On Tuesday, top Democrat in the Senate Intelligence Committee Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., announced his support for President Trump’s nominee to head up the Central Intelligence Agency, Gina Haspel, after she sent a letter to Warner pledging to never engage in enhanced interrogation techniques if confirmed as the director.
“With the benefit of hindsight and my experience as a senior Agency leader, the enhanced interrogation program is not one the CIA should have undertaken,” Haspel wrote to Warner, noting she would “refuse to undertake any proposed activity that is contrary to my moral and ethical values.”
Warner isn’t the only Democrat in the Senate pledging to vote in support of Haspel. She also has votes from Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., and Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., three Democrats who are locked in tight re-election races.
Thanks to those Democrats, Haspel has enough votes to secure her confirmation.
So much for the #Resistance against everything Trump-related, right?
In fairness to Democrats, staunch Trump opposition might help with fundraising, but it doesn’t help them win elections in deep-red states.
According to RealClearPolitics, West Virginia, Indiana, and North Dakota are listed as toss-up states, meaning Republicans have a decent shot of flipping those seats and increasing their majority in the Senate.
It would be different if more Americans thought that President Trump was not performing well. However, according to Gallup, Trump’s approval rating of 43 percent is the highest it’s been since March 2017.
Clearly, Democrats can’t be pure obstructionists in everything that Trump intends to accomplish. They have to cede some ground in the form of a Gina Haspel confirmation.
Yet, when the stakes are this high for Democrats to fulfill the blue wave prophecy, giving an inch to Republicans will allow them to take a mile on a different issue (i.e. Obamacare, the border wall, etc.) — only proving that no good deed in the eyes of the GOP goes unpunished.
Voting for Haspel is a bold, sacrificial chess move the Democrats are playing right now, and their reward of a Democratically-controlled Senate might come up short in the end anyway.
