An increasing number of Democrats and liberals are growing quite concerned over the looming possibility that Joe Biden could lose the election in November and usher in another term for Donald Trump. An unsubtle sign of progressive voices all but saying this directly can be found in suggestions on the left that Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor should retire quickly and allow Joe Biden to nominate her replacement rather than taking the risk that the Bad Orange Man could inherit the task. The latest example of this trend can be found in a column this week at The Atlantic by Josh Barrow with the brief, blunt title, “Sonia Sotomayor Should Retire Now.”
Barrow begins with a walk down memory lane. He invites the reader to imagine a world where Hillary Clinton won the 2016 presidential election. Republicans had been holding Antonin Scalia’s seat open since his death in February of that year. If the Democrats had taken the White House and the Senate majority, the court would have looked significantly different than it does today. That’s when the author sets his sights on Sotomayor and implores her not to make the same mistake that Scalia very nearly made.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor will turn 70 in June. If she retires this year, President Joe Biden will nominate a young and reliably liberal judge to replace her. Republicans do not control the Senate floor and cannot force the seat to be held open like they did when Scalia died. Confirmation of the new justice will be a slam dunk, and liberals will have successfully shored up one of their seats on the Court—playing the kind of defense that is smart and prudent when your only hope of controlling the Court again relies on both the timing of the death or retirement of conservative judges and not losing your grip on the three seats you already hold.
But if Sotomayor does not retire this year, we don’t know when she will next be able to retire with a likely liberal replacement. It’s possible that Democrats will retain the presidency and the Senate in this year’s elections, in which case the insurance created by a Sotomayor retirement won’t have been necessary. But if Democrats lose the presidency or the Senate this fall—or both—she’ll need to stay on the bench until the party once again controls them. That could be just a few years, or it could be longer. Democrats have previously had to wait as long as 14 years (1995 to 2009). In other words, if Sotomayor doesn’t retire this year, she’ll be making a bet that she will remain fit to serve until possibly age 78 or even 82 or 84—and she’ll be forcing the whole Democratic Party to make that high-stakes bet with her.
Click here to read the full story at Hot Air.
