Amid our shock and mourning and raging over the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Friday, progressives have stepped up through our tears to pour more money into the campaign to evict Donald Trump and the Republican Senate majority. As the political reality of Ginsburg’s passing sank in, the ticker that keeps track of donations soared on ActBlue, the non-profit operation that provides a tool for left-leaning activists to raise money for political candidates and issues. About $100,000 in donations came each minute. Between 9 p.m. ET and 9 a.m. ET today, nearly $31 million flowed into campaign coffers of Democratic candidates and causes. The latest tally puts it at $56 million.
One group, writes Hassan Eliwa, Get Mitch or Die Trying, reported a huge rise in donations, getting $1.5 million within an hour of the announcement of Ginsburg’s passing. At the latest tally, it had brought in $8 million of its $9 million goal. The group was founded by Crooked Media, which is donating to 13 Senate races in an effort to win enough of them to unseat the obstructionist Republican majority. That deluge should dispel at least some of our gloom. And it should embolden Democratic leaders to use every means they can think of to derail Republican attempts to fill Ginsburg’s seat with another retrograde justice. That is a fight Ginsburg made clear she favored in her final days.
We know all too well that this may be a fight we lose, no matter how ferociously we engage or how much money we gather. Getting a nominee confirmed in the 46 days left before voting concludes seems a stretch, even for the ethically flexible McConnell. But afterward, even if the Democrats win the White House and the Senate by a landslide, we’ll be dependent for victory on getting at least four Republican Senators to decide they just can’t vote yes on a lame-duck appointment of a justice. That’s a steep hill. If it can’t be climbed, Elie Mystal writes:
If the Democrats are unable to block Trump’s nominee, there is but one choice should Joe Biden win the White House and the Democrats take back a majority in the Senate: pack the Supreme Court. As I’ve written before, the number of Supreme Court justices is set by legislation, not the Constitution. If McConnell can successfully block one Supreme Court appointment because a Republican justice died under a Democratic president but rush through a second nominee because a Democratic justice died under a Republican president, then McConnell has proven that the composition of the Supreme Court is a function of raw political power.
Should Democrats ever hold that power again, they must act. The addition of two justices is simply a proportional response necessary to right the wrongs committed by McConnell. The addition of 10 justices, as I have advocated, puts the Supreme Court on a path toward long-term reform.
This must be our fight now. We must do everything we can to stop McConnell from filling Ginsburg’s seat and, however that turns out, we must retake political power and reform a Supreme Court that has been irrevocably broken by McConnell’s ongoing hypocrisy.
If it weren’t for McConnell’s blocking of consideration of President’s Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland in 2016, few Democrats would be seriously considering adding justices to the Supreme Court. But they are now.