How Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Death Could Reshape America’s Presidential Campaign

A U.S. presidential campaign that was already pulling on the nation’s sharpest divisions was rocked by the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, potentially reshaping elections at a time when some Americans were beginning to cast your votes.

For months, the contest has largely focused on US President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus, the biggest public health crisis in a century that has severely damaged his re-election prospects as the number of dead in the United States is close to 200,000 people.

But in an instant, Ginsburg’s death on Friday (Saturday NZT) added new weight to the election, with the potential that Trump or his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, could choose a successor who could decide access to abortion, the environmental regulations and the power of government. presidency for a generation.

With early voting underway in five states and Election Day just over six weeks away, Democrats and Republicans came together in large part Friday night in praising Ginsburg as a leading legal thinker and advocate for the Women rights. But strategists from both parties also seized the moment to find an advantage.

Faced with the prospect of losing both the White House and the Senate, some Republicans saw the Supreme Court vacancy as one of the few avenues left for Trump to push his supporters beyond his most loyal core of supporters, in particularly suburban women who have left the Republican Party of late. years.

READ MORE:
* Republicans promise to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg before the November US elections.
* The Supreme Court of the United States says that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died at the age of 87.

“It’s hard to see how this doesn’t help Trump politically,” said veteran Republican strategist Alex Conant. “Biden wants this election to be a referendum on Trump. Now it will be a referendum on who nominates the Supreme Court. “

Several Republicans close to the White House believe that Trump will likely nominate a woman, who could serve as a sort of counterweight to Biden’s choice of his running mate Kamala Harris, who would be the first woman to serve as vice president.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, vowed to quickly put whoever Trump nominates to a vote. But it faces a possible division within its own ranks, including Senators Mitt Romney of Utah, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine and Cory Gardner of Colorado. Collins and Gardner are in particularly tight races for re-election this fall.

That is fueling optimism among Democrats that the vacancy could drive home the meaning of the election to their base.

“The implications for the Senate elections could be profound,” said Democratic strategist Bill Burton.

“The presidential race will see an immediate rotation, as activists on both sides will have new energy,” he continued. “The lingering question will be whether the huge protests around the Capitol and the country will ignite an energy so vigorous that it leads to terrible confrontations.”

Biden, who has already pledged to nominate the first black woman to the Supreme Court, told reporters late Friday that “the voters must choose the president and the president must choose the judge to consider.”

Democrats are infuriated by McConnell’s promise to move on, especially after he prevented US President Barack Obama from appointing a judge to replace Antonin Scalia nine months before the 2016 election. That decision yielded a lengthy one. Political shadow, prompting Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who mounted a spirited bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, to make the expansion of the Supreme Court a centerpiece of his campaign. Biden rejected the idea.

Some Democrats privately admit that the Supreme Court vacancy could divert attention from the virus, which has been a central element of Biden’s campaign.

Trump took the unprecedented step in 2016 of publishing a list of Supreme Court elections before he was elected, a move that was credited with unifying skeptical conservative voters to rally behind him. Republicans also believe that the high-profile debate over Trump’s last election to the Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh, helped the Republican Party retain the Senate during the 2018 midterm elections, when the party lost control of the House.

The president, who seeks to generate the same kind of power that surrounded his 2016 candidacy, released another list of potential Supreme Court candidates last week.

But some Democrats said the political environment is already overheated, with partisan divisions on everything from wearing a mask to curb the pandemic to addressing climate change. Ginsburg’s death, they say, may not change that.

“It’s ugly enough enough,” said Megan Jones, a Democratic strategist who worked for former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. “I don’t know how this doesn’t turn into a fight of epic proportions.”