Supreme Court Dysfunction Only Ends When Democrats Win

I doubt Senate Republicans will allow a vote on Merrick Garland before the election – the price they would pay with their base would be too great at this point. And the odds are they will allow a vote in the lame duck session if a Democrat wins and they lose the Senate. But if a Democrat wins and the Republicans manage to hold the Senate, all bets are off.

You really have to wonder why they would bother at that point – whatever losses from their intransigence would already have been incurred. They could simply wait for the Democratic President to either re-nominate Garland or put forward a new candidate. And then they could stonewall that for another few months until the next election cycle begins.  A neutered Supreme Court would just allow the different circuit rulings to stand, creating the bizarre situation of a different application of the same law from one state to the next and more chaos for businesses and citizens. Under their leadership, the legislative branch is clearly broken but they will have paid no price, having just maintained control of the House and Senate; they have left vacancies in the lower courts open for years and paid no price; it is just a small step to take that level of obstruction to the Supreme Court. They can point out that the country would have survived without a ninth justice for nearly a year, so what’s a few more months. After all, when the raison d’etre of their legislative platform under a Democratic President is to make sure government does not work and then run against the incompetence of government, a dysfunctional Supreme Court just plays into their strategy. The only way to make the Supreme Court relevant again is to elect a Democratic President and a Democratic Senate.