Sen. Claire McCaskill, whose vote against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh played a major role in her defeat in the Missouri Senate race, is now criticizing how Democrats handled sexual assault accusations against the judge during his confirmation fight.
“I don’t think my vote [against Kavanaugh] hurt me as much as the spectacle that occurred,” McCaskill told NPR. “There were mistakes made by my party in terms of how that was handled. I don’t think that communication [from Christine Blasey Ford] to the judiciary committee should have been kept private as long as it was. The FBI deals with a lot of confidential information, and that would have absolved [judiciary committee ranking Democrat Dianne Feinstein] of the very real perception that this was an 11th-hour attempt to gut a guy.”
Feinstein received a letter from Ford in July but did not pass it along until September, just as Kavanaugh was on the verge of confirmation after all other lines of attack had failed to derail him.
McCaskill, one of the most vulnerable Democrats in the 2018 cycle because Missouri had gone heavily for President Trump, was hammered by eventual victor Josh Hawley in the closing weeks of the election on her vote against Kavanaugh. She ended up losing the race by by six points.
In the interview, McCaskill also took aim at Democrats for failing “to gain enough trust with rural Americans.”
“This demand for purity, this looking down your nose at people who want to compromise, is a recipe for disaster for the Democrats,” she said. “Will we ever get to a majority in the Senate again, much less to 60, if we do not have some moderates in our party?”
