The Democrats control both the Senate and the Supreme Court, but polls predict they’ll lose one — or both — of those later this year.
With no faith that President Joe Biden will be reelected, liberal pundits fear a repeat of Supreme Court debacles under former President Donald Trump… and they’re demanding two of the liberal justices retire.
Democratic activist Josh Barro turned his attention to Justice Sonya Sotomayor. Barro compared Justice Sotomayor not to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but to Justice Antonin Scalia.
The conservative Scalia died in office in 2016, at age 80, and he left a seat open during the reign of Democrat President Barack Obama. In Barro’s view, Scalia could have prevented this risk by retiring at the age of 70 in 2006, during the presidency of George W. Bush.
Of course, the Senate Republicans blocked Obama’s pick for a replacement, but the Senate Democrats shouldn’t expect such luck.
Barro urged Sotomayor, 70, to retire this year for that reason.
“If Democrats lose the bet, the Court’s 6–3 conservative majority will turn into a 7–2 majority at some point within the next decade. If they win the bet, what do they win? They win the opportunity to read dissents written by Sotomayor instead of some other liberal justice,” Barro wrote in The Atlantic. “This is obviously an insane trade.”
Barro wasn’t alone.
Some Democrats close to Biden told Politico in January that they wanted Sotomayor to retire. They just didn’t want to call for her retirement publicly.
On Wednesday, a viral tweet called for the retirement of not only Sotomayor, but also 63-year-old Justice Elena Kagan. “Breaks my heart to say it but yes Sotomayor and Kagan should both retire,” the tweet said Wednesday.
The Senate Democrats remain scarred by the saga of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The liberal justice refused to retire in 2013 or 2014, a time of Democrat dominance in both the Senate and the White House. Then, she died in office in 2020 at age 87, and she was succeeded by conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
Four years later, the Senate Democrats have had every opportunity to learn from their mistakes. They’ve enjoyed the good fortune of controlling the chamber for Joe Biden’s entire presidency so far, and they’ve already confirmed one of his Supreme Court picks: Ketanji Brown Jackson, a successor to the retired Stephen Breyer.
Will they remember the lesson?
The Horn editorial team