Editor’s note: Tweets may contain extreme profanity.
As with all aspects of Trump-era leftist “resistance,” Democrats’ frustration over losing the Supreme Court seat of late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has taken on a decidedly undemocratic tenor.
The party is trying to sell its case for packing the court with additional liberal justices should Joe Biden win the White House, effectively changing the rules of the system after finding itself unable to compete within the system’s parameters.
To do so, it is using the only rhetoric remaining in its arsenal: a thirst for vengeance.
If they even TRY to replace RBG we burn the entire fucking thing down.
— Reza Aslan (@rezaaslan) September 19, 2020packing
Republicans are about to learn that when the power is with the OTHER party, payback is a fucking bitch.
— BrooklynDad_Defiant! (@mmpadellan) September 20, 2020
Hey Republikkkans, remember payback is a bitch. 11 on SC, statehood for DC and PR. End of the despicable party. Bye bye. You asked for it.
— marketman52 (@marketman52) September 22, 2020
Bereaved liberals are now reverting to a sort of raw, biblical ‘justice’ to avenge the fallen Ginsburg, whose death after a long battle with pancreatic cancer they, no doubt, will blame Republicans for at some point.
While it is unclear what their exact grievance is, many claim it relates to the “stolen” seat of Judge Merrick Garland, whom President Barack Obama nominated to replace the conservative Justice Antonin Scalia in February 2016.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., declined to put Garland up for a vote before the 2016 election—despite the Left’s certainty at the time that Hillary Clinton would prevail.
Ironically, there are numerous historical examples of the Left’s having “stolen” or attempted to steal court seats of its own.
Several Republican-appointed justices in the 20th-century conveniently flipped to become some of the courts most radical liberals.
And starting with Ronald Reagan’s nomination of conservative Robert Bork, Democrats have made judicial smear campaigns a standard practice, often succeeding in blocking confirmations or using unsubstantiated innuendo to undermine the process.
The most prominent—and most recent—example was Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was broadsided by uncorroborated rape allegations reaching back decades to his school days in a highly-watched, nation-rending confirmation hearing.
Left-wing activists—some appearing to be paid protesters—turned out in full force to oppose Kavanaugh, but to no avail as he narrowly cleared the GOP-led senate with a simple majority.
Now, a number of Democrat super-PACs and activist groups are hoping to cash in on the “eye-for-an-eye” vindictiveness—and then some—in retaliation for their past failures.
While it is not unexpected that groups would seek to use Ginsburg—a liberal icon celebrated for her outspoken fusion of politics and jurisprudence—as a pre-election rallying cry, some, like the Progressive Turnout Project have veered toward messaging that emphasizes punishing McConnell.
The group was collecting names via a “petition” that promised to “Ruin Mitch’s Career” as he vies for re-election in his own Senate race.
Another activist group, Indivisible, founded for the express purpose of “resisting the Trump agenda,” recently launched an initiative called the “Payback Project” that is targeting 12 GOP senators it considers vulnerable.
The project’s website tells its supporters to “Get angry. Then, get even.”
“[A]fter years of Senate Republicans enabling Trump and destroying democracy, we have to do more,” it says.
“…[I]t will take a massive awareness campaign to expose the truth of their complicity [… and] make sure Republicans Senators are held accountable for their actions, their votes, and their enabling of Donald Trump.”
The dark-money-backed Demand Justice, meanwhile, planned an organizing call last weekend to “Honor RGB,” but it also hinted that doing so might involve violence and unrest.
“Justice Ginsburg’s vacancy on the Supreme Court should not be filled until after the inauguration in January,” the group said in an email.
“She left us with these instructions,” it said, referencing a thinly-sourced media narrative about Ginsburg’s dying words to her activist granddaughter, “and we must fight to honor her legacy by ensuring no justice is considered until after inauguration day.”
Other liberal reactions also alluded to violent extremism, such as a tweet from radical Islamic activist Reza Aslan that seemed to endorse arson.
Attention @TwitterSupport — these verified users are calling for illegal violence, rioting, & arson attacks in the USA @rossacrosswi @nandelabra @EmmMacfarlane @LEBassett @BeauWillimon @rezaaslan
Clarifying how this does not violate TOS? Please comment, very concerned pic.twitter.com/Fo9bK8by3Y
— ELIJAH RIOT (@ElijahSchaffer) September 19, 2020
Aslan’s tweet, posted only minutes after the Friday night announcement of Ginsburg’s passing, had since garnered more than 17,000 retweets and 51,000 comments as of Tuesday.
His motto on Twitter: “I’d rather be divisive than indecisive.”
Of course, the rhetoric was not much of a stretch given that activist radicals associated with domestic terrorism groups like Antifa were already being arrested for acts of arson, vandalism and violent crime prior to Ginsburg’s death.
Likewise, many of the “payback” initiatives Democrats are proposing—such as packing the Supreme Court with additional justices, granting statehood to the far-left District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, offering mass amnesty and eliminating the Electoral College—had been promoted as part of the Biden agenda prior to Ginsburg’s death.
But their newfound justification for the brazen attempts to consolidate power and secure permanent blue majorities promised to raise the stakes even further in the upcoming election.
Democrats’ radical leaders did little to lower the level of acrimony among their base.
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-NY, stated that “nothing is off the table” in thwarting Trump’s third nominee to the high court.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., suggested that Democrats could use a second baseless impeachment proceeding as an effort to forestall a confirmation hearing.
And Rep. Alexandria Ocasio–Cortez, D-NY, once again used the dog-whistle suggestion of arson to underscore the existential imperative of the moment by saying that McConnell was “playing with fire.”
UNHINGED: Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: “we all must act in unprecedented ways…to tell [McConnell] that he is playing with fire”
pic.twitter.com/UsTzT0otSn— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) September 21, 2020
Despite the threats, Republicans remained largely undeterred.
On Tuesday, even Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, the only GOP member of Congress to vote in favor of Trump’s articles of impeachment, indicated that he would support a Supreme Court vote prior to the election.
Meanwhile, at least a few left-wing Twitter users seemed to anticipate that their exhortations to acts of violence might result in a backlash of some kind.
Democrat strategist Katie Connolly expressed concerns over the semantics of using terms like “payback” and “court-packing.”
She continued to support the radical agenda, albeit newly repackaged under the euphemistic banner of “reforms.”
Folks gotta stop writing if Rs push through a SCOTUS nom Ds will pack the court when we win. We will pursue judicial reform because we must fix a broken system, not as payback.
Also, PLEASE stop calling it “court packing”. It’s reform, not a power grab. We’re not the GOP.
— Katie Connolly (@katiemconnolly) September 22, 2020
Former Attorney General Eric Holder, who previously endorsed violent opposition to the GOP and has been at the forefront of undemocratic efforts to weaponize the justice system in service of a leftist agenda, also agreed that the messaging was problematic.
“If the court-packers succeed in forcing another conservative onto the court regardless of the outcome of the 2020 election, enlarging the court would be a democratic necessity, not payback.” https://t.co/ndWav135Xp
— Eric Holder (@EricHolder) September 20, 2020
