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Biden Makes up New Imaginary ‘Precedent’ to Argue Why Trump Shouldn’t Get a SCOTUS Nomination

September 28, 2020 ,


Joe Biden responded today to President Donald Trump’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.

But Biden being Biden, he had to falsely spin the nomination to do what he could to denigrate it.

So, listen to this nonsense.





First, he pitches the RBG “last wish” nonsense. Not only is this completely inconsistent with her prior statements on the subject. But we also don’t govern the country on the basis of people’s “last wishes” but on the basis of the Constitution.

Biden claims that “Never before in our nation’s history has a Supreme Court justice been nominated and installed while a presidential election is already underway. It defies every precedent.”

First of all, presidents have nominated 29 times in an election year. They’ve even nominated in the lame-duck session after the election. So Biden is trying to invent “precedent” to stop Trump from doing what is his Constitutional right and obligation to do: nominate a candidate. Under the Constitution, the President can nominate someone for the SCOTUS until the last day of his presidency.

That’s the precedent, not some imaginary test or distance to the election that Democrats make up. What is Biden even saying when he says “while an election is already underway?” From the first postal vote being made? Or when it’s received? All of that makes no difference since the President has the power before, during, and after the election.

As Dan McLaughlin at National Review has observed, presidents have even nominated into the lame-duck session, including Abraham Lincoln.

In 19 cases, the president’s party held the Senate; 17 of the 19 vacancies were filled, the exceptions being the bipartisan filibuster against Lyndon Johnson’s nominees in 1968 and George Washington’s withdrawal and resubmission in the next Congress of a nominee who was ineligible to be confirmed (he’d voted to create the Court, and the Constitution made him wait until there was a new Congress seated). Nine of those 17 were confirmed before the election, and eight after. Three were confirmed in lame duck post-election sessions even though the president had just lost reelection.
In ten cases, the party opposing the president held the Senate; only one of the ten got a nominee confirmed before the election, two were confirmed after the election when the president’s party won the election, and one (Dwight Eisenhower’s nomination of William Brennan) was a pre-election recess appointment that was confirmed by the new Senate in the new year after Eisenhower was reelected.

So, this concept that the timing to the election means something is something illusory that Biden is trying to interpose. Need we remind him of Barack Obama’s words? Elections have consequences and Trump is President, not Biden.


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