Justice Kennedy is retiring, and he’s going to be replaced by a much younger, more conservative justice who will do a great deal of damage in the very long time he serves on the bench. There’s no way to sugarcoat that. Not at all. I will, however, make a few observations that you can give however much weight you’d like:
1. Despite Kennedy’s past votes preserving victory in liberal causes, he has never been a sure thing, and each time there was much reason to believe he’d go one way before he went another. In light of that — and in light of his track record in recent terms — I had little faith that if, say, a Roe v. Wade challenge game up again that he’d vote to preserve abortion rights and I suspect he’d break right on host of other issues. Yes, it’s bad that he’s leaving and worse that we have Donald Trump nominating his replacement, but let’s not pretend we’re losing a liberal light of the judiciary, especially given that, five hours ago, he helped end organized labor as we know it in the Janus case.
2. A lot of people are saying the open Supreme Court seat will motivate Republican voters for the midterms this fall. I think that’s overstated and possibly plain wrong. There are a lot of GOP voters who are strongly motivated by packing the courts with conservative judges, but those are also the sorts of GOP voters who vote in every election anyway. In this they’re akin to that lady you know who works at the library, drives a Subaru, carries the NPR tote bag and can tell you the name of everyone on the ballot, right down to the third party candidate for that open school board seat three months before the general. Just as she’s gonna be there voting for Democrats every damn time, the folks who get off on stripping people of their rights via the judicial system are already quite motivated, thank you very much. They’re a big reason we’re in the current mess.
3. While I have learned by now that there is nothing dumber, less-strategically-inclined and less effective than a Democratic political campaign, I suspect that the battle over the Supreme Court seat — which Republicans will win, by the way, 100% — could serve to help motivate Democratic voters who may not have otherwise come to the polls this November. This is especially the case if the seat is still open come November, but even if it is not, the sort of rhetoric with which Democrats should rightfully fill the air for the next couple of months over all of this should be the sort of things that motivate voters, especially young, normally less-than-fully engaged ones. People will vote if they think their very values and possibly even their very way of life is on the line. It very much is for the left. It is not for the right.
This is just my kneejerk reaction, mere minutes after Kennedy’s announcement. Maybe I’m wrong, but I’d ask you: please, let’s not be defeatist. There are elections to win this fall.
