On September eighteenth, eightyseven year old Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a feminist icon and Supreme Court Justice, died of cancer. Like a lot of progressives, I was a big fan of her not only as a justice, but as a wise and strong person who was one of only a handful of women to attend Harvard Law School in the nineteen fifties. While her death was far from surprising (she had been in ill health for years), the timing of her passing has sent shockwaves through the already tumultuous upcoming presidential contest, coming as it did less than two months before election day.
President Trump immediately pounced on the opportunity to appoint another conservative to the court, giving him three such appointments in the past four years. And, of course, most of the Republican party has fallen behind him. Which shows just how cynical and hypocritical the Republican party has become. Back in February of twenty sixteen, months before the election, with Barack Obama in the last year of his presidency, conservative Justice Antonin Scalia died, and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell refused to allow Obama to appoint another justice, blocking the appointment in the Senate and justifying it by saying that it was too close to the election to allow Obama to carry out his constitutional duty and choose another justice. It should be understood that this was a completely unprecedented move by McConnell, a shameless power grab against a popular president that McConnell delighted in carrying out. And now, naturally, he has completely changed his tune, gleefully preparing to affirm another Trump pick less than sixty days before the election.
Another conservative on the court could push it to the right for decades to come. Abortion rights, gay marriage, voter rights laws, and environmental regulations could all be put on the chopping block. If it happens, it will be just another way that the Republican party has managed to shove through minority rule in this century: consider that Democratic presidential nominees have won the popular vote in four out of the last five elections, and yet the Republican party has held the White House for twelve of the past twenty years. That means that if Trump gets another pick, four out of the nine justices will have been chosen by presidents who did not get a majority of the vote. And it's likely that those justices will make decisions banning gay marriage and abortion rights even as majorities of the American public now support those rights.
So what can the Democrats do? Well, it's possible that a handful of Republican Senators in close upcoming elections just might refuse to go along with Trump and McConnell and put the brakes on another juridical pick until after the election. Senator Lisa Murkowski has already said she would prefer that, and others may follow.
But, if that falls through, what can the Democrats do to stop another conservative justice from being appointed? Not a lot. After all, expecting the Republican Party to be consistent with their past actions is madness in the era of Trump, a president who often can't be consistent in the same speech!
There is one other out, and it would be a bold move: if Joe Biden wins the presidency in November, he could pack the Supreme Court. Although the number of justices has always been held at nine, there is no hard fast rule that says that no president cannot appoint more. Sure, the Republican Party would froth at the mouth if that happened, but so what? Remember that McConnell's move against Obama's choice was also unprecedented. Biden, for his part, has downplayed the idea, but I really think he should consider it. It's clear that when Biden first got into politics there was a sense of camaraderie between the parties, despite their disagreements. He needs to realize that those days are over, and that, sadly, both parties have become so diametrically opposed that compromise on major issues is almost impossible. The only way that a Democratic agenda can be achieved is without Republican help in any way. And that means that there has to be a progressive majority on the Supreme Court. The only way forward is to counter hardball politics with hardball politics.
No comments:
Post a Comment