If Senate Democrats do not threaten to expand the Supreme Court after Republicans install a justice in the middle of an election (or during the lame duck), they will have effectively surrendered. There is no other proportional response. It’s court expansion or nothing.

Republicans established new rules: The party in power can use any tool at its disposal to seize the Supreme Court, within explicit constitutional limits. Democrats will solve nothing if they unilaterally disarm. They can either adopt the new rules and expand the court, or die.

Democratic senators who won’t support court expansion as a proportional response to this power grab should be treated as cowards and dupes of the right. Republicans have ruthlessly shattered all norms and principles to seize the judiciary. Democrats must respond in kind.

Progressives should be inundating Democratic senators with calls demanding to know their plan if Trump installs a new justice. “First we try to stop him” isn’t good enough. We need to know what Democrats intend to do when Plan A fails and Republicans seize the Supreme Court.

RBG’s death is the biggest crisis of Trump’s entire presidency but too many progressives are consumed by the election to grasp the magnitude of the catastrophe unfolding before our eyes. Republicans are poised to obliterate the progressive agenda for decades. This is THE fight.

Also: “Republicans are hypocrites” is not a plan. Democratic senators don’t need to tell us how unprincipled Republicans are. We know. Republicans don’t care. Democrats need to talk about the material consequences of a far-right SCOTUS, like the imminent eradication of the ACA.

A far-right Supreme Court threatens everything Democrats support. The ACA. Roe v. Wade. Marriage equality. One person, one vote. Voting rights. Gun safety laws. Carbon regulations. Affirmative action. Unions. Campaign finance laws. Redistricting reform. It is ALL on the table.