America’s democracy is at risk

The battle over the Supreme Court seat opened by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is not about “partisanship,” or even Republican hypocrisy. It is a struggle over whether our constitutional republic will also be democratic.

Allowing President Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to complete a judicial coup and install a 6-3 conservative majority will be a triumph for anti-democratic forces.

This is why we must reject the fake moderation of those who pretend that both sides in this fight are equally partisan, equally stubborn and equally at fault. No. It is Republicans who have been willing to abuse power again and again to achieve their goal of imposing a radical approach to jurisprudence that would undercut democracy.

There is no liberal analogue to the Shelby County and Citizens United decisions, which changed the rules in anti-democratic ways; no liberal analogue to the Merrick Garland blockade; or to the lawlessness of Bush v. Gore.

So let’s understand how the words “court packing” should be used. The real court packers are McConnell, Trump and conservatives who draw inspiration from what some of them call a “Constitution in exile.”

They are expressing nostalgia for the glory days of preNew Deal judging that gave us separate-but-equal rulings on civil rights and eviscerated the ability of the democratically elected branches of government to protect workers, consumers and the environment.

If the court packers succeed in forcing another conservative onto the court, enlarging the court would be a democratic necessity, not payback.

It would be the only way to fight efforts to wreck unions, gut voting rights, tie the hands of regulators and empower plutocrats by voiding laws limiting money’s role in politics.

Oh, wait, that list enumerates what conservatives already have done with just five votes on the court. Imagine the damage they could do with a sixth.

If you want to know what the misnamed “conservative” legal radicals have in store for us, go no further than their continuing litigation against Obamacare. The right already lost once before the Supreme Court. It lost the fight to repeal the ACA in Congress. It lost it again when voters used the 2018 midterm elections to reject politicians who wanted to cast the health care law aside.

Now Republicans are trying to use the courts to void democracy’s writ and flout the wishes of the electorate. This is our future if we refuse to see conservative court packing for what it is.

We should not forget how willing the right has been to use all the instruments at its disposal to perpetuate its hold on power. Five conservative justices effectively made George W. Bush president, and the loser of the popular vote went on to appoint two conservatives to the court. Now, Trump, the loser of the popular vote in 2016, claims a mandate to appoint his third justice.

If Trump succeeds, a majority of the court — lifetime appointees from whose decisions there is little recourse — will have been named by presidents who first reached office without winning the most votes.

And we claim to be a beacon of democracy?

E.J. Dionne is syndicated by The Washington Post Writers Group.