Thread by @AlexandraErin

So, let's talk expanding the supreme court.

Today should make it abundantly clear that any talk about how this will "break" politics or the judicial system is beside the point. It's broken. The way we do things now is is broken. In shambles. Repubilcans beat it to death.

"But if we do something to fix things, Repubilcans will just take advantage of whatever the new normal is to seize power again and it'll be our fault."

They are already doing that. They have abused the status quo past the point that the status quo can be used by anyone else.

They're Republicans, not Republic serial villains. They don't have carefully contrived plans that depend on us making one false move. Their plan is to do whatever they can get away with, within whatever system presents itself.

"But if we expand the court they'll expand it, too, and then they'll have control over it forever."

They already have control of it. And as the Roberts court dismantles voting rights -- and I'd argue this is his most consistent agreement with GOP metagame -- it will be forever.

It does't matter if in some ways Roberts is moderate, it doesn't matter if Roberts shows deference to his own vision of rule of law and can be relied upon to at least vote his conscience. His conscience aligns with the GOP on voting rights. That's all they need.

And all of this is ignoring the fact that Congress adding justices to the Supreme Court is using the Constitutional powers and responsibilities accorded them, while the GOP seized control of it by ignoring and abusing those duties.

Listen. The way we stop the GOP from abusing the levers of power is... we destroy the GOP. We do not let them near the levers of power. It doesn't matter what the system is, their plan doesn't depend on a particular system. Whatever it is, it depends on exploitable assumptions.

And the way we defeat and destroy the GOP is: we actually fight them. That's it. Step up to the line and fight them. If the SCOTUS remains the same through 2020 and we get Trump out... we could add two justices and more or less restore the same balance absent McConnell's gambit.

If we do that, if we do nothing else except un-tip the scales... they will scream and say that we're "packing the court" and subverting the rule of law and destroying the institution (that they trashed).

That's what happens if we do nothing but repair some of their damage.

What happens if we go further?

The exact same thing.

So while I've a proponent of adding two more justices, I say... why not go further? Maybe let ourselves be talked down to two. Make people acknowledge that as the reasonable compromise position.

Republicans can't win a fair election. Not at the national level. Their policies are unpopular, their leaders repugnant, and the steps they take to keep their base happy just exacerbates this.

We fight all out for voting rights, we fight all out for anti-gerrymandering and pro-voting court, and the GOP dies. Ironically, it is an endangered species that cannot live except in sheltered waters in federally protected habitats. We remove those special protections, it dies.

I don't need Democratic candidates to run on this. We can start the conversation without them. Change the way people talk about it. "Court packing" is a very charged term in politics and so an easy weapon for the GOP but I'm not sure how much currency it has in the electorate.

We need to talk about untilting the court, about repairing the court. Trump is making it easy on us with his sloppy bragging about how many judges he's appointing, how many vacancies President Obama "left for" him. It's wild to me how much he's controlled the narrative there.

Like, here on Twitter Dot Com where I'm following a bunch of progressives, every time he talks about that I see a bunch of people going "Actually that's because McConnell blocked them for you." I'm one of them. I don't know exactly how we take that message wider, but we should.

Because Trump isn't ignorant about this, he's bragging. He knows what happened, even if he doesn't have a deep grounding in the mechanics of it. He can brag on national TV about how the Republican Senate broke the federal judiciary for him. That's how comfortable he is.

"Trump has openly bragged about having over a hundred federal judgeships held open for him by Mitch McConnell, and you're concerned about us adding a couple seats to the Supreme Court?"

"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind!"

Yes. But we're not taking eyes, we're healing them. We're undoing damage. Repairing harm.

Mostly, though, we've just got to talk about this thing like it's an option on the table and one that might be necessary. (Is, in my opinion. Is.) Because it is. And because this is how the GOP gets things done. The most honest tool in their kit, and one of the most powerful.

The GOP does not let opponents and critics and bystanders set the terms of it discourse. My entire politically aware life basically I've heard people outside the right saying that repealing or overturning Roe v. Wade was politically unthinkable.

Didn't stop them from pushing.

What's a "political impossibility" today is reflective of today's politics, of circumstances that change. And mostly those circumstances amount to what we're talking about and how.

Exactly. Exactly this. "Two, to counter the effects of the stolen seat." should be, again, seen as being the reasonable compromise position we can fall back to. That's where we meet in the middle.

https://twitter.com/APHowell/status/1144263935136342016

The GOP doesn't bargain with us in advance. Every single time we, as an electorate or party or as represented by our congress people, start off a debate or fight by going, "Now, this is going to be a hard sell, so let's come closer to their position." - we're doing their job!

It's not our job to come off our position, it's our job to *wind up* in our position, or as close to it as we can. Start high, make them fight us down. That's how negotiation works.

We don't have a working camaraderie where we can be like, "You're going to highball me, I'm going to lowball you, so let's skip the fussing and fighting and just spit out the number we're both going to agree to anyway." We don't have that. And we never will.

Last time I dropped a mention of McConnell blocking Garland in a reply on a Republican twitter account, I had a bunch of people reply to me to say, "Ha, you're blaming McConnell? You're dreaming if you think any Republican would have let him through."

And.

That's the point.

The GOP has an organized, well-funded, and multi-pronged program to make sure Democrats can never win an election, and in the meantime to ensure that it doesn't matter when we do.

We can do the same to them.

Difference is, all we have to do is fight fair.

All we have to do is make full use of the actual legal and Constitutional tactics and remedies available to us. All we have to do is ensure that everybody who is entitled to vote gets to vote. All we have to do is make sure elections are free and fair.

But we can pull absolutely no punches while we're doing. We can take no legal options off the table. We cannot attempt to meet someone halfway who is racing in the other direction. No quarter. No bargaining ourselves down in advance.

Nothing necessary is impossible.

We have to proceed like nothing necessary is impossible, because if something is both necessary and impossible... we're fudged. So we act like it's possible, and in the process it becomes possible.

That's how the GOP does it. Again, it's their one honest trick. We can do it, too

They keep telling us: oh, you're going too far, too fast, you're going to provoke a backlash. America's not ready.

Why would they tell us? Why would they help us? They know that's not how it works. They've studied crowd dynamics, persuasion techniques. They know how change works

When we go "too far", when we are visible and vocal, it undermines their narrative of unity. It undermines their idea that the majority is silently in their corner.

We are a gregarious species! The average person in the Mild Moderate Middle has better angels and worse angels and is mostly just trying to get along and live their life. If we let the GOP set the tone for what's normal, possible, and allowed... they will. Every time.

The "backlash" we provoke is just them riling up their base, who is predisposed to be riled up, and then when we retreat from that, the anger in their base becomes the baseline for where public feeling is, since they're the loudest and most passionate voices.

Whereas if we are just as forceful a presence in the public square, they lose the illusion of consensus. The window stops sliding in their direction. And maybe moves in ours.

This is not the time to be timid. This is not the time to be silent. The GOP asserts that the most extreme pipedreams of its radical platform are "common sense" things that "everyday Americans" want and they keep repeating it until it's accepted as true.

We can counter that.

These are the times that try our souls. This is not a time for civility. This is the time to cry havoc and let slip the dogs of civic participation, because we don't have a lot of chances left before those tools are denied to us completely.

Be bold. Be confident. Be matter of fact. Talk like everything that is necessary is possible. If you're talking with friends or family about the SCOTUS opinions today, mention expanding the court. The GOP ran Trump in 2016 explicitly on filling a stolen seat. Didn't cost him!

Heck, the promise of that stolen seat made the benefit of voting for Trump in spite of his shortcomings more real and tangible for those on the fence. He probably wouldn't be in office now without it.

This is not a time for timidity.

Be bold.

Cry havoc.

And tip your weird Twitter pundit.

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