SIO254: We Have To Win

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:28 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only, this Episode 254, I'm Thomas Smith. Coming at you solo today, uh because, yeah, as I'm sure you know, bad news. These pa-, I don't even know what day it was, Friday? When was it? Saturday? Whenever that happened. It's been, I've been a, been not happy since that, uh. Probably going to continue to be not too happy going into the future. Things are bad. Not going to lie to you. Things are bad. I have some thoughts. So I would like to express them. And so I just want to start by saying things were already bad. Things were already bad, you know, like any, well, I was going to say like any optimist. I'm not really an optimist, But at the same time, I'm also not like a fatalist.

0:01:15 Thomas: I'm not, you know, I'm not thinking the worst is literally always going to happen. I'm always keeping in mind the plan. You know, I'm always thinking, okay, yeah, I, I'm not expecting anything good to happen, but if, if we need to fix things, here's my plan. You know, here's the plan. I'm not in charge of anything. I'm just saying like, here's the route that we take. And with the passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, that route just got, I don't know, narrower, more difficult, way the stakes got higher, way higher. You know, with, with RBG living forever, which was, you know, my plan, and I guess hers, too, a lot of people's plan, that that would have been nice if she could just go on to one hundred and thirty or something.

0:02:00 Thomas: That would have been great. That plan, you would have meant that something like Biden winning the presidency, but Republicans still hanging on to the Senate would have been bad. Absolutely bad. Obviously not optimal, but it wouldn't, it wouldn't have been quite as devastating. It would have been something where we could have said, all right. And, by the way, I'm just launching right into it. I, how are you doing? And I, and of course, a second, we're, so that's part of it.

I'm gonna step back for a second. I'll get back to what I was saying, but that's part of it. Like, I would love to be able to spend a week just, in like, celebrating RBG's life, and we're going to, by the way, that, we, we plan to do this very thing, um, over on Opening Arguments, we recorded a reaction episode because we already had the mics on. We're recording something else when the news came, and we were just devastated, and we had to, we thought it might be a good idea to record, um, but that was a very much a, a fear episode. That was a, you know, "Dear God, what's gonna happen" episode, "what does this mean" episode. And, you know, we've made a point to say, okay, we, we want to make sure we can take the time to enjoy her legacy, you know, to celebrate her legacy. We're gonna do that this week.

And, uh, look, and, and just make it a positive episode, take it, take a minute to not worry. Uh, I know it's hard, but, you know, I, I, RBG was amazing, amazing, and she deserves that. Um, so I just, I just say that to let you know that that's not going to be this episode. I'm still, I, while I, I will, um, highlight a couple of things on the way, maybe, too scared.

You know, I'm I much more scared for the rights of millions of people that are going to lost, you know, that I, like I'm not really, I, I'm really right now in the mental space to quite give the retrospective on RBG.

0:03:43 Thomas: And I think we'll do that over on opening arguments, hopefully this Thursday. And I think that'll be, that'll be really valuable. I know I'm going to enjoy it, but that's not this. So apologies if that's what you're looking for right now. This is some thoughts about what's, what's going on. This is, you know, you listen to the show, you know what you are getting. Okay. What was I saying? I was saying that under the theory that RBG lives forever, which was, was my hope, which everybody hoped, you know, Biden winning the presidency and us losing the Senate or, or rather not gaining back the Senate would have, again, sucked. We wouldn't have gotten anything done. There would be no chance of getting any legislation done. Obviously there would be stuff that can be done via executive order. But even that, you know, even that was already pretty tough, pretty tough because, you know, the court was five, four, the other way, the court was five for conservative.

0:04:36 Thomas: So a lot of things would probably get ruled against as they did under Obama. A lot, lot of the things he tried to do once he finally realized that Republicans were just not going to do the thing where they make the country run and all that. They weren't going to do what used to be done for generations. Then he started trying to use executive orders to get stuff through, and some of it worked, a lot of it didn't. But I think I would, I would imagine it would have been even worse than it was under Obama, but still better than a 6-3 court with, with just like Ben Shapiro on the court. You know, it's going to be awful.

0:05:16 Thomas: With something like this happening, if, first off, this has made it so that if not these two things happen, I'm going into a little programming language, let's put this in English. If we don't both win the presidency and the Senate and obviously keep the House, I think that should be about as sure as the thing can get, because this is this weird thing where, like, Democrats have the support of more people, but Republicans have land or something, so they have the borders configured correctly. That's something I'm going to talk about in a minute, but anyway, the House should be good to go, um, most likely. I mean, we, we enjoy as Democrats, uh, overwhelming majority support in this country, uh, don't, if you ask any conservatives about that, they'll pretend it doesn't exist or doesn't matter somehow, but that's the truth.

0:06:09 Thomas: We enjoy overwhelming majority support by like seven points, probably at least. It could be more. We'll see. That's what, you know, why we had a wave election in 2018 in the House. Anyway, that should be good. So if we don't both win the presidency in the Senate, that doesn't look good. You know, obviously the worst case scenario is Trump winning and us not keeping the Senate. That might as well just cover that right now. Now, that, like, honestly, it's hard.

I start feeling like, you know, that Mormon that was on Fox News. I start feeling like that guy who's crying every time about how if Ted Cruz doesn't win, it's the end of the Republic. That guy? What's name again?

Glenn Beck, I always forget his name, probably because I don't want to remember it, I, you start feeling, don't you start, feeling like that guy, you know, where it's like, of course, when he's crying about the end of the world, it means, like, you know, a couple more people get healthcare, and, uh, like trans people might be treated as humans, like that's his end of, that's, that isn't, for me, and for, I imagine, a lot of you, it's, um, well, let's talk about the dire scenarios, you know, it's truly, truly devastating. Like, it feels like we are done as a country if Trump wins again, and especially if he wins again and has the Senate. We are so beyond gone. But I will say this. Here's why it got so much harder.

If Trump wins, and even if we take back the Senate, but Trump still wins, which I think is unlikely. I think it's far more likely the other way, statistically. But just, you know, I guess it's always possible. If for some reason Trump were to win, but we take back the Senate,

0:07:47 Thomas: I think that the result of RBG passing away and being replaced by, you know, Amy Coney Barrett, who would likely be or the Barbara LaGoa, who is from Florida, so I think that has the added potential electoral benefit. It might, it might be her, but either way, we get a very young, insanely conservative, like, like fetuses are people, all this stuff, like we're gonna get that level of conservative. So what that means is I believe if Trump wins again, he, he will be able to use executive orders to do whatever he wants because the law, the law has still mattered. Contrary to popular belief. It's, this is interesting. It's something I wanted to talk about. I've gotten a lot.

0:08:32 Thomas: I've seen a lot and I do not blame people. I'm not really criticizing. I just, you know, I'm trying to be precise because I want to, I want to know the facts as best I can. I want try to, that way you can kind of try to predict what would would happen the best you can. And if you just take an, I don't even want, I don't want to disparage it because I understand the alarmism. I'm part of it. I get it. But if you take the furthest view, like law doesn't matter, like literally the law doesn't matter. That's not really the case. And I get that maybe it's just hyperbole. And if it is just hyperbolic, sure. I agree. Like it does seem like the law doesn't matter, but, but it actually has mattered. There are places where the court has ruined the law, and that sucks, and so, I, in those cases, it's like the law doesn't matter if they can just rewrite it, but there are key ways, there, there are critical things that Trump hasn't been able to do because of the law.

0:09:24 Thomas: He can't do whatever he wants right now. I believe that will change in, in a new court with Amy Coney Barrett or whoever, you know, whatever ghoul, whatever conservative person is on the court. I believe that will change. I believe it could get to the point, you know, we'll have to trust the kindness of a Gorsuch to stop that. I mean, even Roberts dissenting wouldn't matter. You know, can you imagine Roberts siding on the like liberal side and then even that has no effect because some fundamentalists, absolute fundamentalist conservatives who do not represent the will of the people in any way are able to just make up the law. Then the law won't actually matter. Right now, it still does.

0:10:09 Thomas: I know it feels like it doesn't. And there are times it doesn't. You know, when it comes to, we always joke about clear as Kushner over in OA because the law says that Kushner could not, cannot be doing what he's doing. But there are, there are different levels of zero. There are different level of not mattering. It turns out the main thing is tradition. Tradition and norms don't matter. That's a fact. That's the thing about the Supreme Court vacancy too. Um, and I, I guess I might as well do that now too. I have notes, but I still end up jumping around. What am I doing? Um, hypocrisy arguments with the Supreme Court thing. I get that. We're kind of trying it. You know, I get the, I think that's the goal to like, just see if it affects some voters. And I'm all for that. We got to try whatever we can. I understand. But you and you and I here, we're not you know, I don't imagine I have many rust belt swing voters who listen to me.

0:10:59 Thomas: If I do, you know, vote. Vote Biden, please. Dear God, vote Biden. But like the hypocrisy arguments are used. Republicans do not care. And the thing is, it doesn't even really make sense in this instance, because if you're saying like, well, no Supreme Court nominee in an election year, then you're kind of granting that what Mitch McConnell did to Merrick Garland in 2016 was okay, and you're saying like, okay, we're granting that you set the rules now, so please follow your rule. And I get it, you know, there, I guess there's hypocrisy thing. I mean, they can always say like, well, that was because the president was a different party than the Senate. Like, it doesn't, it's just, it's a nothing to me. You know, it just, they don't care.

0:11:46 Thomas: It doesn't matter. And when I see people talking about this and saying the law doesn't mater anymore, well, the reason Republicans can do this is because they've had the law on their side both times. They've gone against norms and that's absolutely true. They violated more norms than Democrats have. They're done it first, which means they just, gained an amazing advantage that we can't catch up to because it's like the bringing a knife to a gunfight, you know, like maybe, oh, we'll learn next time to bring a gun. It's like, well, that's already too late. I think that's kind of happened, but it was a norm that you would, you know, let a president have their, their Supreme court pick. It's not, it's not law. The law says this, the Senate has to approve it.

0:12:32 Thomas: And so Mitch McConnell is the most competent evil person, really, besides Bill Barr. They're in a tight competition there. And anything that is not explicitly in the law, he's going to find a way to not do. And so they didn't do that. And now the law says, well, guess what? The law says the president, you know, nominates a justice and the Senate approves it. And Republicans control the presidency in the Senate. Again, elections have consequences. I know it's tough because it's not all our fault. You know, the system is terrible. The Electoral College is stupid and the Senate is stupid. And I'm going to talk more about that. But still, elections have consequences. That's why we needed to vote differently than we did in 2016, some of us.

0:13:20 Thomas: That was vital then. It's even more important now. Now, so picture again, back to what I was saying, picture a court in which it's three shoo-in bat shit votes, like three, the kinds of stuff we talk about in opening arguments where it's like seven, two decisions where it's just Thomas and Alito, that will now be six, three, uh, and I mean, those are bat shit ones. Like those are things that even like Kavanaugh was like, that's too conservative. I don't know what you're talking about. So we will go from two batshit guaranteed votes to three batshit guarantee votes, which means you only need two more conservatives of Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Roberts.

0:14:05 Thomas: The odds of, for any particular thing, the odds that you're not going to get two more votes on that, that looks tough, and so that's stuff like, again, executive orders that Trump could issue after this, could just be total nonsense, obviously unconstitutional, and then the court could just say, no, that's fine, there's not a damn thing we can do about it. Know, I've, I have lost all interest, uh, and energy in arguing with anyone who's still like, well, I'm lefty, but I'm not, they're both the same, I'm not voting, I don't even waste my fucking time with that anymore. But with this court, with the age that it is, that these people, that these howler monkeys are on the on the right, this is, this will, it doesn't matter.

0:14:51 Thomas: If we voted in Bernie Sanders and AOC or whatever in 2024, it doesn't, it won't matter. For one thing, you won't be able to vote. I mean, obviously it'll be protected in the blue states where we have control to protect it, like California, but in all this, like millions of states, even right now, after RBG passed away, one of the first things Republicans did was issue another challenge to mail-in voting, and I, I believe it was Pennsylvania. And we'll see what happens there. They will make it gerrymandering. By the way, 2020 census year, the bullshit census that they ruined out of, you know, malice and incompetence, both probably equally, that will be terrible data that that has all kinds of consequences that I'm sure we've talked about before.

0:15:40 Thomas: If there's any way that Democrats could have, I think, done a few things legally to try to fix that. And not to mention, we have have to control state government. So that's vital. Like in 2020, that's how Republicans murdered us this last 10 years, as they did this in 2010. I've talked about this before. Republicans very sneakily fought very hard for state government and governorships and all this stuff to be able to control the redistricting. They gerrymandered, they gained a huge advantage, and we're still, you know, they are still reaping the benefits of that. We're still suffering because of that. Well, that happens again in 2020. It's every 10 years. It is the census. And that will be vital. Having the court be able to rubber stamp any stupid Republican nonsense there, you know, like there will be no voting rights guaranteed.

0:16:28 Thomas: It was awful. And voting rights was already under threat, you know, because Roberts is terrible on voting rights. And he will, again, Roberts, the guy who is terrible in voting rights, will be on the left of the court. He'll be of the of the ghouls. He'll be like fourth most left.

0:16:47 Thomas: This is what we're dealing with. There is no option of not winning in November. There's no option. The nec- and here's the thing. The only option after that is some sort of, like, actual revolution. I'm not even joking. And I think that has no chance. That's why I've always been the way I am, and I think, I think there are a lot of you out there, who I hear from, who think that, no, actually, we have to do the revolution, like that's, that's what we are waiting here for. We don't even care, you know, like it doesn't matter, voting for Biden doesn't help because we just have to do the whole revolution thing. I just do not think there's a snowball's chance in hell of that, A, happening, or B, going well.

0:17:27 Thomas: There are people who are like, oh, we got to do a constitutional convention. How do you think that's going to turn out? I think it'll turn out worse than what we currently have. I mean, to get to redo the constitution, you got to have like super majorities of stuff. I don't understand. Here's a fundamental thing I never get. People who can't scrape together the votes to get their candidate in, be it whoever it is, be it Bernie Sanders, be it, you know, the libertarian or whatever, whoever it Is. Those people think when they, despite the fact that they cannot do that thing, they can't get enough people to vote for their candidate to win in a primary or something, but they are going to get enough People for some sort of armed revolution or something.

0:18:14 Thomas: I truly, I do not understand how that could possibly be the right thing to do. That could be more likely that that's going to work. I just don't think people can do that. I don't know, especially Americans. I, I don't know. So, you know, if you're one of those people, feel free to, to rebut me or something. But I, but anyway, the point is that has to be, that's the last option. Like if we don't win in November, that will be the last option available to us. We'll be some, some sort of extreme action. Now, maybe you could argue at me that some sort of demonstrating will do something. I, you know, maybe it will. I don't know if enough people stop all of the country from operating, perhaps. I just, I don'T know.

0:19:00 Thomas: It didn't, it's not like the women's March did anything for Trump. I mean, you Know, it was amazing. It was inspiring. Um, I think it did a lot of good things for people who are willing to listen, but it didn't change Trump is what I'm, what I'm trying to say. Um, and it didn't change McConnell. It didn't change the outcome of Kavanaugh or any, you know, like, so they have the law on their side in order for, so here's the path. I think I started with this. The path is so much narrower. Here's what we have to do now. Here, I, but the way I see it is we have to win in November. That is Biden has to win. And we have to retake the Senate. Those are the options. We get rid of the filibuster. We have to get rid of the filibuster. Uh, meaning, you know, that, that we can pass legislation with a simple majority with actually just 50 votes plus the tiebreaker, uh, in a Kamala Harris would be the tiebreaker vote there.

0:19:46 Thomas: It's nice saying that instead of Mike Pence. And then we have to, um, pack the court. There's a couple other options people are looking at. You know, there's like, just stop listening to the court. That's a weird one. That feels like chaos to me. That also feels like things could go the other way. You know, they could also stop listening to the good stuff the court has said over the years. So that feels a little, I don't know.

I don't like that as much as I like packing the court right now. That seems like to me, the most, the best option and pack the hell out of, out of that thing, you know, really, really pack it in, really just ram a bunch of liberals in that court. And then we need to make Puerto Rico and D.C. a state, and that is if Puerto Rico wants statehood, they give them autonomy to, uh, to choose, um, and I don't know, beyond that, I would like there to be better ways to get rid of the stupid Senate, so, here, here are the major problems, again, I've already said it, but, electoral college, I'm sure I don't need to explain it, it's not democratic,

0:20:46 Thomas: Uh, it's killing us, and the Senate is, like, even, maybe worse, I don't know, like the idea, you always see that meme where it's like 40 million Californians get two senators, and then these states, these combined states, 23 states that combined to a population of 40 million have, of course, 46 senators. So, 46 to 2, and it's amazing, the debate always goes the same way. I say, well, this is stupid, we need to change the system, and then some reply guy is like, no, that's how it's supposed to work, you don't get it, it's in the Constitution. It's like, nah, I, yeah, I get it.

I'm not saying, not saying it's not part of the rules, I'm saying we have to change the rules because it's stupid, it's- It's stupid. I mean, I remember being a Republican back in my high school days, and you come, you know, you're all, well, you know, small states, that's the thing they would get trampled, those small states, we didn't have that, these, these important protections, you know, if these 23 states that have the same number of people as one state get the same representation, Senate, well, tyranny of the majority. And you know, now I realize that like, okay, what's the other side of that, though?

The other side of it is you are looking at a Supreme Court. I think, I think I just saw that there were seven Catholics on the Supreme Court. Yeah, so, I just checked, six now, but obviously, depending on the nominee, who's almost certainly going to be a Catholic fundamentalist, there will be seven of nine justices will be Catholic.

0:22:21 Thomas: This is not to say that I hate Catholics, not a big fan of the religion, personally, my family, some of my family's Catholic, not big fan the belief system, but to have seven of nine people deciding the law for everybody be of one specific pretty very right-wing belief system. It's a joke. It should not be happening. So it all combines to just not be democracy.

I know I jumped back to the Supreme Court, but the Senate, you know, the presidency nominates, the Senate has approval on that, and if the president is decided by a stupid system that values these small states for no reason, and the Senate is overwhelmingly controlled by stupid, you, I say stupid, a system, a stupid, system in which small states have an overwhelming majority that is so tough to fight, You have to win by just astronomical margins to be able to have a majority in the Senate, which we're going to try to do here anyway, and then that leads to, again, a court in which, like, most of the non, again, seven of the nine nominees will be Catholic, and most of them will be, um, appointed by presidents that didn't have popular support. I mean, it's, it's, this is not democracy.

And then the other side, well, but you don't understand, it says in the Constitution, you're not, what part of it's in the Constitution, aren't you getting, Thomas, this is, but they constantly reply to my tweets, and I say, what part of, I don't give a shit, do you not understand? We need to change that. And, uh, in order to actually amend the Constitution, of course you need an impossible thing.

0:23:56 Thomas: That's never going to happen. Um, you need overwhelming. What do you need? It's like either a super majority, plus it goes to the States and then you gotta get like what? 30 or 30 something states. It's not going to happen. I would look it up, except I I don't need to look it up. I know it's not happening anytime soon. In today's partisan environment, there's just no chance. Maybe later on, maybe another time. There's a reason we've only had like one amendment in the last however many years. Too polarized. Not going to happen now. So when I talk about adding states, like I think that's the quickest way to try to get us back to democracy. Even that, I think it'll fall a little short. I don't know that there's a guarantee that Puerto Rico will necessarily be like overwhelmingly democratic. I'm not sure.

0:24:41 Thomas: Could we split California? I feel like you can't take away. The best option would be combine some of these. There should only be one Dakota. There's only the other states should just be like one giant territory that has like, instead of, you know, 20,000 citizens that'll have like 40,000 or something, you know, or just get rid of the Senate, which honestly wouldn't be the worst idea. But again, those are major things that take amendments, not going to happen. So what things that take simple majorities can we do? And part of this is, I meant to say this too, the gloves need to be off. I hope they will be, but I just don't know about Joe Biden in particular and some of the older Democrats in leadership. I think that's going to be tough. But the mind, is all that matters is power.

0:25:28 Thomas: Like, there's no point any longer to pretending that any of this is about anything other than who has the power to do what. And I don't think it was always that way. I think it's, you know, there were a lot of norms that were norms and people decided for some reason there's like a gentleman's agreement. It was a gentleman'S agreement because it was all men, you now, forever. Ever. But I, for some reason, there were these norms that we, you know, you would let the person have their, uh, Supreme court nominees, you'd blah, blah, all this stuff. That's all gone.

0:26:02 Thomas: And, oh, I was going to bring this up, news today. Romney says he'll vote for the, for the nominee. Well, you know, I predicted that. I believe I predicted that in Opening Arguments, the one we did the rapid response. I said this, um, why would you expect anything else from someone like Mitt Romney or any of these Republicans? It's weird, it's like, because Mitt Romney voted for a conviction of impeachment in the Senate, because of that somehow people think he's like a liberal now or something, I don't get it. I mean, I think Mitt Romney, what he did was very laudable when he, when he voted to convict Trump, I think that was, that was actually pretty cool. I said at the time that he was the first one ever to vote against party in the Senate ever.

0:26:47 Thomas: That's, you know, that was cool. I give him that accomplishment, but he's a Republican. That'S when Trump is doing something fucking bat shit that no one should agree with. You know, like that's, there's a chance of Republicans, a tiny chance of Republicans standing up to Trump when he does something bat shit, that, you know, is even against everybody's interest is only in his own interest. There's a a chance. It's, it's too slim. Uh, unfortunately there's, there's not even a guarantee that you would get four senators, by the way, which is what we would need. We would need four Republicans to say no to Trump. We have, I think maybe two, it'S just the usual suspects. Um, but people, you know, we're surprised by Mitt Romney and, and also it's weird. Cause they're saying like, oh, he has no spine, spineless Mitt RomNEY.

0:27:34 Thomas: I see that almost the opposite way. This is what Mitt Romney wants. This is Trump doing something that every Republican wants. This is not what Trump has done in the past, which is totally flout the Republican orthodoxy and not give a shit and just enrich himself. And then a bunch of Republicans have to be like, oh yeah, can I have another? Can you do, yeah, insult the troops more. We love that. We'll back you. We won't say anything. That's spineless.

But when Trump is like, hey, let's have some trickle down economics. The Republicans are like, yeah, definitely. That's great. That's That's almost Trump bowing to them, that's like Trump giving something to, it's not the other way around, this is almost the other, way, that why I said it's like the other-way, this like Mitt Romney getting something he wants from Trump, so I, I don't know why people would at all be surprised, and, and he's not spineless, none of that makes any sense. Sense. At least not for this, I don't know if people think that Mitt Romney was a senator during the Merrick Garland thing, because he wasn't, came after, I yeah, he probably voted on his confirmation, rather, Gorsuch's confirmation, but he wasn't part of the Senate that decided to block Merrick Garland. But, look, the gloves need to be off.

Imagine a world, I just want to say this, imagine a world in which, in 2016, let's say we had control of the Senate, and, uh, Obama was still president, let's say, and in November of 2016, let's say we had, again, we had the control of Senate, Obama's president, and then Trump wins. In the lame duck period, I would have been off to say, screaming my ass off saying, please, dear God, Obama appoint a liberal justice, like squeeze it through in the lame duck.

0:29:18 Thomas: If that came up somehow, or if it's, you know, whether it's the, I, yeah, in this alternate universe, I guess you wouldn't have the Merrick Garland situation because we had control of Senate in this alternate universe. But let's say, you know, Ginsburg had decided to retire. Or Breyer decided to retire, whatever. I would say, please dear God Obama put in the the leftmost justice of all time during the lame duck. And I wouldn't give a shit about it. Republicans then would have been the ones that were like, oh, the norms, the norm. How dare you Democrats? There are norms here. You know, in a way, like, honestly, yes, McConnell jumped on it first. Yes, Republicans have broken norms first in how much they gummed up the works for Obama. So we had to then get rid of the filibuster for lower court appointments to get some of those through.

0:30:06 Thomas: And then Republicans later did it for the Supreme Court, etc., but like, let's just be done with that. I think we should just recognize, as Democrats, it's one thing if you want to use this argument on centrists or something, fine, I, I'm not, if next time I talk to a centrist, maybe I'll try it, but I'm talking to you guys, I, I don't think I have a lot of centrist listeners, uh, but, like, it's something, if you try that centrist argument of like, no fair, they broke the rules or whatever, but in terms of like what we all know as, as liberals here, uh, in this, in this room, listening to the sound of my voice, I don't give a shit, if, if that, if I were McConnell, but the liberal Mcdonnell, I would do the exact same goddamn thing, because I want women to have the right to their own health choices, I want gay people to be able to get married, I want trans people to not be fired, inspired, for being trans.

0:30:57 Thomas: Uh, I want a lot of things. Um, and I, that's what I care about. And you know what? Some conservative douchebag, what is it? Matt something. I don't, I'm not going to look it up. One of those conservative opinion guys, not Ben Shapiro, but one of them was like, why are we pretending this is about norms or fit? Like he was just like, here's the, here's game everybody. We wanted not Merrick Garland in 2016. So we blocked him. And now we want a conservative jurist now, so we're going to do that, that's what it's about. Like he kind of gave up the pretense, which in a way I kind of respect, you know, and think, honestly, let's just give it up, fuck it, there's no pretense, I want the most liberal court any way we could possibly get it, I don't care about the, we're done with the norms, we're down with the filibusters, all that that crap.

0:31:47 Thomas: However we can do it, I want that to happen because here's the principle, the last norm or guiding principle that I care about, which is our system is not democratic and I want it to be more democratic. And now we need to do whatever it takes to do that. We can't play within the rules because it doesn't work. The rules are configured to be undemocratic. We're not able to get through that. Now, this is different from saying anarchy and revolution and all that. I don't think that would work. I really don't. I don't, I don't think it would work, try to convince me. Otherwise, I think the best bet is to try to change the rules, not to end government or get rid of, you know, I, I don't, that seems to me to be a terrible plan.

0:32:33 Thomas: I think that will result in far more suffering than, than anything else. Um, but we can try to do everything. We can play play constitutional hardball. We can take the gloves off and change things to be more democratic. So that things will finally be who can convince more people of which thing, or, I guess to put it another way, what is the policy, what's the position that more citizens support? That's what it should be, and it is just not because of the way our system is. So, that's my current road to anything, we have to win November, we HAVE to win in November, it's not an option, we are done if we don't win in november, we ARE DONE! Gay marriage will be gone, Roe v.

0:33:19 Thomas: Wade, it is not just Roe v. Wade. By the way, Roe v. Wade effectively has been gone, you know, like, there are states in which you can't get an abortion, you have to drive, but well-off people, people of means, will always have access to abortion. Yeah, it's people in lower socioeconomic status who don't, and some states are already effectively down to, like, you know, zero abortion clinics, and it's already gone. However, it can get worse, it can get worse. Strike down Roe, and then a bunch more states will restrict, restrict abortion tomorrow, because they have these laws that are just waiting, they're already on the books, and they have a provision that says if Roe is ever struck down, then this goes into effect immediately the next day, not even the next, why did I say that? That day, it will be, there will be injunctions on abortion in those states.

0:34:06 Thomas: You won't be able to do it. It can be worse. I know you're thinking, how could it be worse than that? I'll tell you how it could be worse than that. A completely bullshit thing whereby the fundamentalists on the court could declare, as Andrew told us in Last Opening Arguments, uh, we were talking about Ginsburg, they could declare a fetus to have rights under the 14th Amendment, which is a batshit legally nonsense opinion, makes no sense, however, when you control the court to this degree, you have the power to make nonsense into sense, you have to make the law be whatever you want it to be, even if that is totally ass backwards, and that would mean that no, no state could even have legalized abortion, so it would flip the the burden there.

0:34:51 Thomas: Like Roe would say, you know, Roe currently says no state can outlaw it, even though they can effectively get rid of it in some ways. And then flipping that would say no, no state could even have the option of it. That's what's on the table! That could happen!

0:35:07 Thomas: That absolutely could happen. Look at what Amy Coney Barrett has said about abortion. That could happen. I don't know if I'd put the odds at 100%, like maybe, you know, for that second. I think Roe will be gone. I dunno if they'll officially do it or if they just keep ruling more and more cases, you know? Chipping away at Roe just to keep people thinking it still exists. You know, they seem to benefit from that. A lot of people, you know, don't have the time to be politics junkies like you or I, know all the details of all this crap. So they think like, yeah, Roe's still good law. And even though it's been effectively taken away for millions of people, but, like, this is what blows my mind, this is why I can't even deal with the both-sides-y people, it's just not even, how do you even have that conversation?

0:35:54 Thomas: I'm not, oh, Joe Biden, well, he's a creep, I'm no, I, yeah, all right, I agree , I agree, I am not a big fan of Joe Biden. Wish he weren't the candidate, he does, not great, but to ignore everything that's gonna happen, if we don't elect Joe Biden is it's, it's too much. You have to be too ignorant or malicious to do that. It's one or the other. You're either ignorant or you actively want bad things to happen. That's it. Or you don't care.

Yeah, I guess you can parse that however you want. One or the Other. You either don't care or you don't know how bad it could get. And the mindfuck of all this is, when you look at the polls and people, you know, I just heard an interview the other day about, like, who the swing voters are, is that this doesn't work on those people, like honestly, somehow, guys, we're in a simulation, this is just hell, because the people we need to make sure vote, most likely, statistically, is not, obviously, it's just a matter of numbers, doesn't mean everybody, but, like statistically speaking, speaking, the marginal voters, the ones who are going to swing this election,

0:37:12 Thomas: The polling shows they don't respond well to these dire scenarios. So when you say like, yeah, well, this, you know, Trump's going to, this shit's going in the world, blah, blah. They're like, then I don't care somehow. I don't know how. Apparently from the polling, they take it as a given that Trump is awful, but like, I guess they don't feel motivated by that or something. The polling shows that they'd be more motivated by giving you something to vote for.

So maybe we should say, you know, Joe Biden's going to give you health care or whatever. He's going to protect Obamacare or whatever it might be. I don't know. Look that up. But I heard that interview and I thought, what an incredible situation we're in. What a special level of hell where you and I are looking at all these horrendous possible consequences, Declaring fetuses people, you know, the census, gerrymandering, into voting rights, voter suppression being just legal, and the court just killing us, like, just absolutely ruining our lives for 30 years or more, and we have to sit here and be like, not saying that, if we, if we want to go and like actually get people to vote for Biden, we gotta be like, yeah, um, so everything's great, and, uh, you know, like you're sweating bullets.

You like can't mention the doomsday device that's like about to be triggered if this doesn't happen. It's what a crazy thing. What a, what a world. So, yeah, if anyone has the next steps of the plan, you know, either split California in two, that's what I started to say earlier, I don't, I think you wouldn't be able to, like, get rid of states, combined states, but maybe, if the adding states thing is a simple majority, maybe, I'll have to ask Andrew on this, maybe you can split a state, maybe we add some,

0:39:01 Thomas: Can you add a state? No, I dunno. There must be more ways to try to make the system more democratic, because, and again, again, picture the end result of this, or the idea that we need to protect small states as though that's a one-way thing. Like, yeah, currently we are protecting the small states. And it's like, the other side of that is these small states are holding us hostage. That's the other part of it. And guess which affects more people by definition. By definition, more people are negatively affected by the tyranny of the minority than the tyranny of the majority.

0:39:40 Thomas: And the funny thing is, the worst things get in these red states, where they outlaw abortion and they don't give healthcare, you know, because of all this Republican ideology, the worse things gets, the more this problem gets worse, because then people move out of those states, or they only, you know, they tend to cluster more in the blue states, and so you can have even more absurd electoral outcomes, where we have these vast majorities that don't win. And it's, it's not sustainable, something has to be done. Okay, the last thing I want to talk about, and I kept this to the end for a reason, is... argument over whether RBG should have retired. And I'm letting you know I'm going to talk about the argument, kind of a meta style, I'm gonna give some facts about it, and I'll tell why I'm doing that.

0:40:29 Thomas: I was getting really meta, several levels of meta. But, like, if you're not interested in that, you can just stop the eps, just quit, and that's fine by me, but I have to say something because it's driving me nuts because seemingly all of the country, I don't know, like all of the left has collectively misremembered history in the most weird way. It's like the Berenstein Bears thing, or Shazam, or Kazam, whatever that thing was, where everyone thought what's his name was in the Shazam movie that didn't exist. It's like that. And, say something, that I have to clarify a few facts if you care, if you care about what actual facts of history are with this RBG thing, um, listen on, I, I, I just, I have to clarify them, it's driving me insane, I have to say something, otherwise, this is a lot of my episodes are that, like, I have have to talk about this.

0:41:23 Thomas: Otherwise I will lose my mind. So that's where a lot of the episodes come from. Um, but it's okay. If you're, if you're someone who's like, I just don't care. I don't want to hear about it. I don't want to rehash that argument. That's totally fine. Um, and don't worry, I'm going to, for those who stick around. I'm also going to recommend Rebecca Traister. You should read her piece. Uh, it is great. I would recommend it over listening to me any day. It's in The Cut, it's called, It Shouldn't Have Come Down to Her, that kind of thing. But anyway, here's why I wasn't gonna get into the argument in the first place, because I don't think it'll matter, you know? So the argument is, you know, people are out there saying, God damn it, I wish RBG would've retired. And other people are saying, how dare you, you misogynist. Like, essentially, to straw man, but that is, honestly, that's happening a lot.

0:42:12 Thomas: A lot of people are saying this is asking a woman to step aside, let alone such an iconic woman, only the second woman to be on the Supreme Court. How dare you ask that person to resign? That's bullshit. That's misogynist. That's sexist. And I get it, but I just don't think that the facts are being represented fairly. But OK, so why I wasn't going to talk about it is, it our only plan now is court packing. And so if, like, RBG has passed away, the time when she could have retired is over. There is nothing to be made on that decision. You might say, well, we can learn from it for next time. And that would be a reason to have the argument. Let's learn from this for next time, except I want to do court packing, and I want make it so there isn't a next time, so that no one ever has to have this decision again, because I want to pack the court with a bunch of liberals so we don't have this problem.

0:43:10 Thomas: So that was the reason I just wasn't even going to bother with it. Who cares? It doesn't matter. It's in the past. Whatever. Then I saw every single argument online, on Facebook, Twitter, everywhere. It would go like one of one ways. It would approximately go one way, which is someone would say, hey, maybe RBG should have retired. And then basically everyone in the world will say, you idiot, Merrick Garland, essentially. And I think what has happened is people have Berenstain Bears. Look that up if you don't know what I'm talking about. We all thought it was Berenstein Bears, but it was actually Berenstain Bears. The weirdest that really blew my mind. And we somehow, we all thought that really weird.

0:43:56 Thomas: Anyway, everyone has done that, but with Mitch McConnell here, Here, how about I quiz you? When do you think Mitch McConnell gained control of the Senate? Just think to yourself. I would imagine this should be a 100% easy question. But somehow everybody thinks it's earlier than it was. Mitch McConnell did not have control of the Senate until the senators were sworn in January 3rd, 2015. That's when Mitch McConnell had control of Senate. It's weird. I think what has happened, I think what happened is that people remember the bloodbath, you know, swing election of 2010. And they think, well, that must be, I guess, in their mind, they remember, like, that must be when, yeah, Mitch McConnell took back over, over Obama, during Obama's term, and then nothing could happen after that.

0:44:50 Thomas: And like, I can understand remembering it that way, it kind of makes sense. That's not what happened, though. 2010, yes, we lost the House. It was a bloodbath in the House, and we lost a lot of Senate seats, but we retained control of the Senate through until the 2014 midterm election. And it's so amazing people are rigidly dedicated to not knowing this. Like, I've had a couple interactions, again, I don't want to get into the argument, but I've commented a couple places just saying, like, hey, FYI, for the record, you know, Democrats controlled the Senate until January 2015. And I've got someone even just say, like, no, I was like, no, yeah, they did, just look, just Google it. Like, they did.

0:45:36 Thomas: Now check your facts. I was like, uh, checked. It's like that, what is that? The office when he's like, can you recrunch the numbers? And he's like, it's in Excel. There's nothing. Okay. Recrunch. It was like that, looking at it right now, folks, we had 53 senators and two independents. Uh, I believe one of those probably would have been Bernie. So that would essentially give us 54 blue votes potentially. But anyway, that was a majority. We had a simple majority after that election, uh, it basically flipped to 54, so then it was 54 Republicans, and they were sworn in January 2015. So if you're looking at potential, when could RBG have retired? Again, I don't, I'm not necessarily going to rehash this argument, I just want to clarify it because it's driving me nuts to see people say over and over, no, she couldn't have retired because, because Mitch McConnell, oh, you think, uh, two words, Merrick Garland.

0:46:31 Thomas: It's like, that's not, that's not the argument. That was after this election, when that happened, that was after Mitch McConnell controlled. And, and what happens then is I think, you know, if you point that out, and the only reason I know all this is because I kind of made this argument a few months back, RBG had a health thing. And I, you know, I said, I kind of wish you would retire. No, no, actually, here's why I said it. I'll come right out and say it. Here's why He said it, there was a meme being shared that was like, I can't believe a system is forcing, you know, an 87 year old woman to, like, hang on to life through all these health scares. Otherwise civilization collapses. It was something like that, like some tweet or whatever. And, um, fair to a point, but I just had to point out, it's like, well, it is true that the system has become, made it so that one person has way too much, you know, role in how people's rights go.

0:47:28 Thomas: Absolutely. Totally granted. But the age part, you Know, I just said at the time, like that's the system didn't make RBG not retire. She could have retired up until that lame duck period. You know, Democrats would have had to, do things a little faster than maybe maybe they traditionally have, but she could have seen the 2014 results and, and could have gotten together and been like, um, I need to retire. Cause I, I don't want to risk two years of Republican Senate. Plus who knows what will happen in 2016 could have. And I've been, I've read up everything I can on this, because I've curious about her thought process. Again, I love RBG. I just posted a photo of Phoebe in an RBG shirt on the day she passed away.

0:48:17 Thomas: I love, I absolutely do. I also believe that it's okay to critique people's decisions from again, there's not much point now, but I, I just wanna, if you're going to be somebody who has this argument, I have to put the actual facts on the record because it's just, I see it every damn day. I see people saying that McConnell had control of the Senate before he did and all this other stuff. That's not true. Um, and, and by people who I really respect have talked about this, like any talk about her retiring is like making a woman step aside, um, know, or like retire high or early. And it's, it's just hard because while I want to grant that this is a fraught topic and you definitely will find, uh, sexist men making the argument sexistly for sure.

0:49:06 Thomas: And then women too, probably, um. And that's all very much a concern, um, but to clarify some facts, the average age in the, in the past 100 years, since 1900, some more, sorry, 120 years, of Supreme Court retirements, the average age of retirement is 73.6, it's the average.

0:49:29 Thomas: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in 2014, underwent a heart procedure, which would mean, at that point, she had had cancer twice, and a heart procedure, and was age 81 in 2014.

0:49:46 Thomas: So, to suggest, as people did at the time, I've dug up an L.A. Times article about it, which, by the way, the person got a lot of heat for, and, you know, I accept that, it's probably good. We should certainly be questioning when men are telling women to retire, especially iconic second women ever on the Supreme Court. Absolutely. But I just want to clarify, if you want to have this argument, the proposition is, should a woman of 81 years of age after two cancers and a heart procedure, perhaps have retired in 2014 at the age of 81, seven and a half years older than the average retirement of any of, of the last 120 years in the Supreme Court.

0:50:33 Thomas: I still see why she didn't, and I don't necessarily blame her for it. I found an interview where she said that she didn't think anyone Obama could appoint would be as left wing as her at that point, 'cause we know that's demonstrably not true early in Obama's administration. And I'll tell you why. And this gets to one of the other responses. The other response you get is, look, no one else could do the job. She still had, no one would have been as left as her. No one, no one could do the thing she was doing. And that makes no sense to me because, you know, we have a demonstrated history of Sotomayor being actually more progressive by a little bit, not a ton, but Sonia Sotomaior is my favorite justice. She's more progressive on a few things. Um, it's pretty much the same.

0:51:20 Thomas: If you look at measures of her versus RBG, pretty much the same, I think the only difference is criminal justice, and, if you're looking at RBG's legacy, just a couple criminal justice decisions, um, like she didn't join, uh, in the finding that solitary confinement should, should not be tolerated, and actually Kennedy at the time did, um, so she, she didn't join a dissent with Kennedy on that, or a concurrence, I, I think, with Kennedy, that solitary confinement is just torture or something.

One of the, I'd have to get Andrew to explain the ruling, but you can look it up. She did that. There's a couple criminal justice matters that she wasn't good on. There's one case that literally Sonia Sotomayor was the only dissent on. The case is Kansas v. Carr, it's a death penalty case, it has to do with, like, jury instructions, again, you, wrong podcast for legal breakdown, look it up, I guess, or, I don't know if we'll talk about it on OA, but anyway, this was an 8-1 case, the only dissent, Sonia Sotomayor, the author was Scalia, so, this is all the liberals on the court, except the most liberal, Sonja Sotomaior, my favorite justice,

0:52:26 Thomas: Everybody else joined a Scalia opinion. The idea that there isn't another woman who would do the job as well as her, I, you know, all due respect to RBG, who's a legend, I just don't think that's true. I mean, it's demonstrably not true. Now there's the other claim of, well, could they have gotten through? And RBG answers that question, that interview, I'll put these links in the show notes, I think I can just dump all my links in there because I have a giant thing of tabs open, um, she specifically says, uh, the, while we've gotten rid of the, for lower court appointments, it's still there for the Supreme Court, and so I don't think we could get somebody passed that would be as left as I want them to be, is what she said in this interview video. And I think that's a little bit like, when you want the decision to be a certain way, you're justifying it.

0:53:19 Thomas: What would have happened is we would have eliminated the filibuster, I think, that's absolutely true. I think the only reason we didn't is because it hadn't come up, and we didn't know it was going to come up. So, Democrats, here's what happened. Just, again, some facts. What happened early on in Obama's tenure, Republicans started doing the norm breaking thing. They didn't, we have a simple majority still, so we could still ultimately approve Obama's nominees. But Republicans started doing all this crap, these tricks like to slow everything down to a grinding halt. They used every dirty trick they could to just gum up the works entirely. And Democrats were very slow to recognize this. This is absolutely at the feet of Democrats, Democratic leadership at the time.

0:54:09 Thomas: Harry Reid, you know, like they should have pulled these nuclear options sooner. Eventually they did in 2013, November, 2013, they said enough is enough. We have to be able to make these court appointments. Like it's just not fair that But coincidentally, you're doing everything you can to slow down the appointment process for the first black president ever. Coincidence? And so they got rid of the filibuster. Democrats got rid of filibuster for lower court appointments in November 2013. They specifically preserved it for Supreme Court appointments. Now, why did they do that? Well, I think that, you know, they recognized that they were doing a norm-breaking thing. And Democrats are far more loathe to do a norm-breaking thing than Republicans.

0:54:56 Thomas: Republicans will proudly just shatter norms. They don't care for the most part. That's why they are better at retaining power than we are. But I think Democrats wanted to kind of split the baby there and be like, well, we're not doing this for the Supreme Court, you know, so we're going too crazy thinking that it wasn't going to matter. Little did they know that Scalia would pass away in 2016 and it did come to matter Because had we gotten rid of it, then we would have been able to get Merrick Garland through.

0:55:25 Thomas: But I absolutely think it's the case. I really do. Even that Democratic Senate would have gotten rid of it to get Supreme Court justice through if RBG wanted to retire. I absolutely believe that's true. I think they were leaving it up there to save face, to try to make it seem like they weren't as norm-breaking as they were, and they didn't think it would come up. And it didn't come up until after they could no longer do anything about it.

So when McConnell took over again, 2015, and then Scalia died in 2016, that it was beyond the point where we could have done it. We didn't have the majority anymore, so we couldn't do it. And here's another thing, I should have said this first, apologies, I don't think we would have even needed the filibuster.

Now, the argument that RBG is making and the sort of anti-RBG retirement argument is, well, Republicans would have opposed it, etc., etc., and yet we only had 53 senators and maybe 54 or 55, I think the independents would have supported the, it's only the hardcore Republicans that wouldn't have supported the Supreme Court nominee. Because again, when McConnell blocked Merrick Garland, that was a dramatically norm-breaking thing. There had only been one that had ever not quite made it up to that point. So like this was a huge norm- breaking thing. Most voters, and this is the thing I was going to say, what McConnell did was he stopped it from coming to a vote, which is very different.

They did not vote down Merrick garland, if you remember properly, because actually I don't think they could have. This is what the House did, too. This is what the house did under Paul Ryan, thing is, like most, it's getting less and less true, but like back in the day, back in my day, 10 years ago, most representatives and senators were still, you know, had these little gentlemen's agreements or whatever,

0:57:15 Thomas: And the way Republicans stopped everything was by not allowing it to come to a vote, and so that allowed Mitch McConnell to be the bad guy. Nobody else really had to take the blame for Mitch McConnell's gambit with Merrick Garland, because he just didn't do it. Said, no, we're not going to vote. And so I actually think had Ginsburg retired and Obama got another nominee again before McConnell took over. So we still had 54 or whatever. I think it would have passed no matter who it was. They would have past. That's my belief. And I think the evidence supports that because McConnell, again, prevented it by not letting it come to a vote there. I think Merrick Garland would have cast. I firmly believe this is true. You can look up opinion pieces on this, likely they would have had the votes because a lot of Republicans don't want to break norms.

0:58:05 Thomas: Not every Republican, fortunately, is Mitch McConnell. Some of them are. A lot of them aren't, though. And they would Have voted for Merrick Garland, and I believe they would've voted for whoever might have replaced RBG. I'm going to give you further evidence for that.

When they got rid of the filibuster, November 2013, so this is the lower court filibusters, under the theory that Republicans wouldn't let anything happen kind of thing, they would have just voted against every Obama lower court nominee, now, even though they don't have the majority. That's what you might imagine.

But if you look at it, they didn't, there were a couple that they voted no on, they challenged, but we still had over 50 votes for all of them, none of them failed, so So that's the period between getting rid of the filibuster and when McConnell took over, after that point, he got no appointments, which is just absolutely stunning, I mean, he got, there were a couple that, like, kind of got grandfathered in, but once you hit, I'm looking at the chronological list here, once you hit 2014, it just ends, so he just got no appointment in his last two years, it's absolutely a travesty, but again, that was only once they took control, so once we got rid of the filibuster, all of the, all of the nominees went through, none were voted down. So I think the votes would have been there.

Okay, having said all that, I have come around, I've looked at every aspect of this argument, and I really don't, I don't really blame RBG, because it really was a small length of time that she would have had to realize this, and, you know, it's hard to blame someone for being optimistic a little bit and thinking, well, you, know, we haven't gotten rid of the filibuster on the Supreme Court nominee, so you're not going to get 60 votes for my replacement,

0:59:56 Thomas: Which, again, again, I've outlined why I think that was a little bit of, you not necessarily true. Like, I think we would have just gotten rid of the filibuster. Put that aside. You know, in her mind, from the interviews I've read here, she's saying, it's probably not going to happen. It's not going be left enough. I bet we're going to win the presidency in 2016 and then and maybe it'll be Hillary and maybe the first ever woman president will get to, you know, nominate my replacement. Won't that be amazing? And um, that's how she lived her life, she lived her life, not letting other people tell her what to do, and I respect that, especially men, I really do. And, and you know, it's, it's hard because we are in the system, and this is why you should read the Rebecca Tracer piece, please read it, I think she puts it great, because, because even she, you know, says like, this, this gamble didn't work out, and results wise we would have been at better off if RBG had retired in 2014, results wise.

1:00:53 Thomas: But, you know, we don't we can't do everything. We don't have perfect information. And I and I can certainly understand why she made that decision. It's hard. I still struggle because part of me is like, you're you're really gambling a lot. Like there's a lot on the line also that, you can have another two years if again, if the plan was, oh, Hillary will nominate ain't my replacement, that's two years. I mean, that was a big gamble for RBG to be in the seat another two years, feels like that's way too much to risk for that, so it's hard, but I get it, you know, I understand, it was a small period of time where she would have had to kind of recognize this and prognosticate accurately, and you know that's hard to do, and there were people who wrote articles at the time who said it'd be nice if she retired.

1:01:44 Thomas: I think maybe they were right, but again, it doesn't matter now. She was a legend. She did everything she could. She fought as hard as she could through the Trump administration. And God damn it, so fucking close. She was so close. She almost made it. Just a couple of months. Oh my God, it's so horrible. It's so sad. She was so close.

1:02:10 Thomas: But as Rebecca Traister says, the system is the problem, the sy-, when the system doesn't work, the, the crux of her article, which again, please read, is when the system is broken, we start to put too much emphasis on individual choice, and we start to say, ah, this person could do this, this person can do this. And it's because we feel powerless. And I, I think she's dead on, you know, the system that brought us here is the electoral fucking college and the stupid ass Senate. Those are the technical terms for them. That's what put us here. You know, it's not the, it's not the court itself. The court, in my opinion, that, that's fine. Like, I mean, we could reform it in certain ways, but like it's more the fact that the of those other two things make it so the will of the people doesn't get through to the court.

1:02:55 Thomas: It doesn't translate through. And there are a number of different ways. There's not one way to fix these things or a number of different things. But one way or the other, we have to get back to where people's voices matter and democracy matters. And we're nowhere near that. So there you have it. There's my correcting a few facts. It's just, sorry, McConnell didn't have power until January 2015. Any time before that was the decision time. And look, if you're sitting here thinking that an 81-year-old woman who'd had cancer twice and a heart treatment procedure in 2014 maybe should have retired seven years after the average age of retirement for the previous 100 years, 120 years, I think, I'll put it this way, I think that argument can be made not in a misogynistic or sexist way.

1:03:51 Thomas: I do not think there's sexism there. By the way, I should have said this. I also think I said this, I said, this in the primary Biden should not be running. He should have retired. Absolutely. I said that a year or more ago. I said, Biden should go on stage, say, Hey, look at this, uh, slew of impressive, young, diverse candidates. I am not going to run. I put endorsing such and such or whatever, any of them. Um, Um, and he would have ridden off into the sunset as a beloved figure by almost everybody. I said that he should have retired. I'm also saying this, by the way, just to make sure we're, you know, covering all the bases. Breyer should absolutely retire if, if Biden wins, uh, and we have the Senate, don't do it if we don't have the senate.

1:04:36 Thomas: Cause I don't think McConnell will ever allow another, uh, Democrat into the court. If he can, I don't think he will, uh? If he has that power. But assuming we swing everything, yes, absolutely, Breyer should retire. And by the way, when Kennedy retired, he retired at about the age RBG would have retired in 2014, roughly. It's close. So it's not some unreasonable young retirement. Those are the attacks that are kind of driving me nuts. It's not forcing someone to step aside early or something. I mean, it's a tough, I get it.

It's, we all love RBG and people are emotionally dedicated to to their arguments and I understand, and we don't want to criticize our heroes, it's hard, but uh, but that's, that's what I think. All right, thanks for listening, um, I hope you got something out of this, and I can't wait to, we have an episode on cults coming up, uh, Lindsey and I, again, based on the, oh, this is good, I can tell people, you should watch the Nexium, it's called The Vow, the documentary on HBO, we've already, already recorded, but this preempted that. And it's really interesting. She talks about the psychology of cults stuff. So that's next episode. I'm excited for it. And I will see you then.

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