CNN last week published a story about the progressive push to get Justice Breyer to retire. In the story there’s was one paragraph that the story seems particularly striking. noted that the Senate could fall into Republican’s hands “at any moment” because “two members of the Democratic majority are near or just over 80 years old.”
This having said that Democrats are one stopped heartbeat away from losing the chance to replace Breyer with a young progressive. Today, the NY Times weighs in with a piece that is focused not just on Justice Breyer but the possibility that President Biden’s entire agenda could come to a grinding halt if the wrong people were to die suddenly.
Ultimately, I think this story is being driven by progressives who are trying to send a message to Justice Breyer. Brian Fallon, who is cited in the piece, leads Demand Justice, the same group that sent this mobile billboard truck to the Supreme Court last month. They added Tillis to this list to balance the power dynamic doesn’t change if a Republican Senator dies.
Republicans have a real chance to take the House. And if that happens, Biden’s ability to pass big rising bills is over for his whole first term. The focus of this story is what happens if one of these elderly Democrats were to die in the next six months or so.
Meanwhile, it’s possible Democrats lose control long before the outcome of the 2022 elections where So as much as this Democratic deathwatch seems a bit grim, it does have the potential to completely alter the course of this administration.