As partisan politicians pull each other's hair, and shriek and create delicate alternate realities in their battle over the Supreme Court, may I ask a favor?
Let's all just take a step back from the drama and listen to what the wise man said.
“Elections have consequences,” said the wise man, “and at the end of the day, I won.”
That was then President Barack Obama, snapping at Republicans after his 2008 election, when he didn't have to worry about compromise, when his Democrats had majority control of both the House and the Senate.
But that crazy America political pendulum keeps swinging. It doesn't give a fig for wise men or fools. It just swings.
And now Democrats are in the minority, trying to stall the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, even as President Donald Trump tells Senate Republicans to “go nuclear” if necessary.
There's been much hand-wringing over the so-called “nuclear option,” a Senate rules change favoring a simple majority on judicial confirmations. It was imposed on the Senate by Democrats when they held the majority. They used it to help Obama install liberal judges to the federal bench and appellate courts.
Democrats loved it then. They don't much like it now.
Gorsuch, a well-respected conservative jurist, will eventually be confirmed to replace the late Antonin Scalia. The balance of the court doesn't shift.
And in the short term, several Democratic senators will be running for re-election in 2018 in states that Trump won big in November.
Those Democratic senators are vulnerable if they vote against Gorsuch. And if they support Gorsuch, the emboldened Democratic hard left may come at them with primary challenges.
There is, however, a long-term question here, because Trump could make more than one nomination to the court.
His promise to nominate conservative justices to the Supreme Court is a big reason he won the election. Evangelicals and others who could barely stomach his vulgar ways and his bragging style supported him because they cared more about the Supreme Court than his boorish behavior.
Trump kept his vow and nominated Gorsuch. But he'll be president for four years at least, so there could be other nominations.
Which raises a question about how long the oldest member of the Supreme Court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, will remain on the bench.
If Ginsburg or one of the other three liberals on the court retires with Trump still in office, then we're not talking about short-term anything.
Then we're talking about a long-term ideological shift in the court away from liberalism.
Another conservative after Gorsuch could mean more freedom from the carnivorous federal leviathan that feeds on individual liberty and never stops growing.
But it would also likely turn the abortion issue back to the states.
To be clear, I mean no disrespect to Justice Ginsburg here. The brilliant warrior priestess of the left still has her formidable, lively mind, personal grace and her dry sense of humor.
She's a feminist icon. Perhaps you've seen those stories of little girls dressing up in Justice Ginsburg costumes: black robes, lace collar and hair in a tight bun, glasses.
On Wednesday, she spoke at Virginia Military Institute, two decades after her famous opinion in United States v. Virginia ended publicly sponsored, all-male education there.
She got laughs when she talked of her undergraduate days at Cornell. “There were four men to every woman, and so families felt, ‘if she can't find her man here, she's hopeless.' ”
And more laughs about her daily workout regimen.
“It's an hour,” deadpanned the justice also known as “The Notorious RBG.” “In the first segment there are pushups and something called a plank.”
She talked of her Brooklyn roots, the law, and of her fondness for the late Scalia, who was every bit as conservative as she is liberal.
But as I watched her on the internet, I couldn't help but notice that she's quite frail. She's also had serious health issues.
And she's 83 years old.
I do not doubt she has the will to remain on the court. She'll want to stay as long as Donald Trump holds the White House. And I'm not suggesting she step down.
She loathes Trump and went on the record to publicly despise him.
“He is a faker,” she was quoted as saying during the campaign. “He has no consistency about him. He says whatever comes into his head at the moment …
“… I can't imagine what the country would be — with Donald Trump as our president.”
She can imagine it now.
Then, Trump put his angry thumbs to work on Twitter. “Justice Ginsburg of the U.S. Supreme Court has embarrassed all by making very dumb political statements about me. Her mind is shot — resign!” tweeted candidate Trump.
I won't say her mind is shot, but it was foolish of her to go public with her criticism. Justice Ginsburg later apologized.
Still the damage had been done to her fellow Democrats. Because in attacking Trump, she reminded voters that the black robe isn't a holy cloak of impartiality.
She reminded them that human beings live under those robes, and that humans are political.
This is why the Constitution shouldn't be interpreted as a living document to address the political winds of the moment.
The framers understood that the pendulum swings both ways, sometimes wildly.
And since they were wise, they knew something else:
Elections do have consequences.
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