Manchin has said he won’t contest the 2024 election against Joe Biden. Now he has other plans.
And Joe Manchin threw Democrats a major curveball they’ll never recover from.
Senate Democrats have refused the Left’s attempts to portray Justice Sonia Sotomayor like Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Members of the Judiciary Committee, which is in charge of vetting her ultimate replacement, have widely dismissed a movement to force her retirement and choose a younger justice.
However, it is Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), progressives’ arch adversary in the Senate, who is making calls for her resignation statistically unfeasible in a chamber that Democrats control by one vote.
The pocket veto, which he describes as “my own little filibuster,” is not new.
He enforced it on all judges in March. However, it has gained importance as Sotomayor, who turns 70 in June, faces mounting pressure to resign before President Joe Biden’s first term ends.
Progressives want to replace her with another liberal, fearing a repeat of what happened to Democrats when Ginsburg, 87, died in the last months of Donald Trump’s administration.
However, if another Democrat joins Manchin, the court may go further to the right with a moderate taking her place.
Ginsburg was the third justice Trump replaced, but her death solidified a 6-3 majority throughout his four years in office. The Supreme Court went on to overturn liberal priorities, including five decades of precedent in Roe v. Wade.
Despite a childhood diabetes diagnosis, Sotomayor appears to be in good condition, and she is unusually young for the Supreme Court. Justices frequently choose to retire in their eighties.
“She’s a pup around here,” the 76-year-old Manchin quipped.
However, progressives have authored a series of prodding op-eds in recent days, citing her admission in January that she finds the caseload exhausting, as well as a 2018 incident in which paramedics were called to her home owing to low blood sugar.
Given the likelihood that Democrats would lose the White House and Senate in November, they have encouraged Sotomayor to give Biden time to identify her replacement.
Congressional Democrats have raised a number of concerns, including that progressives were targeting the lone Latina justice.
“She brings a tremendously important perspective to the court that was lacking prior to her arrival,” stated Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA), a member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
Last Thursday, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) urged Sotomayor to “weigh the competing factors” and told NBC News that “we should learn a lesson” from Ginsburg’s premature death.
However, he then clarified his position in a quick hallway chat with the Washington Examiner. “She should decide what is right for her. I’m not saying she should resign,” he said.
The subdued reaction, and even exasperation among Senate leadership, has dashed progressive ambitions of replacing Sotomayor, the eldest of the three liberal justices on the Supreme Court, before November.
Dick Durbin (D-IL), the No. 2 Senate Democrat and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, responded, “Get another story,” on Tuesday after days of probing by reporters.
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