Anthony Kennedy retirement latest reason Democrats risk losing Supreme Court for generations Anthony Kennedy retirement underscores need for Democrats to make all-out bid for Senate control. The outcome will shape the Supreme Court for generations.

Jill Lawrence | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Justice Anthony Kennedy retiring from Supreme Court Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy, will step down at the end of July, which gives President Trump a opportunity to alter the nation's top court for decades.

Between Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy's retirement and "RBG," the new documentary about Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the stakes of the midterm elections could not be more clear. From the George W. Bush presidency to a wave of state attempts to restrict voting to this week's blow to union finances, one 5-4 decision after another changes the course of the nation. Yet you could show "RBG" to every adult Democrat in America and odds are that wouldn’t drive them to the polls.

Conservatives have been motivated for decades by the court's central place in history and the Senate's role in shaping the court. Democrats should be too, but they aren't. This year, they are preoccupied with the House. In fact, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, typically a donor to both parties, recently revealed he'll spend $80 million on the midterms — most of it to help Democrats flip the House, at least for now.

A Democratic House majority would certainly be a lot better than nothing. It would allow Democrats to set the House agenda on taxes, spending, oversight, investigations and (should it become inevitable) impeachment — and give them sorely needed bargaining power on all issues. Yet it’s perhaps even more urgent that Democrats go full-out to win the Senate. The odds are longer but it's not impossible, and the outcome will have massive economic and social consequences over the next half-century.

Which brings us back to the Supreme Court.

Why don't Democrats care?

Just in the past few weeks, the 5-4 conservative majority has handed down decisions that curtailed voting rights, sharply narrowed redress for union members as well as labor's political clout, and upheld President Donald Trump's travel ban centered on majority-Muslim countries. In the next year or two, the court could be weighing in on your access to health insurance.

From abortion, guns and privacy to voting, gay and worker rights, from immigration to criminal justice to who gets to draw political maps and contribute to campaigns, the Supreme Court is in all of our lives and business. This should be a major voting issue for Democrats in every election. Even in 2016, however, it didn’t rise to the top.

That was the year President Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland — a smart and lovely fellow according to senators from both parties — 10 months before his term ended. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and his passive-aggressive majority refused to consider Garland for all that time, effectively shrinking Obama’s presidency from four years to three. That was the most outrageous partisan obstructionism, and the most consequential, in my memory. Yet in several swing states and key demographics, Democratic turnout fell.

Now we have the results: Justice Neil Gorsuch, a conservative Trump pick who, at age 50, likely has another 25 to 30 years on the court. Rumors swirling for weeks that the 81-year-old Kennedy, a less predictable conservative, would retire this summer and give Trump another opportunity to nudge the court rightward (they were accurate, as it turned out). And two liberal seats held by Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, who are 85 and 79, respectively.

It is not being disrespectful to say anything could happen — and if it happens while Trump is president and the Senate is Republican, the court could go from a 5-4 conservative majority to a 6-3 or even 7-2 conservative majority.

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This is not the America most people prefer, considering that Hillary Clinton won 3 million more popular votes than Trump. There is a disconnect, however, in conveying to many voters both the mechanics of Supreme Court nominations and just how much the makeup of the court affects them. At the height of the Garland controversy, the Pew Research Center found that seven in 10 Democrats had a favorable view of the court.

Brian Fallon, executive director of a new group called Demand Justice, attributed this to the court’s rulings upholding legal abortion and gay marriage. But he told me voters are missing the corporate capture of the Roberts court — “all of the quiet work that the court is doing to undermine worker's rights” — as well as “the slowly emerging threat” on social issues such as abortion and gay rights.

Fallon, who worked for Clinton’s 2016 campaign, said she tried to fire up Democrats for two days during the Garland episode, and the needle did not move. “I think we are years away from having a progressive base that is cultivated enough to treat this as a voting issue,” he said.

Not even donors are mobilized

One approach is to fold the court into the economic message Democrats already are running on — to frame the pro-business, anti-worker court as “part of the rigged economy,” as Fallon put it. He would ask voters this: “Do you you want a $15 minimum wage or Medicare for all? We could get it all and this court would strike it down.”

Fallon said not even donors are as mobilized as they need to be, but some wealthy Democrats are stepping up. There are more than a dozen $1 million-plus donors to the Senate Majority PAC, and reservations for fall advertising time in states Democrats want to flip as well as the many they need to hold. There are also new groups like Win Justice and Fallon’s Demand Justice devoted at least in part to ginning up money and interest in Senate races.

Democrats must summon the energy to fight for a Democratic Senate and the money to make the strongest argument possible. The Supreme Court probably won't work, but economics might. All that matters is the result: prevailing over a Republican majority positioned to install an ideological, out-of-touch Supreme Court empowered to impose its will for generations.

Jill Lawrence is the commentary editor of USA TODAY and author of "The Art of the Political Deal: How Congress Beat the Odds and Broke Through Gridlock." Follow her on Twitter: @JillDLawrence