They don’t entirely, though. In fact, much of what the SCOTUS has struck down has been them saying Congress needs to do their job and write laws to do what they want the laws to do, versus having the SCOTUS legislate from the bench. Don’t get me wrong, this SCOTUS is fucking awful, but there’s some slight truth to some of what they’ve said on some of their rulings. For example, Roe v Wade could’ve easily become a national law, but Congress won’t do it.
It’s bad when even RBG was saying roe shouldn’t have been used as law. The dems have had a ton of times to solidify it into law via the proper channels but won’t because it gets votes.
It wasn’t because it gets votes, but because it loses votes. People will strongly object to one thing a hell of a lot faster than they’ll give you credit for doing anything. Look at Biden’s entire administration. We handled post-covid inflation* better than any other developed nation, but he didn’t get credit for the 90% he fixed. He got shit on for the 10% left to go.
* And I’d argue a good chunk of that inflation was the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), the bipartisan bill Trump signed into law while rejecting the oversight the Dems wanted. That was the biggest corporate giveaway in our nation’s history. Literally just giving public money to private corporations. A step far beyond “privatize profits, socialize losses”.
Dems believed, reasonably, that Roe was settled and wasn’t in imminent danger. Holding a vote on that just pushes people away. Of course, in hindsight, they should have done it anyway. But as you can tell from this past election, and all the states that went red while passing women’s rights legislation, having the issue out there is not getting them votes.
There is probably 1% of dems who are pro-life. The mass majority is pro-choice. This is like saying people who vote repubs are anti-gun. Dems have had a ton of chances to solidify it into law, which is way harder to remove.
This only sounds reasonable until you think about it for 2 seconds. Do you really want the Senate and Congress to have to learn about and try to legislate the details of chemistry, medicine, finance, engineering, etc, rather than delegating figuring out the details of tasks like “make the food safe” or “make the water clean” to scientists and other experts at agencies?
The Supreme Court only has the power it does because the legislature has been dysfunctional. Most of their terrible decisions are not based on the constitution, but rather their interpretation of laws written by Congress. Congress can easily override them by passing a law saying “No, that Is not what we meant”.
“Separation of powers” is an incredibly nonsensical concept. If we live in a democracy then the democratically elected legislature should have total power. The idea that unelected judicial branch can dictate policy is indeed anti-democratic, the judicial branch should be wholly subervient to the legislature. The same is true of the executive branch, the executive branch also should be wholly subservient to the legislature. Giving a single guy control over the whole freaking military and making the branch roughly independent is also entirely nonsensical. It has happened historically in the past in several countries that the executive just tells the military to attack the legislature and the country collapses into a dictatorship. This literally almost happened in South Korea literally today, although the president backed down at last moment. Any country with separation of powers is already borderline a totalitarian dictatorship, since it just takes a single crazy executive to decide to pack the courts and disband the legislature solely for their own personal gain and the whole thing falls apart.
democracy is when you let a bunch of unelected elders in robes dictate how society operates
They don’t entirely, though. In fact, much of what the SCOTUS has struck down has been them saying Congress needs to do their job and write laws to do what they want the laws to do, versus having the SCOTUS legislate from the bench. Don’t get me wrong, this SCOTUS is fucking awful, but there’s some slight truth to some of what they’ve said on some of their rulings. For example, Roe v Wade could’ve easily become a national law, but Congress won’t do it.
It’s bad when even RBG was saying roe shouldn’t have been used as law. The dems have had a ton of times to solidify it into law via the proper channels but won’t because it gets votes.
Have they, though?
It wasn’t because it gets votes, but because it loses votes. People will strongly object to one thing a hell of a lot faster than they’ll give you credit for doing anything. Look at Biden’s entire administration. We handled post-covid inflation* better than any other developed nation, but he didn’t get credit for the 90% he fixed. He got shit on for the 10% left to go.
* And I’d argue a good chunk of that inflation was the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), the bipartisan bill Trump signed into law while rejecting the oversight the Dems wanted. That was the biggest corporate giveaway in our nation’s history. Literally just giving public money to private corporations. A step far beyond “privatize profits, socialize losses”.
Dems believed, reasonably, that Roe was settled and wasn’t in imminent danger. Holding a vote on that just pushes people away. Of course, in hindsight, they should have done it anyway. But as you can tell from this past election, and all the states that went red while passing women’s rights legislation, having the issue out there is not getting them votes.
There is probably 1% of dems who are pro-life. The mass majority is pro-choice. This is like saying people who vote repubs are anti-gun. Dems have had a ton of chances to solidify it into law, which is way harder to remove.
This only sounds reasonable until you think about it for 2 seconds. Do you really want the Senate and Congress to have to learn about and try to legislate the details of chemistry, medicine, finance, engineering, etc, rather than delegating figuring out the details of tasks like “make the food safe” or “make the water clean” to scientists and other experts at agencies?
Notice how I emphasized “some” twice in my comment. It wasn’t a catch-all statement.
Roe v Wade would take a super majority and Dems had that for 4 months in the last 44+ years. Obama used that to get the ACA through. Not easy at all.
Your thinking of a plutocracy or a senate.
The Supreme Court only has the power it does because the legislature has been dysfunctional. Most of their terrible decisions are not based on the constitution, but rather their interpretation of laws written by Congress. Congress can easily override them by passing a law saying “No, that Is not what we meant”.
An incompetent Supreme Court would fit your argument.
But what about a malicious court doing destructive things a paralyzed congress could not possibly fix?
“Separation of powers” is an incredibly nonsensical concept. If we live in a democracy then the democratically elected legislature should have total power. The idea that unelected judicial branch can dictate policy is indeed anti-democratic, the judicial branch should be wholly subervient to the legislature. The same is true of the executive branch, the executive branch also should be wholly subservient to the legislature. Giving a single guy control over the whole freaking military and making the branch roughly independent is also entirely nonsensical. It has happened historically in the past in several countries that the executive just tells the military to attack the legislature and the country collapses into a dictatorship. This literally almost happened in South Korea literally today, although the president backed down at last moment. Any country with separation of powers is already borderline a totalitarian dictatorship, since it just takes a single crazy executive to decide to pack the courts and disband the legislature solely for their own personal gain and the whole thing falls apart.