Replacing RBG: In looming Senate battle, both sides race to the brink

Think politics and fairness belong in the same sphere? Our reporters look at how hardball tactics may be putting party over country in the Supreme Court succession battle.

The battle to fill Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat on the U.S. Supreme Court is shaping up to be a defining moment in politics – a titanic struggle that could shift a presidential election and produce enormous policy consequences, while straining the limits of American constitutional democracy.

Much depends on how the Senate’s “advice and consent” confirmation process plays out. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, by vowing to proceed only weeks before Election Day, has enraged many Democrats, who see the move as blatantly hypocritical given that Senator McConnell refused to even allow a hearing for President Barack Obama’s nominee to an open high court seat in 2016.

In response, some Democratic lawmakers are threatening, should their party win control of the Senate and the White House, to add seats to the Supreme Court or push for statehood for Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., to dilute the Republicans’ geographic edge in the Senate.

All these moves – Senator McConnell’s included – are within constitutional bounds. The problem is the escalating brinkmanship of action and reaction.

When parties exercise their powers of office to the very edge, they encourage opponents to do the same if they’re elected. And as the stakes of losing rise, politics becomes more heated, voters become more polarized – and the longstanding norm that lawmakers act with the realization they will not always be the majority withers away.