I can’t claim that I have listened to every exchange in the full day of hearings on Judge Neil Gorsuch’s nomination to the Supreme Court, but the proceedings seem to be following a pattern common for at least the last dozen years, going back to the hearings on Chief Justice Roberts in 2005, and arguably the last quarter-century, going back to the hearings on Justice Ginsburg in 1993. The nominee refuses to answer questions on how she or he would decide particular cases, opposition party senators ask questions aimed at eliciting embarrassing information or politically unattractive statements, and senators of the president’s party ask questions highlighting the nominee’s professional accomplishments and personal charm.
Democrats have consistently been more willing to attempt to defeat or discredit nominees of Republican presidents than vice versa. Few Republican senators voted against confirmation of Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor or Kagan; many Democratic senators voted against confirmation of Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito.
Judging from the hearings, nearly all Democratic senators seem inclined to vote against the confirmation of Judge Gorsuch. Even those acknowledging his impressive qualifications and temperament, like Michael Bennet of Gorsuch’s native Colorado and Chris Coons of Delaware, have left themselves room to vote no. The Democratic base seems to be demanding root and branch opposition to every initiative of the Trump administration and the Republican Party, with such vehemence that few Democrats except Senators Joe Manchin and Heidi Heitkamp, from the strongly pro-Trump states of West Virginia and North Dakota, seem wary of anything that could be interpreted as a pro-Trump vote.
That may be true even when such votes undercut Democrats’ political interests. It’s plain that if 41 Democratic senators commit to a filibuster of the Gorsuch nomination—something the Democratic base surely wants—then Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will lead Republicans to abolish the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations, as Majority Leader Harry Reid led Democrats to do so for lower court and executive branch nominations. That move enabled Democrats to approve liberal nominees onto the D.C. and 4th Circuit Courts of Appeals, but it has also left them unable to stop Trump administration executive branch and lower court nominees unless they get some Republicans to break ranks and join them. And if the obduracy of their opposition to Gorsuch leads Republicans to follow the Reid precedent and abolish the filibuster, they won’t be able to stop a later Trump Supreme Court nominee whose qualifications may be less impressive and whose personality may be less attractive.
I’m sure most Democratic politicians understand this, but they also understand the rage of their party base—and how widespread and deep that rage is among the Democratic primary electorates in almost every state. That rage is understandable: Democrats believed they were going to hold onto the presidency, maybe by a wide margin, and regain a Senate majority and instead lost each by agonizingly small margins—and in our polarized politics with partisan parity, even a narrow loss can produce huuuuge differences in policy. But understandable rage can lead a party into political peril.
