Ruth Bader Ginsburg is dead. I still can't wrap my head around that. Even though she was 87 and had had multiple bouts with cancer, she was tough as nails. You just assumed she'd live forever.
But no one lives forever, not even a legend. And whatever else you might think of her, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a legend; she was an American treasure. She was to women's rights what Thurgood Marshall was to civil rights. To say she will be missed is an understatement.
I'm struggling to find the right words, and to be honest I'm not even sure they would suffice. The best I can come up with is to paraphrase that great line from Shakespeare's Hamlet, "We shall not look upon her like again."
I wanted this piece to be a tribute, but as Michael Tomasky sadly and correctly pointed out, the politics of this is "necessary and urgent." That's because in a matter of few weeks, this lion of the Supreme Court will be replaced by Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell.
Please spare me with all the flashbacks to McConnell's statement from February, 2016 when he blocked even the consideration of Merrick Garland. That Supreme Court vacancy was eventually filled by Neil Gorsuch fourteen months later. If you haven't figured out by now that Republicans are hypocrites you're beyond hope anyway. So, yes, Trump will nominate someone and, yes, McConnell will have the votes to get them appointed.
Is there a chance that maybe a few "brave" souls will buck McConnell? Perhaps, but I wouldn't bet the farm on it. Remember, McConnell only needs 50 "yes" votes. So maybe Mitt Romney takes another bullet; hell he's already damaged goods from his conviction vote in Trump's Impeachment trial, so what's one more wound? And maybe if Mark Kelly beats Martha McSally in the Arizona special election, he can be seated in time to vote "no." That leaves 51 possible "yes" votes.
Lisa Murkowski has stated publicly that she won't vote to confirm another justice until after the next inauguration. Good for her, but that still leaves McConnell with 50 possible "yes" votes. If you're holding your breath waiting for Susan Collins to grow a pair, good luck with that. If she wins her race, it probably means that Trump has been reelected, so there's no way in hell she'd go against her party's president, especially not when he has the power to make her life a living hell. And if both lose, would she even have the incentive to do the right thing and vote "no"? Yeah, right! This was the senator who thought Trump would be "chastened" by his impeachment experience. And you're banking on her?
One thing you can take to the bank. If Trump does lose in November, McConnell will move heaven and earth to get a nominee through before the next session of Congress is sworn in. The one thing McConnell has managed to accomplish over the last three and a half years is pack the courts with Trump's judicial nominees. Two hundred, in fact. In the end, it'll be his lasting legacy to the Republic he helped destroy.
The best Chuck Schumer and Senate Democrats can do now is to delay the vote for a few days. The bottom line is this: whether before the election or during the lame-duck session, that Supreme Court vacancy is going to be filled.
But I don't want to spend any more time talking about the GOP; they're not to blame here. That's right, they're not. Blaming Republicans for the mess we're in makes about as much sense as blaming the dog for defecating on your rug. No, if you're looking for someone to pin the blame on, I suggest you gaze over at the other side of the political aisle.
I'm not being obtuse. Democrats and progressives must equally take responsibility for the disaster that happened here. Let's start with Ginsburg herself, who had been battling cancer for quite some time and knew in 2014 that Republicans stood a half-way decent chance of retaking the Senate. She could've stepped down and allowed Barack Obama to nominate her replacement. Instead she resisted calls to do so and when pressed, replied by asking, "So tell me who the president could have nominated this spring that you would rather see on the court than me?"
In a perfect world, no one, but for an 81 year-old cancer survivor, it wasn't a matter of preference but necessity. Even if Obama couldn't have found someone as liberal as Ginsburg, there certainly were qualified judges and lawyers out there who would've done a more than admiral job. After all, Obama did manage to nominate Sonia Sotomayer and Elena Kagan to the Court and they are hardly what I would call chopped liver.
Then there was Obama himself who, after Antonin Scalia died, decided to nominate a moderate judge like Garland, naively believing Republicans would be receptive to that pick and allow him to receive and up or down vote in the Senate. Instead, McConnell blocked his nomination and didn't even grant Garland the courtesy of an interview. What Obama should've done is nominate a progressive to replace Scalia. Doing that would've energized the base of the Democratic Party. It was Obama's pragmatism, his desire to do the right thing, that proved to be his undoing.
Next up we have Hillary Clinton, who on top of running the worst presidential campaign since Thomas Dewey, stood by and watched the Garland debacle unfold. While the nomination was Obama's to make, she could've come out and announced that if she won the election she was going to nominate a liberal to replace Scalia. Had she done so, I believe she would've won the election. One of Clinton's biggest problems was lack of enthusiasm within the base. This would've given them the issue they needed to get on board.
And McConnell would've then had a tough decision to make. Gamble the fate of the Court on Trump winning, or, believing Clinton would prevail, settle for at least half a loaf. In the end, McConnell never had to make that decision because a sitting president and a presidential nominee never forced him to. They could've used the Garland pick as leverage; instead, McConnell ran the clock out on them. That's why he is who he is. Hate him all you want, but if Democrats had someone like him on their side, there'd be at least five liberals on the Supreme Court right now.
But my biggest bone of contention isn't with Ginsburg or Obama or even Clinton; it's with the progressives who stayed at home in 2016, or, worse, voted for Jill Stein. How does it feel knowing that your selfishness was the primary reason the worst human being ever to run for political office is living in the White House?
Don't even dream of denying your complicity here. I won't have it. Those votes that went to Stein in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, and the countess ones that were never cast at all, cost Clinton the election. Period, end of story.
Al Gore wasn't pure enough for you; John Kerry wasn't pure enough for you; Hillary wasn't pure enough for you. Enough with the purity tests, for Christ's sake. This isn't a rock concert. If you need inspiration to vote, try yoga or some other form of meditation. But get your ass out to the polls. In a binary world, there are only two choices: right or wrong; chocolate or vanilla. You want pistachio, go to Baskin Robbins.
Yesterday morning there were four liberals on the Supreme Court. Now there are three. I know shit happens, but more often than not, the shit that happens is of our own making. Right now, Joe Biden is ahead in the polls. If he doesn't win this November the number of liberal justices will continue to go down until there are none left. And when that happens, the last fifty years of jurisprudence in this country will cease to exist. Abortion rights, gay rights, civil rights, Obamacare, all of it will be gone. You want purity? That's about as pure as it gets.
I know what you're thinking; to be honest, it wasn't all that hard. Why should I vote for another centrist Democrat? I would remind you that it was a centrist Democrat by the name of Bill Clinton who nominated Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the Supreme Court.
Still not inspired? Just wait until December when Ted Cruz is being sworn in by John Roberts as the next associate justice of the Supreme Court. By then, of course, it'll be too late.
Elections have consequences, people. And this election is about as consequential as they come.
Comments