President Trump has been more focused and more successful than any modern president in appointing excellent judges to the federal courts. With the help of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Trump has produced impressive raw numbers in terms of judicial influence.
Still, McConnell is not the Senate majority leader Trump should be thanking. That honor goes to McConnell’s predecessor, former Democratic Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada.
Despite unprecedented, massively obstructive tactics by Senate Democrats, Trump, in fewer than three years, has secured the confirmation of two Supreme Court justices and 50 appeals court judges. In contrast, Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, in eight years each, secured just two appointees to the Supreme Court and, respectively, only 62, 61, and 49 appellate judges. At the highest levels of the federal courts, then, Trump is securing appointments at about twice the rate of his three predecessors. At the district court level, Trump has successfully appointed 132 of the 677 judges authorized by law and has an additional 42 nominees pending. In this respect, he is moving at about the same pace as recent presidents.
In total, at all court levels together, Trump’s average number of confirmations per year exceeds every president in history except (barely) for Democrat Jimmy Carter, who enjoyed a large Senate majority and no concerted obstructive efforts by Senate Republicans.
Again, Trump and McConnell have achieved this despite the dilatory tactics of the Democrats, who have forced procedural “cloture” votes an astonishing 131 times on Trump’s judicial nominees, compared to only seven cloture votes in the first three years of all of the previous five presidencies combined.
How did Trump and McConnell manage this feat? It all goes back to Reid’s greedy effort to stack the courts. In 2013, with Obama in the White House and Democrats controlling the Senate, Reid made the fateful decision to limit Senate debate on judges — something he had strongly opposed when Republicans had considered doing it during the Bush administration.\
Unlike those earlier Republicans, Reid got Democrats to stick together on the so-called nuclear option, using a bare majority of the Senate to make a major rule change that the wiser voices in his party warned against. Thanks to Reid, it would no longer take 60 votes to confirm a judge.
It was a very short-sighted decision because Obama would only enjoy the advantage for a single year. After Republicans seized the Senate in the 2014 election, they hit the brakes on judicial appointments. McConnell made sure that Obama would end his presidency with only about the same number of judges confirmed (329) as Bush had before him (327).
As a result, Trump would take office not only with the opportunity to fill judicial vacancies with a simple majority, but also with the opportunity to replace dozens and dozens of Democratic appointees who chose to retire in 2013, 2014, or 2015 in the belief that Obama would replace them. This has given Trump a unique opportunity to influence the judiciary that even future presidents will not enjoy.
It is also good for the nation because the quality of Trump’s nominees has been superb. Even Ian Millhiser, the left-wing writer for Vox who greatly laments Trump’s successes on this front, acknowledged that “based solely on objective legal credentials, the average Trump appointee has a far more impressive resume than any past president’s nominees.” The result, he writes, is that Trump has “filled the bench with some of the smartest, and some of the most ideologically reliable, men and women to be found in the conservative movement.”
This is good news for the Constitution and everyone who believes that the Constitution’s governing framework is a blessing to humanity. As James Madison wrote in Federalist 62, “a government with unpredictable and arbitrary laws poisons the blessings of liberty itself.” Instead of unpredictability and arbitrariness, Trump’s judges are likely to deliver interpretive clarity and consistency.
Far too often we see radical judges thwarting Trump’s lawful actions to secure the border or prevent unvetted refugees from areas infested with terrorists from entering the country. These decisions have flown directly in the face of clearly accepted Presidential powers, but they block sorely needed actions based on ideology and the need to simply obstruct Trump.
Thank you, Harry, you short-sighted, fascist twit.
As much as Obama was known as a ditherer, I have to wonder if he was under some duress from Hillary about not replacing all those open positions of judges who retired in 2013,14 &15.
After all, she figured she was a shoe-in and wanted to reward her friends by putting them on the bench.
But it might be that Obama simply was lazy.
Anyway, great job, President Trump!
@Nan G: Well, the fix was definitely in. Hillary was definitely predetermined to win and Obama was creating the weaponized government institutions to assure that outcome. No doubt, putting together that fix was part of the bargain to get Hillary to shut up and not kill him.
I agree that the blame falls squarely on Reid but not for the reasons here.
Reid was naive to think he could ever work with the donor class owned republicans. He was a push over and allowed Rs to trample all over him.
The reason Reid had to change the rules was because McConnell was intentionally obstructing any judge Obama nominated with a full intention of creating more vacancies in order to load the courts once in Rs regained power.
Where Reid failed was that he didn’t do as Mitch did and change more senatorial rules, bypass opposition party input, disregard the ABA ratings, and just ram as many judges through as possible.
The concept that Mitch would have never changed any rules had Reid simply allowed him continue his unprecedented obstruction is beyond silly. This was proven with Gorsuch rule changes and the many other changes Moscow Mitch has made.
When Republicans use the same tactics Democrats have routinely utilized, it’s unfair. Waa, waa, waa, waa. “We’re entitled liberals and we demand to make all the rules. Or we’ll stomp our feet and pout.”