The fight to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg megathread

[brucejoel99]

https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1307372950388199425

[brucejoel99]

Not enough time in Senate to confirm an appointee before the election

Which means we're having a lame duck battle.

What's going to be McConnell's excuse for confirming a nominee during the lame duck?

"We're still in charge so we can do whatever the f**k we want."

[brucejoel99]

https://twitter.com/baseballot/status/1307382999160414213

[brucejoel99]

What do you guys think Alexander is going to do? Has he made a statement yet?

Some random political reporter at George Mason said his sources were telling him that Alexander is a no (but nobody else has reported that so it obviously needs to be taken with a huge grain of salt), but other than that, nothing.

[brucejoel99]

It should be noted that the statement put out by Senator Collins (Concerned-ME) says she doesn't think there should be a vote before election day, not that she would actually vote nay if McConnell held it anyways.

At the same time, she did explicitly say that "[t]he decision on a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court should be made by the President who is elected on November 3rd."

[brucejoel99]

https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1307434532770119682

[brucejoel99]

https://twitter.com/pkcapitol/status/1307162138692247553
https://twitter.com/pkcapitol/status/1307163140514369536

[brucejoel99]

So correct me if I’m wrong but I see four scenarios:

A conservative justice is confirmed, Biden is elected President
A conservative justice is confirmed, Trump is elected President
Biden is elected, a conservative justice is confirmed
Trump is elected, a conservative justice is confirmed

All four scenarios get us a 6-3 conservative court. We need to suck it up and take it. They won’t overturn marriage equality, and John Roberts has been a pretty swingy vote. Try and be optimistic.

Okay, you're wrong:

4 Republican Senators refuse to confirm a lame duck appointment, Biden is elected President, a liberal justice is confirmed

[brucejoel99]

https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1307709781075951618
https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1307709957765246976

[brucejoel99]

https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1307715357982023680

[brucejoel99]

So correct me if I’m wrong but I see four scenarios:

A conservative justice is confirmed, Biden is elected President
A conservative justice is confirmed, Trump is elected President
Biden is elected, a conservative justice is confirmed
Trump is elected, a conservative justice is confirmed

All four scenarios get us a 6-3 conservative court. We need to suck it up and take it. They won’t overturn marriage equality, and John Roberts has been a pretty swingy vote. Try and be optimistic.

Okay, you're wrong:

4 Republican Senators refuse to confirm a lame duck appointment, Biden is elected President, a liberal justice is confirmed

It's more likely that Jo Jorgensen wins the election than 4 Republican Senators refusing to vote for a nominee.

It really isn't, no, given Collins/Murkowski are already confirmed, Romney is likely, & Grassley/Alexander are very possible. Funny attempt at a joke, though.

[brucejoel99]

Really there is no reason for these fence-sitters to not vote to confirm, so long as they are able to stay wishy-washy before the election and then vote after it. Voters have a short attention span. Being a Republican and confirming a conservative judge, even in a sketchy circumstance, is not going to lose anyone their seat, especially if their next election isn't for two, four, or six whole years.

Did confirming rapist Kavanaugh end up costing anyone anything (I am suspecting the answer is no, but I'm genuinely asking)? Why should confirming a standard conservative woman judge be such a liability?

If she hadn't voted to do so, Susan Collins would be in a much better position than she currently is at the moment, so yes.

[brucejoel99]

Would Lagoa be any better than Barrett? Barrett is basically the poster child for the anti-abortion agenda, but Idk if Lagoa would be any better.

Yes, I know they'd both probably be bad.

[brucejoel99]

https://twitter.com/brianneDMR/status/1308168488285020167

[brucejoel99]

Barring any surprises, this unfortunately seems over. Democrats' only hope at this point is Romney opposing & the confirmation vote (somehow) not occurring until after Mark Kelly is seated:

https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1308180572569841664

[brucejoel99]

https://twitter.com/MikeShepard4/status/1308155299736547330

It would be an insult for RBG to be replaced by Amy Coney Barrett.

Maybe she should have retired in 2014.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-ginsburg/u-s-justice-ginsburg-hits-back-at-liberals-who-want-her-to-retire-idUSKBN0G12V020140801

So you could have whined about how awful Obama's replacement would have been?

Interesting point. Has any Supreme Court Justice ever resigned for political convenience in terms of timing of their replacement?

I would have thought that most human beings would hold the job until death as their ego would be a self-serving feedback loop that they could not break.

If someone offered me a geophysicist job for life, I would take it until the grave unless i became incapable of doing the job.

Kennedy, Stevens, Souter, Blackmun, White, Stewart, etc.

[brucejoel99]

https://twitter.com/MikeShepard4/status/1308155299736547330

It would be an insult for RBG to be replaced by Amy Coney Barrett.

Maybe she should have retired in 2014.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-ginsburg/u-s-justice-ginsburg-hits-back-at-liberals-who-want-her-to-retire-idUSKBN0G12V020140801

So you could have whined about how awful Obama's replacement would have been?

Interesting point. Has any Supreme Court Justice ever resigned for political convenience in terms of timing of their replacement?

I would have thought that most human beings would hold the job until death as their ego would be a self-serving feedback loop that they could not break.

If someone offered me a geophysicist job for life, I would take it until the grave unless i became incapable of doing the job.

Kennedy, Stevens, Souter, Blackmun, White, Stewart, etc.

In fact, the last 4 retirements (O' Connor, Souter, Steves, and Kennedy) have all been in the first 2 years of a term under a President that they felt closer to ideologically and a Senate of the same party.

To be fair, it's been well-documented that O'Connor wasn't gonna retire were it not for her having to take care of her husband, so I wouldn't go so far as to classify that as a politically-motivated retirement.

[brucejoel99]

https://twitter.com/MikeShepard4/status/1308155299736547330

It would be an insult for RBG to be replaced by Amy Coney Barrett.

Maybe she should have retired in 2014.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-ginsburg/u-s-justice-ginsburg-hits-back-at-liberals-who-want-her-to-retire-idUSKBN0G12V020140801

So you could have whined about how awful Obama's replacement would have been?

Interesting point. Has any Supreme Court Justice ever resigned for political convenience in terms of timing of their replacement?

I would have thought that most human beings would hold the job until death as their ego would be a self-serving feedback loop that they could not break.

If someone offered me a geophysicist job for life, I would take it until the grave unless i became incapable of doing the job.

Kennedy, Stevens, Souter, Blackmun, White, Stewart, etc.

In fact, the last 4 retirements (O' Connor, Souter, Steves, and Kennedy) have all been in the first 2 years of a term under a President that they felt closer to ideologically and a Senate of the same party.

To be fair, it's been well-documented that O'Connor wasn't gonna retire were it not for her having to take care of her husband, so I wouldn't go so far as to classify that as a politically-motivated retirement.

O'Connor definitely wanted to retire under a Republican President; it's documented in several accounts.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/justice-oconnor-regrets

In the ballot box as well as on the Supreme Court, O’Connor voted for George W. Bush thinking that he would be a President much like his father. (The story of O’Connor’s election-night rooting for Bush in 2000 is well-known; I’ve told it in two books.)

Except that negates the well-known accounts of how, once W. actually took office, she came to abhor everything he & the modern GOP had come to stand for (especially on matters of civil liberties) & so didn't wanna retire while he was President, only doing so when forced to by the circumstances of her personal life. The very author of that article you link - Toobin - discusses this having been the case in-depth within those books that he alludes to.

[brucejoel99]

In the last 15 years, Rehnquist, Scalia, and Ginsburg have died, but no one died on the court between 1954 and 2005.

It seems like it used to be more common to retire under a hostile President. I don't think Douglas liked Ford much and Hughes retired (the first time) to run against Wilson.

"Hostile president" didn't used to be a thing.  All this hyper-partisanship really began with Nixon, and even then, he initially tried to get a segregationist on the court, then reverted to normal picks once Congress put its foot down.  The politicization of the court kicked into high gear under Reagan with the Bork nomination, which conservatives still complain about 33 years later (see Bret Stephens' op-ed in the NYTimes today).  But even then, the Democrats approved Anthony Kennedy unanimously.

It utterly amazes me how butthurt they get over a guy who was Nixon’s lackey in Watergate and had utterly repulsive views on what a company can do to their female employees 🙄

Really? That shouldn't amaze anybody, given how they're all Trump-lackey wannabe's & would probably have just as repulsive views on what they could do to women if electoral realities actually allowed for them.

[brucejoel99]

Makes sense: confirm a lifetime justice nominated by the man he voted to remove from office.

Sigh.

Welp, we're f**ked at this point. We don't have the votes. Nothing is changing that. All we can do now is look forward to eliminating the filibuster & expanding the Court come January 21st.

[brucejoel99]

https://twitter.com/cnnbrk/status/1309585309185847299

[brucejoel99]

Both the "flight" and the "fight" to replace RBG is OVER!

https://flightaware.com/live/flight/SAM722/history/20200926/1722Z/KSBN

"SAM" - Special Air Mission!

It's not over 'til a commission is signed.

[brucejoel99]

https://twitter.com/JTHVerhovek/status/1309968841238286336

Has there ever been a straight party-line vote on confirming a Supreme Court justice?

[brucejoel99]

Clarence Thomas is 72. He's likely to be the next justice to retire.

He's already said that he'll be on the bench 'til he passes away.

[brucejoel99]

Come to think about it, here is a completely dystopian scenario even if it might also be a big hot take.

If the courts get politicized so much, I would say that it is far from impossible that a Supreme Court judge could get murdered within the next 2 decades; with the objective of changing the makeup of the point, even if it has to be by gunpoint.

And I imagine that, while they probably have reasonable enough security, it must be nowhere near as much as say the President. Maybe not even as much as the average House Rep? (and one got shot not too long ago)

How much security do SC judges have around them?

Outside of the Court, they don't really have any. Souter literally got mugged while jogging when he was on the Court. Justices rely on their relative anonymity for protection.