Kennedy was no "moderate." He's been instrumental in dismantling American democracy

https://www.salon.com/2018/06/27/listen-up-progressives-anthony-kennedy-was-not-your-friend/

Listen up, progressives: Anthony Kennedy was not your friend
Kennedy was no “moderate.” He’s been instrumental in dismantling American democracy so Trump could take it over
Amanda Marcotte
June 27, 2018 8:45pm (UTC)

...

Because of his occasional glimmers of human compassion, Kennedy got a reputation as being a "moderate." He was not a moderate, and especially not on the issue that might be most pressing for the United States in the coming years, that being the effort to preserve our democracy in the face of Republican efforts to destroy it.

Kennedy — a Reagan appointee, for those who have forgotten — spent much of his Supreme Court career supporting Republican efforts to gut the ability of progressives to compete politically on equal footing, even when doing so meant doing real harm to democracy itself.

Kennedy voted to shut down vote recounts in the 2000 Florida election, siding with George W. Bush, who clearly worried that Al Gore would emerge the winner if the vote count proceeded. (Which is likely, as most voters in the state clearly intended to vote Gore.)

Kennedy wrote the opinion in the Citizens United decision of 2012 that eviscerated campaign finance law by allowing wealthy donors and corporations to dump money into electoral politics without restraint. The resulting explosion of super-PAC spending has, in turn, helped secure Republican control of all levels of government, from county governments and state legislatures on up.

Kennedy voted to strike down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act in 2013, which opened the door to the flood of voting restrictions in numerous states, which are clearly aimed at shutting out Democratic voters and specifically to target voters of color with onerous restrictions that limit legal voting rights for no valid reason.

In the past month, Kennedy has gone hog-wild dismantling voting rights. He has voted to uphold an Ohio law meant to kick legal voters off the rolls, to uphold racially discriminatory gerrymandered maps, and to punting on blatant partisan gerrymanders, even though he surely know that whichever Right-wing Robot the Federalist Society picks for Trump's next justice will sign off on them.

Oh yeah, and Kennedy also voted against public-sector unions in Janus vs. AFSCME. Part of that is simply consistent with his long history of siding with corporate interests against workers at every opportunity, but part of it is also likely due to his knee-jerk Republican loyalties. A major reason Republicans are so intent on dismantling union power is because unions are effective at organizing coalitions to support progressive policies and Democratic candidates. Take out unions, and not only can conservatives drive down wages, but they can increase the Republican stranglehold on power, even as increasingly large majorities of Americans want them out of office.

Even Kennedy's retirement fits the pattern. He knows Trump is a racist authoritarian with an obvious hunger for fascist levels of power. But Kennedy would still prefer Trump to nominate his replacement than a Democratic president who could (at least theoretically) take office in 2021. ...