“The side that wants to take the choice away from women and give it to the state, they’re fighting a losing battle,” Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in a 2009 New York Times interview. “Time is on the side of change.”
Ginsburg died Sept. 18 at 87 after a difficult battle with metastatic pancreas cancer. She was the second woman appointed to the Supreme Court and was a long-time fighter for gender equality and civil rights.
RBG, as she was affectionately known, voted to ensure and uphold abortion rights, same-sex marriage, affirmative action, access to health care and so much more. She was a trailblazer and spent her life working to improve the lives of others.
Instead of honoring and remembering this iconic woman’s legacy, however, the news cycle has quickly shifted to the complete politicization of an open Supreme Court seat.
Power-hungry Republicans seem to be foaming at the mouth to push through yet another culturally right-wing judge with not even two months until the election.
Of course, this craven move is exactly the opposite of the precedent set by the same Republicans — led by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. — in 2016 when they blocked former President Barack Obama from nominating Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, arguing that presidents should not be allowed to seat justices during election years.
Despite the blatant hypocrisy, it seems likely McConnell and his gang of spineless lawmakers — the GOP — will at the very least try to push this through.
“We’ve got the votes to confirm a Justice Ginsburg replacement before the election,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. — a spineless lawmaker — said on Fox News earlier this week.
Quick question Graham: how can you confirm that the entire GOP will vote “yes” on a Supreme Court nominee before you even know who the nominee is?
Graham gave the whole game away right there: he admitted the Supreme Court is not at all an unbiased check on the legislative and executive branches, but rather a home for purely partisan political theater.
So I pose this question to Democrats: what are you going to do about it?
It’s clear that Senate Republicans are more than willing to lose the initial public relations battle by going back on their word. It’s all in hopes that clinching this seat will win them the war. Are you willing to stop them?
Dear Democrats, it’s time to play hard ball.
Last time around, you let McConnell hold Merrick Garland’s nomination hostage. But, as RBG said, “time is on the side of change,” and we can’t afford for you to avoid changing tactics this time.
Some have posited that Ginsburg’s death is a win for Democrats because even if Trump’s nominee is seated on the bench, Dems can just add two seats to the Supreme Court when they assume power.
Except, if Joe Biden wins in November, he’s not likely to fight for that.
Biden has a history of opposing court-packing — the strategy of adding seats to the Supreme Court — and has avoided discussions on whether he would push for expanding the court since RBG’s passing.
But aside from court-packing, Democrats can stop Republicans in their tracks if they have the political will to do so.
The most talked-about option is convincing four GOP senators to defect and vote against their party’s head. Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, have already publicly opposed filling the seat. But the rest of the GOP is either standing firm or likely to support Trump and approve his nominee.
This strategy of picking off Republican senators is likely to fail just as it did in 2018 when Democrats wanted to stop Justice Brett Kavanaugh from being confirmed.
The strategies not being talked about are admittedly more drastic, but could prove very effective.
If the House of Representatives, currently controlled by Democrats, filed articles of impeachment against the president for crimes not included in their original filing back in December, the Senate would be forced to immediately take up impeachment hearings.
These hearings would take precedence over the Supreme Court nominee confirmation, and would allow Democrats to stall the Republicans’ time until the election.
The Democrats could also leverage a possible government shutdown in order to stop Republicans from pushing a nominee through. Congress is due to pass a new budget by Sept. 30 or it will face a government shutdown.
But Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has already struck down the idea of shutting down the government, despite it being a point of leverage.
Though the Democrats are currently in a difficult position, blocking the Republicans from reneging on their own precedent is not impossible. Democrats should be able to win this battle and the long war if they are strategic and relentless in their approach.
If they fail, it will be because they lacked the necessary courage to finally play hard ball.
