The One on Justice Kennedy's Resignation

The retirement of one of the Supremes, Justice Anthony Kennedy, is causing both glee and concern across the land. I mean, serious glee and even more serious concern.

On the glee side, of course, Mitch "Don't Pick on Me or I'll Sic My Wife on You" McConnell, the Senate majority leader and chief scaredy cat (won't bring legislation to the floor unless he knows Trump will sign it), the destroyer of the Senate rule requiring 60 votes on important stuff like Supreme Court nominees, has proclaimed that there will be a vote on Kennedy's replacement before the midterms and he has already declared that whoever the president picks will be confirmed, no matter what. He's already lining up his ducks, including Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, the two most likely to deviate from the plan. John McCain is still at home, battling brain cancer, although my hope is that he makes it back to the floor to throw his honest-to-goodness American hero thumb down, way way down, on Trump at least one more time.

On the dismay side, things are much darker. Woe and hand-wringing abound. Chuck Schumer is speaking with a distinct lack of fire and brimstone about specific cases that will almost certainly be overturned should one of the conservative ideologues get approved by the Republican controlled Senate. Roe v. Wade, the Affordable Care Act, and the right of unions to organize are on that list.

To me, fighting about the dangers of ideology by using ideology is going to fall on deaf ears, unless he's trying to sway Collins and Murkowski to not make it easy for McConnell and Trump. Those arguments will surely energize Trump, who's now spending as much time on the stump as he used to spend playing golf in Florida. But will it energize the Dems?  I don't think so.

What he should be doing is hitting hard - over and over and over (like David Gest talking about Liza Minnelli, I mean) about the fallacy of having the vote until the makeup of the next Congress is determined. Why?

There are four lame duck senators in McConnell's gang: Jeff Flake (AZ), Bob Corker (TN), Orrin Hatch (UT) and Thad Cochran (MS).  That's four people who should NOT be voting for the next Supreme, because the people need to speak, just like the people needed to speak in 2016 when, in March - not July, in March - President Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland was stopped dead in its tracks. These four are are reason enough to wait until after the election to see who will be representing those states. If they're replaced by four Republicans, so be it - hold a hearing on whoever Trump nominates. But if any of them end up being replaced by Dems, the vote should NOT be held until the new Congress is seated in January.

Now is not the time for playing nice in the sandbox. All of the Dems need to be speaking at every single opportunity - on the floor, in committee meetings, in the hallways and cloakroom and in their dormitories - about this being the wrong thing to do. They need to get on the Sunday shows, knock on the doors of the press, volunteering to talk about this, and getting the word out whenever they can, however they can.  Newspaper editorials, billboards in their districts -- I don't care what they do, but they have to start now, and not stop. 

One thing the Dems simply cannot do - in public, at least - is play the blame game. You know, if so-and-so hadn't have done such-and-such, Hillary would have won and we wouldn't me in this mess right now.  All of that is water over the dam, under the bridge, and down the toilet as far as I'm concerned. 

Now is also NOT the time to be fretting about the past --now is the time to be laser-focused on the future, and on making the point that doing this right, and honoring the voice of the electorate after they make their choices in November  matters.

Because if it's not now, it's never.