It is entirely possible that a vacancy could occur before the election. What do you think he will do? Ram a Trump nomination through? Or hold off until after the inauguration?
I would fully expect him to go for confirmation, despite what he did in 2016. If so, is there anything the Dems could do to delay or derail it? I would also fully expect the largest media outcry ever! Not that it would do any good.
He’s on record saying he will fill it .
He already said he’d nominate someone.
I expect 35% of the country to love it.
I expect that 25% of the country will shrug.
I expect the rest of the country to be furious and it not matter.
Of course he’ll fill it. It’s laughable to think otherwise. If a vacancy occurs AFTER the election he’ll get Trump to nominate someone and he’ll ram it through in record speed.
And he and the Republican Party will pay no price for doing so.
It’s politics. If the Democrats–who lambasted the Republicans for delaying–could manage it they’d delay until after the election. And then we’d have another example of:
I expect 35% of the country to love it.
I expect that 25% of the country will shrug.
I expect the rest of the country to be furious and it not matter.
If a vacancy occurs on Jan 2, there will be an emergency session of congress to confirm a new justice. If the senate stays Republican and a vacancy occurs at 11:45 AM on Jan. 20, Trump will make an appointment at 11:50 which the senate will confirm at 11:59, having been called into session against just such an eventuality. In fact, I have no idea whether an incoming president has the power to withdraw a nomination already made and transmitted to the senate.
What happens if the nomination is confirmed but the new president refuses to transmit the appointment to the nominee, then we would appear to be in Marbury v. Madison territory and the appointment is dead.
Nice hypothetical you got there. The Democrats eat their own all the time (notice how liberals don’t lock-step with Biden like conservatives do with Trump) and they have no problem putting the party second to a greater good, or whet perceive to be such. See how they handled Clinton’s impeachment compared to the farce that they turned Trump’s into. Just one of a hundred examples I can point out.
The evidence to date shows that attempts at “they do it too” are nothing but false equivalencies, so forgive me for thinking that predictions of “they would do it too” are not particularly persuasive.
Yes, because it is a law of nature that both parties must always be equally awful, forever and ever, amen.
He’ll nominate a replacement. Republicans will call him a tactical genius. Democrats will rightly call him a fucking snake. The 50% or whatever it is of Americans who aren’t interested in voting won’t even know that it happened.
And therein lies the tragedy of the great American experiment in democracy.
The OP asked what McConnell would do. He won’t nominate a replacement justice, only the president could do that.
I expect that McConnell would have the Senate proceed with confirmation of any Trump nominee regardless of proximity to the election. He has said he would do as much.
I do think that would include proceeding during a lame duck session after the election, particularly if the election would turn control of the Senate over to the Democrats.
As to the other hypothetical, the Justice Department is on record that the president is under no obligation to sign the commission of a nominee who has gained Senate confirmation. So any last moment Trump nominee would need Senate confirmation in time to let Trump sign the commission before his term of office ends. Otherwise the following president could refuse to sign the commission and the nominee would not be appointed.
Let’s pretend that Ginsberg becomes incapacitated. Then Nancy Pelosi (yeah, I know she’s in the House; work with me here) uncovers a technicality that she manipulates to delay the confirmation until February. We’d likely be talking about what a brilliant politician she is. I seriously doubt you’d be calling her awful.
Democrats certainly weren’t above using 30-year-old, uncorroborated rape allegations against a teenager to try to derail the confirmation of a judge they didn’t like. Which might have come back to bite them if the woman who accused Biden had been more credible.
Using legal means to strengthen your side is politics. People are upset that McConnell is trying to get some older Republican judges to retire so they can be replaced by younger conservatives. And yet early in the Trump administration some people around here were unhappy that Ginsberg didn’t retire during Obama’s administration. (Hold on, Ruth!)
I’m not asking you to be happy about it; I’m certainly not. When Biden becomes president then he can play politics to lessen the Trump stench.
The scenario I was pondering is a Thomas retirement some time in August or September. If that were to happen, it would help Trump in multiple ways. He could nominate a conservative Black judge to demonstrate (in his mind at least) that he isn’t racist. In addition this would remind Republican voters on the importance of electing Trump in the event of RBG retiring or passing. IMHO Trump’s campaign has probably considered this scenario, and I give it at least a 20/80 chance of happening, with the likelihood increasing if things are looking bad for Trump.
All of you realize, if the Senate retains a GOP majority and Biden wins, McConnell will block every nominee to SCOTUS until the GOP loses the majority, right? He will block any Biden nominees for four years if he can. Even if McConnell is no longer the Majority Leader, as long as the GOP has a majority in the Senate no Democratic President will be allowed to get a nominee approved ever again.
Certainly everyone here understands this is the world we live in now.
Agreed.
I’m hoping in November we prove this part isn’t true.
Yes, and we have lots of sitting senators posting here. There is no comparison between the senate majority leader trying to do this and random posters on this message board bemoaning the fact that Ginsberg didn’t retire. It would have been silly for her to do so, anyway, since McConnell wouldn’t have let Obama replace her.
Anyway, keep the hypothetical examples of liberal hypocrisy coming! They’re very enlightening. Of course, they don’t address your earlier both-sides-do-it post.
As to your Pelosi comment, remember when Pelosi held up a SCOTUS nomination for almost a year because she said we must let the voters decide? I don’t either.