It appears as though President Joe Biden will get to nominate at least one justice to the United States Supreme Court. And that's what is most important, yes?
We keep thinking back to when justices named O'Connor or Souter or Blackmun or others retired from the court, and the papers were full of their legacies and histories and legal opinions. If folks were more interested in the sitting president's list of potential nominees, it was whispered about--or at least a decent amount of time was given before the parlor games began.
But these aren't decent days. Liberal activists have been (loudly) pushing for Justice Stephen Breyer to retire--even going as far as buying ads and making scenes in Washington, D.C., around the Supreme Court building. They wanted him to move on, quickly, so that President Biden could put a younger liberal on the court while he still can.
Get this from somebody at an outfit called Demand Justice, emphasis on demand: "Justice Breyer's retirement is coming not a moment too soon, but now we must make sure our party remains united in support of confirming his successor." What, no retirement party cake?
With the president's approval ratings in the dumpster, and elections coming this November that will almost certainly end the 50-50 tie in the Senate, liberals are in a rush.
So let the battle begin. Again.
Some of us know, or at least suspect, that there is a playbook that all Democrats use when a Republican president nominates a justice to the nation's highest court. It's always the beginning of the end of democracy, American rights, and maybe apple pie.
When the first President Bush nominated David Souter to the Supreme Court, the left said he was a threat to minorities. David Souter! When Neil Gorsuch was nominated by the last president, Democratic senators were quoted in the papers saying the man showed "a stunning lack of humanity" and should have to "explain his hostility to women's rights" and one senator called the day of Judge Gorsuch's nomination a "very dark day for America."
A group of 22 senators--including Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Kerry and Joe Biden--voted against John Roberts' nomination in 2005. Because John Roberts was completely unacceptable as a Supreme Court Chief Justice, doncha know.
Now the roles are reversed, as happens in this country on frequent occasion. And the talking points are being prepared for Republican senators as they schedule their TV appearances. Aw, who are we kidding? These talking points don't need to be prepared. They are just taken out of a drawer. They'll be put back after this nomination fight for next time--the same way the Democrats do this sort of thing.
Faulty memory and not-so-faulty archives reveal that Republican senators opposed Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor for the court, too. Madam Justice Kagan was too inexperienced, and Madam Justice Sotomayor was going to pull the court to the left. (There was much less vocal opposition to the nomination of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.)
So we will expect another Barrett-Kavanaugh-Gorsuch battle in the coming months. Maybe with less Kavanaugh-type personal attacks. But it will be a battle just the same.
Should it be?
Surely this president wouldn't nominate somebody so far to the left that his own party's moderate senators (from West Virginia, perhaps? or Arizona?) couldn't support her. Surely this president will nominate a moderate, somebody who could be easily confirmed by the Senate. Surely this president has learned his lessons about trying to appease the progressives of his party, even when the majority of Americans might think differently.
Surely this president doesn't need another failure in Congress.
Surely.
As far as Stephen G. Breyer, associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, may he have a much-deserved happy retirement. This column might not have agreed with many of his opinions, legal or political, but he did his job. He was nominated by Bill Clinton in 1994, and was a steady liberal voice on the Court, which needs liberal voices every bit as much as conservative ones.
Justice Breyer will stand out in some minds not for just his easy-going style, or those far-flung questions he might ask attorneys arguing their cases at the highest level, or even for the self-deprecating jokes he told in speeches, but because he seemed to have so much respect for the American system.
When other justices decided to boycott the State of the Union Addresses--claiming that they were partisan pep rallies, which they certainly are--Justice Breyer kept going to them. He said that going to them was symbolic. And showed the country that the branches of government could work together.
So happy retirement to him. It's time to enjoy the grandkids.