Both parties complicit in strangulation of democracy

On June 14, 1993, President Bill Clinton nominated Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the Supreme Court. On Aug. 3, she was overwhelmingly approved by the Senate.

Nearly three decades later, the battle to replace Ginsburg has turned into a holy war. Republicans are determined to approve her successor before the year’s end despite past proclamations that the Senate should not ratify a Supreme Court justice on the eve of a presidential election.

Democrats know that President Donald Trump will almost certainly succeed and are threatening drastic retaliation should they capture the Senate and the White House. At the top of their list is ending the filibuster, so they can then consider enhancing their power, from adding justices to the court to adding states to the union.

We are witnessing a profound tragedy: the strangulation of representative democracy; the virtual collapse of Congress as a forum for decency and deliberation.

The essence of democracy is not majority rule but a healthy respect for minority rights, rooted in a shared understanding that all sides will play fair. That understanding has been pulverized. The endless warfare over judges might be the worst example.

Traditionally, presidents and lawmakers did not impose litmus tests on judges. Chief Justice Earl Warren, who wrote the decision integrating public schools, and Justice Harry Blackmun, who authored the ruling legalizing abortion, were nominated by Republicans and approved by the Senate without dissent.

President Ronald Reagan deliberately stocked the federal courts with ideologically reliable candidates. This highly successful effort was halted briefly in 1987, when the Senate rejected his nomination of Robert Bork to the high court. That vote was instructive. Six Republicans opposed Bork, including Lowell Weicker of Connecticut and John Chafee of Rhode Island: exactly the sort of northeastern moderates who are no longer around to restrain Trump. Shreds of civility remained, but by 2005, hostilities had hardened. Republican Sen. Bill Frist threatened to invoke the so-called nuclear option: eliminating the filibuster on federal judges to speed approval of President George W. Bush’s nominees.

Catastrophe was temporarily averted by a bipartisan deal to stave off the rules change. The group behind it included moderate Republicans, Southern Democrats and senators known to put loyalty to the institution of the Senate ahead of partisan considerations.

Moderate Republicans, conservative Democrats and institutional loyalists are close to extinction in today’s Senate. The bridge builders are gone, leaving the partisan warriors in command. In 2013, the Democrats did invoke the nuclear option, eliminating the filibuster on lower-court judges and pushing through a raft of President Barack Obama’s nominees.

They were told at the time that they were courting disaster. One of those warnings came from U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas, who later lost his seat to a Republican: “Today’s use of the ‘nuclear option’ could permanently damage the Senate and have negative ramifications for the American people. This institution was designed to protect — not stamp out — the voices of the minority.”

The Republicans completed the demolition that Democrats had started, blocking Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to replace Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016 and then eliminating the filibuster on Supreme Court nominees. That enabled them to push through two of Trump’s choices. They are poised to ratify a third.

Pryor’s words have proved prophetic. The Senate has indeed been damaged by leaders in both parties who have trashed tradition in the name of short-term gain by silencing the voices of the minority. And it’s only going to get worse.