Ben Shapiro: Democrats oppose Barrett because they want Supreme Court to be progressive super-legislature

This week, Democrats struggled to explain why Judge Amy Coney Barrett should not be confirmed to serve on the Supreme Court.

The Democrats trotted out hackneyed arguments, suggesting that some political norm had been broken by a Republican president nominating a judge to be confirmed as a justice by a Republican Senate in an election year.

In fact, there have been 19 times where a seat became vacant in an election year and both the presidency and Senate were controlled by the same party, resulting in 17 judicial confirmations. But Democrats suggested that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's dying wish to leave her seat open until a Democrat takes power represented a sort of binding legal commitment.

And they fumed.

They fumed that Barrett refuses to pledge fealty to their political priorities. They fumed that Barrett has stated that the role of the judiciary is not to achieve moral ends but to enforce the law.

The Democrats fumed that Barrett had the temerity to state that "courts are not designed to solve every problem or right every wrong in our public life," that "the policy decisions and value judgments of government must be made by the political branches" and that she has done her utmost to "reach the result required by the law," whatever her preferences might be.

That's because, in the view of the political left, the court ought to be merely another weapon in its political arsenal.