, the Party needs all the votes. It doesn't need Democratic Reps coming out publicly against him, working to create an in-group and out-group within the Party.

I truly think Bernie would have won in 2016. He had his own cult-like backing (though not one that would storm the Capital for him) and I really think he would have carried WI/MI/PA, which would have allowed him to win by a razor thin margin. Look back at those Dem primaries and you could see the trouble on the horizon. Bernie ran away with Wisconsin and won a shocker in Michigan, despite polling in the ballpark of -30 behind Hillary. But he wasn't nominated because the DNC wanted a united front behind Hillary. They were determined to show that there was an answer to succession after Obama, and it was predetermined set in stone, and it was Hillary Clinton. The superdelegates pledged their allegiance early and the predetermined results were force fed to voters. The faction that resulted cost Hillary (and America) in the end. Then in 2020, the Dems had more of a free market primary, but settled on Biden quickly, swiftly, and the party got behind him in full force. There was no in-fighting. By Super Tuesday, most every candidate had dropped out and endorsed Biden. That's all neither here nor there at this point. My point is... Why now - months after the faux primaries and with an incumbent in office who does not want to leave - are we playing this game that there needs to be a free market to determine the Democratic candidate? We've never played by that rule. When we have our candidate - the anointed Democratic candidate - the rule is we get behind them and shun the other candidates, or anyone who speaks out against them. And when it works, it works. The Party united behind Biden in 2020, and he won. The party united behind Obama in 2008, and he won handily. The party did not successfully unite behind Hillary, leaving swaths of Bernie supporters in the dust and a DNC in shambles, and she lost. Why are we trending towards 2016 rather than 2020?

This is terrible. Sounds as if police believe he was the victim of a drunk driver recklessly changing lanes at a high rate of speed.

Trump support has always been visible. I'm not sure that's a great metric. The cult followers have always been out there willing to tell everyone who will come within eye sight they're in the cult. There are Trump stands (illegally?) selling MAGA hats and flags on the road side in Saline. Biden will win Washtenaw County by 30% or more. Biden people don't tell everyone they're voting for Biden, they just do it. Some of them begrudgingly. That all being said, I agree that I don't expect a 5-point Biden victory in Michigan, but would be overjoyed if that's how the results came in.

In 2020, there was one goal. Beat Trump. I remember the shock nationwide when Buttigieg, running third in the polls after having won Iowa and tied with Bernie for winning in New Hampshire, dropped out and endorsed Biden after South Carolina. It was considered a very early drop out, as he still had something of a chance. But he saw the unlikelihood of a comeback, and recognized that beating Trump in the general (and - sure - getting his cabinet position as a thank you) was more important than sticking around in the spotlight for a few more primaries. Why is there this bitching about Biden now? Who gives a flying **** if he's old? He was old in 2020 too. Deal with it in 2028. Dems need to get over themselves and get behind him. Now.

These are the only polls that matter. Nationwide polls mean nothing. Biden will win the national vote, likely by a lot. But he needs six states. More likely, he needs three. Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania. Win those three and it would be hard to not get to 270.

I'm not one to bitch and moan about the media. It's easy to complain about them covering something unfavorable, but usually it's just them doing their jobs. But I thought the Biden debate thing was a one-day story. He hasn't made it a two-day story. I'm confused why it's becoming a one-week story.

The polls that matter are those in MI, WI, PA, GA, NV, and AZ... I have no doubt Biden will win the popular vote.

I probably fall further right than most would guess. As long as it's a binary choice though, and one of those choices is a reality TV clown with a racist history and felony convictions (or those who support him), my choices are made for me.

Speaking of Thomas.... watching him live yesterday, he did not look well. He leaned back in his chair multiple times with a hand over his face, like he was in visceral pain. It could be just him not giving a ****, like normal. But I did make the remark to someone I was with that if it was indeed chronic pain causing him to act how he was acting, that I wouldn't be shocked if he didn't make it through another term.

If she wanted to come out against Thomas for all of his unethical and compromised nonsense, that would be fine. They wouldn't go anywhere, but if she wanted to bring articles against him for his out-of-court conduct, I would understand it. This is just not liking something and running for impeachment, which is straight out of the ultra-right Marjorie Taylor-Green/Kellyanne Conway/Lauren Boebert/Matt Gaetz playbook.

I think I would have come out with Barrett on this. There has to be some amount of immunity, lest Trump's DOJ prosecute Obama's drone strikes after Obama's DOJ prosecuted Bush's bungling of the global economy (and his War on Iraq, amongst other things overseas), but "properly conceived, the President’s constitutional protection from prosecution is narrow," and there was no need to go back down to the District Court on these specific charges, because the facial allegations in the indictment alone are clearly so far removed from the realm of official conduct. Ultimately though, as a matter of evidence for trial, I don't think you can avoid doing a piecemeal formulation of what is official and what isn't, which is getting to what SkyBlue is saying.

This is some Kellyanne Conway level of nonsense.

I think this is right, but I think it's even harder than pornography, because while there are probably hundreds of thousands of pornographic images out there (...... or so I'm told), there have been four criminal cases brought on former Presidents ever. If you could have ten people each sort the same 200 images into piles of pornography and not pornography (now there's a job for the interns), you could probably teach a machine to run that algorithm for you in 2024, at least into three categories of "porn", "not porn", and "close call". Categorizing criminal indictments - let alone pieces of evidence - into "official acts" and "unofficial acts" of a President requires a case-by-case analysis under any scenario. There is no one rule that SCOTUS could announce that is going to capture every possible criminal indictment. That said, they could have decided on the one at issue here.

I'm right there with you. It helps me understand it better when those kinds of questions are posed, even if they are hyperbolic in nature. Because those are the kind of questions that the District Court now has to tackle in weighing this out. Where do you draw the line?

The closest I can see the majority getting to actually defining "official act" is where that say that "[w]hen the President acts pursuant to 'constitutional and statutory authority,' he takes official action to perform the functions of his office... Determining whether an action is covered by immunity thus begins with assessing the President’s authority to take that action." I would argue that POTUS has constitutional authority to be the commander in chief, but that does not equate to a free license to kill. I think in such a case, the Court would - and should - more narrowly define "official act" to include only actions naturally associated with the execution of his duties as POTUS. Commanding the bombing of a village in the Middle East against DOD advice because you illogically think a terrorist is there, and it results in dozens of innocent deaths? Probably immune. Commanding the bombing of the home of a political opponent because you want to win an election? Probably not immune. They definitely could have been more clear, but this is what SCOTUS loves to do. Send it down to the lower court, have them guess what SCOTUS wants to be the line between official and unofficial, have the case slowly trickle back upstream, have the Court of Appeals take a stab at it too, and then finally tell everyone a year or two later what they actually wanted all along.

From ACB's concurrence: She goes on to say that she would not have vacated the judgement but instead declared the acts at issue here not official acts based off the present record, and that the case could therefore go to trial. That means at least four already agree that Trump should be able to be prosecuted in at least this case.

I think seven of the nine would be offended by this notion. Should definitely be nine of nine, but I don't think Roberts, ACB, Gorsuch, or Kavanaugh would participate in an outright coup.

Stood outside SCOTUS starting at 5am to get a front row ear to the opinions today. I think what will stick with me the longest is Roberts' saying "I wrote the opinion in Trump v. United States" and the deafening sound of a hundred people leaning up in their chairs, moving to a fresh notepad, and clicking their pens. FWIW, I don't think this is the affront to democracy that the dissent makes it out to be. What if Trump had directed the DOJ to prosecute Obama for conspiracy to commit murder on day one, on account of his drone strikes? There just has to be some level of criminal immunity provided to the commander in chief. The question at the end of the day will be how far the periphery of that presumptive immunity will go, which almost has to be anecdotal and case-by-case in nature, because (hopefully) so few Presidents are getting indicted and charged with crimes. At the end of the day, voters are who should be holding elected officials accountable for their official acts. That being said, if the Court comes back next term after a Biden victory in November and says "sorry, but a President inciting a violent mob and violating RICO in an attempt to overthrow an election is within that umbrella of an official act", then that's a different conversation, and the dissent will be right to be livid. I don't think they'll have the five votes to get that far though, especially when the political pressure of an election is removed.

The problem isn't that they'll vote for him. It's that they won't vote at all, or will do something even dumber and vote for RFK or some other useless third party. Trump has his base, Biden by and large has everybody else. The name of the game is solely about getting everybody else in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia to vote.

Not everyone! I think the concept of having the black female prosecutor be the one to take down the racist felon has some extremely appealing attributes to it, to the party and to America generally. I can't imagine there are any number of people who would vote for Biden but not Kamala, and that's probably the most important thing to consider, if they actually entertain replacing him. The worst case scenario has to be a net neutral. But I think nominating Kamala would scare Don more than any other candidate. Kamala had her fair share of bad press early in the administration, but that seems to be past her now.

As much as I don’t like her (or any political prosecutor), a Harris/Buttigieg ticket may win running away. I don’t think Joe would allow it though and I don’t think anyone would stand up to him about it. I also don’t think it’s even necessary. It’s June. He’s just old. His opponent is a felon who led a coup.

Hey now, lawyers have to eat too!! 😉

How much time did he spend on this closing statement for it to be this incoherent?

Biden looks like he’s 20 years older than Trump. I think it might be true that if Trump hadn’t committed so many crimes to lead to so many investigations and so many future convictions, that he wouldn’t have run for President. It’s the only sure way he sees to stay out of prison though. In any event, this doesn’t matter. There are no real undecideds in 2024. It’s all going to be decided by the turnout in 4-6 states.