\u201cGod will not give you more than you can handle\u201d. If you are a believer, then take comfort in that phrase. The losses of John McCain, Elijah Cummings, John Lewis, and last night Ruth Bader Ginsburg seem overwhelming. As we approach the critical turning point of the election in forty-five days, our moral leaders are slipping away. We needed them for this fight, but that\u2019s not to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ruth Bader Ginsburg did everything she could to stay in the fight.\u00a0\u00a0Her position in the Supreme Court was critical. The eighty-seven year old suffered through multiple rounds of cancer, trying to survive until 2021.\u00a0\u00a0She wanted so much to retire in 2016, with the inauguration of the first woman President, Hillary Clinton.\u00a0\u00a0But that too wasn\u2019t to be \u2013 so she remained the liberal icon on the Supreme Court, working until the end.\u00a0\u00a0Her last words were intentionally written for the world.\u00a0\u00a0She told her granddaughter that it was her most fervent wish that her replacement be chosen by the next President in 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her incredible power as a legal thinker went far beyond her Supreme Court career.\u00a0\u00a0She created whole new theories of the law as it applied to women, and lived the results of those expanded rights.\u00a0\u00a0And she fought for the rights of individuals in the Court itself for over twenty-seven years.\u00a0\u00a0Like her friend, Antonin Scalia, who was the ultimate conservative lion on the bench until his untimely death in 2016, she was a fierce fighter, and an incredibly complex thinker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Before politics, we should pause at the passing of this tiny woman, this legal giant.\u00a0\u00a0We should honor her lifetime of service to the United States. She was a role model for young women (and men) who saw her example, and wanted to do the same.\u00a0\u00a0The Justice even allowed (and enjoyed) becoming a cultural icon \u2013 the \u201cNotorious RBG\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0She was lovingly lampooned on\u00a0Saturday Night Live<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 a singular honor for a Supreme Court Justice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many are honoring her now, even conservatives, and even the President.\u00a0\u00a0He called Ginsburg a remarkable woman who lived a remarkable life \u2013 a rare moment of decency.\u00a0\u00a0But there are already many dancing on her un-dug grave. They are salivating over the opportunity to place a conservative on the Court and cement a far-right legal ideology into the third branch of government.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s unseemly, and perhaps un-American, but it\u2019s our political climate today.\u00a0\u00a0This is Mitch McConnell and Bill Barr\u2019s fever dream.\u00a0\u00a0And while I could delete the worst of them from my Facebook post honoring Ginsburg last night, we cannot delete them from our political world today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All bets are off. This is a fight for the near future of the Court and American Law, though perhaps not the decades that doomsayers on both sides proclaim. It\u2019s simple numbers: there are now three Justices who would be considered \u201cliberal\u201d, and five Justices, members of the Federalist Society, who are \u201cconservatives\u201d. If McConnell and Barr get their way, another extreme conservative will go on the Court, cementing their view. <\/p>\n\n\n\n That result would hamstring whatever a future Democratic President, perhaps Joe Biden next year, would want to accomplish. The Supreme Court would echo the legal thinking of the 1880\u2019s.\u00a0\u00a0Everything from the hard earned LGBTQ rights, the Affordable Care Act, Voting Rights and Re-Districting would be at risk.\u00a0\u00a0But more than anything else, the fight would be about the right of women to control their own their bodies.\u00a0\u00a0 The right to choose to have an abortion or not is the issue that makes both conservatives and liberals willing to do whatever it takes to win.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are lots of political permutations in the competing strategies. The first moves are already clear: President Trump will nominate a candidate in the next two weeks. Mitch McConnell will then have to decide either to try to force the confirmation process before the election, or do it after. There are political imperatives on both sides: before the election McConnell has more leverage over the few Republican Senators who really have the power in their hands to determine the result. Afterwards, if Trump wins, it doesn\u2019t matter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But McConnell\u2019s expectation may be that Joe Biden will be the next President of the United States, and perhaps Democrats will win control of the Senate. To secure this seat and control the future, the current Republican Senate MUST confirm the nomination before the end of the year. After the election, the Republican Senators who might have lost will have little more to lose by voting for a pro-birth nominee. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And for Democrats, their ultimate test is to gain the help of four Republican Senators, lame duck or remaining in office, to break the McConnell stranglehold.\u00a0\u00a0There already is dissension in the Republican caucus, with twenty holding out against any additional Federal COVID relief.\u00a0\u00a0One Republican Senator, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, has already stated that she wouldn\u2019t vote on a nominee before the election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If Biden does win, then the pressure on remaining Republican Senators will be even greater. Do they \u201cignore the will of the people\u201d as defined by the election results, or do they let down their conservative allies and let the new President Biden make the choice. Which is more final political suicide? <\/p>\n\n\n\n We saw an ugly \u201cstreet fight\u201d over the Kavanaugh nomination two years ago. The stakes are even higher now, especially in the middle of a Presidential election, and when thirty-five of the Senate seats are up as well. The Supreme Court nomination will motivate both conservative and liberals to even greater excesses: as if we needed more excess in this campaign year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Requiesce in Pace Justice Ginsburg: rest after a life well lived, and a fight well fought. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But for us, the living, there will be no rest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Existential Fight<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Political Maneuvers<\/h3>\n\n\n\n