President Trump has revealed the names of people he'd consider nominating to the Supreme Court in the event of a vacancy like the one opened by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Former Vice President Joe Biden, Trump's Democratic challenger, hasn't.
Some critics were faulting Biden's reticence as recently as Thursday, as the Associated Press reported, and the matter has become newly urgent for Democrats as they go to war to try to stop Senate action on the high court.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and other members in the minority hope that they can defer action now, Biden will be elected, that they'll secure a Senate majority and then — and only then — they could move ahead to fill the Ginsburg vacancy.
Democrats would need persuade a number of Republican senators, some of whom are facing reelection themselves, to go along with this plan.
That would be difficult, and as some Democrats told the AP this week before Ginsburg's death, the putative identities of a Biden nominee likely wouldn't make that big a difference to party loyalists.
Biden acolyte Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., for example, told the wire service that he believed the faithful could trust Biden enough to put him into position for when the right time came without the bona fides that Coons suggested Trump had to secure with sometimes nervous conservatives.
"He doesn't need to issue some lists in order for Democrats to be comfortable that they know his values and his priorities," Coons told the AP, arguing that Americans could expect a potential Biden administration to select "highly qualified, mainstream jurists."
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