Just 44 days before Election Day, with the scales tipping against him in the polls, a window of opportunity has opened up for US President Donald Trump, on that has the potential to shift the public's attention and move the discussion from the problematic situation of dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, to a much more comfortable issue - the cultural and moral shaping of America for decades to come.
And indeed the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg – the Supreme Court Justice who fought bravely until her last day to promote her social agenda, one based on a whole body of clear liberal values, which at their core was the desire to completely abolish discrimination based on sex or race – allows the president to act quickly to fill her seat with a conservative judge.
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Even though during the entire 20th century, as was the case during the first two decades of the 21st Century, there has only been one precedent of a justice appointed on the eve of presidential elections (just three weeks before the presidential elections of 1956, President Eisenhower appointed William Brennan as the replacement for Sherman Minton, who fell ill and retired, and got the Senate's approval for it before the people voted), and even though the Republican majority in the Senate vetoed President Obama's move to appoint liberal Merrick Garland as the replacement for the conservative Antonin Scalia, who passed away ten months before the election – this time the White House has decided to immediately proceed with steps to replace her.
The motives for this are clear. First, even if this is a deviation from long-standing tradition, and a shift from Republican party positions of only four years ago, the advantages in the eyes of the GOP camp outweigh the risks.
It is a defining moment in the whole battle, which could give the president the big bang and the coveted change that would enthuse and rally his conservative base, with the evangelical base at its center, for whom basic moral and religious issues are important. And indeed, the possibility that the fragile majority in the Supreme Court today could quickly turn into a solid majority of six conservatives opposite three liberals could create a safety net and important stamp of approval for at least some of the conservative voters, who have yet to decide if they will again give Trump the key to the Oval Office.
Since the Republican party enjoys a majority in the Senate, the chances of the initiative, which needs the Senate's approval, are high. This is so, even though it may meet objections from a few Republican senators, like Susan Collins from Maine, especially if the candidate for the seat will be ultra-conservative, particularly on the sensitive issue of abortion. However, just as things were during the midterms in 2018, when Collins and her moderate colleagues bit the bullet and eventually voted for the conservative Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court, this time as well we can assume that almost all of the Republican party will get behind Trump's candidate.
This will allow the president to state again and again that the appointment of three conservative Justices during his term (Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and the new candidate) is the ultimate proof that on the ideological front he has laid the foundation for a new and sustainable American reality (it's worth remembering that there is no mandatory retirement age for Supreme Court Justices).
Second, Trump's choice of a female conservative judge will be a counterweight to Biden's choosing of Kamala Harris as his running mate, and will thus offset in some way the advantage the democratic candidate currently has on the gender front. Therefore, even if the public discourse that is already underway in all its pungency, will include clear criticism of Trump, the media focus on this issue will be far more comfortable for the White House than continuing to discuss how it's doing in the fight against the pandemic.
If the move succeeds, and Trump will be wise to combine the moral dimension with the political, we may witness the traditional October surprise already in September. In any case, we will see an uncompromising battle on Capitol Hill between the two camps, where the promise of Speaker Nancy Pelosi yesterday to take all steps to block to the expected appointment is the first sign of the clash of the titans over the makeup of the Supreme Court, and maybe even the fate of the whole election. And this as we draw closer to election day, and we enter the final stretch with the traditional three TV debates between the candidates, expected to kick off on Sept. 29 in Cleveland, Ohio.
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