Senate Democratic leaders pulled a page from the GOP playbook Thursday, quickly proclaiming they’d oppose all of President Trump’s nominees to replace retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy until after the midterms.
There shouldn’t be a vote on any nominee, Democrats said, until voters have had a say in the November election, which could determine control of the Senate. Though Senate Democratic leaders, most of their caucus, and the party’s restless base are eager to rumble with Republicans over the vacancy, they have no tools to block Trump’s pick.
Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., knows Democrats can’t block Trump’s nominee but intends to pressure Republicans throughout the entire process.
“I can tell you we’re four months away from an election where the American people will decide the majority in the United States Senate,” said Durbin. “Following the tortured logic of Mitch McConnell, let’s let the American people speak.”
Their best option is to stay united, use the vacancy to rile up their base, and apply pressure to the two Republicans — Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine — who could conceivably join them in voting against a Trump nominee. To do that, however, red-state Democrats would have to stick with their caucus in refusing to consider any Trump nominee and as a result likely jeopardize their seats.
The divide became apparent within hours of the news of Kennedy’s retirement.
“I look forward to meeting with and evaluating whoever President Trump nominates to become a justice on the Supreme Court,” Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., said in a statement. “Senators have a responsibility to do our job as elected officials and this includes our Constitutional obligation to advise and consent on a nominee to fill this Supreme Court vacancy.”
But most Democrats like Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., see the opening as a chance to give Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., a dose of his own medicine.
“Merrick Garland is probably still available and I’m still hung up on how shameful he was treated for almost a year,” Carper said of President Barack Obama’s pick to replace Justice Antonin Scalia. “I won’t get over that soon.”
McConnell held open the seat left vacant by the deceased Scalia for a modern record, blocking Garland for 263 days, until his nomination expired, on the grounds that it was an election year.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., wants to do the same.
“Our Republican colleagues in the Senate should follow the rule they set in 2016: not to consider a Supreme Court justice in an election year,” Schumer said on the Senate floor. “Millions of people are just months away from determining the senators who should vote to confirm or reject the president’s nominee, and their voices deserve to be heard now as Leader McConnell thought they deserved to be heard then.”
Here it is, plain and simple.
McConnell set the rule.
Now, he and Senate Republicans need to follow it.
No vote on a Supreme Court nominee until after the new Congress is seated.
— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) June 27, 2018
If Trump doesn’t nominate someone with “broad bipartisan support,” said Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen, who runs Senate Democrats’ campaign arm, “you’re going to have a knock-down, drag-out fight.”
And if Democrats don’t put up a fight to their base’s liking they’ll have to answer to their already energized voters. Within hours of Kennedy’s announcement, progressive groups, including Planned Parenthood and Center for American Progress, sent a letter to Democratic leaders to reject any of the names on Trump’s shortlist, the Washington Post first reported. And the Progressive Change Campaign Committee blasted out an email declaring “Schumer’s legacy will be judged by this moment … for generations.”
And potential 2020 hopefuls within the Senate Democratic caucus were quick to draw the line.
“The President’s list of potential nominees are complete non-starters,” said Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif. “They are conservative ideologues instead of mainstream jurists. We cannot and will not accept them to serve on the highest court in the land which is supposed to stand for equal protection under the law and justice for all.”
Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., who like Harris is mulling a presidential run, said Kennedy’s vacancy puts the country on the “precipice” of going back to a time “when women’s access to contraception or abortion is limited by what politicians and bosses say is OK.”
“With so much at stake, with a president being actively investigated for possible collusion with a foreign power, and especially in light of the precedent-shattering theft of the previous vacant seat,” Merkley said, “it would be deeply inappropriate to fill this vacancy before the November elections.”
