Dem
47
GOP
53
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is a master tactician. He has run the Senate Republican conference adroitly for 18 years, the longest leader of either party in U.S. Senate history. He knows how the game is played extremely well. The only recent leader of either party even in his league is Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).
But Tuesday, he blew it. He said the quiet part out loud. As a brilliant tactician, you don't do that kind of stuff. You just make a mental note of things for future use and move on. Everybody knows that judges are partisan and their personal political views often color their decisions nowadays. If that weren't the case—and back in the 19th century it wasn't—why are judicial nominations so controversial now, especially for the Supreme Court? But you are supposed to pretend that judges are guided entirely by the facts, the law, and the Constitution. Then everyone will smile politely and be happy.
So what did McConnell do that violated the protocol so grossly? U.S. District Judge Algenon Marbley of the Southern District of Ohio, a Bill Clinton appointee, had previously announced that he was going to take senior status. This means technically staying on the court, getting full salary, but handling only a few cases. It also opens up a vacancy for the president to fill. Marbley, who is Black, is also 70, a reasonable age at which to semi-retire. After the election, he said he had changed his mind and would stay on.
Similarly, a U.S. district court judge in the Western District of North Carolina, Max Cogburn (73), who is white and a Barack Obama appointee, also said he would take senior status and then after the election changed his mind. Clearly both judges were expecting Kamala Harris to win and then appoint their replacements. When she lost, they decided they didn't want Donald Trump to replace them, so they bit their tongues and decided to stay around for 4 more years. Is this what real patriotism looks like? After all, they put what they perceive as the best interests of the country ahead of their personal desires to have more time with their friends and families. Isn't that what patriotism is? Country first?
Now back to McConnell. On the floor of the Senate, McConnell condemned both judges for their change of heart. He said: "They rolled the dice that a Democrat could replace them, and now that he won't, they're changing their plans to keep a Republican from doing it. It's a brazen admission." Omigod. Politics plays a role in matters judicial and it matters who nominates judges. How can that be? What a disgusting thing.
In case you have forgotten, when Justice Antonin Scalia suddenly died on Feb. 13, 2016, Barack Obama quickly nominated Merrick Garland, a moderate judge, to replace him. McConnell (the same McConnell who was disgusted by judges timing their retirements with a thought about who would replace them) refused to have the Senate vote to confirm or reject Garland. He said that in 9 months, the people should decide who gets to make the nomination. But when Ruth Bader Ginsburg suddenly died on Sept. 18, 2020, then-president Donald Trump took all of 8 days to nominate Amy Coney Barrett. The Senate immediately took up the nomination and on Oct. 26, 2020—just 8 days before the election—the Senate confirmed Barrett on a straight party-line vote 52-48, except for the nay vote of Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME). Barrett was the first justice to be confirmed without a single vote from the minority party since 1870. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called it "the most illegitimate process I have ever witnessed in the Senate."
So McConnell held up an Obama nomination for 9 months but rammed through a Trump nomination 8 days before the election and now he is whining that two district judges decided to stay on because they want a Democrat to replace them. Someone who knows how the game is played as well as McConnell should have kept quiet, sighed, and said to himself: "Who cares about a couple of district judges in hillbilly country? We won the big one." But he said it out loud on the floor of the Senate. He's 82 and losing it. (V)