Thing that I expect will happen:
- Evangelicals will claim that God killed Ruth Bader Ginsburg so that Republicans can appoint another arch conservative to the court.
- Mitch McConnell will ram someone through, despite the hypocrisy of sitting on Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland for most of a year. In fact, McConnell has already said he will do that.
- The GOP actions will enable the Democrats to pack the court, assuming that Democrats prevail in both the presidency and the Senate in this election. The only question is whether they will stop at 11 or go to 13.
- Partisanship will get even worse.
UPDATE: Good articles about Ruth Bader Ginsburg in Electoral-Vote and by Heather Cox Richardson.
6 Comments
E-V says 4=13
I heard on analyst with an interesting thought.
If they do not fill the vacancy right away they gain points for yielding to the Democrats and it will boost their currently-wavering support from the evangelical right, who will rally behind being able to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Trump may be overconfident enough to try this scenario, and hopefully he will still lose the election.
— maybe.
@RK – 3 words: Lame duck session. The most likely scenario is, I believe, for Moscow Mitch to wait for this period to ram through another far right horror story.
“Partisanship will get worse”. This is an absolute certainty, whoever wins. Our only hope for ending the accelerating death spiral of the US is a non-trumpian majority to recognize that the far right have been engaged waging a pitched battle for decades. Heeding centrist cries for hand-holding and Kumbaya outreach to fanatical extremists will do no more than offer brief pause before our next avoidable descent to failed state status.
The math on adding four justices is simple. If Trump and McConnell push through a conservative justice, that will make a 6-3 conservative majority. To get a liberal majority, the Democrats would have to add at least four liberals, expecting to get 7-6 results.
I think four, (women), is a nice round number. And maybe OAC would be a good pick. Mainly because it would so irritate the right. And I think RBG would like the idea. And they should pick people as young as they can find, so they will be on the court for decades to come.