Amidst the encomiums the editors of the Wall Street Journal sum up how events will unfold pretty accurately in my opinion:
The President has the power to nominate a successor as soon as he desires, and the Senate then has the power to confirm or not. The timing of that vote is a matter for the Senate to decide, and the current Senate can hold a confirmation vote even on the last day it is in session if it chooses.
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a statement Friday evening that “President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate.†He is right to hold such a vote. The GOP retained its Senate majority in 2018 in large part because of the political backlash from the smearing of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Whether Mr. McConnell holds a vote before or after the election is a prudential political decision based on the likelihood of getting the votes for confirmation.
Democrats are sure to raise as a precedent Mr. McConnell’s refusal, in 2016, to allow a Senate vote on Barack Obama’s nominee after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. But that was a constitutional use of the Senate majority that Democrats would also have employed, as no less than New York Democrat and now Minority Leader Chuck Schumer had declared toward the end of George W. Bush’s second term.
GOP voters will insist that a Republican Senate vote on Mr. Trump’s nominee in this Congress. Does anyone who has ever met Mr. Schumer think that he wouldn’t insist on a confirmation vote now if he were Majority Leader and a Democrat were President?
There is one way that we could avoid bitter controversy on judicial appointments: Congress could start doing its job and stop depending on Supreme Court justices to “legislate from the bench” and work Congress’s will without leaving Congress’s fingerprints on it. That’s the source of an enormous amount of today’s acrimony. Too much social legislation has already been effected by judicial decree but it is likely to continue. It maintains the cozy situation of Congress being able to get results more extreme than they’re willing to vote for.
That, of course, is correct. But I suspect that from a Senator’s point of view, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And their world is just fine.
Really need the whole Supreme Court mess fixed. Lets acknowledge that they are political appointments and they vote based on politics. The goal is not to get qualified people but rather they youngest and most extreme people you can get on the court. Make their terms 10 or 12 years or 9 years and replace one each year.
I have no good ideas on how to make Congress do its job. I do think it is tied up with decreasing the amount of power that has been ceded to the executive branch.
Steve
I agree. Delegating its power to the other two branches of government has become a strategy for political longevity.