KH Anglais Presse File 4 - American Elections 2020 -Towards a ‘Minority Rule’ ?

A/ Kamala Harris, Daughter of Immigrants, Is the Face of America’s Demographic Shift Her parents’ arrival to Berkeley as young graduate students was the beginning of a historic wave of immigration from outside Europe that would change the United States in ways its leaders never imagined.

The New York Times, Aug. 15, 2020 When Kamala Harris’s mother left India for California in 1958, the percentage of Americans who were immigrants was at its lowest point in over a century. That was about to change. Her arrival at Berkeley as a young graduate student — and that of another student, an immigrant from Jamaica whom she would marry — was the beginning of a historic wave of immigration from outside Europe that would transform the United States in ways its leaders never imagined. Now, the American- born children of these immigrants — people like Ms. Harris — are the face of this country’s demographic future. Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s choice of Ms. Harris as his running mate* has been celebrated as a milestone* because she is the first Black woman and the first of Indian descent in American history to be on a major party’s presidential ticket. But her selection also highlights a remarkable shift in this country: the rise of a new wave of children of immigrants, or second-generation Americans, as a growing political and cultural force, different from any that has come before. The last major influx of immigrants, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, came primarily from Eastern and Southern Europe. This time the surge* comes from around the world, from India and Jamaica to China and Mexico and beyond. In California, the state where Ms. Harris grew up and which she now represents in the Senate, about half of all children come from immigrant homes. Nationwide, for the first time in this country’s history, whites make up* less than half of the population under the age of 16, the Brookings Institution has found; the trend is driven by larger numbers of Asians, Hispanics and people who are multiracial. Today, more than a quarter of American adults are immigrants or the American-born* children of immigrants. About 25 million adults are American-born children of immigrants, representing about 10 percent of the adult population, according to Jeffrey Passel, senior demographer at the Pew Research Center. By comparison the foreign-born* portion of the population is still much larger — about 42 million adults, or roughly one in six of the country’s 250 million adults, Mr. Passel noted. At 55, Ms. Harris is on the older side of this second generation of Americans whose parents came in those early years. But her family is part of a larger trend that has broad implications for the country’s identity, transforming a mostly white baby-boomer society into a multiethnic and racial patchwork. Because of the influx of immigrants from outside Europe and their children, every successive generation in America in the past half-century has been less white than the one before: Boomers are 71.6 percent white, Millennials are 55 percent white, and post-Gen Z, those born after 2012, are 49.6 percent white, according William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution. “The demography is moving forward,” said Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, chancellor at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, who has studied these modern children of immigrants from the Caribbean, China, Central America, and Mexico. “This is the future in the U.S.”

B/ The Changing demographic make-up of the United-States

America's face is changing. Fast.

Analysis by Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large, August 29, 2019

Washington (CNN)In the nearly two decades between 2000 and 2018, more than 100 counties across the United States saw their white population slip under 50%, according to a Pew analysis of census information, the latest in a series of data points that make clear the country's demographics (and, eventually, its politics) are in a period of considerable change. With the addition of the 109 counties that turned from majority white to majority non-white over the last 18 years, there are now 293 non-white majority counties in the United States. While that accounts for only 9% of the total counties in the United States, it's the change over time that is most interesting -- and where it's happening. Two facts stand out in that regard: 1) While 109 counties went from majority white to majority non-white over the past 18 years, just two -- yes, TWO -- went from majority non-white to majority white. (They were Calhoun County in South Carolina and West Feliciana Parish in Louisiana.) 2) Some of the largest counties in the country are changing the fastest. As Pew concludes: "In 21 of the 25 biggest U.S. counties by population, nonwhite groups together make up more than half of residents. Eight of these counties were majority white in 2000 but are no longer: San Diego, Orange, Riverside and Sacramento (all in California), plus Clark (Nevada), Broward (Florida), Tarrant (Texas) and Wayne (Michigan)." And there are a handful of other huge counties (Fairfax in Virginia, Pima in Arizona, Milwaukee in Wisconsin) where the white population has sunk under 52% -- and could well go majority non-white in the next few years.

The pattern is clear. Big counties with lots and lots of people in them -- largely clustered in the south, southwest and west -- are rapidly being transformed from white-dominant populations to places where Hispanic, black and Asian faces make up the majority of residents. What does this mean for politics? Well, a lot. While President Donald Trump's 2016 election proved that predictions of demographic doom for Republicans were premature, it also highlighted the increasingly white nature of the GOP coalition. Whites made up 71% of all voters in 2016 -- their lowest percentage ever -- and Trump won that group by 20 points. He lost black voters (12% of the electorate) by 81 points. He lost Hispanics (11% of electorate) by 38 points. He lost Asians (4% of electorate) by 38 points. The trends are clear. The country isn't getting any whiter. And the Republican coalition is growingly increasingly dependent on that shrinking white vote. (George W. Bush took 44% of the Hispanic vote in 2004.) "America is changing demographically, and unless Republicans are able to grow our appeal the way GOP governors have done, the changes tilt the playing field even more in the Democratic direction." Know when that sentence was written -- and by who? It was in the wake of the 2012 election by a group of Republicans tasked by the Republican National Committee with conducting an autopsy of the party's losses. They were right then. The Pew numbers suggest they are even more right now. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/08/21/u-s-counties-majority-nonwhite/ https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2019/03/21/views-of-demographic-changes-in-america/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/02/15/the-changing-face-of-congress/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/01/17/where-millennials-end-and-generation-z-begins/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0WVQUHkNmc&ab_channel=TheLateShowwithStephenColbert https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45146811 C/ 1 in every 4 circuit court judges is now a Trump appointee

The Washington Post, Dec. 22, 2019

After three years in office, President Trump has remade the federal judiciary, ensuring a conservative tilt for decades and cementing his legacy no matter the outcome of November’s election. Trump nominees make up 1 in 4 U.S. circuit court judges. Two of his picks sit on the Supreme Court. And this past week, as the House voted to impeach the president, the Republican-led Senate confirmed an additional 13 district court judges. In total, Trump has installed 187 judges to the federal bench. Trump’s mark on the judiciary is already having far-reaching effects on legislation and liberal priorities. Just last week, the 5th Circuit struck down a core provision of the Affordable Care Act. One of the two appellate judges who ruled against the landmark law was a Trump appointee. The Supreme Court — where two of the nine justices are conservatives selected by Trump — could eventually hear that case. The 13 circuit courts are the second most powerful in the nation, serving as a last stop for appeals on lower court rulings, unless the case is taken up by the Supreme Court. So far, Trump has appointed 50 judges to circuit court benches. Comparatively, by this point in President Obama’s first term, he had confirmed 25. At the end of his eight years, he had appointed 55 circuit judges. Trump’s appointments have flipped three circuit courts to majority GOP-appointed judges, including the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in New York. The president has also selected younger conservatives for these lifetime appointments, ensuring his impact is felt for many years. The executor of this aggressive push is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who is almost singularly focused on reshaping the federal judiciary, twice ramming through Senate rule changes to speed up confirmations over Democrats’ objections. “Leave no vacancy behind” is his mantra, McConnell has stated publicly. With a 53-to-47 Senate majority, he has been able to fill openings at breakneck speed. That philosophy did not seem to apply in 2016, when McConnell refused to allow Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, Obama’s choice to replace the late justice Antonin Scalia, a confirmation hearing, let alone a vote. McConnell insisted on waiting until after the 2016 election, a gamble that paid off when Trump beat Democrat Hillary Clinton. Trump appointed conservative Justice Neil M. Gorsuch for that seat. McConnell has repeatedly described blocking Garland as one of his greatest achievements. While Trump has wavered on some conservative policies during his tenure, he has reliably appointed judges in line with conservative ideology.“I’ve always heard, actually, that when you become President, the most — single most important thing you can do is federal judges,” Trump said at a White House event in November celebrating his “federal judicial confirmation milestones.” (…) Trump has facetiously thanked Obama for leaving him so many judicial vacancies. “Now, President Obama was very nice to us. He gave us 142 empty positions. That’s never happened before,” Trump said in the Oval Office on Thursday. “But, as you know, that’s said to be the most important thing that a President has.” When Fox News host Sean Hannity made a similar remark while interviewing McConnell on his show recently, the majority leader made clear that Obama didn’t leave those vacancies intentionally. “I’ll tell you why. I was in charge of what we did the last two years of the Obama administration,” McConnell said, laughing. “I will give you full credit for that, and by the way, take a bow,” Hannity responded. In April, McConnell limited debate on Trump nominees from 30 hours to two hours, which has allowed him to push through judges at warp speed. Before that, McConnell did away with “blue slips,” which allowed senators to contest judicial nominees from their home states. Republicans say Democrats started this trend when then-Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) eliminated the filibuster for most nominees in 2013, a tool the minority party could use to block or delay a confirmation. When the Democrats lost the Senate in 2014, McConnell gained the power to stall Obama nominees, leaving Trump with plenty of vacancies. The fast clip of judicial confirmations has no doubt shifted the courts rightward, said Russell Wheeler, a judicial branch expert at the Brookings Institution, calling it “a significant impact but not a revolutionary impact.” At least not yet. Two-thirds of the 50 circuit court judge slots filled with Trump appointees were previously held by other Republican-appointed judges. There’s also the potential for additional openings on the Supreme Court. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1993, is 86 and has had health problems. Justice Stephen G. Breyer, another Clinton pick, is also over 80. Chris Kang, chief counsel of Demand Justice, a group that supports liberal judicial nominees, wants Democrats to recognize just how high the stakes are for 2020. “Republicans have been using the courts to achieve policy priorities that they couldn’t achieve through the democratically elected legislative branch of government,” Kang said. “These federal judges serve for life; that’s a point we take for granted, but not a way a lot of Americans understand it. Trump’s imprint on this country will be felt for decades through his courts.” Democrats have long been reluctant to talk about the courts in a political way, Kang said. But, with Republicans choosing judges with far-right ideologies, liberals can’t “cling to romantic notions of our courts as impartial,” he added. “That’s not the reality and not how Republicans see it.”

D/ 'Democracy has been hijacked by white men': how minority rule now grips America

The US is becoming more diverse and progressive, but white men’s grip on power is being exercised via the courts, gerrymandering and dark money in politics The Guardian, Fri 24 May 2019

The exercise of political power by legislative majorities of white, male elected officials in ways that disproportionately exclude or harm women and people of color is such a familiar part of the American political landscape that it sometimes goes underremarked. That was not the case last week after 25 white Republican men in Alabama voted for a near-total abortion ban in the state, an act that focused the national attention and sparked fears of a broader assault on women’s rights. But the furore around Alabama’s move was exceptional. Elsewhere white, male legislative majorities have enacted controversial policies without drawing such a spotlight, by stopping minimum wage increases, voting down paid sick leave, blocking bans on fracking, defeating gun safety measures, purging voter rolls, upholding discriminatory criminal justice measures and barring free choice in marriage. Neither race nor gender nor any other demographic distinction is purely predictive of political outlook, and each of the causes listed above has had champions and opponents of all kinds. But as when 11 white men on the Senate judiciary committee last year had to recruit a female lawyer to question Dr Christine Blasey Ford about her sexual assault claims against judge Brett Kavanaugh, the Alabama abortion ban has prompted new questions about why America’s elected officials don’t look more like America. It is also reinvigorating the debate about what that discrepancy is costing the country. “It’s pretty clear that what’s happening in Alabama is not a reflection of what most people in Alabama want,” said Caroline Fredrickson, president of the American Constitution Society and former director of the ACLU’s Washington legislative office. “And so the ultimate question is: How is it happening that the state legislature is passing bills that the people don’t support? A 2018 poll showed that the Alabama ban was supported by only 31% of people in the state. “It is a reflection of a failure of democracy, of a democracy that has been hijacked by special interests, and in particular by white conservative men who have an agenda. It’s an economic agenda but it’s also a social agenda,” Fredrickson said. The white male grip on political power in the United States is strong. Seven out of 10 US senators are white men, a group that makes up only about 30% of the US population. White men hold 65% of elected seats nationally, according to the Reflective Democracy Campaign. About half of all federal judges (but more than 70% of Donald Trump nominees) are white men. The white male grip on power is also deeply entrenched, and well-insulated by historical design. It was written into the constitution, secured by the enslavement of African Americans and an economy and society built on slavery, and promulgated by generations of reinforcement and denial. Many contemporary structures still prop it up. The US Senate, already badly underrepresentative, will become more so as city populations grow and rural populations shrink, swinging an even greater proportion of power to less populated, and more conservative, states. Federal courts have been rendered more conservative for at least a generation owing to a record number of lifetime appointments made by Trump. Voter suppression laws, dark money in politics and gerrymandering all reinforce a white male grip on power. The proliferation of racially discriminatory voter suppression, half a century after the civil rights movement, is “shameful”, wrote Stacey Abrams, the former Georgia gubernatorial candidate and founder of the voting rights group Fair Fight Action, in a New York Times op-ed last week. The impact of this dynamic on American life goes deeper, analysts say, than the fact that many citizens simply don’t see themselves in their elected representatives: white men are not creating the same America, through legislation, that a more representative group of lawmakers would. The proportion of women serving in state legislatures stagnated for more than a decade around 25% in the lead- up to the 2018 election, said Jean Sinzdak, associate director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. But when women are elected, they tend to advance a different agenda from men. “There’s research that shows that female elected officials are more likely to make the governing process more transparent, they’re more likely to build consensus,” Sinzdak said. “They are also more likely to carry the water on issues like health and education. They’re more likely to bring previously marginalized groups into the policymaking process.” The 2018 election saw a distinct uptick in the proportion of women in state legislatures, Sinzdak said, and the 2020 election could see the trend continue. The current disproportionate representation in government of conservatives, in particular, has been achieved through a deliberate plan to seize the levers of power, Fredrickson explains in her recently published The Democracy Fix: How to Win the Fight for Fair Rules, Fair Courts and Fair Elections. Progressives must mount a comparable effort in reply, Fredrickson says, describing part of the challenge as demanding that Democratic officials treat the confirmation of judges like the political process it is. “We can’t complain about voting rights and gerrymandering and a whole set of other bad court decisions that are issued, and not actually have put in any energy to making sure that the courts are fair and representative,” Fredrickson said. Another task is to confront voter suppression and the gerrymander, she said – and not in a way that simply results in a reciprocal Democratic gerrymander. An enforcement of “one person, one vote” and of fair districting benefits progressives “because progressives are the majority in this country,” she said. “Because the country is becoming more and more demographically diverse and socially progressive, [fair districting] is actually going to produce outcomes that are more favorable to our values,” she said. “Which is why the right is fighting so hard against democracy in this country, because they know they’re outnumbered.” The numbers only count when people show up to vote, and the men who enacted the Alabama abortion ban (and the woman governor who signed it) represent one of the country’s most reliable voting blocs: white evangelical Christians. In his book The End of White Christian America, Robert P Jones, chief executive of the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), writes that the influence of white evangelical Christians in US politics is diminished, but persistent, owing to voter turnout patterns. “White evangelicals over the last decade have dropped from about 21% of the population down to only 15% of the population, but both in the 2018 midterms and the 2016 election, they made up 26% of voters, according to the exit polls,” Jones told the Guardian. “And that’s because they turn out to vote at higher rates than nonwhite, non-Christian voters do. So basically they’re overrepresented at the ballot box.” That could change with new voting patterns, Jones said. “If we ever got anywhere near parity of turnout, we’d see a dramatically different political landscape. At the end of the day, it really is about who shows up.”

https://www.vox.com/21456620/supreme-court-scotus-undemocratic-milestone-minority-rule

E/ Why Republicans Play Dirty

By Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt Mr. Levitsky and Mr. Ziblatt are political scientists and the authors of “How Democracies Die.” The Washington Post, Sept. 20, 2019

The party’s abandonment of fair play was showcased an escalating conflict that is difficult to undo. As the spectacularly in 2016, when the United States Senate collapse of democracy in Germany and Spain in the refused to allow President Barack Obama to fill the 1930s and Chile in the 1970s makes clear, these Supreme Court vacancy created by Justice Antonin escalating conflicts can end in tragedy. Scalia’s death in February. While technically Why is the Republican Party playing dirty? constitutional, the act — in effect, stealing a court seat Republican leaders are not driven by an intrinsic or — hadn’t been tried since the 19th century. It would be ideological contempt for democracy. They are driven by bad enough on its own, but the Merrick Garland affair fear. is part of a broader pattern. Democracy requires that parties know how to lose. Republicans across the country seem to have Politicians who fail to win elections must be willing to embraced an “any means necessary” strategy to accept defeat, go home, and get ready to play again the preserve their power. After losing the governorship in next day. This norm of gracious losing is essential to a North Carolina in 2016 and Wisconsin in 2018, healthy democracy. Republicans used lame-duck legislative sessions to push But for parties to accept losing, two conditions must through a flurry of bills stripping power from incoming hold. First, they must feel secure that losing today will Democratic governors. Last year, when the not bring ruinous consequences; and second, they must Pennsylvania Supreme Court struck down a Republican believe they have a reasonable chance of winning again gerrymandering initiative, conservative legislators in the future. When party leaders fear that they cannot attempted to impeach the justices. And back in North win future elections, or that defeat poses an existential Carolina, Republican legislators used a surprise vote threat to themselves or their constituents, the stakes rise. last week, on Sept. 11, to ram through an override of Their time horizons shorten. They throw tomorrow to Gov. Roy Cooper’s budget veto — while most the wind and seek to win at any cost today. In short, Democrats had been told no vote would be held. This is desperation leads politicians to play dirty. classic “constitutional hardball*,” behavior that, Take German conservatives before World War I. while technically legal, uses the letter of the law to They were haunted by the prospect of extending equal subvert its spirit. voting rights to the working class. They viewed equal Constitutional hardball has accelerated under the (male) suffrage as a menace not only to their own Trump administration. President Trump’s declaration of electoral prospects but also to the survival of the a “national emergency” to divert public money toward aristocratic order. One Conservative leader called full a border wall — openly flouting Congress, which voted and equal suffrage an “attack on the laws of against building a wall — is a clear example. And the civilization.” So German conservatives played dirty, Supreme Court’s conservative majority, manufactured engaging in rampant election manipulation and outright by an earlier act of hardball, may uphold the repression in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. constitutionality of the president’s autocratic behavior. In the United States, Southern Democrats reacted Constitutional hardball can damage and even destroy in a similar manner to the Reconstruction-era a democracy. Democratic institutions function only enfranchisement of African-Americans. Mandated by when power is exercised with restraint. When parties the 15th Amendment, which was ratified in 1870, abandon the spirit of the law and seek to win by any black suffrage not only imperiled Southern Democrats’ means necessary, politics often descends into political dominance but also challenged longstanding institutional warfare. Governments in Hungary and patterns of white supremacy. Since African-Americans Turkey have used court packing and other “legal” represented a majority or near majority in many of the maneuvers to lock in power and ensure that subsequent post-Confederate states, Southern Democrats viewed abuse is ruled “constitutional.” And when one party their enfranchisement as an existential threat. So they, engages in constitutional hardball, its rivals often feel too, played dirty. compelled to respond in a tit-for-tat fashion, triggering Between 1885 and 1908, all 11 post-Confederate days are over, but the loss of a group’s social status can states passed laws establishing poll taxes, literacy tests, feel deeply threatening. Many rank-and-file property and residency requirements and other Republicans believe that the country they grew up in is measures aimed at stripping African-Americans of their being taken away from them. Slogans like “take our voting rights — and locking in Democratic Party country back” and “make America great again” reflect dominance. In Tennessee, where the 1889 Dortch Law this sense of peril. would disenfranchise illiterate black voters, one So like the old Southern Democrats, modern-day newspaper editorialized, “Give us the Dortch bill or we Republicans have responded to darkening electoral perish.” These measures, building on a monstrous horizons and rank-and-file perceptions of existential campaign of anti-black violence, did precisely what threat with a win-at-any-cost mentality. (…) they were intended to do: Black turnout in the The only way out of this situation is for the Republican South fell to 2 percent in 1912 from 61 percent in 1880. Party to become more diverse. A stunning 90 percent of Unwilling to lose, Southern Democrats stripped the House Republicans are white men, even though white right to vote from millions of people, ushering in nearly men are a third of the electorate. Only when a century of authoritarian rule in the South. Republicans can compete seriously for younger, urban Republicans appear to be in the grip of a similar panic and nonwhite voters will their fear of losing — and of a today. Their medium-term electoral prospects are dim. multiracial America — subside. For one, they remain an overwhelmingly white Such a transformation is less far-fetched than it may Christian party in an increasingly diverse society. As a appear right now; indeed, the Republican National share of the American electorate, white Christians Committee recommended it in 2013. But parties only declined from 73 percent in 1992 to 57 percent in 2012 change when their strategies bring costly defeat. So and may be below 50 percent by 2024. Republicans also Republicans must fail — badly — at the polls. (…) face a generational challenge: Younger voters Liberal democracy has historically required at least two are deserting them. In 2018, 18- to 29-year-olds voted competing parties committed to playing the democratic for Democrats by more than 2 to 1, and 30-somethings game, including one that typically represents voted nearly 60 percent for Democrats. conservative interests. But the commitment of Demography is not destiny, but as California America’s conservative party to this system is Republicans have discovered, it often punishes parties wavering, threatening our political system as a whole. that fail to adapt to changing societies. The growing Until Republicans learn to compete fairly in a diverse diversity of the American electorate is making it harder society, our democratic institutions will be imperiled. for the Republican Party to win national majorities. Republicans have won the popular vote in presidential * Constitutional hardball refers to the exploitation of procedures, elections just once in the last 30 years. Donald Trump laws and institutions by political actors for partisan gain in ways captured this Republican pessimism well when which violate pre-established norms and push the bounds of legality. he told the Christian Broadcasting Network in 2016, “I Legal scholars and political scientists have characterized think this is the last election the Republicans have a constitutional hardball as a threat to democracy, because it undermines shared understanding of democratic norms and chance of winning because you are going to have people undermines the expectation that the other side will comply with flowing across the border.” democratic norms. As a result, the use of constitutional hardball by “If we don’t win this election,” Mr. Trump added, one side of partisans encourages other partisans to respond in “you’ll never see another Republican.” similar fashion. The problem runs deeper than electoral math, however. The concept stems from a 2004 article by Mark Tushnet of Harvard Much of the Republican base views defeat as Law School. catastrophic. White Christians are losing more than an Harvard University political scientists Daniel Ziblatt and Steven electoral majority; their once-dominant status in Levitsky have argued that democracies such as Argentina and American society is eroding. Half a century ago, white Venezuela, shifted to authoritarianism in part through constitutional Protestant men occupied nearly all our country’s high- hardball, as Juan Perón and Hugo Chavez used legal court-packing schemes to cement power (Wikipedia) status positions: They made up nearly all the elected officials, business leaders and media figures. Those

F/ After RBG How to make American judges less notorious

Supreme Court judges should be term-limited

Leaders, The Economist, Sep 26th 2020

At the time of her death, Ruth Bader Ginsburg featured on more than 3,000 pieces of memorabilia which were for sale on Amazon.com. Fans of “Notorious rbg” could buy earrings, mugs, babygrows, fitness manuals and Christmas decorations (“Merry Resistmas!”), all bearing her face. The number and variety of these tributes suggest two things. First, that Justice Ginsburg was an extraordinary woman with an extraordinary place in American culture. Second, that something has gone wrong with America’s system of checks and balances. The United States is the only democracy in the world where judges enjoy such celebrity, or where their medical updates are a topic of national importance. This fascination is not healthy. Republicans have often lamented that the Supreme Court is too powerful. But faced with the opportunity to tilt it decisively in a conservative direction, the prize is too great for them to resist . The Republican majority in the Senate is likely to push through the confirmation of a replacement for Justice Ginsburg before the election. Since judges have life tenure, the newcomer could still be on the court in 2060. That is bad for American democracy and for the court. In 2016, when a vacancy came up in a presidential year, Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, declared that “The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.” Having invented that principle when it suited him, Mr McConnell and friends have abandoned it when it no longer does. The move is as cynical as it is unsurprising. For the record, the precedent can cut both ways. There have been 25 Supreme Court nominations in presidential-election years. More than half have been confirmed by the Senate. And yet, no appointment has ever been confirmed this close to an election. Precedent is not really the point here, though. Judicial nominations have become exercises in raw power, where the only real principle is that anything goes, so long as your side has the votes. For Republican senators this unconservative approach to institutions makes sense, for several reasons. For some who privately disdain President Donald Trump, reshaping the court for a generation was the chief reason to support him. Most conservatives still resent the judicial remaking of America from the 1960s onwards, after liberal courts discovered a right to abortion in the constitution, abolished organised school prayer and enshrined other lefty priorities that should properly have been decided by the legislature. And all members of the Republican caucus believe, with some justification, that Democrats began the breaking of the judicial nominations process, and that this unprincipled act is payback for past wrongs. Better to get their retaliation in first. Inevitably, Democrats feel the same way, also with some justification. Republican presidential candidates have won the popular vote just once in the past seven cycles, yet Republican presidents will soon have appointed six of the nine Supreme Court justices. The division of American politics along urban-rural lines makes the Senate even more anti-majoritarian than this suggests. The Democratic minority in the Senate represents about 15m more Americans than the Republican majority that will confirm Mr Trump’s latest judge. Some Democratic activists favour levelling things up by increasing the number of judges on the court when their party next has power, an idea that, thankfully, has not yet been adopted by Democratic senators. This cycle of revenge will not end well, either for the court or America. The Supreme Court is not elected. Yet its power is ultimately founded on the trust and consent of Americans who believe that its decisions are impartial and grounded in law, not party. The more brazenly parties attempt to capture it as the choicest political prize, the less legitimate it will be. Imagine that a court judgment determines who wins November’s election. Or that, if Democrats win both houses of Congress and the presidency, their attempts to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions are struck down by judges chosen by Mr Trump. The referee must not only be fair, but seen to be so. There is a better way. America is the only democracy where judges on the highest court have unlimited terms. In Germany constitutional-court judges sit for 12 years. If America had 18-year non-renewable terms, each four- year presidency would yield two new justices. It would end the spectacle of judges trying to game the ideology of their successor by choosing when they retire. And it would help make the court a bit less central to American politics—and thus more central to American law. Justice Ginsburg was a great jurist. A fitting tribute to this notorious judge would be to make her the court’s last superstar. https://www.economist.com/obituary/2020/09/23/ruth-bader-ginsburg-died-on-september-18th