In the absence of any visible effort by presumptive Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden to push Supreme Court nominations as a key election issue, a progressive group, Supreme Court Voter, is filling the void.
The group, funded by Demand Justice, a left-of-center advocacy organization that supports the appointment of liberal judges, announced its opening bid last week with a $2 million ad buy in five “battleground” states: Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
The initial ads say that “the future of the Supreme Court is on the line.… We can’t afford any more Brett Kavanaughs, or our court will be his court.”
On the other hand, President Trump recognized the polling power of his 2016 campaign announcement of his list of potential Supreme Court nominees, and plans to announce another list.
Only now the landscape has changed, and not necessarily in a good way. Conservatives have been disappointed over wayward decisions made by the high court in recent weeks, including Bostock v. Clayton County, in which it held that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is unconstitutional, and June Medical Services LLC v. Russo, which declared a Louisiana law requiring abortion clinic doctors to have hospital-admission privilege is also unconstitutional.
Rather than throwing up their hands, conservatives instead are rallying around the president’s run for reelection, knowing/hoping/praying that, given a second term, he might be able to complete the task he began during his first one.
Still on the table are Roe v. Wade and ObamaCare, and the opportunity to replace liberal justices thanks to the aging process is clear. In a second term, President Trump might have the opportunity to nominate perhaps as many as six new Supreme Court justices.
The two most obvious are Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who is 87, and Stephen Breyer, who is 81. But there are rumors that Samuel Alito, age 70, and Clarence Thomas, age 72, might opt for retirement in Trump’s second term, giving him the opportunity to nominate similarly-minded, but younger, judges to the court.
And then there’s the health question for Chief Justice John Roberts, who struck his head in an unreported and strange incident that occurred at a country club last month. This follows previous health issues experienced by Roberts.
Finally, there’s Sonia Sotomayor who, age 66, will turn 70 during Trump’s second term, and may decide to leave the court more out of frustration than poor health.
Vice President Mike Pence made it clear just how important the issue is to the president. In an exclusive interview on Breitbart News Sunday, he said:
There may be no issue more important to the life of the nation than the destiny of the Supreme Court. As we learned in the recent disappointing decision on the right to life, I hear conservatives around the country understand now more than ever that we need four more years of President Donald Trump in the White House.
We’ve confirmed more than 200 judges to our federal courts, and that includes two justices to the Supreme Court, and I can tell you that each and every one of them are exactly the kind of conservative jurists that President Trump promised to appoint in the election of 2016.
When asked about Biden’s reluctance to release his own list of preferred nominees for the high court if he were elected president, Pence said that voters don’t need such a list. They already know what kind of people Biden would nominate:
I’m not surprised that Joe Biden won’t release a list. He doesn’t have to. Joe Biden is being driven, his candidacy is being driven, by the far left. And the American people know that any judge that Joe Biden would appoint would be one more activist judge legislating from the bench, trampling on our liberties, trampling on our values.
In President Donald Trump, they know they’ll have a president who, just like he did before, will keep his word, will appoint principled conservatives to our Supreme Court and all our courts, and in a very real sense, will strengthen the foundation of the rule of law in the United States for generations to come.
Image: Matt Anderson/iStock/Getty Images Plus
An Ivy League graduate and former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American, writing primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at [email protected].
