Our Struggle

In a piece at RealClearPolitics Charles Lipson pretty aptly characterizes the struggle that will follow Justice Ginsburg’s death:

Replacing any Supreme Court justice is important, but substituting a conservative for a liberal giant like Ginsburg or the 82-year-old Justice Stephen Breyer, when he retires, would be far more consequential. That’s why the fight over the Ginsburg’s vacant seat will be so fierce, worse even than the brawl over Kavanaugh, who was smeared by multiple, last-minute allegations of sexual assault, none of which were substantiated. That fight was so toxic that several senior Democrats openly rejected the idea that Kavanaugh should be presumed “innocent until proven guilty,” a bedrock assumption of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence for over a thousand years.

The Democrats’ immediate demand is for Ginsburg’s seat to be left vacant until a new Senate and president can fill it. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer made that demand Friday night, shortly after Ginsburg’s death was announced. All other Democrats will follow. They will pointedly add that the Republicans, who controlled in the Senate in 2016, refused to give Merrick Garland a hearing or vote after President Obama nominated him to fill Scalia’s seat. Republicans said then that nine months was too close to the election. It would be grossly unfair, Democrats say, for those same Republicans to move forward with their own nomination now.

McConnell has already rejected that argument, promising to fill every vacancy on every federal court during the current Congress. He is saying that the current situation is different since the presidency and Senate are now controlled by the same party. He will quote Democrats’ statements in 2016, when they insisted on voting immediately to fill the Supreme Court vacancy.

That both Republican and Democratic leaders are hypocrites, as Mr. Lipson goes on to aver, is obvious but my observation when Senate Republicans rejected President Obama’s nominee to replace Justice Scalia is more to the point: they are politicians. That is what all politicians do. Not just the ones you don’t like but the ones you like, too. It ain’t beanbag.