JUSTICE GINSBURG'S SUCCESSOR.

• Position: COMMENT - Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg - Viewpoint essay

Ruth Bader Ginsburg's untimely death presents a do-or-die moment for American democracy.

If our democracy is going to survive, Trump and the Republicans must not be allowed to pick her successor to the U.S. Supreme Court--unless they win the next election.

The GOP s pronouncements in 2016, when the Senate refused to even hold a hearing on President Barack Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, were crystal clear. Back then, Senator Mitch McConnell and the Republicans said the 237 days between Garland's nomination and the election that brought Trump to power was not long enough. Back then, they said the American people must get "to weigh in on whom they trust to nominate" to the court.

Now they are saying that the forty-six days between Ginsburg's death and the November 3 election is not too short a time to move forward with a new pick. They want to be able to fill Ginsburg's seat with her ideological opposite no matter who wins.

In 2016, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, told the Senate Judiciary Committee: "I want you to use my words against me. If there's a Republican President in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say Lindsey Graham said, 'Let's let the next President, whoever it might be, make that nomination.' "

Now Graham, who became the committee's chair in 2019, says he will support Trump "in any effort to move forward regarding the recent vacancy created by the passing of Justice Ginsburg."

The hypocrisy is beyond sickening. It is dangerous.

As former-President Obama wrote in his statement on Ginsburg's passing, "A basic...