Presidential winner should pick Ginsburg replacement
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said on Friday that "there is absolutely no doubt" that the winner of November's presidential election should pick Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's replacement.
"There is absolutely no doubt - i want to be clear - that the voters should select the president and the president should select the justice for the Senate to consider," Biden told reporters after learning of Ginsburg's death. Biden's remarks appear to set the stage for a partisan fight over the judiciary that could dominate the less than seven weeks remaining before Nov. 3 presidential election.
Ginsburg, a stalwart liberal on the Supreme Court since 1993, died on Friday at age 87, giving President Donald Trump a narrow window in which to expand the court's conservative majority with a third appointment throughout a tough re-election fight.Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he intends to do something on any nomination Trump makes. Biden's comments signal he and the party will fight such a move.
McConnell's stance reverses the positioning he took four years back, when he refused to do something on Democratic President Barack Obama's election-year nomination of centrist appeals court judge Merrick Garland to displace conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in February 2016.
Some Democrats accused McConnell and his fellow Republicans of "stealing" a Supreme Court seat by blocking Garland's appointment. Biden, who was simply Obama's vice president, has said he wished Democrats have been "a complete heck of a lot harder" on McConnell throughout that fight.
McConnell's explained his position in a statement on Friday, saying that in 2016 the Senate and White House were manipulated by different parties, while now they are both handled by Republicans. Democrats have called McConnell's about-face hypocrisy.
The Democratic former vice president learned of Ginsburg's death while flying home from a campaign trip in Minnesota and he delivered brief remarks to reporters at an airport in New Castle, Del., without taking questions. As a senator, Biden presided over Ginsburg's confirmation hearings for the job in 1993. "Ruth Bader Ginsburg stood for all of us," Biden said. "She's been absolutely consistent and reliable and a voice for freedom and opportunity for everyone."
Ginsburg's death could significantly alter the ideological balance of the court, which already had a 5-4 conservative majority, moving it further to the right. The problem thrust courts into the center of an election that had been dominated by the coronavirus and its own public health and economical consequences.
Trump on Sept. 9 unveiled a set of potential nominees to fill any future Supreme Court vacancies in a move targeted at bolstering support among conservative voters. Biden has pledged to mention a Black woman to the Supreme Court but so far has resisted unveiling his own list of nominees.
