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Bloomberg
Donald Trump’s plans to name a replacement for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg this week offer Joe Biden the chance to galvanise newly energized Democrats, while providing the president a fresh battle in a culture war he’s waged for four years.
Early reaction to Ginsburg’s death suggests Biden stands to gain more politically from the sudden vacancy, as it underscores the stakes of the contest for liberal voters who had been reluctant to endorse his centrist candidacy.
A flood of Democratic fundraising signals that fear of
a generation-long conservative hold on the Supreme Court has rallied support behind the former vice president, and gives Biden a new chance to extend his advantage with younger and female voters who viewed Ginsburg as an icon.
In the 48 hours after Ginsburg’s death, donors poured more than $120 million into
the ActBlue platform, which processes grassroots donations for Democratic Party candidates and causes.
That included $71 million on Saturday alone, shattering the party’s previous one-day record of $42 million.
The donations on the left may accelerate after Trump names his choice to replace the justice, who will be memorialised at the Supreme Court this week followed by a private burial at Arlington National Cemetery.
Republicans did not report any comparable figures over the weekend.
Their voters have historically shown higher interest in
the court, and may already regard Trump’s re-election as a way to lock in a conservative majority.
Yet Trump’s allies sense there could be immediate political advantage for them as well. The coming nomination is a welcome chance to refocus attention on the nation’s cultural divisions, animating conservative loyalists who may have grown cold to the president after months dominated by coverage of the Trump administration’s struggles to combat the coronavirus pandemic.
And the pick — which the president has already said will be a woman — is an opportunity for Trump to try to curry favor with a demographic that has soured on his performance, polls indicate.