So much for that easy win Republicans expected heading into the midterms. Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court has turned into our latest national morality play, and Democrats deserve credit for turning what could have been a dispiriting loss into a midterm rallying cry. Now Republicans will have to fight to get him over the finish line, and every blow they land will hurt them in the midterms.
The GOP deserves some of blame, too. There are a lot of conservative judges afoot in the land, just as the Federalist Society intended. Trump, or more likely his advisers, didn’t have to choose an ideologue and partisan operative, but they solved that by not releasing the records of his extremist views. They didn’t have to nominate someone who repeatedly lied to the Senate during his hearing for his current post on the appellate court. They dodged that bullet when the media decided it was too inside-baseball to make good clickbait, but in a functioning system this would have been enough to disqualify Kavanaugh immediately.
Kavanaugh’s only vulnerability on the #metoo front was thought to be his clerkship for and friendship with disgraced circuit court judge Alex Kozinski. But in July an attorney contacted both Chuck Grassley and Dianne Feinstein to tell them of complaints from court employees involving Kavanaugh, so both sides knew about this for weeks. The Republicans went ahead anyway.
Republicans still don’t realize that their fixation on the past leaves them stuck in a time warp. Their rote reactions to women’s stories don’t work anymore — they strike most people nowadays as monstrous. Every time someone says “it was just high school hijinks,” or “why didn’t she go to authorities back then,” or “you can’t hold someone responsible after so long,” a lot of women hear “we don’t believe women.” Pissed-off voters are motivated voters, and any women who weren’t pissed off before this sure are now. There’s no such thing as over-motivation.
I think there’s still at least a 50% chance Kavanaugh gets confirmed, but Democrats took a basket of rotting fruit and turned it into Snapple.