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US Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has urged the Senate not to vote on the successor to the late Constitutional Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg before the November elections. US President Donald Trump’s plan to fill the vacant Supreme Court seat as quickly as possible is an act of “sheer political power,” Biden said Sunday.
Trump is about power. “Exclusively and simply,” Biden said in a speech in Philadelphia. If the president presents a candidate to the House of Congress, senators should not take action “until the Americans have elected their next president and Congress,” warned Biden, who, according to polls, may aspire to a victory in the elections. presidential elections on November 3.
“If Donald Trump wins the election, the Senate should make its selection and judge these nominees fairly,” the Democrat added. “But if I win the election, President Trump’s nomination should be withdrawn.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell criticized Biden for having already announced “in the hour following Ginsburg’s death announcement that he would organize a vote on his successor.
Ginsburg died of cancer on Friday at the age of 87. The resulting vacancy on the Supreme Court offers Republicans a chance to secure a conservative majority there for decades. Trump called the appointment of his successor an “obligation without delay.” Therefore, he will make a decision “very soon”, which will be “more likely” that it is a woman.
Under the Constitution of the United States, the president appoints the justices of the Supreme Court and the Senate must approve the proposal. There the Republicans currently have 53 and the Democrats 47 seats. A vote so close to the presidential election would be extremely unusual, because judges are appointed for life and their political orientation influences the judiciary in the United States for decades.
In 2016, ten months before the presidential election, Majority Leader McConnell refused to put to a vote the successor proposed by then Democratic President Barack Obama to a deceased Conservative judge. Now there are only six weeks left until the elections.
Republicans are not allowed to take any other line in the succession dispute “just because it serves their interests,” Biden said in Philadelphia. As he was not “naive,” he did not appeal to Trump or McConnell on this issue, but to “the handful of Republican senators” who “know deep down what is good for their country.” They must “follow their conscience.”
On Sunday, a second Republican senator spoke out against a Supreme Court personnel decision before the presidential election. Lisa Murkowski, from the state of Alaska, said she was against a vote “so soon” before the election. Republican Senator Susan Collins from the state of Maine had already publicly rejected it on Saturday. If two other Republicans in the Senate take this stance, Trump’s desired early voting could be scrapped.
