The 2020 Election Takes Another Twist

On Friday evening, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, longstanding justice of the Supreme Court, passed away at 87. And while it's never appropriate to celebrate someone's death, even someone such as Ginsburg, who as a committed leftist could easily be seen as an enemy by many conservatives, her passing and the Court's ensuing vacancy could -- and likely will -- have massive ramifications in this election and through the years to come.

The first issue is obvious: with around forty-five days until the election, will Trump and the Republican-controlled Senate seek to confirm a SCOTUS nominee before then? It hearkens back to 2016, when a lame-duck President Obama nominated Merrick Garland for the spot vacated by the late Antonin Scalia, only to have the (then, as now, Republican) Senate refuse to even hold hearings for Garland's confirmation and passing the decision on to whoever was elected that November, 'leaving the decision to the American people'. Prominent senators swore they would do the same in any situation; that the imminent election should decide the issue. In 2016, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said (this is a direct quote), "I want you to use my words against me. If there's a Republican president in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say Lindsey Graham said, 'Let's let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination'"; and many others said the same. Now those words may come back to haunt them; President Trump is urging that the process be accelerated, so that his nominee might be confirmed before the election; he is expected to announce his choice in a matter of days. Lindsey Graham is himself facing a tight race for reelection in South Carolina. Decisions will have to be made.

It seems that this potential possibility -- Trump and the Senate railroading a nominee into the Court in the next month and a half -- can only favor the Democrats. The Left will absolutely destroy the Republicans, accusing them of lying, hypocrisy, subverting the wishes of the people in favor of their own agenda, and really everything else that seems commonplace to their rhetoric today; except this time they'll be right. And as a conservative, I can say that when the Left can use truth, logic, and reason to defeat you, you are not in a good place. Even say the Republican establishment weathers the storm and confirms the nominee anyway; it will not help their reputation. Any hope of being the bastion of reason, common-sense, justice, and freedom is ruined when it appears that Trump has merely led the Republicans into being a militaristic right-wing establishment, differing only from the liberals in goals, not method. Really the only positive would be ... that there would be a solid, 6-3 conservative majority in the Court (assuming Trump, as he has so far, picks another solid Constitutionalist justice to fill the vacancy.)

But that is also the entire problem: this Court seat is massively important. Huge issues are and will be coming up into the Court's judgment in the next few years, and it is absolutely crucial that there are solid, small-government justices arbiting the laws of the land. Things like gun rights, immigration, abortion, religious freedoms and exemptions in a number of areas, and many others are becoming increasingly tense issues, and another hard liberal justice nominated by Biden's administration could be absolutely catastrophic. So there's quite a lot of pressure on both sides; whether to do what is arguably the more right thing to do (leave the decision up to the general election and allow the next president to make a nomination, risking the possibility that Trump is defeated in November) or what is arguably the more necessary thing to do (confirm another justice before November, despite the bad press and any precedent of honor they sounded so loudly back just four years ago.)

It could, in fact, be better both long-term and short-term to wait until after the election; firstly, Trump has a very real chance of actually winning. Furthermore, as the Wall Street Journal pointed out, this gives Trump the opportunity to make the election about something other than himself. Joe Biden is literally running on the platform of not being Trump, and it's telling (and accurate) that he is receiving as much support as he is. Trump has spent the last four-plus years being an absolute rollercoaster of inanity, repellent to all but his most entrenched supporters, and either hated or accepted as "not socialist" by the rest of the nation. He is not conservative, not admirable, and not beneficial to really anything; he is destroying the Republican party and arguably the nation. But if this Supreme Court spot was on the line in the election, it gives him an opportunity. This election would be about more than just the next four years, it would be about the next thirty or forty. The SCOTUS vacancy would, as it did four years ago, draw in crucial votes, people who lean moderate and don't like Trump, but cannot tolerate another extremely left-leaning justice on the Court for the next few decades. It would draw the true conservatives; it would draw some of the NeverTrump movement; it would draw people (like me) who cannot support Trump or almost anything he does, yet are forced to realize that this presidency would be about something more than just the next four years; it would impact our entire future in numerous ways.