What would have happened if Ruth retired in 2015 or 2016....GOP Senate would have blocked any nomination. She was still going strong then. She would have had to predict in the 2014 election 6 years ago that Dems would have lost the Senate and then the Presidency. Neither of which were on the table really. If HRC wins then she can pick her time when the health issues go to be too much. I dont think RBG felt she needed to leave in 2014 when she was still active and functioning.
No. She would have just had to do what Anthony Kennedy did and she could have picked her successor like he did.
She has had health problems for years. The Obama administration tried to move her out in his first two years and met with her to advise her that it looked like they might lose the Senate so she needed to think about it. The rest is history. Yeh, Hillary could have won, and then she could have won and had the Senate too. So on and so forth. But she didnt. She did more political calculating than she did just doing the logical thing. Anyway. If dems are happy with it, I am too.
I see no reason for "everything the same" unless you somehow think the US is incapable of roughly matching Canada's experience in the same time period. I suppose you could make an argument that Clinton is as useless as Trump ( I'm not making that argument ); but any kind of rational decent leader would have been far better then Trump. Examples of why I think this : resources spent on unnecessary trade war actions, lack of real progress on upgraded universal health care, unnecessary cheerleading from the top on ethnic rifts, tax cuts that were too top heavy in nature, extremely poor Covid response, and I really don't think a $1 trillion plus deficit pre-Covid was necessary. With respect to the three judges, the last one is highly questionable. Normally, I'd be supportive of promoting a career woman, but on closer inspection ( I looked at an article yesterday ) she's almost the "anti-woman" in nature, more at home in the 1950s then modern day USA. She's anti-abortion on a fairly extreme level, protects the rights of felons to own guns, and sided heavily on the side of a college rapist. She was also involved in questionable actions when Bush got elected ( which may be the real catalyst for Trump picking her; a judge with a record of partisan decisions ). I'm no expert on American law, but I'm not impressed with this women at all it smells of dirty politics. It really doesn't matter to me personally, but if she starts siding on some controversial decisions in the next few years it will be obvious she's lying now about her ability to be impartial and respect the supposed nature of the role.
They trusted the Republicans to act in good faith and do what is good for the country. Never a good assumption it seems. It gets kind of ridiculous that they blocked a judge in similar circumstances in recent history but now pretend it never happened. The American public should take note or stop whining about corruption in Washington because too many Americans are signing off on this bs as being all good.
Dems would have done the same thing if they were in that same situation with Trump as president but Dems in control of the Senate. The Dem argument is that the President should stop working in an election year because the people should decide what new policies or plans or appointments the president can make and should wait until after the election. So basically a prez should stop working by January of 2016 or January 2020... I believe the GOP are acting like raging hypocrites but of course they are. And Dems pretending they would not do the same if they had control over the Senate is ignorant hypocrisy. It is wrong to believe the hypocrisy only belongs on one side.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the ultimate partisan was thinking that if she retired, President Donald Trump will appoint a more conservative judge to replace her which is why she stayed in the US Supreme Court, hoping for a Democrat victory on November 3, 2020. You would think, spending the last days with your loved ones matter more in the greater scheme of things but, she was just a rabid partisan who did not care. That US Supreme Court seat mattered to her more than anything else in life. A sad choice really but, she made her choice and she failed.
Further, the Appointments Clause does not say that the President may nominate a justice to fill a vacancy- it says he shall.
Might be time for Americans to take responsibility for what Americans are doing stop blaming it on the left or right or assorted other "enemies". It is an objective assessment that the US is a mess right now riddled with corruption and many social systems are breaking down. Trump has made it much worse. Is this woman a good candidate for Supreme Court ? Maybe if you want to roll back to the 1950s. Of course, Trump's been trying to do that rollback and your two Presidential candidates are both in their 70s. Hardly inspiring.