Here is what I wrote in “OK, RBG. But…,” January 5, 2019, after Justice Ginsburg survived yet another life-saving surgery:
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You’ll cause mass heart attacks if you have another health scare while Trump is still president. So please stop tempting fate … yours and ours!
That said, it’s funny to see liberals poking fun at conservatives with memes about reports of Ginsburg’s demise being greatly exaggerated.
But trust me, if Trump has an opportunity to nominate another Neil Gorsuch or Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, that would trigger tribal warfare not seen since the Hutus and Tutsis went at it in Rwanda.
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I could not help reflecting on that as I watched thousands gather on the steps of the Supreme Court tonight, holding an impromptu wake and paying vigil. And, sure enough, many appeared so grief-stricken (and stricken with fear), they could hardly breathe. This, no doubt, because they all know that her death could mean war.
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the second woman to serve on the high court and a legal pioneer for gender equality whose fierce opinions as a justice made her a hero to the left, died Sept. 18 at her home in Washington.
Working in the 1970s with the American Civil Liberties Union, Justice Ginsburg successfully argued a series of cases before the high court that strategically chipped away at the legal wall of gender discrimination, eventually causing it to topple. Later, as a member of the court’s liberal block, she was a reliable vote to enhance the rights of women, protect affirmative action and minority voting rights and defend a woman’s right to choose an abortion.
(The New York Times, September 18, 2020)
Former President Clinton nominated Ginsburg to the Court in 1993. While introducing her, he echoed the chorus of those hailing her as the female Thurgood Marshall – who did the for Blacks what she had done for women. But I wonder to what extent this ardent feminist considered that a compliment. Not least because Marshall never became the progressive cultural phenomenon that was Ginsburg.
Her dissent to a 2013 Court ruling speaks volumes in this regard. She skewered the conservative majority for rolling back a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, which Marshall himself had pioneered. But her dissent inspired a (white) law student to launch a meme crowning Ginsburg as the Notorious RBG. It went viral and the rest, as we say, is history. You can’t make that sh*t up.
In any event, I had just cause to warn about Republicans and Democrats aping Hutus and Tutsis. And this was before BLM protesters became worthy adversaries, if not useful targets, for the white supremacists who were already lying in wait to reassert their unquestioned prerogatives of white supremacy – by any means necessary.
I know that seems scary, and it is. But we can avert this war. The problem is that it depends on Republicans doing what they have never done, namely putting love of country above fear of Trump. But the good news is that we only need a few good senators to do so.
Specifically, we need 4 of the 53 Republicans who control the Senate to show the political courage and moral fiber to honor their own Garland precedent, which they established in 2016. Perhaps you recall them insisting back then that they were standing on principle when they declared that:
- No president shall nominate anyone for the Supreme Court in an election year. And, if any president does, no Senate shall confirm that nominee.
Meanwhile, President Trump, their white supremacist in chief, is clearly treating Ginsburg’s death as a godsend. Because no other development could possibly affect his political fate at this point more than nominating someone to replace her – that Garland precedent, or even her “most fervent [dying] wish” that he not do so, be damned.
Except that everyone knew Republicans were establishing this precedent pursuant to a nakedly partisan ploy. Their aim was simply to avoid confirming Merrick Garland as then President Barack Obama’s third Supreme Court nominee. And this, despite the fact that Obama nominated him in March 2016, more than seven months before Election Day.
Well, that chicken has now come home to roost. This is why it will take a truly shocking level of hypocrisy, even for this systemically hypocritical administration, for Republicans to confirm Trump’s third nominee. After all, this is an election year. And, unlike 2016, when Obama’s nominee had more than seven months, this nominee will have less than two before Election Day.
Incidentally, I am all too mindful that only one Republican had the political courage and moral fiber to convict a plainly guilty Trump at his Impeachment trial. I duly applauded that Republican in “Impeachment Vote: Hail Mitt for Daring to Convict,” February 6, 2020.
But Ginsburg’s death presents what might be the last opportunity for Republicans to redeem what little remains of their political integrity. And I’m just hoping that, at long last, at least four of them will be seized with enough pangs of conscience to follow their own Garland precedent. Perhaps I’m hoping against hope. But I’m counting on them doing so for their own sakes as much as the country’s.
More to the point, I urge them to declare their intent to do so as soon as Ginsburg is laid to rest. Not only will this spare the country certain warfare; it will refocus this presidential campaign on the issues that have been animating it for the past six months, namely Covid-19 and the economy.
But boy, what a lucky SOB that Trump is! And, he’s so cynical, he’ll probably nominate a gay, far-right, Black Latina … with a disability just to pander to as broad a base as possible.
Even worse, Republican leaders seem hellbent on confirming Trump’s nominee before the end of his term, if not before Election Day. But am I the only one who sees the fool’s gold inherent in this for Trump?
After all, if disaffected Republicans don’t have to vote for him again to get their right-wing justice, why on earth would any of them do so? I mean it’s not as if this nomination will suddenly turn Trump into a more palatable or less odious president.
Besides, I suspect many Republican leaders welcome this opportunity to finally play him for the fool even they believe him to be. This they can do by taking his conservative justice and still sending him back where he came from – namely back to what has become a gilded cage in the sky above New York City. There he would anxiously await state prosecutors who he knows are chomping at the bit to indict him on a battery of charges related to fraud and tax evasion.
Intriguingly enough, Republicans can take their lead in this regard from the two Supreme Court justices Trump nominated to do his bidding on an issue, which looms for him as a matter of freedom or imprisonment:
In a major blow to President Trump, both of his Supreme Court appointees voted with the majority in a Thursday decision ruling that the president is not immune from a subpoena demanding he reveal his tax returns.
(Business Insider, July 9, 2020)
What’s more, I suspect his nominated justice to replace Ginsburg will boomerang in similar fashion.
Still, there’s no denying that any nomination is bound to give him a little reprieve from the daily bashing he’s now getting. A bashing richly deserved of course – given his genocidal bungling of the fight to combat Covid-19. Apropos of which, as I insinuated above, don’t think for a second that this cursed year of 2020 cannot possibly get any worse. But I digress …
The state funerals of Senator John McCain and Representative John Lewis had Trump seething with pettifogging jealousy. The state funeral of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will offer him a chance at redemption. If there are any grown-ups left in his administration, I hope they prevail upon him to rise to the occasion.
Truth be told, though, I am as saddened by her death as I am concerned about what it portends. But wailing “I dissent” will prove every bit as feckless in the face of unfolding events, as it proved the many times she was obliged to vote the same in the face of conservative rulings throughout her tenure.
Ginsburg died tonight at her home in Washington, D.C., due to complications of pancreatic cancer. She was 87.
Farewell, RBG.
Related commentaries:
notorious RBG… Garland precedent… Gorsuch and Kavanaugh… Hail Mitt… John McCain… John Lewis…
* This commentary was originally published yesterday, Friday at 9:19 p.m.