Republican efforts to ram through Donald Trump’s third US supreme court pick in the wake of the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg are firing up a fierce progressive backlash that some believe could actually trigger the most dramatic round of democracy reforms in America in a generation.
Democratic party leaders are coming under intense pressure to use the first 100 days of a Biden administration – were Trump defeated in November – to tackle some of the most glaring deficiencies in the world’s oldest constitutional democracy.
A vast array of reforms – from ending voter suppression and removing corporate money from elections, to rebalancing the US Senate and tackling the conservative stranglehold over the courts – are all up for grabs, though they are predicated on Biden winning the White House.
Deirdre Schifeling, campaign director of the progressive coalition Democracy For All 2021, said that the failures of the Trump administration to contain the pandemic and the resulting economic recession, together with the president’s unprecedented attacks on voting rights, had paved the way for a potentially historic push next year if Democrats win.
“Our political system has so clearly failed the people that the environment will be ripe for a big transformative package to make our government work for all of us,” she said.
A massive surge in small donations to progressive and Democratic support groups following Ginsburg’s death underlined how the supreme court crisis is boosting the push for reform. Act Blue, the online fundraising channel, raised $100m in the first 36 hours since the justice passed away.
Democratic organizers are hoping that such a war chest can be put to use unseating vulnerable Republican senators in states such as Maine, Colorado, Iowa and even South Carolina where the Trump acolyte Lindsey Graham is facing a tough fight. A Biden presidential victory, combined with Democrats taking control of the Senate and retaining power in the House would pave the way for potentially seismic democratic reforms.
“The fight for the soul of this nation is what’s at stake in the presidential election,” said Democratic congresswoman Terri Sewell, who represents Alabama’s seventh district covering Selma in the crucible of the civil rights movement. “Joe Biden faces a monumental task in restoring faith in our democracy.”
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
