Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) this week came out saying he refuses to vote for President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court justice nominee, citing it as an “illegitimate process.”
Friday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Kaine noted that Republicans in 2016 refused to confirm then-President Barack Obama’s SCOTUS nominee, Merrick Garland, because he was in the final year of his presidency. He argued they want to rush in a conservative nominee to “kill the Affordable Care Act.”
“When President Obama had a vacancy in the last year of his presidency, the Republicans wouldn’t even meet with the candidate, hold a hearing or hold a vote and they announced this is the new rule if there’s a vacancy in the last year of a presidency we’ll wait, and they said, ‘Let the American people decide,'” emphasized Kaine. “Over and over again, Lindsey Graham, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said, ‘Hold these words against me. If there’s a Republican elected in 2016, and in the last year of his or her term there’s a vacancy, hold it against me. We won’t move to fill the vacancy. Let the American people decide.’ Now, the Republicans have decided to reverse it. Why are they rushing? This is really important. Why are they rushing? I think they’re rushing because they view this as their last chance to kill the Affordable Care Act.”
Kaine went on to stress the importance of Democrats winning back the Senate and the White House, saying it has “life and death consequences.”
“I do think if the Senate majority is determined to break their promise and move forward, they can probably figure out a way to do so,” he asserted. “But what I want to convey in the clearest possible terms, there’s no mischief they can do in the Senate or in the Supreme Court between now and inauguration day that Democrats can’t fix if we win the Senate and win the White House. We can fix anything bad that they do in the next couple of months if we can win the Senate, win the White House. And that means voting this year is fundamentally a vote to protect your own health. It’s got life and death consequences.”
Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent