Thread by @TheValuesVoter

Democrats sometimes ask questions like “how did Mitch McConnell get away with keeping Merrick Garland off the bench but getting Coney-Barrett on? And getting Gorsuch and Kavanaugh through?

It’s really simple. Previous #Midterm elections had a lot to do with it.

Mitch McConnell and the Republicans took the Senate in 2015 because they won a four seat majority.

The margin of which was made up by close Senate elections in the 2010 and 2014 midterms. When a lot of people didn’t bother to vote.

Supreme Court vacancies occur on average every three years and four months (over the last several decades).

And when a vacancy occurred in February, 2016, Mitch simply refused to hold hearings. Because he had the majority.

And Mitch and the Republicans had the majority because among the small number of people who bothered to vote in key Senate races during those two midterm years, 2010 and 2014.

Many Democrats expressed outrage later. But a lot of them did not vote in the Senate elections earlier.

Okay, so now that Garland was not given a hearing in 2014, Gorsuch got to fill that vacancy that had existed for more than a year in 2016.

Then the next year Kavanaugh was confirmed with a margin that also came via close Senate elections in midterms in which many didn’t vote.

And then Coney Barrett was also confirmed by a margin that came via close midterm Senate elections in which a significant percentage of eligible voters didn’t bother to vote.

Voting matters. But not when you only vote for President or during Presidential Election years. A third of the Senate is elected every two years. Which means that half the time, half of the Senate is two-thirds comprised of people elected in midterm years. When fewer people vote.

If you don’t vote, don’t complain later.