To Honor Ginsburg, Democrats Have One Choice: Go Nuclear
It’s a popular sentiment on the left: Don’t mourn, organize. But with the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, that won’t be enough. Ginsburg, a hero of female empowerment and of the Supreme Court, deserves much mourning. But Democrats and progressives can waste no time prepping for the battle royal that lies ahead. After all, it took Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell mere minutes after the news of RBG’s passing to declare that the GOP-controlled Senate will vote on whoever Donald Trump sends its way to fill the Supreme Court vacancy—a direct eff-you to the Democrats after McConnell in 2016 refused to consider President Barack Obama’s SCOTUS nominee Merrick Garland with the phony-baloney argument that the Senate should not consider new justices during an election year. So yes, Dems will have to organize, but they must do more: They have to get ready to rumble.
What is coming, at least as the Republicans see it, is a grand political clash. They have been hellbent on reshaping the entire federal judiciary and especially drool over the prospect of locking the highest court into a right-wing course that will last decades and counter demographic trends that favor Democrats. This is their Holy Grail. After all, nothing galvanizes conservative evangelical voters more than the courts. For political consultants, it has long been conventional wisdom that right-wingers obsess over the composition of the courts and the Supreme Court far more than progressives. So Ginsburg’s departure is a gift for Trump. If there has been any erosion occurring on the edges of his conservative and evangelical base, his effort to shove another anti-choice, pro-corporate conservative on to the highest court could certainly shore up that ground for him. Here’s something Trump can campaign on for the next six and a half weeks, without breaking a sweat or fielding a tough question. It’s his lifeline. A cure for his coronavirus problem.
It will be bare-knuckles politics from the right. Do or die. By any means necessary. To replace Ginsburg with a young right-wing extremist. And for the Democrats to have a chance of thwarting them, they must realize that this fight is not only a matter of persuasion. They will not win by writing well-reasoned op-eds. Cable host tirades will be of little use. Panel discussions will be irrelevant. Clever ads highlighting GOP hypocrisy won’t do the trick. Angry editorials in the New York Times won’t help. Not even a freckin’ David Brooks column (“conservatives should realize they have an interest in preserving democratic norms!“) will do them any good. Passionate speeches on the floor of the US Senate? Fuggedabout it.
This is about power.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/09/ruth-bader-ginsburg-death-democrats-whats-next-mcconnell-trump/?fbclid=IwAR0n_JliK6hvm_RM1BGHdY2uSTNkMoi7qJ6yvxL4GCtSdWpp_bnJ64X9T_k
