Sen. Chuck Schumer has teamed up with some of the nation’s most liberal grassroots organizations to ramp up the pressure on Senate Republicans to consider President Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court.
“The way this will change is through grassroots, people calling their senators,” the New York Democrat told reporters by phone Wednesday. “Then we’ll get a hearing and a vote.”
Democrats have been hammering the GOP with criticism since Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., signaled on Saturday that he wants the next president, not Obama, to nominate someone to fill the vacancy left by Antonin Scalia’s death.
Schumer believes the pressure used so far has been successful, noting interviews with some GOP senators, including Sen. Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, that indicate Republicans aren’t ready to rule out a hearing on an Obama nominee to the high court.
“Senator McConnell will have to back off,” Schumer said of Grassley’s remarks. “We are seeing the coalition begin to crack.”
Schumer and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., have teamed up with the liberal groups MoveOn, Color of Change and Progressive Change Campaign Committee, to call on people to contact their senators and demand a hearing and vote on Obama’s eventual nominee. “Grassroots forces are going to be key in getting Sen. McConnell to back off and let the Senate do its job,” Schumer said.
But the liberal groups aligned with Schumer don’t want a middle-ground nominee. They are seeking someone who can realign the court away from its conservative tilt.
“This vacancy is a chance to course-correct,” said Anna Galland, executive director of MoveOn, who was also on the phone call.
Galland said her organization is not publicly recommending candidates, but wants a nominee “who will show more respect to the values enshrined in the Constitution.”
Color of Change Executive Director Rashad Robinson said he expects Obama “to put forward someone who is in line with the values he laid out” as president.
During the call, Schumer was questioned about his American Constitution Society speech in 2007, in which he declared that Democrats “should reverse the presumption of confirmation,” because the high court was “dangerously out of balance.” At the time, President George W. Bush was president.
“What I said in 2007 is after a hearing, if senators felt that a nominee was out of the mainstream and wasn’t being forthwith about it they could vote no,” Schumer said on the call. “And that is still my position today. There should be a hearing and a vote on who the president nominates.”
Blumenthal said the calendar allows plenty of time for a hearing and vote on a nominee. He said the longest a Supreme Court seat has been left vacant is 237 days.
“A person of unquestioned intellect and integrity should be approved in a bipartisan way,” Blumenthal said. “That is what the American people want.”
The grassroots organizers on the call said they are mobilizing their supporters. McConnell’s Saturday announcement suggesting he would not approve an Obama nominee “was a real shot to liberals and civil rights communities,” Robinson said.
The Progressive Change Campaign Committee announced it is heading to Kentucky to deliver a petition with “over half a million signatures” to McConnell’s office “demanding a fair up-or-down vote” on a Supreme Court nominee. The petition will include “local voters, including likely gun owners and Republicans,” a PCCC statement said.
Progressive Change Campaign Committee founder Adam Green said his group has encountered “unprecedented grassroots energy and outcry as Republicans work against the Constitution.”
