Threatening this as brinkmanship might persuade Republicans not to push ahead with filling the vacancy. But beyond the scenario of a contested election, this raises the possibility of renewed constitutional upheavals once a President Biden were to take office. These risks aren’t negligible. It is prudent for investors to take them into account.
Survival Tips:
How exactly did the waif-like Ruth Bader Ginsburg survive numerous bouts of cancer to live as long as she did? Depending on how you look at it, her decision not to resign six years ago, while Democrats still held the White House and Senate, showed either misguided arrogance, or a thrilling and cussed determination to live on. Her work-out regimes are legendary. And of course she is nicknamed after a rapper who didn’t live to see anything like such an advanced age.
One other key to her longevity is her well-known love of opera. She even played a cameo in a Donizetti work four years ago, while her unlikely friendship with conservative Justice Antonin Scalia even became the subject of its own comic opera, Scalia/Ginsburg. Usefully, the New Yorker ran a list of her favorite operas eight years ago. Those with a Pandora account can listen to an interview with RBG here.
There are few better ways to escape the stresses caused by the effort to replace Scalia and Ginsburg than to dig through some of the operas she recommended here. To get started, I’d suggest The Rake’s Progress by Stravinsky, one of her more avant-garde suggestions, or La Ci Darem La Mano from Mozart’s Don Giovanni, a gloriously seductive duet, with the great Bryn Terfel in the title role. Rest in peace, RBG, while your country tears itself apart over how to replace you.
John Authers is a senior editor for markets at Bloomberg. Before Bloomberg, he spent 29 years with the Financial Times, where he was head of the Lex Column and chief markets commentator. He is the author of The Fearful Rise of Markets and other books.