Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar declined to state whether or not there should be a longstanding principle against confirming Supreme Court justices during an election year.
During an interview on NBC’s Meet The Press, Klobuchar, who ran for president during the Democratic presidential primary, said Republicans should adhere to a 2016 precedent established by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell that a Senate of a different party than the president should not confirm a justice during an election year. But she did not say whether or not that principle should be the standard.
“But in your mind, which precedent is wrong? The one they set in ’16 or the one they’re trying to create now?” moderator Chuck Todd asked.
“For me, whatever happened before, ancient rules, whatever it is, what matters right now is that they just made these statements. They’re not beholden to Mitch McConnell. They’re beholden to the people that voted for them in their own state,” Klobuchar said, adding, “So if my colleagues want to look themselves in the mirror and say, ‘What did I just say the last time this happened? What’s the precedent I set? What should I follow?’ They each have to make an individual decision.”
Merrick Garland, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, was President Barack Obama’s nominee in 2016 to replace the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia. However, McConnell declined to allow the Senate to vote on his nomination, saying the new president should have the ability to fill the vacancy. Democrats have expressed outrage that Republicans are moving to fill a vacancy left by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, urging them to adhere to that precedent.
Ginsburg said in 2016 that the precedent diminished presidential power. “The president is elected for four years, not three years, so the power he has in year three continues into year four,” she said in regards to Garland’s nomination by Obama. “Maybe members of the Senate will wake up and appreciate that that’s how it should be.”
However, before her death on Friday, the liberal justice imparted to her granddaughter a dying wish: “My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.”
