Topline
Former Vice President Joe Biden on Sunday said President Trump should withdraw his Supreme Court nominee if he loses in November and warned wavering GOP Senators of civil unrest and a constitutional crisis that could result from them attempting to rush through a replacement for the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Democratic presidential nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden speaks at the National ... [+]
Key Facts
Speaking from the Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Biden accused GOP leaders of shifting standards for court appointments, citing their opposition to confirming President Obama’s nominee for the late Justice Antonin Scalia in an election year in 2016 and their past commitments not to confirm a nominee in 2020.
Biden said he wouldn’t be “naive” by attempting to sway Trump or Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell into halting their efforts to jam through a nominee, instead addressing Senate Republicans who he said, “know deep down what is right for the country — not just for their party.”
Biden warned of a “constitutional crisis” from continually “rewriting history, scrambling norms, and ignoring our cherished system of checks and balances,” and said he believes if the Senate does nominate someone before election day, voters “will not stand for this abuse of power.”
The former vice president urged pivotal GOP senators to “uphold your Constitutional duty, your conscience” and “cool the flames that have been engulfing our country,” telling them not to vote for a nominee “under the circumstances President Trump and Senator McConnell have created.”
Biden also underscored the importance of the Supreme Court vacancy in an effort to motivate his supporters, laying out crises currently facing the U.S. – coronavirus, the recession, a “reckoning on race” – and declared, “Supreme Court decisions touch every part of these crises.”
Crucial Quote
“If Donald Trump wins the election, then the Senate should move on his selection and weigh that nominee fairly,” Biden said. “But if I win the election, President Trump’s nomination should be withdrawn. As the new President, I should be the one who nominates Justice Ginsburg’s successor, a nominee who should get a fair hearing in the Senate before a confirmation vote.”
Key Background
With a 53-seat majority and Vice President Pence as the tie-breaker, McConnell can afford to lose only three votes. Two Republican Senators – Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) – have already come out against voting to confirm a nominee before the election. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) is seen as another potential defector, while vulnerable Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) may also break ranks.
Big Number
62%. That’s the percent of Americans who said the vacancy should be filled by the winner in November in a Reuters poll released Sunday, compared to 23% who disagreed with that.
Tangent
Biden reiterated his earlier pledge to pick a Black woman for the court but laid out his reasoning for not putting out a list of potential Supreme Court nominees as Trump has done and called on Biden to do. Biden noted that Presidential candidates had not put out such lists before Trump, and said he didn’t want such an action to influence the judges’ rulings or subject them to “unrelenting political attacks” in the interim. Biden also explained that his eventual nominee would be based on the “advice and consent” of the senators from both parties, as prescribed by the constitution, and not “as part of a partisan election campaign.”
Chief Critic
Republicans took aim at Biden for reneging on a seeming pledge in June, when he said he was “putting together a list” of African American women to serve on the court, but that he was “not going to release that until we go further down the line in vetting them.” Trump campaign rapid response director Andrew Clark asked, “Why did [Biden]
think it was ok to release a SCOTUS list in June but now think it’s wrong?”