When should RBG have stepped down?

[Beautiful Disaster]

65. So her goal was to what...?

Your point doesn't add up. If she knew Obama would struggle to get someone as liberal as she was with a DEMOCRATIC senate - how could you rationalize that she would believe Obama or Clinton or anyone else could get as liberal of a justice with a REPUBLICAN senate?

It's illogical.

Odds dictated that the Democrats were going to lose the Senate in 2014. For someone as smart as RBG, she certainly knew the odds were stacked against the Democrats to grow their majority in 2014. In fact, only once did a president grow his majority in a midterm year going back to 1978: Bush in 2002. That's it.

The Democrats lost three seats under Carter in 1978.

The Republicans lost one seat under Reagan in 1982.

The Republicans lost eight seats, and the Senate, under Reagan in 1986.

The Republicans lost one seat under Bush in 1990.

The Democrats lost eight seats, and the majority, under Clinton in 1994.

The Democrats and Republicans retained the same amount of seats under Clinton in 1998.

The Republicans lost six seats, and the majority, under Bush in 2006.

The Democrats lost six seats, and the majority, under Obama in 2010.

The odds dictated in 2013, after Obama began his second term, that this would be the highwater mark - at least for the second term. Every other midterm showed us exactly what he was facing: a reality where he was likely to lose the senate in 2014. If RBG couldn't see that, she clearly didn't have the mental capacity to continue on the court and I don't believe that's the case.

RBG only had to look at history to see that in 2015 through 2017, despite her advanced age and health scares, that the senate the Democrats had at that point would have been far more hostile to a liberal justice than the senate she had in 2013 and 2014.

Moreover, 2016 was not a slam dunk election and she had to have known there was an even better chance that the GOP took over in 2016 than the Democrats had of keeping the senate in 2014 based on historic trends, all but guaranteeing she would be replaced by a Republican president.

She gambled. We lost. That is a fact.