A high-profile Democrat is imploring President Joe Biden to emulate an unlikely politician as he prepares for his first Supreme Court confirmation battle.
Democratic strategist Stephanie Cutter has repeatedly urged Biden to copy Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell’s cutthroat Supreme Court tactics despite McConnell’s status as a Democratic bogeyman.
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Democrats, including Demand Justice Executive Director Brian Fallon, have amplified Cutter’s New York Times opinion piece about the Supreme Court on social media. And Cutter, Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation “sherpa,” supplemented the article this week with a separate interview.
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One Senate Democratic aide agreed that McConnell had established a precedent with his “rapid” 30-day confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett before the 2020 election.
“Surely one of the lessons of the drawn-out Build Back Better negotiations should be that Democrats should act more quickly when they can,” the staffer told the Washington Examiner, referring to Biden’s $2 trillion social welfare and climate bill.
But onetime Democratic operative Sandy Maisel argued that Biden should not rush the Supreme Court nomination or confirmation process. After all, Biden has promised to name a black woman, such as Judges Ketanji Brown Jackson or J. Michelle Childs, to replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer by the end of February. And House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn is championing fellow South Carolinian Childs with support from Sens. Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott.
“It is as if he is saying, ‘We see the Supreme Court as an important, independent, coequal branch of government and will treat a nomination to the court as such — even if Sen. McConnell and the Republicans see it only as a political game,'” Maisel said.
One Senate Republican aide contended that “when it comes to courts, Democrats will always be playing catch-up.”
Another staffer laughed off Cutter’s suggestion that Republicans “rubber-stamped” former President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court candidates “instead of spending weeks scrutinizing a nominee’s rulings and parsing legal intricacies for potential hearing questions.”
“Among the contenders, she only mentioned Judge Brown,” the source said. “If that’s the pick, they may want to try to ram her through.”
Cutter’s Supreme Court push coincides with Biden’s overfriendly overtures to McConnell at this week’s National Prayer Breakfast after last month’s tensions over the president’s elections and voting speech in Georgia.
“Mitch, I don’t want to hurt your reputation, but we really are friends,” Biden said. “And that is not an epiphany we’re having here at the moment.”
“You’ve always done exactly what you’ve said,” he added. “You’re a man of word — of your word, and you’re a man of honor. Thank you for being my friend.”
Biden also praised McConnell during this week’s cancer moonshot relaunch for backing research funding in the past. His calling McConnell a friend again followed the pair speaking the previous day regarding the Supreme Court fight.
“The leader believes the cornerstone of a nominee’s judicial philosophy should be a commitment to originalism and textualism,” McConnell’s spokesman said, in addition to withstanding “efforts by politicians to bully the court or to change the structure of the judicial system.”
Biden’s deferential treatment of McConnell is notable after the Kentucky Republican maneuvered to prevent former President Barack Obama from confirming now-Attorney General Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court in 2016 and the fact that a united Senate Democratic caucus, along with Vice President Kamala Harris, could approve his nominee without a single Republican vote. It is significant, too, after McConnell ripped Biden’s Georgia speech as “unpresidential” and has increasingly featured as a foil to other Biden remarks.
“Mitch has been very clear he’s going to do anything to prevent Biden from being a success,” the president said last month.
Biden’s tone change toward McConnell could be explained by his apparent hope for more bipartisanship in Washington, regardless of his own digs at Republicans. But it better reflects the Senate Democratic majority’s fragility, which was underscored this week by New Mexico Sen. Ben Ray Lujan’s stroke. Lujan will not return to work until he has recovered from his surgery.
The White House has emphasized soliciting the Senate’s Supreme Court advice, not simply its consent. Biden even invited the Senate Judiciary Committee’s top Republican to his meeting this week with the panel’s Democratic chairman. At the same time, his aides have equivocated when asked whether Biden is prioritizing bipartisanship in his nomination process.
“The president’s commitment, above all else, is to nominate a qualified woman, a black woman, to serve on the Supreme Court with impeccable credentials,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Friday. “And he thinks anyone he chooses should have the kind of credentials and be so qualified that they should be considered by Democrats and Republicans.”
For Maisel, Clyburn is unlikely to secure Childs’s Supreme Court nomination, irrespective of her bipartisan appeal.
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“Giving into Clyburn would look too much like political payback for his help during the campaign,” he said. “Biden does not need that.”
