The Supreme Court was already at issue in the 2018 midterms before Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement. Now it’s going to force a difficult vote.
Democratic senators running for re-election in red states, depicted by their opponents as partisan obstructionists, have worked to shore up their centrist bona fides. You can bet re-election was on the minds of Sens. Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., when they bucked their party and became the only three Democrats to vote in favor of Justice Neil Gorsuch’s confirmation last year.
With the confirmation process to install Kennedy’s replacement likely to play out before November, those three senators will have to make another tough decision. And that decision could be even tougher for vulnerable incumbents like Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., and Jon Tester, D-Mont. (and maybe now Bill Nelson, D-Fla.), who voted against Gorsuch’s confirmation. Will they double down, or take the opportunity to moderate?
[Also read: ‘Oh my God’: Hear the moment the Kennedy news broke during a DNC conference call]
Both senators’ opponents have used their votes to cast them as liberal obstructionists to President Trump, who remains popular in their states. Trump could also make strident opposition more difficult by nominating the first Asian-American justice. But either way, the vote will pit red-state Democratic incumbents against their party’s #Resistance base, which they need for turnout purposes, and their broader constituencies.
And it doesn’t matter that Republicans have the votes to confirm the nominee on their own. Vulnerable Democrats will be forced no matter what to go on record either obstructing a major Trump decision or not. And you can bet that Trump is going be all over Twitter, slamming the ones who go against him and making headlines in their Trump-friendly home states.
This also puts Republicans in an interesting position. The GOP likely will not need any of these senators’ votes. So do they drop the Supreme Court issue altogether? Pressure campaigns like the one surrounding Gorsuch’s confirmation in this case would only serve the purpose of running up the vote tally, while also allowing these incumbents to burnish their centrist reputations in a big way if they ultimately support the nominee.
In a statement sent out early after Kennedy’s retirement announcement, Tester’s GOP opponent Matt Rosendale revealed his strategy, saying, “I’m not holding my breath that Tester will finally listen and support the President’s nominee because time and time again he’s put the interests of his D.C. party bosses and far-left special interests allies ahead of the people of Montana.”
Expect to hear more like that.
