The appointment of Neil Gorsuch (age 51) and the pending appointment of Brett Kavanaugh (age 53) could change the Supreme Court’s political climate for a generation since Justices often serve on the court into their 80’s. Very conservative Justices will soon have a solid 5-4 advantage and if either Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (85) and/or Stephen G. Breyer (80) die or are forced to retire due to illness during the next two plus years, Donald Trump (or Mike Pence) will have an another opportunity to stack the court even further.

So, as the voting population of our nation as grows ever more liberal, the Supreme Court is definitely becoming more conservative and it is a situation we will likely have to deal with for the next 20 to 30 years.  It is time to take a step back and understand how we came to be in this situation and record lessons learned.

Presently the Republicans have a one seat advantage in the Senate, the body that confirms potential Justices of the Supreme Court.  That means that even if every Senate Democrat refuses to confirm a nominee, the Republicans can lose one of their 51 votes and still be successful because Vice President Pence would vote to break the tie.  Let’s look back to the 2016 Senatorial elections to see how this situation originally developed.

Before the 2016 elections there were 54 Republican Senators, 44 Democrats and two independents who caucused with the Democrats. However, during the election that year there were 20 Republican Senate seats up for grabs while the Democratic only had to defend 10 seats.  The Democrats gained 2 Senate seats reducing the Republican majority to 2.  Since then Democrat Doug Jones took over the seat previously held by Republican Jeff Sessions of Alabama when Sessions became Attorney General reducing the Republican majority to one.

Had the Democrats gained just 2 more seats in 2016 the Republicans would have had to share power in the Judiciary Committee during the Gorsuch confirmation hearings (the Senate would have been split 50-50) and Democrats would have control of the committee proceedings during the Kavanaugh hearings because these are occurring after Doug Jones has been seated. That would have made the confirmation or Gorsuch more difficult and confirmation of Kavanaugh very difficult given the current partisan wrangling within the committee.

I can guarantee that if the Democrats were in control of the Judiciary Committee, there would be no hidden emails or attempts to rush the Kavanaugh’s confirmation through the Senate. The entire process might have been delayed until after the mid-term election and/or the committee would have recommended that his nomination be rejected before a vote by the full Senate.

But all of that ignores the big elephant in the room; had Hillary Clinton won the Presidency in the 2016 elections, we probably would have never even heard the names of Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. Even if the Republicans still controlled the Senate, that situation might have force Clinton to offer up more moderate candidates for the court than she would have liked. However, there wouldn’t be the huge swing to the right on the court that we are currently expecting.

Making the current situation even more difficult to swallow for Democrats and progressive independents is Trump’s narrow margin of victory in a number of swing states.   Trump won in Michigan by only 10,704 votes – 0.2% of the 4.8 million votes cast.  In Wisconsin Hillary lost by only 22,748 votes and in Pennsylvania by only 44,292 votes.  So we are talking about a 77,744 vote difference out of 13.7 million votes cast in those three states. With razor thin victories in those states alone Trump won the Electoral College.  It is sickening when we think of the millions of people who didn’t vote and the several hundreds of thousands who voted for third party or for independent candidates in those Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

Lessons learned:  1) Elections have consequences, sometimes severe consequences. 2) It is vitally important to not only to vote, but to also do everything you can to encourage people who are likely to favor the candidates you prefer to vote as well. 3) We need to discourage voting for third party and independent candidates whenever possible.

If you now have the impression that I wrote this article to encourage you do everything you can to get out the Blue Vote in the 2018 and 2020 elections, you are not unintelligent.

Cajun    9/8/18