(CNN) The past two years have been nothing short of a hellscape for Democrats.

The stunning election of Donald Trump in November 2016 has been followed by a presidency that has taken as its fundamental motivation the undoing of everything President Barack Obama accomplished -- from the Affordable Care Act to a series of clean air and clean water regulations to some sort of path toward citizenship for children brought to the United States illegally by their parents. Republicans have been broadly willing to rubber-stamp Trump — and overlook his conservative apostasies, exacerbating Democrats' angst.

But nothing has driven Democratic depression more than the fact that President Trump is now on the verge of appointing his second Supreme Court justice in less than 20 months on the job. Putting conservative Neil Gorsuch into the spot left vacant by conservative Antonin Scalia was one thing. Filling the seat of retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy, the widely recognized swing vote on a number of major cases in recent years, with Brett Kavanaugh, a man who came to fame due to his role in the Starr Report , was quite another.

And it was all made worse for the party -- much, much worse -- by the fact that due to a series of rule changes begun by Democrat Harry Reid when he served as Senate majority leader, every one of the 49 Democrats in the Senate could vote against Kavanaugh and he can still wind up on the bench.

With the Democratic Party largely leaderless and the 2020 presidential primary race still a long way off, one person has served as a rallying point for dispirited Democrats: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.