Some on left put heat on Schumer for tougher Kavanaugh resistance
WASHINGTON — At least once a week, they assemble in Capitol meeting rooms for an hour-long strategy session. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer convenes the gatherings, which regularly include several Democratic senators, a dozen Senate aides and representatives of about 20 liberal organizations.
The goal: figuring out how to derail President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court pick, conservative appellate judge Brett Kavanaugh. Up to now, participants say the strategy sessions have been cordial. Yet with Senate Judiciary Committee hearings just two weeks off, cracks in the alliance are showing.
Schumer, D-N.Y., who plans to meet Kavanaugh privately early this week, is methodically building arguments that would help vulnerable Democratic senators in conservative states vote “no,” while avoiding pressing them. But the party’s left wing says he’s not aggressively rallying lawmakers to oppose the nominee, thwarting the momentum needed to galvanize voters and maybe win the uphill fight to block Kavanaugh.
“It’s really a test for Schumer,” said Elizabeth Beavers, associate policy director of Indivisible, an anti-Trump group. “Is he going to be the minority leader who lost Roe?” Roe v. Wade is the 1973 Supreme Court decision that established abortion rights.
“We’re looking to Sen. Schumer to unite the Democratic caucus to fight Kavanaugh,” said Ben Wikler, Washington director of the activist MoveOn.org. He said unless leaders unify the party and raise the battle’s visibility, the news media will focus on Trump nemeses like fired White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman and lawyer Michael Avenatti.
It’s the latest manifestation of the Democratic debate over how ideologically pure and confrontational the party’s strategies and candidates should be in resisting Trump. That battle has played out in Democratic congressional primaries around the country and in Congress, where leftwing lawmakers are pushing proposals like universal health care that other Democrats shun.
Democrats agree that Kavanaugh’s confirmation would tip the nine-member court to the right, which could threaten abortion rights and former President Barack Obama’s health care law.
Even so, the votes of three moderate Democratic senators facing difficult re-election races seem up for grabs: Indiana’s Joe Donnelly, West Virginian Joe Manchin and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota. A few other Democrats are seen as uncertain, from Alabama and Florida, for example, while about 20 who are considered certain to oppose Kavanaugh haven’t declared their positions.
“It undermines our efforts when members of the public don’t see their elected leaders in Congress reacting with more fury,” said Brian Fallon, a former Schumer aide now heading Demand Justice, a Democratic-aligned liberal group trying to sink the nomination. Fallon said there is “urgent need for Democrats to unite quickly against Kavanaugh in order to shift the dynamic here.”
Republicans have a 50-49 Senate edge, excluding the absent and ailing Arizona Republican John McCain, so Democrats alone can’t stop a united GOP.
“Our job is to convince the American people he will undo women’s reproductive freedom and undo health care,” Schumer said when discussing liberals’ complaints about his efforts.