Vacancy adds uncertainty to election,

The death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has put enormous new pressure on the two candidates in a presidential race already roiled by a global pandemic and a summer of civil unrest, raising the prospect of a contentious Senate confirmation battle waged side by side with the campaign. The skirmishing over a replacement is certain to thrust a constellation of red-hot issues — from abortion and gay rights to religious liberty and environmental regulation — to the foreground of national politics.

The Supreme Court may quickly become a shared focal point for the candidates in a contest that has unfolded, so far, as though the two parties inhabit different universes. Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee, has built a lead over President Donald Trump by focusing on the president’s handling of the pandemic, while Trump has attempted to make up ground with dark forecasts of looming insurrection by left-wing radicals.

The president signaled even before Ginsburg’s death that he intended to inject judicial politics into the final stretch of the 2020 campaign. He released a new list of potential nominees earlier this month to motivate conservative voters who have grown demoralized during a year of political tribulations. But it was not clear that his right-wing coalition would be more motivated by a confirmation fight than the alliance of liberals and moderates supportive of Biden would be.

The former vice president has built a lead over Trump with lopsided support from women, people of color, moderates and collegeeducated whites — groups likelier to be alarmed than allured by the possibility of a court that tilts far to the right. Biden has struggled to excite progressive voters and young people, who draw inspiration of a different kind from a far-reaching struggle over social policy and civil rights.

In a sign of the extraordinary stakes of the judicial struggle, former President Barack Obama issued a statement Friday night calling on Republican lawmakers not to fill Ginsburg’s seat. Alluding to Republicans’ claims in 2016 that he should not be allowed to replace a Supreme Court justice in an election year, Obama said it was “a basic principle of law” that even such “invented” standards be applied with consistency.

The likelihood of a polarizing fight to replace Ginsburg seemed sure to command the attention of the candidates and the general public, perhaps unlike any other issue this election cycle besides the coronavirus that has ravaged the nation for six months.

Hanging over the Republicans’ maneuvering is the emphatic argument by McConnell and his party, just four years ago, that the outgoing Obama should not be allowed to name Judge Merrick Garland to a Supreme Court vacancy in the final year of his term.

Two moderate Republican senators have recently expressed serious misgivings about ramming through a Supreme Court appointment only a few months before the next president’s inauguration. The party holds 53 seats in the Senate, leaving relatively little room for defections, but only a few Republicans have ever broken with the party line on any matters of great importance.

Sen. Susan Collins, RMaine, told The New York Times in an interview this month that she would be uncomfortable with seating another justice in October.

“I think that’s too close, I really do,” Collins said of a fall confirmation process.

Collins cast a crucial vote in the last Supreme Court battle that helped secure the confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and she has faced backlash from voters in her current reelection fight.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, a Republican who opposed Kavanaugh’s nomination, told Alaska Public Radio on Friday that she was against confirming a new justice before the election. She took that position before Ginsburg’s death was announced.

Collins is among the senators likeliest to face a painful squeeze at the ballot box as a result of Supreme Court politics. In a New

York Times poll published Friday, and conducted before Ginsburg’s death, 55% of Maine voters said they disapproved of her vote to confirm Kavanaugh. By a 22-point margin, voters in the state said they believed that Biden would do a better job than Trump of choosing a Supreme Court justice.

Biden pledged during the primaries to make the first appointment of a Black woman to the Supreme Court, although he did not say whether that person would be his first nominee.

By Saturday morning, Democratic advocacy groups were already targeting Collins with new, Supreme Court-themed advertising. NextGen America, an organization backed by billionaire Tom Steyer, released an ad arguing that Americans’ “basic rights are in unprecedented danger” because of the vacancy and voters “can’t trust Susan Collins to do the right thing.”

Fix Our Senate, a Democratic-aligned group, unveiled its own ad campaign opposing a Trump appointment, while a third group, Demand Justice, said it would spend $10 million “to ensure no justice is confirmed before the January inauguration.”

In addition to Maine, Biden held an advantage on the Supreme Court issue in two other swing states, Arizona and North Carolina, by varying margins, according to the Times poll. In Arizona, voters preferred Biden by 10 points on the issue, while North Carolinians favored him by a smaller gap of 3 percentage points.

For all the immediate attention to an open Supreme Court seat and the death of a judicial titan, it was not clear that confirmation politics would truly seize and hold the attention of a country racked by infectious disease and economic devastation. With millions of Americans unemployed and tens of millions more struggling to return to work or send their children to school, voters may prioritize other matters when they fill out their ballots by Nov. 3.