Three weeks later, John Oliver returns to Last Week Tonight to contemplate the death of Supreme Court Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg and mock Donald Trump’s nomination as her successor.
Oliver said that Trump announced on Saturday that he had chosen Amy Connie Barrett, a very conservative judge known by some as “the female Antonin Scalia”, to replace Ginsburg, paving the way for a possible vote to vote “whose impact could be terrible.”
“In recent years, major issues have been decided by just one vote, from supporting the Affordable Care Act, to preserving the Daca, to repealing the incredibly restrictive abortion law. If these cases go to court again, they can now. Going the other way easily “for decades, when Barrett is only 48 years old.
Oliver added, “It is clear that there is no point in holding onto the hope that the Conservatives will choose to respect the precedent they set by refusing to count Merrick Garland even in an election year,” “because that was always in bad faith, as was clear at the time.”
Utah Senator Mitt Romney echoed the long-awaited dream of conservative hegemony in the courts, justifying reversing the Republicans ’position on assertions in the election year that it is” appropriate for a nation, if you will, from the center-right, to have a court that reflects center-right views. ” “.
“What the hell are you talking about dead ?!” Oliver shouted. “Put aside the idea that the court that abolished the Voting Rights Act is a“ liberal court. ”Since when is this nation naturally the center-right? Oliver noted that more Americans in opinion polls say they support Democrats than Republicans. Majority supports the right to abortion , And support for Roe v. Wade has reached an all-time high Almost 60% of Americans say the winner of the next election should fill the Ginsburg seat.
Oliver concluded, “So, our country is not so much the right in the center as Mitt Romney was in the middle.”
He added, “Look, this week has been very dark for a lot of people.” “The Supreme Court is about to take the oath for the foreseeable future, and if things seem hopeless at the moment, it is because they are, quite frankly, also.”
Although we arrived at this “pivotal moment” with “a little bad luck and bad timing,” Oliver continued, the disagreement over the rank of the Supreme Court disproportionately on the right has been long overdue. This is partly due to the Republican leadership by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, but “there is a whole system under them that enabled them to do what they did,” Oliver said.
Oliver offers examples of the “highly undemocratic nature of American institutions” that has allowed a minority of voters to wield significant power over the US government, and for Republicans to declare inaccurately a popular “mandate” for conservative politics: The winner takes everything away from the nature of the electoral college that distorts the presidential election toward white voters. In less densely populated areas; The Senate, which gives two votes to each state, prefers rural states with Republican tendencies; The regions of Puerto Rico and the capital, which have large numbers of black and Spanish voters, have no representation in the Senate at all.
The Senate is called “affirmative action for white people,” since the average black Americans have only 75% of the representation of the average white American, and Hispanic Americans have only 55%. Oliver joked, “It’s clearly not great when the best you can say about your representative democracy is, at least blacks are three-fifths this time.”
Basically, when Barrett’s decision is confirmed, “The president who lost the popular vote will have chosen one-fourth of the federal judiciary and one-third of the Supreme Court. His options will have been approved by the Republican majority in the Senate that represents 15 million fewer than the Democratic minority. “And if that sounds silly to you, then it is clearly because it is.”
For those who question what might be done, Oliver has offered some ideas that go beyond the immediate priority of restoring Congressional power in elections, such as granting state status to Washington, DC and Puerto Rico, and abolishing the Electoral College – an idea that, in the 1960s and 1970s, enjoyed support from Bipartisan in Congress is supported by 61% of Americans today – and it sets limits on the terms of Supreme Court justices.
Oliver said these steps would help address the “inescapable fact here,” which is that “the system is indeed rigged. It was rigged in a way that allowed the party without popular support to radically reshape an entire branch of government in the foreseeable future by attracting exclusively white voters.” Almost in some of the less populated areas of the country.
He added, “This is not a mandate and it is not a democracy.” “It’s a silly farce.”
Oliver concluded that Barrett’s potential appointment marked the end of “the generational battle, and the heartbreaking thing is: we lost.” “And it’s painful. You will be hurt for a long time, to a lot of people, in ways that will take some time to fully understand. But the next battle has to start now.”
