commonplacing

One other thing I’d like to remind people is that the next president could nominate up to four Supreme Court Justices. I know that’s not a sexy issue and it doesn’t tend to dominate the headlines, but it really, really should. Whatever issues you’re passionate about (voting rights, access to abortion, campaign finance, health care, etc.) the Supreme Court wreaks massive influence on them all. The Court is composed of a mere (usually) nine people who together decide things like whether you should be able to vote in Alabama if you’re black or if you should have to drive 300 miles to get an abortion if you’ve been raped. So in the coming weeks and months you have to decide if you’d like Hillary Clinton to nominate the people who make those decisions for you or if you’d prefer Donald Trump to do that. To illustrate, Donald Trump could substantively influence critical decisions your granddaughter has to make about her reproductive health care, long after you’re dead. And that’s not a silly thought exercise, that’s an elementary understanding of how the Supreme Court, whose Justices are appointed for life, shapes American lives through law. So my hope in writing all this is that somebody might read it and move past the cult of personality nonsense that makes up the bulk of election “news” and think about what matters to them, on an issue-by-issue basis and vote based on that.