A Death Which Gave New Life To A Campaign
By Amir Oren
When the Israel Defense Forces and especially its aviators fought their way to the country’s independence in 1948, their formative experience was World War II, including the communication system used by English-speaking troops. Thus, Roger for “right” was changed to the Biblical Ruth. The most common usage, which seeped into everyday conversations, was “Ruth, Sof”, as in “Roger and out”, Sof being Hebrew for “end”.
Yet when U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died Saturday, it was a start, or at least a restart, rather than an end. Not to her 87 years of trail blazing life and careers, including decades on the highest legal bench in the American government, but rather to President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign. With some six weeks to go, Ginsburg’s death is providing Trump with an issue which has the potential to help him narrow the perceived gap opened by his rival Joe Biden in public opinion polls. If that happens and Trump is within a striking distance in the last 7-10 days before November 3rd, another unexpected event could let him come from behind and win. This essentially happened in 2016, with the announcement by FBI Director James Comey that he is reopening a criminal investigtion involving Hillary Clinton.
Timing is everything. Comey re-closed the file, in effect admitting there was no cause for his earlier action, when it was too late for Clinton. Of course, there were several reasons for her loss in the Electoral College, even as she won the popular vote, but the dynamics and trends in late October and early November have proved once again to upend what seemed an almost certain victory by the eventual loser.
Trump’s handling of the Covid-19 crisis and other domestic issues is giving Biden the upper hand in mid-September polls. Foreign affairs do not loom large. People seem more concerned with health, employment and the economy, along with race, rights and riots. So when Trump portrays China as an evil enemy he is most capable of facing off, it is not an effective battle cry.
Then there is Iran. Led by Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the Administration has adopted an assertive stance against the Islamic Republic, most recently moving to a “snapback” of sanctions lifted five years ago under the Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action – the 2015 nuclear deal Trump denounced and rejected. The problem for Trump is that allies, along with Russia and China, may ignore his threats to act against whoever violates his directive. It will once again portray him as isolated internationally and force him to choose between letting it go and confronting America’s best friends in the world. Trump, who does not want the U.S. to be a global policeman, cannot like the idea of serving as an internal affairs department chief in this police. But thanks to timing, a mere couple of weeks before the elections when sanctions go into force on October 18, he does not need to act in haste, as distinct from alluding to the issue in speeches.
So when his campaign staff looks for game changers and momentum shifters, the Ginsburg succession is an obvious favorite. In the U.S., Constitution is king and the Supreme Court is the final arbiter. Its nine-member make-up is crucial for matters of ideology and practicality. Justices serve until they retire or die (in Israel they must leave the bench at 70). An opening may come up when a Justice decides he or she better let the incumbent President nominate their successor, but more often it is as sudden as Ginsburg’s death.
The vacancy on SCOTUS is a gift to Trump. It gives him a galvanizing issue to appeal to his political base. He has already remarked that choosing Justices is one of the most important powers and obligations a President has, and challenged Biden to produce a list of potential candidates as against his own. The purpose, of course, is to juxtapose the Republican’s conservatives with the Democrat’s liberals and sound the alarm.
A Supreme Court nomination battle in the Senate is always interesting and rarely uneventful, but never has it been so explosive. With the Republican majority in the Senate, the party in power – which may not remain so come November 4th – could shape American lives for decades, but also have an immediate impact, if the election result are engulfed in controversies and challenges. The experience of the Florida recount in the 2000 Bush vs. Gore contest is fresh on everyone’s mind.
Trump is not beholden to past practices , including his party’s refusal to move on Barrack Obama’s nominee in his last year in office, claiming it should be left to the next President. Victory is for him – and he will surely claim, for America – more important than precedent or protocol. He will soon anounce his pick. In the interest of avoiding as many embarrassing doubts as can be foreseen and gleaned in the FBI background check, he indicated a woman will be favored. This would be framed in line with Ginsburg’s legacy, but in fact would avert a possible fight over sexual harassment allegations which could be leveled at a male judge or politician elevated from Trump’s list.
The scenario is three-fold. In Trump’s best case, the Senate Judiciary Committee votes to recommend and the full Senate approves his nominee within weeks. Alternatively, and because there are vulnerable Republicans fighting for their own political lives, the process may start but not end before the elections, with the lame-duck legislators confirming the nominee as one of their last acts on the eve of the next Presidential inauguration and the swearing-in of the next Congress. In Trump’s worst case, operationally, neither will happen, but he will still get to talk about it, a lot, including in the three televised debates with Biden.
What it all comes down to is that a new and powerful factor has been injected into the campaign. that it is of the domestic variety rather than national security or foreign affairs, and because it is giving Trump new hope he would probably focus on it, leaving aside crises or initiatives in the Middle East and elsewhere. Trump will make a determined effort to fit the national conversation to his own size. It may have indeed become all Ruth and no Beirut.