By Todd Lassa

Lines have been drawn in what could be the biggest political battle since The Reconstruction, following the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Friday. President Trump says he will nominate a woman to Ginsburg’s seat this week and expects the Senate to approve his choice before the presidential election, just 43 days away. 

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden called on the Senate to honor Ginsburg’s wishes, as the progressive icon told her granddaughter, Clara Spera, before her death, as NPR reported. 

Ginsburg told her granddaughter she requests that “I will not be replaced until a new president is installed,” NPR’s Nina Totenberg reported. 

But by Sunday, NPR was reporting that Trump followers’ “Build the Wall!” t-shirts had been supplanted with “Fill the Seat!” shirts. The argument that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who blocked President Obama’s nominee to replace the late Supreme Court Justice, Antonin Scalia, with Merrick Garland for nine months leading up to the 2016 election was being hypocritical in pushing Trump’s expected 2020 nominee seemed resolved by Sunday as representative of the state of our Red and Blue political gulf. 

Even if the Senate fails to approve Trump’s nominee before the election, there is a very good chance the Republican majority could push her through before the January 20, 2021, inauguration.

Thus the November 3 presidential election, which is already underway in various states with early and mail-in voting, appears to hinge on Trump’s replacement for Ginsburg. The U.S. Supreme Court begins its new session on October 5, when it will take up a case on a Trump administration challenge to the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), and may even have to consider challenges to the outcome of the presidential election, which most analysts and pundits agree will not be settled on November 3.

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