Kennedy's Final Days Solidified His Legacy As Just Another Partisan Hack
I’ve been busy the last day or so but I have plenty to say and will eventually get around to saying it. But one thing that should not go unmentioned is just how partisan Anthony Kennedy had really become, and this goes far beyond his recent right-wing decisions.
It is clear that Kennedy was itching to retire a few years ago but he was damn sure not going to do it while Obama was President. Now, having watched Mitch McConnell refuse to even give a hearing to an eminently qualified jurist and steal one Supreme Court seat, Kennedy could have taken the option, as many other Supreme Court nominees have, and waited until after the fall elections and the swearing in of the new Congress next January and then announced his retirement. It at least would have allowed the voters to again express their will and perhaps given Democrats a chance at winning the Senate, which would force Trump to reach for a consensus nominee, if one is possible.
Instead, he announced his retirement now, giving McConnell the best possible options. Trump and the Republicans can motivate the base to hold the Senate, as they have already begun doing, in order to get that long-last vote to repeal Roe v. Wade and continue sending the country back to the Gilded Age and beyond. And even if ginning up the base isn’t enough for Republicans to hold the Senate, McConnell can still go ahead and ram through Trump’s nominee in the lame duck session. Does anyone think a Republican would stand up against that? Relying on Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski is about as useful as relying on the Supreme Court, and how has that worked out.
In the end, Kennedy watched McConnell steal a Supreme Court seat and, rather than being appalled, just gave McConnell another gift with the timing of his retirement. So, for his final acts on the Court, Kennedy just proved himself to be another extreme partisan hack, joining a string of logically inconsistent decisions that destroyed outstanding precedent, then timed his retirement decision to benefit a particular party, the Republicans, and again, like his voting rights decisions, denied the American people a voice in the process. Quite a legacy.
UPDATE: And now we learn that Kennedy was potentially exposed to being blackmailed by Trump. The NY Times is reporting that Kennedy’s son was the global head of Deutsche Bank’s (DB) real estate capital markets division. In that job, Kennedy’s son worked closely with Trump and provided over $1 billion in loans for Trump real estate projects here in the US when no other bank was willing to touch Trump. Considering that DB is implicated in laundering at least $10 billion in Russian money, it does not beggar the imagination that Kennedy’s son was laundering Russian money through Trump. And then, when you look at Kennedy’s total capitulation to the conservatives on the Court this year, including many curious opinions that concurred with the majority but then decried the potential for abuse of those decisions as well as opinions that rejected Kennedy’s own previously set standards, and combine that with Trump’s modus operandi as a racketeer, you have to seriously wonder whether Kennedy was being softly blackmailed. As I say, quite a legacy.
