Specifically, the article is wrong that "The first thing the Red Army did was kill the czar and his family, to make it clear they weren’t kidding around."; the revolution was in October and the czar was killed on 16 July 2018. The fate of the czar was one of many decisions that weighed on Lenin at that time.
Also: "nothing got better in Russia for five decades" is not an accurate analysis. Lenin was a butcher; Stalin was worse. Lenin's wife started a school for librarians and the country went from backwater to a nuclear power in 1948, launched a satellite 10 years after that.
Given that Russia might not have survived the wars of the period and put up strong economic growth up until 1970 or so you have to give Stalin at least a "C" in retrospect. In the 1970s both the West and the Communist Bloc faced an economic crisis which the West weathered better.
Personally saw a lot of parallels to the bolshevik/menshevik/socialist divide in recent US history.
PS: you have a typo of 2018 instead of 1918
> If they have that majority before then, it doesn’t matter who wins the election, because a 6–3 court will kit-bash some reason to hand Trump a second term.
While a partisan intervention by the court is grounds for concern, and certainly one expects that a Trump appointment on the EV of the election will be made with the possibility of an election contest at the top his mind, I don't see a lot of reason to believe Kavanaugh (for his many and deep faults) or Gorsuch (likewise, though to a lesser extent), much less the pre-Trump Republican appointees, are likely to be particularly bad actors here.
I know a lot of liberals will point to Bush v. Gore, but remember there that while the Court was sharply divided on the remedy, the decision that the recount as mandated by the Florida courts was unacceptable was 9-0.
> So the Democrats are threatening that filling Ginsburg’s seat means they will create two to four more seats right after they win the Senate, if that happens.
No, “the Democrats” are not. Sure, there are people who have suggested that, and all kinds of other things, but no group of officeholders has threatened it, or even committed to pushing other Democrats for it.
> They might add D.C. and Puerto Rico as states,
D.C. statehood (or at a minimum equivalent autonomy plus voting representation in Congress, which amounts to the same thing since it already has the electoral votes of a state) has been supported by almost every Democratic Platform since 1972. Anything that increass partisan rancor and reduces incentives to try to acheive bipartisan consensus means Democrat are more likely to push it in the case of a triple (President/Senate/House) win, but it's not really specifically tied to this Supreme Court seat.
Puerto Rico actually has another statehood referendum this November; if statehood wins that will be there in a row. Democrats will be under significant pressure to recognize the referendum if it passes, which it probably will. or even change the rule of apportionment. Republicans probably should be, too, as the pro-statehood faction includes Puerto Rican Republicans. Again, tje SRNG seat is tangential.
> or even change the rule of apportionment.
That would take a Constitutional Amendment, which a Congressional majority won't get ratified.
More likely (though again tangential to the RBG seat) would be enforcing the disenfranchisement clause of the 14th Amendment