Jenny Beth Martin: Liberals have a secret list of judicial nominees. Why won’t they share it with voters?

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What's the difference between Donald Trump and a bunch of liberal judicial activists? When it comes to naming potential judicial nominees, Trump is all about transparency -- and the liberals, oddly enough, are all about secrecy.

According to The New York Times, a group of liberal judicial activists is putting together a secret list of potential judicial appointees in the event a Democrat defeats President Trump in next year’s election.

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In doing so, they are mirroring a tactic from Trump’s successful 2016 campaign, except for one glaring difference. In the 2016 campaign, Trump didn’t just make a list, he made it public (and quite loudly). Meanwhile, in the current liberal endeavor, progressives are making a list but keeping it a secret.

It’s ironic that many of the very same liberal activists who demand “transparency” and “openness” from their political leaders want to keep secret their list of potential judicial nominees.

To put this in context, let’s back up to the 2016 presidential campaign when then-candidate Trump was still introducing himself to the GOP base.

With a history of campaign contributions to Democrats and an archive of public statements expressing support for various liberal shibboleths over the decades, Trump knew he was still viewed skeptically by conservative segments of the Republican party. He knew he needed to do something to show that he had evolved and wanted to prove that he would be a standard-bearer loyal to the principles of his new party.

So in the spring of 2016, Trump asked for a meeting with Leonard Leo, executive vice president of The Federalist Society, an organization of conservative lawyers and legal scholars. As Leo recalls the conversation, Trump told him he wanted Leo’s help in putting together a list of potential Supreme Court nominees for public release and said, “People don’t know who I am on these issues, and I want to give people a sense of that.”

In typical Trump trail-blazing style, it bothered him not at all that he wanted to do something no previous campaign had done before.

And thus Trump’s list was born. Released on May 18 of 2016, the first list had eleven judges from which Trump promised to pick a Supreme Court nominee. In September of that year, Trump released a second list with another ten names.

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And we now know that the list had a big impact on voters. There are two eyebrow-raising statistics from the 2016 exit polls. First, more than one in five voters (or 21 percent) said Supreme Court appointments were “the most important factor” in determining their votes. And that 21 percent of the electorate voted for Trump over Clinton 56 to 41 percent.

The second interesting stat to emerge from exit poll data is that more than a quarter of Trump’s voters -- 26 percent to be exact -- “told pollsters that Supreme Court nominees were the most important factor in their voting, compared with only 18 percent of Hillary Clinton voters…”

Do the math. In the upper rustbelt battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin -- places where Trump won by a combined margin of fewer than 80,000 votes, and, with those wins, won the presidency –- those Supreme Court-driven votes were crucial to victory.

Since being inaugurated, President Trump has moved 112 judges onto the federal bench: two Supreme Court Justices, 41 appeals court judges, and 69 district court judges. He’s nominated another 32 district court judges who are awaiting confirmation, and he is working on scores more.

The American public should demand that they reveal the list, so voters can know up front what they can expect if a liberal Democrat defeats President Trump next year. That way, voters can make an informed decision after comparing the list of liberal potential judicial nominees to President Trump’s list of potential judicial nominees.

Their refusal to reveal the list to public scrutiny should open them up to a rightful charge of hypocrisy. The American public should demand that they reveal the list, so voters can know up front what they can expect if a liberal Democrat defeats President Trump next year. That way, voters can make an informed decision after comparing the list of liberal potential judicial nominees to President Trump’s list of potential judicial nominees.

Is there any possible reason to keep the list secret other than the obvious one –- that is, that the liberals who are putting the list together fear that exposure of the names on the list would actually harm the eventual Democratic nominee for president?

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Not publicizing the list only serves to raise interest in it. And what are the odds that a list of liberal potential judicial nominees is going to remain secret for another 18 months? Hardly likely, I’d say, especially given that, according to The Times, there are “more than 30 law professors and lawyers [who] will serve as an advisory board to this effort.” When was the last time more than 30 people could keep a secret as juicy as this?

The list of liberal potential judicial nominees is going to be made public sooner or later. If the liberals guiding the effort are smart, they’ll reveal the list soon. The longer they wait, the more damage to their own cause they will do.