Associate Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is irreplaceable. Her opinions were sharp and incisive, her struggles and her workouts inspiring. She became both a feminist icon and an action figure. She died after a long struggle with cancer on Friday, the first night of the Jewish New Year. Crowds of mourners immediately formed outside the Supreme Court in Washington to sing “We Shall Overcome” and for a recitation of the Kaddish.
Ginsburg said often that she stood on the shoulders of giants. Perhaps it takes one to know one. Nothing I can write here can do her appropriate tribute. I leave that to Dahlia Lithwick who knew her and who offers advice on what comes next. RBG may be irreplaceable, yet she will be replaced:
America has lost a warrior and it’s OK to be crushed. I am flattened. And I will mourn, because she deserves to be mourned. But we are also facing an almighty battle that will rage in the coming weeks, with attempts to fill her seat in an unseemly and grotesque manner. It will be hard, and painful, but if you find yourself feeling hopeless and powerless, then you are empathically doing it wrong. Because if anyone had a right to say “nah,” it was the woman who couldn’t get a job or a clerkship after graduating at the top of her class. But she pushed on, and then she pushed forward. She stepped into the fight of the phenomenal women who paved the path before, and now, well, it’s time to step into her fight and get it finished. I think the Notorious RBG would have peered owlishly out at all of us tonight and asked what the heck we are waiting for. And I think we can probably honor her best by getting to it.
Former Vice President Joe Biden gave this statement Friday night: “Tonight and in the coming days, we should focus on the loss of the justice and her enduring legacy. But there is no doubt – let me be clear – that the voters should pick the president and the president should pick the justice for the Senate to consider. This was the position the GOP Senate took in 2016.”
That was Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s rationale for holding Antonin Scalia’s Supreme Court seat open for ten months and handing Barack Obama’s pick to Donald Trump.
On that note, I can add something based on how the GOP operates in North Carolina.
I know nothing of U.S. Senate procedure, just that with McConnell in charge, as we have learned, norms are disposable. My caution to Senate Democrats is they may not have the coming days to mourn and had best watch their backs. Expect no hearings. No vetting. Just a snap vote. Any day.
N.C. Republicans had threatened an override of Gov. Roy Cooper’s (D) budget veto for months in the summer of 2019. House Speaker Tim Moore (R) claimed he had said repeatedly “he would hold the veto override when the votes were secured.” He pushed back the vote 32 times in July and August because he did not. On Sept. 10, Moore again put the override vote on the next day’s calendar. Democratic Leader Darren Jackson asked Republican Rules Committee chair David Lewis if they could hold off the vote until the afternoon so they could caucus. The two leaders agreed, or so Jackson thought. The next day being Sept. 11, many members including the governor would be attending memorial events in the morning.
When the session opened at 8:30 a.m., Moore called a vote on the veto override within minutes. It passed 55-15 with 38 Democrats and 10 Republicans not voting. They were not in the chamber.
With that in mind, which GOP senators are behind in their races, which are tied, and which few may have independent streaks, etc., does not impress. All the punditry we will hear surrounding how McConnell could muster 51 votes to approve a new Supreme Court pick seems like so much inside-the-Beltway navel-gazing.
Here in North Carolina, Moore vowed he would hold the 2019 veto override only when he had secured the votes. He secured his three-fifths override margin on a day over 40 percent of House members were absent, most of them Democrats. They had been misled. On 9/11.
Democrats who were there responded with fury. Rep. Deb Butler unleashed an epic tirade against Moore on the floor of the House. Moore told the press that afternoon, “If they didn’t want it to pass, all they had to do was show up for work.”
With Ginsburg gone ands Trump’s reelection chances in jeopardy, all bets are off, Jonathan Last writes at The Bulwark:
If Trump and Republicans replace Ginsburg it will destroy the remaining public legitimacy of the Supreme Court. Full stop.
The Republican party’s willingness to invent, bend, cherry-pick, or break rules and norms as needed in the pursuit of power would be undeniable. Already Republican activists have begun creating ludicrous, tortured rationales: Since 1880, no Senate with more than three left-handed members has failed to vote on the nominee of a president whose name contains the letter “d.” To anyone with ears to hear and eyes to see, these justifications are an affront to common sense and basic fairness.
If Republicans choose this route, their ruthlessness would have resulted in not one, but two SCOTUS seats that will be widely regarded as stolen. And worse: stolen by a president who was himself elected despite a decisive loss in the popular vote.
“My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed,” Ginsburg told her granddaughter before her death. May she have her last wish.
● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.