In an exhaustive article at Vox, Dylan Matthews catalogs what's at stake, both at the top of the ticket and on the second tier—the U.S. Senate—this election. And, yes, it is all about the Supreme Court. Where it's been:
The Court ruled that states didn't have to give poor black and Latino school districts the same funding as rich white districts. It ruled that school resegregation achieved through white flight to wealthy suburbs was just fine. It ruled that despite declaring abortion a fundamental right, that didn’t mean Medicaid had to extend that right to poor women, and then it reversed course on treating abortion as a fundamental right at all. It struck down the death penalty but then brought it back four years later.
And in more recent years, it’s gutted the Voting Rights Act, struck down limits on campaign donations by corporations, strangled Medicaid expansion in the crib, and for the first time in American history declared an individual right to own guns.
And where it could go with a Hillary Clinton presidency and Senate majority, beginning with replacing Antonin Scalia:
Clinton also stands a good chance of replacing the moderate-to-conservative Anthony Kennedy (who recently turned 80) with a reliable liberal, and keeping Ruth Bader Ginsburg (83 and a two-time cancer survivor) and Stephen Breyer’s (78) seats in liberal hands. The result would be a solid 6-3 liberal majority of a kind not seen in many decades. […]
A liberal Court could end long-term solitary confinement. It could mandate better prison conditions in general, making it more costly to maintain mass incarceration. It could conceivably end the death penalty. It could uphold tough state campaign finance rules and start to move away from Citizens United. It could start to develop a robust right to vote and limit gerrymandering. It could strengthen abortion rights, moving toward viewing abortion rights as a matter of equal protection for women.
But it's not going to take just a Clinton presidency, not in the near-term. It requires a Democratic majority in the Senate. Mitch McConnell has already set precedent for obstruction by refusing to allow even considering the Merrick Garland nomination in committee. He's committed his majority to only allowing the bare minimum of federal judges through the Senate system. There's no reason to believe he would change his stripes under a President Clinton. There are depths to which he certainly can still plunge, and he's just the guy to do it. An eight-justice Supreme Court can still function? He'll insist that a seven- or six- or five-justice court will operate just fine. A Mitch McConnell majority cannot stand, not for the future health of the nation.
Please donate $1 today to each of our slate of Senate candidates. The future of the Supreme Court, and the health of our republic, depends on it.