Following Justice Breyer’s official retirement announcement, President Biden is poised to nominate a Black woman to that seat.
It’s a timely reminder as we kick off 2022: Keeping the Democratic majority in the Senate is critical to progress, for the remainder of President Biden’s term and for years to come. That’s why we need to be ready — not just to defend the eventual nominee from the inevitable sexist and racist attacks, but to keep the Senate blue for future appointments.
Democratic voters got us here
Let’s take a moment to remember why we’re even here:
- First, more than 81 million of us turned out to elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
- Then, Georgians showed up, again, two months later to elect the state’s first Black and Jewish Senators and ensure that Democrats would have the majority.
In the 12 months since, the Senate confirmed more federal judges than in any president’s first term in 40 years. President Biden’s picks have included public defenders and labor lawyers, and have been mostly women and people of color — a stark difference from the unqualified white men that Trump pushed into Federal courtrooms.
When judges look more like the country as a whole, when they have a broader range of life experiences, that means they’re working for all of us. And federal judges are lifetime appointments.
Because there’s no filibuster for judicial confirmations, Democrats (and Majority Leader Schumer) accomplished all this with the barest possible majority in the Senate. And to be clear, there’s exactly a zero percent chance any of this could have happened with Mitch McConnell in charge.
Why judicial appointments matter
It’s true that the newest justice, whoever she is, won’t change the fact that there are six far-right justices already on the Court. But the Supreme Court isn’t the only court that makes important decisions.
Federal judges have a huge impact on our lives: on our civil rights, reproductive rights, and voting rights. On our air and water and climate change mitigation. On Labor law and our COVID strategy.
And while the Supreme Court’s decisions get the most headlines, the number of cases they hear each year is tiny compared to the rest of the federal judiciary.
Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump made the judiciary their top goal, naming as many unqualified, far-right, and overwhelmingly white men to lifetime appointments as they could. For the sake of our rights in the decades to come, we need to keep the Senate and build better courts.
How we keep Mitch McConnell in the minority
The goal is clear: keep Democrats in charge in the Senate, and keep Mitch McConnell as far away from power as possible.
And the how is clear, too: We need to rally Democrats to vote in 2022 by talking directly to voters. We’ll discuss how Democrats have delivered with President Biden in office, make the case for the work still to be done, and empower voters to make their voices heard.
We’ll be in that fight, deploying Campaign Fellows, Community Mobilizers, Turnout Grants, Postcards to Swing States, and other voter contact programs to boost Democratic turnout.
And we hope you’ll get involved, too:
- By volunteering to write postcards to swing state voters
- By applying to work with us (or sending us your talented friends)
- By supporting our work with a contribution (the average is $19.13)
Every vote makes a difference. Every person who joins this fight with us makes a difference. Together, we can keep this progress going.
