Kennedy would never have retired if he wasn’t certain his replacement was of a similar ilk. The fix was in from the beginning on that one.
It was. Trump had the choice of appointing Kavanaugh who is only a tiny bit to the right of Kennedy or refusing in which case Kennedy would’ve retired when Biden was in office. That would have resulted in somebody far worse than Kavanaugh being appointed.
Trump did well with Gorsuch. Kavanaugh at least kept that seat from going to a hard left judicial activist. ACB looks like a bad pick and nowhere near as much of an Originalist as we had hoped. She’s clearly in the mushy middle with Kavanaugh and Roberts. Still, she is better than Ruth Bader Ginsburg so while Trump did not shift the SCOTUS as much as we would have liked, he clearly did improve it.
Hopefully in his 2nd term, Trump will be able to appoint 2-3 rock ribbed Originalists to replace Breyer, the Wide Latina and maybe the great Clarence Thomas who is getting up there in years. Alito, as much as I admire him, is no spring chicken either.