{"id":3606,"date":"2020-10-12T11:44:16","date_gmt":"2020-10-12T11:44:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=3606"},"modified":"2020-10-12T11:44:16","modified_gmt":"2020-10-12T11:44:16","slug":"the-supreme-court-is-about-to-hit-an-undemocratic-milestone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=3606","title":{"rendered":"The Supreme Court is about to hit an undemocratic milestone"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>\n\n&#8220;The confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, back in 1991, was a squeaker: 52 yeas, 48 nays \u2014 the narrowest margin in over a century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The senators who voted to put him on the bench had won their most recent elections with a combined tally of 42 million votes. But the senators who voted \u201cnay\u201d were elected by 46 million. Thomas became the first Supreme Court justice to be confirmed by a bloc of senators who had been elected by a minority of voters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Then it happened again. And again and again. The senators who confirmed Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh received millions fewer votes than the senators who opposed their confirmations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg\u2019s replacement seems certain to join the ranks of these \u201cminority justices.\u201d Even if President Trump\u2019s nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, wins the support of every Republican senator, including moderate hold-outs like&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/policy-and-politics\/2020\/9\/19\/21447031\/susan-collins-ginsburg-no-supreme-court-vacancy-vote-inauguration-day\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins<\/a>, all those senators combined received 13 million fewer votes than their colleagues across the aisle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>With this new confirmation, the Supreme Court will enter a particularly undemocratic new era. For the first time since senators were directly elected, a controlling majority of the court will have been put there by senators who most voters didn\u2019t choose. (And of course, the last three will have been nominated by a president who lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes.)&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/21456620\/supreme-court-scotus-undemocratic-milestone-minority-rule\">https:\/\/www.vox.com\/21456620\/supreme-court-scotus-undemocratic-milestone-minority-rule<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;The confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, back in 1991, was a squeaker: 52 yeas, 48 nays \u2014 the narrowest margin in over a century.<\/p>\n<p>The senators who voted to put him on the bench had won their most recent elections with a combined tally of 42 million votes. But the senators who voted \u201cnay\u201d were elected by 46 million. Thomas became the first Supreme Court justice to be confirmed by a bloc of senators who had been elected by a minority of voters.<\/p>\n<p>Then it happened again. And again and again. The senators who confirmed Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh received millions fewer votes than the senators who opposed their confirmations.<\/p>\n<p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg\u2019s replacement seems certain to join the ranks of these \u201cminority justices.\u201d Even if President Trump\u2019s nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, wins the support of every Republican senator, including moderate hold-outs like Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, all those senators combined received 13 million fewer votes than their colleagues across the aisle.<\/p>\n<p>With this new confirmation, the Supreme Court will enter a particularly undemocratic new era. For the first time since senators were directly elected, a controlling majority of the court will have been put there by senators who most voters didn\u2019t choose. (And of course, the last three will have been nominated by a president who lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes.)&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[431,528],"class_list":["post-3606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-democracy","tag-supreme-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3606"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3607,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3606\/revisions\/3607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}