In a not unexpected but belligerent answer to a question in front of the Paducah Area Chamber of Commerce luncheon, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell replied to a question about whether he would follow the standard he imposed on President Obama in regards to the Trump administration to not allow a Supreme Court nomination to go forward during the last year lame duck portion of the Trump term.
According to Politico he replied "Oh, we'd fill it" with smirk and loud laughter from the attendees.
I don't have much to add to this blatantly hypocritical attack on Democrats other than to suggest that once Democrats gain the Senate and the White House back that it is time to start unpacking that court by adding a couple new justices. It is already packed with radical conservative activist Justices. No, to unpack the court we must balance it. If this “My way or the Highway” approach to governance is the Republican game plan we need to come up with some new rules of our own. We need a couple new Justices as a penalty for McConnell's hubris. We need to color outside the lines to start overturning the Republican Apple cart. And to return to legislative policies and principals which once made the GOP a semi-permanent minority party for decades.
McConnell must pay for this outrageous attempt to pack the SCOTUS along with other courts in his favor whereupon he would not even chance a vote on a well-regarded Obama nominee. Perhaps we need new districts for new courts as well given the expansion of our population and judicial complexity; to speed more cases through the upper courts. And balance the unflinching Republican attempts to stack all the courts in their favor.
We must also finish more of McConnell's approach and do away with the filibuster or return it to the Mr Smith goes to Washington standard including doing away with allowing multiple filibuster threats to be in place simultaneously. We then need to spend those following two years putting legislation in place which has polled well for us for many, many years and make them laws of the land which start bringing immediate benefits and releif to the general public that Republicans have denied us for decades. Including laws to bring up wages, reduce private debt, attack social injustices including economic wage disparacies and inequality. Expending the civil rights of those denied them. Things which a majority of voters would be reluctant to vote away y putting Republicans back in power. Advantages for the rust belt and rural America along with the great population centers.
Once we have control of those institutions and the House of Representatives we need overarching Green New Deal programs which revise the whole of government in place and ready to go. A permanent health care solution and everything leading up to it.
We need to go out of our way to expand our influence over the SCOTUS and to do away with old methods of giving the minority parties extarordinary power through mechanismsn like the filibuster and the Election College. I also hope that if such a vacancy takes place that we will sue to make McConnell hold to his standard or expose the SCOTUS as an ever more activist tool of the Republican party.