So this post is kind of meant to reinforce a post written by Joan McCarter earlier today about the Supreme Court.
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. […]
I think, when it comes to the Supreme Court, I like a visual to help convey this idea. But I also wanted to try to present the data in a different way than usual. The result is the above graph.
The blue represents all the former Supreme Court Justices. The bottom axis shows the age that they left the bench,* i.e. death, retirement, etc. The left axis shows how many Justices left the bench at those ages. So in case you are wondering, the oldest represents Oliver Wendell Holmes, who I am henceforth nicknaming Methuselah.
The red bars represent the eight current Supreme Court Justices. The boxes represent four-year intervals.
So yeah, I wanted the graph to convey that the next President would likely get multiple Supreme Court picks; but even getting to choose Alito or Thomas’s replacement is not outside the realm of possibility, especially if the next President wins a second term.
So yeah. Winning the Senate is vital. Flipping the House would be awesome. But the Presidency is a must-win, without a doubt.
* Just going by years listed on Wikipedia, not to the day.