For the most part I agree with this:
The 81-year-old Supreme Court justice should retire this summer to ensure Obama can choose a like-minded successor.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg should retire from the Supreme Court after the completion of the current term in June. She turned 81 on Saturday and by all accounts she is healthy and physically and mentally able to continue. But only by resigning this summer can she ensure that a Democratic president will be able to choose a successor who shares her views and values.

There is a real possibility that the Democrats will lose the Senate in November.  Although Supreme Court nominations were exempted from the initial “nuclear option”  there is no reason to believe that it would not be expanded should a Supreme Court nomination come into play.  While in theory ideology should not apply to the Supreme Court it does.

Some might question whether a justice should be so calculating in choosing when to retire. But not doing so ignores the reality that ideology matters enormously in Supreme Court decision-making. This is nothing new; ideology always has mattered, and which president fills vacancies on the court can have an impact for decades.

We have seen the Supreme Court has become a real policy driver – not what the founding fathers had in mind but reality never the less.  We already have a right wing SCOTUS but a 4-5 split has kept the pragmatic John Roberts pragmatic.