Liberals call on Justice Sotomayor to resign before election
Former President Donald Trump made headlines late last month when a Wall Street Journal poll showed him leading President Joe Biden in six of seven swing states.
The prospect of another Trump presidency has many liberal growing nervous about the Supreme Court, with some calling for Justice Sonia Sotomayor's resignation.
Journalist says Sotomayor should enable Biden to pick replacement
Sotomayor will turn 70 in June, and is the oldest member of America's highest judicial body to be appointed by a Democrat.
Journalist Josh Barro alluded to this fact in an article of his newsletter published this past weekend titled, "Keep the Pressure on Sotomayor to retire."
"The best thing Sotomayor can do to secure her legacy and increase the likelihood that liberals can gain ground on the court in the future is to retire after 15 years of service, enabling Biden to appoint a younger, liberal judge to replace her and serve for decades to come," he wrote.
Barro is not the only one to make such an argument, as former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan did so as well in an op-ed piece published by the Guardian earlier this month.
Hasan: "Why take the risk?"
Hasan recalled how Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg chose not to retire while former President Barack Obama was in office, thus allowing Trump to replace her with Amy Coney Barrett when she died in 2020.
"Biden, elected Democrats, and liberals and progressives across the board should be both publicly and privately encouraging Sotomayor to consider what she wants her legacy to be, to remember what happened with RBG, and to not take any kind of gamble with the future of our democracy," Hasan maintained.
Fox News noted that Hasan reiterated his position during a recent CNN appearance, stating, "I think the Democrats didn't learn lessons."
"Republicans are very good at stacking courts and getting their people on courts and thinking strategically about filling courts. Democrats aren't very good at seeing the power of the Supreme Court," he complained.
"Why take the risk? You have a Democratic president and a Democratic Senate, and you have a justice who is about to turn 70," Hasan said.
Democratic senator asks justice to consider "public interest"
Fox News also reported that while Connecticut Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal stopped short of asking Sotomayor to step down, he did tell NBC News that "she really has to weigh the competing factors."
"We should learn a lesson. And it’s not like there's any mystery here about what the lesson should be. The old saying — graveyards are full of indispensable people, ourselves in this body included," he continued.
"Justices have to make their personal decisions about their health, and their level of energy, but also to keep in mind the larger national and public interest in making sure that the court looks and thinks like America," Blumenthal added.
