Democrats are seizing on the confirmation of a new Supreme Court justice to stabilize President Joe Biden’s political standing and flip the script on surging Republicans heading into the midterm elections.
On Thursday, Biden vowed to nominate a black woman to replace Associate Justice Stephen Breyer, who will retire from the high court in late June. It’s an opportunity for the embattled president to deliver a win for the liberal base and energize disinterested Democratic voters after months of prominent domestic and foreign policy struggles increased chances of a Republican tsunami this fall. That is how Democrats are approaching the confirmation battle.
The moment Breyer’s retirement was publicized, Democrats began formulating a strategy. They plan to use Senate Judiciary Committee hearings and the ensuing floor debate to confirm Biden’s nominee to put Republicans on the defensive and save themselves from a fall extinction event.
“This vacancy reinforces the stakes in this year’s election and why we must defend and expand our Democratic Senate majority,” Sen. Gary Peters, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said in a statement. “In 2022, voters will make their voices heard by standing with Senate Democrats.”
Michigan’s junior senator characterized the battle over Breyer’s successor as a fight to block Republicans from using the courts to overturn abortion rights, take away healthcare protections enshrined in Obamacare, put a major dent in workers’ rights, and that “so many other issues central to the lives of every American are all on the line.” (The landmark abortion rights decision Roe v. Wade could be overturned this year, before Breyer retires.)
BREYER GOT MANY REPUBLICAN VOTES. BIDEN’S PICK TO REPLACE HIM WON’T
At the very least, this Supreme Court vacancy, the first of Biden’s tenure, presents him with a deliverable. Amid the difficulties the president has had coalescing Democrats behind his legislative agenda, his judicial nominees have sailed through the Senate with little to no trouble. Even centrist Democrats such as Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona have supported Biden’s picks for the federal bench.
“The Senate will have a fair process that moves quickly so we can confirm President Biden’s nominee to fill Justice Breyer’s seat as soon as possible,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said. Former President Donald Trump appointed three of the nine justices sitting on a Supreme Court dominated by conservatives by a 6-3 margin. Trump’s third nominee, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, was swiftly confirmed just days before the 2020 election.
Biden’s job approval rating has sunk to 40.8% in the RealClearPolitics average.
The president and Democrats in Congress are reeling from their collective failure to pass Build Back Better, Biden’s signature domestic spending legislation, as well as an overhaul of federal voting laws they claimed amounted to a national emergency. Meanwhile, Biden is bedeviled by multiple foreign crises, from Russia’s threats to invade Ukraine to China’s provocations against Taiwan to the fallout from the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal.
With Democratic majorities in the House and Senate hanging by a thread even before voters soured on Biden, Republicans say they are not all that concerned the confirmation process will change a midterm election trajectory that points to big GOP gains. Democrats are defending a practically ungovernable five-seat advantage in the House and a tie in the Senate that can only be broken by Vice President Kamala Harris.
Indeed, some Republicans are expressing confidence that Biden’s eventual nominee, who they expect to be a doctrinaire liberal, will ultimately help Republicans win seats in November.
“Biden is going to do what he always does — go Left, and that is going to remind independents and swing voters why they need to go back to divided government,” said Brad Todd, a GOP strategist in Washington.
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Senate Republicans did not waste any time in attempting to frame Biden’s likely nominee as an obsequious move to satisfy the liberal factions of his party. “I encourage President Biden to nominate a jurist committed to the Constitution and the rule of law, instead of nominating yet another unqualified, left-wing ideologue, as he has done so often with lower-court nominees,” Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton said.
However, even some Democratic insiders are approaching the confirmation process cautiously. A party operative in the southwest, who requested anonymity to speak candidly, said Biden should nominate “the most confirmable justice he can find,” emphasizing that “it’s critical Manchin and Sinema be on board,” in advance, with whomever the president picks.
