Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., will filibuster Neil Gorsuch, she announced today on Medium:
This is a really difficult decision for me. I am not comfortable with either choice. While I have come to the conclusion that I can’t support Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court — and will vote no on the procedural vote and his confirmation — I remain very worried about our polarized politics and what the future will bring, since I’m certain we will have a Senate rule change that will usher in more extreme judges in the future.
McCaskill’s comment that Gorsuch’s opinions “reveal a rigid ideology that always puts the little guy under the boot of corporations,” and the fact that she failed to point to some examples that might at least lend a bit of support to this caricature, suggests that either she or the staffer who wrote the piece didn’t watch the hearings long enough to craft a better argument against him. But that’s probably neither here nor there. The politics of a Supreme Court nomination itself is kind of inside baseball to all but the most committed voters.
It only matters to the extent that Trump wants to show up in Missouri and make it an issue. The good money says that he does, and this is one of the few states where his participation would be undoubtedly be a plus for the GOP nominee.
McCaskill has evidently calculated that it’s more important to keep her base energized, happy, and convinced that she’s resisting all things Trump than it is to run toward the center. It’s a much harder calculation to justify in the Missouri of 2017 than it was in 2006, when Republicans had only just gotten the upper hand in state politics but it still seemed like a genuine swing state where the pendulum could come back in Democrats’ favor.
It never did, though. Trump carried Missouri by 18.5 points in November as Republicans went seven-for-seven in statewide races. Trump’s victory margin was twice Mitt Romney’s from 2012, and substantially better than the Republicans who won the statewide races for governor (Eric Greitens) and Senate (Roy Blunt).
So to cross Trump specifically, and over an issue that will be mooted by the nuclear option anyway, seems like someone you’d only do because you want to please your base, despite potential consequences later on.
