One of the most revealing moments in the Senate hearings for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh involved Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.). He said Republican justices overwhelmingly side with corporations and right-wing interests in cases before the High Court. And so does Kavanaugh in his votes on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Not shocking revelations, for sure. The press yawned. Fox News commentator Chris Wallace lamented, tongue in cheek, that Whitehouse had consumed a half hour or so of his life that could never be retrieved. But Whitehouse had actually said something quite interesting—about Democrats.
It was how he spoke about dozens of cases won by conservatives that matters. He named the parties and the subjects but not the legal issues at the core of the cases. Other Democrats talked the same way time after time at the hearings and so did Republicans now and then.
Here’s what I’m getting at: Leaving out the legal issues reflects how Democrats see the Court. They are results-oriented. Legal niceties are beside the point. Whatever strategy is most likely to win a case, as long as it comes out the way they want, they’re for. They’re not crazy about the Constitution. It limits their options.
Republicans are susceptible to this type of thinking, but less so. They’re eager to win too. But my seat-of-the-pants view is they do pay attention to the law. The media are worst of all, which isn’t surprising. They just take their cues from Democrats.
When I covered the Supreme Court years ago, I got the impression several of the justices decided cases based on the identity of the parties. And Whitehouse’s data would lead one to believe it’s not just Democrats. The senator’s data, by the way, is both impressive and provocative. And it was a rare moment in these hearings that was thought-provoking in a good way.
From the opening seconds of the Kavanaugh hearing, Democrats unleashed a tactic that has increasingly become a favorite weapon in their political arsenal. They created a disturbance. They use it to throw Republicans off their game. And it sometimes works.
Democrats were in a weak position, so they had nothing to lose. Over the summer, Republicans had rebutted their attacks on Kavanaugh effectively, putting him in a strong position to be confirmed. So Democrats complained about having received 42,000 pages of Kavanaugh overnight and demanded the hearing be adjourned.
This went on for 90 minutes and fit the Democrats’ plan perfectly. Their only hope for blocking Kavanaugh is delay. If they can somehow slow-walk the proceedings past the midterm election on November 6 and capture the Senate, they can kill the Kavanaugh appointment and force President Trump to compromise on a new nominee. It won’t be a conservative.
The leaders of the putsch were senators Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.), both preparing to run for president in 2020. Harris is smart and unpleasant. If you’re a Democrat, you’d want her on your side. Booker talks nonstop. With him, it’s hard to get a word in edgewise.
To call Booker histrionic is putting it mildly. He’s made a fetish out of documents that senators on the committee can see but not make public. He threatened to release them anyway, even if it means he could be ousted from the Senate. Fat chance.
Harris and Booker’s Project Chaos was nothing new. In the 2012 vice presidential debate, Joe Biden acted like a meatball. He was rude and obnoxious and disrespectful to Paul Ryan. He guffawed, groaned, and gasped. The moderator was afraid to restrain him.
And four years later, we got more of this from Tim Kaine. He was the Great Interrupter. Halfway through every comment by Mike Pence, Kaine butted in, as if he had a crucial question that couldn’t wait. He had nothing to ask. Zilch. It was pure interference. The equivalent in football gets you a 15-yard penalty.
Think about this: Would Democrats assign this nasty job to party leaders if they weren’t serious about their new strategy? Dignity? Forget that. Better to turn any clash with Republicans into a shouting match. At the hearings, the screaming protesters were the Greek chorus.
I learned, after three days of watching Democrats badger Kavanaugh, that they are wonderful actors. Listening to Cory Booker, for a moment I thought he was genuinely outraged about being denied millions of irrelevant documents. Then he declared, “I am Spartacus,” and other Democrats joined in. That’s when I knew the whole thing was fake.
And so were all the efforts by Democrats to get their hands on more documents and weeks more to go through them. All the pleas had one goal in mind: drag the process out.
What kept them from succeeding? The biggest factor was Kavanaugh, a witness with an amazing memory. He had learned the lesson of the Robert Bork hearing in 1987—don’t blab, be vague, and never let down your guard. Right to the end, Kavanaugh was careful.
The other factor was Chuck Grassley, the Judiciary Committee chairman. He allowed the Democrats, even blowhards like Booker, to talk pretty much all they wanted. He seldom raised his voice. He was deferential to everyone. The aim was to let the Democrats’ attempted coup wear itself out.
And sure enough, it did.
