The hug was real and it permeated through the chamber for all to see. And it was refreshing, considering the last midterm elections when spineless Democrats made a frantic dash away from the president and his successful policies. Heck, one of them did not even want to say if she voted for the man. But in last night’s State Of The Union Address, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg showed those spineless Democrats how it should be done.
It should be noted that those Democrats who ran away from the president lost their reelection. Apparently the voters turned their backs on those politicians after they turned their backs on the president.
“She is one of my favorite people,” Obama told The New Yorker in 2014, after the 81-year-old associate justice was rushed to the hospital with a blocked artery. Following her hospitalization, Ginsburg brushed aside suggestions that she step down from the bench while Obama is still in office. The president told the magazine at the time: “Life tenure means she gets to decide, not anybody else, when she chooses to go.”
It’s clear that the warm feelings are mutual between Ginsburg and Obama, who had a special bond even before he was elected president.
“When the Court had one of its occasional dinners for members of the Senate, Ginsburg asked that Obama be seated at her table,” wrote Supreme Court expert Jeffrey Toobin.
Ginsburg has served on the Supreme Court since 1993, when she was appointed by then-President Bill Clinton. Since then, she has become famous for her advocacy for women’s rights, perhaps most notably her blistering dissent in the Hobby Lobby case, and her strong opposition to the court’s Citizens United decision, which she said she wished she could overrule.
