If you're still deliberating about whether you think McConnell will try to move a nominee before the election or during lame duck, you don't understand what the fight is about. He will try to move it before the election because that's what this is all about. 1/thread

Trump has said repeatedly that he wants results that night, and that ballots counted after are fraud. His allies like Ted Cruz have said that they need 9 justices to resolve election disputes in a potentially contested election. 2/x

Meanwhile, Trump has done everything he can to drive a bifurcation between Democrats voting by mail and GOP votes in person on election day, and there's a reason for that. 3/x

Election day votes are counted that day, and mail ballots often take a while to count after election day. Trump knows he's way behind and can't win fairly, so what his machine is trying to do is hope they "win" the vote counted on election day, and have SCOTUS stop the count. 4/x

They believe that Gorsuch, Alito, Thomas and Kavanaugh will go along with that scheme, but the right doesn't trust Roberts to. He has let them down too many times, and they probably believe that if this scenario happens under the current court composition, it's 4-4, remanded. 5/x

6/x so they need that fifth justice. They need it before election day. They need a loyalist. And McConnell won't care about sacrificing his caucus to get it if it means another 4 years of Trump's judicial appointments.

7/x Schumer and Pelosi need to understand those stakes and pull out every stop to delay any confirmation vote past election day and make sure the election is decided before any justice can be confirmed to rule on election disputes.

8/x meanwhile, what can you do? Get your vote in damn early. If your state has early voting, use it. If it doesn't, mail it in way early to get it counted as early as possible. Trump and his allies went to stage an electoral coup, and the way to prevent that is to vote early. Fin