and nail if they want any credibilicredi credibili credibility. of president trump ultimately will make the nomination and look, anyone with an understanding and appreciation of the recent history of this country, the past 50-year history of this country and of the court would understand that this crucial middle vote, the swing vote, the nominee has to be somebody who is not way, way over to the right. i think anyone with that sort of appreciation would understand it. donald trump doesn t have the that kind of appreciation of history that anyone can discern. and so who knows what sort of nomination it would be, if he s smart and he wants it to go through quickly, he will nominate a more moderate justice but it s not clear to me that that s even in the realm of possibility. we ve learned a republican
re-election in states where trump is popular. one other thing to remember even if democrats succeed in delaying this vote till after the midterm elections president trump will still be able to make a nomination. it s possible democrats will be in a stronger position to temp ter his choice. trump will make a conservative choice for this seat. but the voters, it seems to me a position on the court which will have a profound effect being number five, the middle of nine we can all figure out the arithmetic here for 30 years. the voter will get to decide after it s done. they ll be a fait accompli. gene, it s my argument that the voter ought to this ought to be taken to the people. i don t see how the democrats can lose this before the election and say there s still a decent resistance when they only have a one-vote deficit against the republicans and weren t able to slow this down so the vote ares had to vote first. look, i think the democrats have to fight it tooth and nail and be s
being sent to him. it would be one thing if he was calling us and saying i hear you. let s hear who you think or justices that would follow privacy rights. this 5-4 court has done stuff none of us could imagine. intervene in a presidential election in 2000 and decided that george w. bush, the five republicans on the court, said should be president and they voted 5-0 to make george w. bush the president of the united states. on citizens xwrints they said money should talk more than a voter. they made that partisan decision. they keep making partisan decisions and say we ve above partisanship. it s not about partisanship. it s about corporations. the other side right now is hurrying to end the tax bill to give corporation what s they want. they have people in the cabinet who are not following regulations and now they want a court that is also going to side with them and basically say whether it s clean air that basically was so hard fought. you mean the working people of pennsylvan
i think he just decided after nearly 31 years, it was time to step down. let me, jonathan, let me ask you how his politics worked. it s implicit in what pete was saying. somehow he managed to be a libertarian on court. he s he has fought for the right to avoid any undue burden for a woman choosing abortion, for the essential liberty of this country when it came to sexual orientation and gender and sex, the whole thing. he seemed to understand that that it was wronging to have sod dommy laws. nobody had any hostility towards him. like scalia dumping on him, sometimes scalia did question him. he would say he was what s the right word? capricious. what do you make of how he was able to bib as a conservative without being the kind of conservative that mike pence
page, usa today washington bureau chief. gene, talk about so anybody that couldn t get it yet, the importance of number five seat on the united states supreme court. well, justice kennedy was the swing vote. and everybody understands that. he was a conservative identified as a consecutivetive but he voted with the progressive side of the court on a number of issues. he was the leading voice on the court actually for lgbt rights in a very real sense. and he played that crucial role in a court otherwise evenly divided. so the gorsuch seat replaces scalia that s a conservative for a conservative, as senator harris said. this is an entirely new, an entirely different ball game. it has different stakes including for some republican senators such as susan collins