#Barack Obama joins push to delay filling of Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s seat

Former President Barack Obama early Saturday joined in the push by fellow Democrats to delay filling Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Supreme Court vacancy, instead urging that there be an “unimpeachable process.”

“A basic principle of the law — and of everyday fairness — is that we apply rules with consistency, and not based on what’s convenient or advantageous in the moment,” Obama wrote in a post to Medium.com.

“As votes are already being cast in this election, Republican Senators are now called to apply that standard,” he wrote.

“The questions before the Court now and in the coming years — with decisions that will determine whether or not our economy is fair, our society is just, women are treated equally, our planet survives, and our democracy endures — are too consequential to future generations for courts to be filled through anything less than an unimpeachable process.”

Ginsburg died Friday at age 87 due to metastasized pancreatic cancer — and within two hours of the Supreme Court announcing her passing, the leaders of both sides of the Senate had weighed in on how her seat should be filled.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell vowed in a statement that he will call a confirmation hearing for whomever President Trump nominates.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer issued a counter statement that tried to throw back in McConnell’s face the words the majority leader had used in refusing to call hearings on Obama’s choice to succeed Justice Antonin Scalia, who died nine months before the 2016 election: “The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice.”

Democratic presidential contender and former vice president Joe Biden has also issued a statement urging a delay in filling Ginsburg’s seat.