by cmsellers » Sat Sep 19, 2020 4:28 am
Not being a liberal, my feelings about Ginsberg are that she was a perfectly adequate liberal justice, but nothing exceptional aside from her gender. It's sad she passed though, and cervical cancer is a shitty way to go. I'm also not much one for decorum, so I'm gonna leap right into the politics of her death.
In a move that should surprise no one, Moscow Mitch immediately called for the seat to be filled, in the same press release that he expressed condolences.
Stripped down to the basic propositions: "we had the power to block Garland, so we did. Now we have the power to replace Ginsberg, so we will." Interestingly, Moscow Mitch
doesn't claim that Americans elected Trump. Wonder if he's an oversight, or if he expects to be corrected if he does that.
In a display of incompetence that should surprise no one familiar with him, Chuck Schumer didn't even express condolences for Ginsburg's death before saying the seat should be filled by the next president. Republicans on Twitter are having a field day with that.
Ginsberg expressed her dying wish that her seat be filled by the next president, to which Republicans are responding with her quote that nothing in the Constitution says Senators should wait in an election year. This, of course, conveniently ignores the fact that Mitch McConnell started a brand-new precedent when he invented the "Biden rule." (Biden's actual proposal was that vacancies close to an election should be filled in the lame duck session, meaning McConnell may end up reverting to the actual Biden rule.)
That said, if she wanted to retire under a Democratic president, she should have retired under Obama. I don't know if she thought that only she could do what she did, or wanted the first female president to appoint her successor, or just really liked her job, but whatever her reasoning, it was an act of hubris.
Many Republicans, meanwhile, are hitting back that we need nine seats in case the election is contested. I've seen the tweets, but I'll include this one from a journalist.
Funny how that wasn't a concern for them in 2016. Funny how it's necessary to have an extra Trump judge to weigh in an on election he's promised to contest if he loses no matter what the circumstance.
that she wouldn't support filling RBG's seat if she passed. While I'm sure she regrets the timing, Lisa Murkowski showed with her Kavanaugh vote that she's willing to buck McConnell on these things.
Chuck Grassley, Susan Collins, and Lindsay Graham, at a minimum, are all on record saying during the Garland thing that they wouldn't let president Trump fill a hypothetical vacancy in 2016 either. There may be other sitting GOP senators who've said the same thing, but I'm not sure. Grassley is retiring in two years, while Graham and Collins face tough Senate races. It's not clear, given how red South Carolina is, what the wise move for Graham is, but it's clear that what the smart one for Collins is. I'm therefore sure that she will honor her word as long as she's not the 51st vote against Trump's nominee. A lot of people are putting their hopes in Romney, which strikes me as ridiculous. As long as Trump doesn't nominate someone manifestly unqualified, Romney has an interest in confirming conservative judges.
I've called Senator Cornyn's office and told him that if Trump's nominee is confirmed, I will not only be voting for Hegar, but donating to her and campaigning for her as well. Cornyn not only sits on the judiciary committee, but is one of the few GOP senators up for re-election for whom a vote to confirm could make them substantially
vulnerable (the others are Collins, David Perdue, and maybe Joni Ernst; all the remaining GOP senators up for re-election are either so far behind (Gardner, McSally, Tillis) or so far ahead it doesn't matter, or are running in deeply red states (Alaska, South Carolina, Montana), where the calculus is unclear. I still expect Cornyn to rush through confirmation, but unlike Ted Cruz, who also sits on the Judiciary Committee there's not
hope.