As Ruth Ginsburg often said, there is no magic wand, and there is no turning back.

Even though she was ill and 87 years old, her death was somehow a great shock.

She seemed invincible.

Her last wish to her daughter was for her to live long enough so a new president could replace her.  I thought she would to it.

I can’t think of any better or wiser advice for her shocked and frightened followers.

My heart goes out today to the many women who are grieving the loss of a towering feminist icon and inspiration. My e-mails tell the story of frightened, despairing, and angry people.

“This is a nightmare for women,” one write, “they will come after us now. I am terrified.”

For Americans, this year is rough on the nerves. And to some, Ginsburg’s death seemed the final straw.

But if you loved Ruth Ginsburg and what she stood for, then you know that fear and despair are not what she would want, and not what she would do.

She would want her followers to be strong, focused, undeterrable, and courteous. That was the point of her.

She always told her students to reserve their fire for their arguments and beliefs, not for other human beings.

And yes, since many of you asked,  I am hopeful that her legacy is yet to reveal itself fully. It will be powerful, meaningful, and strong. It’s really up to women now. And it will soon be apparent.

In a sadly divided country, the idea of Ruth Ginsburg unites so many women – young and old, centrist and left, center and right, rural and urban. That is the very tall hill for Donald Trump to climb.

A lot of men have learned over time that feminism is our liberation and the liberation of women.

Many other men have not accepted this lesson and have launched a powerful movement to stop it. Trump is leading the white man’s last stand in front of a shocked and uneasy nation.

There is not one thing about Ginsburg or her legacy that Trump and his neew Supreme Court Justice would wish to maintain or keep.

To me, and I think to Ruth  Ginsberg, this election, this time, this angst is all about the rise of women and the resistance of men who wish to stop their long march to freedom and equality.

We see that one powerful man after another believes he can bend or fight or bully women to his will. One step at a time wrote Ginsburg. She never quit.

“I’m dejected, but only momentarily, when I can’t get the fifth vote for something I think is very important,” she told some law students.

“But then you go on to the next challenge, and you give it your all. You know that these important issues are not going to go away. They are going to come back again and again. There’ll be another time, another day.”

Donald Trump is said to be ecstatic that he has an issue that will make voters forget about the pandemic and racial struggle and divide the country further.

I think Ruth’s spirit is much bigger than that. Not so fast, not so easy.

If I have confidence in anything, it is in the President’s ability to dig deep holes and shoot himself in one foot and then the other. His staff is said to be thrilled and confident at this turn.

That’s just what the pundits and wise men said about the Battle of Bull Run at the start of the civil war. It would be an easy victory, just what was needed. People came in fancy horse carriages with picnic baskets.

It didn’t turn out that way.

Neither will the meaning of her death, and the struggle over replacing her.

I’m not at ease, even writing about Ruth Ginsburg; she belongs to women.  But it’s important. It is easy enough to wring hands, lose sleep,  surrender hope and feel threatened, even doomed.

But I am an admirer of Ginsburg and have followed her for years.

Women have fought so hard, and for so long to get where RBG got, it is difficult for anyone who is not a woman to grasp the meaning of her loss fully.

Just knowing she was who she was and where she was was a bulwark, a comfort, a beacon. This morning, it felt like a loved and respected general died just before a battle.

But those of you who have followed her life and read her writings are perhaps considering what she would want and what she would do if she were in your shoes.

And for much of her life, she was. She did not whine, she never succumbed to fear.

I believe that everything happens for a reason, and I believe the reason for Ginsburgh’s death now, six weeks before a great reckoning for women, is to awaken every person who valued her and what she means.

Today, at this time, there is something every one of them can do to strike a blow in her honor: vote.

In the New Yorker Magazine, Jill Lepore wrote this about the death of Ginsburg:

“The Supreme Court, like much of the rest of the federal government, is at risk of becoming an instrument of the executive instead of a check against it. Preserving the Court’s independence will require courage and conviction of the Ginsburgian force. And there are changes, too, that most of us would never want to be undone. A century after the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s pioneering career as a scholar, advocate, and judge stands as a monument to the power of dissent. The natural and proper timidity and delicacy which belongs to the female sex evidently unfits it for many of the occupations of civil life. It took centuries, and tens of millions of women, to dismantle that nonsense. And no single one of them was more important than Ginsburg, warm-hearted, razor-sharp, and dauntless.”

I’ve felt from the first that this election is all about women and the rise of the women’s movement. I don’t believe women will let Donald Trump take that away.

But it is also about the power of dissent. All over America, women are dissenting Ginsburg style, and they are changing our world.

Some practical political things to consider this week and beyond.

Donald Trump has misjudged, mismanaged, or blown just about everything he wanted and intended to do in this political campaign.

He is simply incapable of sticking to a plan or agreeing to a good one. I have absolute faith in his ability to fail.

It is too early to know what ramifications Ginsburg’s death will have on the election, the country, or the Supreme Court. As her death reminds us, this campaign is a wild and unpredictable ride, and lots more things can happen before November 3.

Donald Trump might have got a new issue to excite his already fervent and exciting base.

Still, as he has done so many times this year, he has also excited the Democratic base, which is bigger than his. He has given Joseph Biden Jr. and Kamala Harris some important new openings and opportunities.

Women in general and the young, in particular, loved Ginsburg.

Anyone who wants to vote or take charge of their own bodies or fight climate change or see income equality or paid family care or vote or not leave college in debt,  suddenly has the most personal stake in this election.

What great reasons for voting.

If Trump doesn’t get the rigidly conservative judge he wants, his evangelical and other followers will live their lives, as usual, getting rich and soiling the legacy of Jesus Christ.

But women who want to make their own decisions, or who want access to health care and people who want to vote or people with pre-existing conditions, or people who want to save Mother Earth or the Dreamers facing deportation students fighting college debt are now at imminent risk.

The Democrats will make good use of those fears. And they are very real.

People who pay little or no attention to a presidential campaign – which is most of the country, now have some very strong reasons to vote.

Like the pandemic, this is personal, someone immune to lies.

The next Supreme Court Justice will directly touch almost every American’s lives, just as the pandemic has done and is doing.

Ginsburg’s death and Trump’s scramble to replace her makes the election very different. Trump already has his base; he needs what’s left of the middle. And they don’t like him and his genius for dividing the country.

According to poll after poll, women don’t like the conflict and rancor and chaos Trump is causing, and they will not like what Ginsburg’s death has meant for the election either.

By now, I would think most progressives would be gaining some faith in Trump’s disastrous failure as a candidate. For every MAGA cheer, there will be a gasp and quicking of the heart.

This could just as easily blow up in his face as help him. This is the year of the women, and I think they will make themselves heard. They already have. Ruth Ginsburg was a brilliant role model.

Her death makes this messy election messier,  uglier, and more disturbing. The modern tradition – until Mitch Connell disrupted it four years ago – held that presidents don’t nominate judges for Supreme Court vacancies in an election year.

The idea was to let the people decide by electing a president who would choose. How ironic that this President does not want women to have the right to choose, and now he proposes to take a right to choose away from the rest of us.

There are five or six Republican senators in difficult campaigns. It would only take two or three of them to upend Trump’s Supreme Court plans, just as John McCain disrupted his plans to kill Obamacare.

I don’t know how these people will vote, but at this point, it could as easily go against Trump as for him.

Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi have several legislative tools and powers that could shut the government down and raise all kinds of hell that might stall the appointment or push it into next year.

That is far from unthinkable. Or, some Republican Senators might balk at the candidate Trump chooses. Their political futures might depend on it.

Democrats and progressives were made enough at Trump; now, they will be in a rage.

The ferocity of the Democratic resistance is not clear. I suspect it will be intense. Both Biden and Harris jumped out quickly to challenge Trump’s plans for her replacement. Harris said, “today we mourn Ruth Ginsburg, tomorrow we fight for her legacy.”

That’s the story now. (And there is no magic wand for the pandemic either, it is still here.)

I’ve never seen or felt a deeper response to anything that I felt last night when Ginsburg died. You could feel the heat just by turning on the computer.

Ginsburg means a great deal to a great many people, young and old. The power of her values and spirit and commitment is a lot stronger than Luke Skywalker ever dreamed. Women, in particular, will not relish seeing her legacy dismantled.

Ginsburg urged women to fight for the things they care about, and millions of younger women heard her message. “But,” cautioned Ginsburg, “do it in a way that will lead others to join you.”

That is not a message too many mothers chose to tell their sons.

Ginsburg was the Queen of Dissent. Dissenting was never a pretense or a waste of time for her. She did not fear losing.

“Dissents speak to a future age,” she said. “It’s not simply to say, ‘My colleagues are wrong, and I would do it this way.’ But the greatest dissents do become court opinions, and gradually over time, their views become the dominant view. So that’s the dissenter’s hope: that they are writing not for today, but tomorrow.”

Ginsburg’s dreams have come true in many ways. Her lifelong fight for women is by no means for nothing.

And this is what I think will happen to the women who loved her. Isn’t this what they have been waiting for?

They will fight. They will do it today, and today and today. They will do it today and tomorrow. What a wonderful opportunity for people who believe in justice with compassion. It doesn’t come free.

Ruth Ginsburg spoke for most of her life to a future age, but that future is now, and that place in right here in this country, at this time, and in this election.

See you there.

Ruth Ginsburgh wrote her dissents for tomorrow, and tomorrow is here.