Confirmation hearings for President Trump’s second Supreme Court nominee began this week, and while it’s clear that there is strong resistance to the idea of a lifetime appointment for Bret Kavanaugh, it is also clear that there is little we can do about it beyond making noise, pushing our senators, and demanding justice. I credit people in that hearing room for giving it a try. Linda Sarsour and many others were dragged out and arrested for raising their voices up against an extremist appointment by an illegitimate president and a confirmation process that has lost all credibility since the blocking of Obama’s appointee Merritt Garland in 2016. Why the Republicans on the senate judiciary committee are bothering to run through this pantomime is beyond me. They have nothing but contempt for the process, so why not go straight to the vote?
The sad fact is, as Matt said in his song “See For Yourself,” we have nothing to defend with, as we on the left have failed to turn the issue of Supreme Court appointments into one that lights a fire under progressive voters. When Democrats lost the Senate in 2014, we lost the ability to confirm or deny Supreme Court appointments without the cooperation of the GOP, which simply is not a possibility. We expend all of our energy trying to convince Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski to vote against this nominee, while attempting to keep red state Democrats like Joe Manchin, Joe Donnelly, and others in line a few weeks before they face an election. Perhaps we can delay the proceedings until after the mid-terms, but that seems doubtful without the requisite votes.
Make no mistake about how consequential this appointment will be. This amounts to closing the circle on the Republican project that has been underway full-bore since the George W. Bush administration, when party leaders were focused on building a permanent majority. With five solid reactionary votes on the Supreme Court, the Republicans will have a veto over any progressive policies that may come to pass in the coming years. Even if we manage to wrest control of a gerrymandered House and a lopsidedly unrepresentative Senate from the GOP, even if we then win the presidency, there will be severe limits on what can be accomplished. Legal challenges to, say, single payer health coverage will almost certainly find success before a Supreme Court with Judge Kavanaugh on board.
Once again, elections matter. Whatever else you do, go out and vote, and encourage friends and strangers alike to do the same. We neglect this right at our peril, as the current catastrophe clearly demonstrates.
luv u,
jp
Of course, none of this would be considered disqualifying for a lifetime appointment on the nation’s highest court. That said, let’s not pretend that appointment and confirmation isn’t an intrinsically political process, much as impeachment is. If an attorney can refuse a juror based on the way he or she looks, I think it’s fair to expect that a senator has every right to reject a presidential nominee on the basis of his or her judicial philosophy. The right always attempts to characterize their “originalist” approach to constitutional law as a pragmatic practice of calling balls and strikes, following the law and the constitution as written, etc. The truth is far more complicated, of course – they have a political agenda that they’ve been pursuing relentlessly for decades while the center-left has been asleep on this issue. That’s why, even with Kennedy, we have a Supreme Court that’s well to the right of the American people.