Biden condemns push to fast track Supreme Court confirmation as 'exercise in raw political power'

Fox News' Lucas Tomlinson with more.Joe Biden on Sunday made a personal appeal to the handful of Senate Republicans who will determine if President Trump’s pending Supreme Court nominee will go forward, while framing the titanic battle over the high court opening as a referendum on saving health care coverage for tens of millions of Americans amid the worst pandemic in over a century.PELOSI DOESN'T RULE OUT IMPEACHMENT TO STOP TRUMP SCOTUS NOMINATIONThe former vice president – speaking at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia on Sunday in his first address since Friday night’s passing of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg – warned that if the president and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., go ahead with their push to confirm a successor to Ginsburg with less than 7 weeks to go until the Nov. 3 election, “it would cause irreversible damage.”“The last thing we need is to add a constitutional crisis that plunges us deeper into the abyss – deeper into the darkness,” he stressed.And he called the move by the president and the Senate Majority Leader an “exercise in raw political power.”Pointing to McConnell’s refusal to hold a hearing for President Obama’s nominee four years ago, after Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died just nine months before the last presidential election, Biden argued that “having made this their standard when it served their interest, they cannot, just four years later, change course when it doesn’t serve their ends.”Biden also pushed back on repeated calls by the president, the Trump campaign, and allies, to release a list of his own potential nominees. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska - said this weekend that the nomition to succeed Ginsburg should not be taken up until after the election, when the next president and control of the Senate will be determined by voters.McConnell can only afford to lose the support of one more Republican and still be able to push through Trump's nominee.Biden, in his speech, pleaded with "those few Senate Republicans — the handful who will really decide what happens. As the new President, I should be the one who nominates Justice Ginsburg’s successor, a nominee who should get a fair hearing in the Senate before a confirmation vote."Get all the stories you need-to-know from the most powerful name in news delivered first thing every morning to your inboxSubscribedYou've successfully subscribed to this newsletter!This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.