Kavanaugh saga didn’t settle fight – it ignited it
Both sides expect fallout from confirmation debate
WASHINGTON – Brett Kavanaugh’s ascension to the Supreme Court over the weekend, far from settling the fierce debate over his confirmation, has inflamed the nation’s political and cultural fissures for the midterm elections next month and well beyond.
The repercussions from the most brutal battle over the high court’s makeup in a generation could end up affecting all three branches of government: which party wins control of Congress on Nov. 6, what issues define the White House contest in 2020 and whether Americans have faith in the Supreme Court – not to mention the decisions that will follow from the court’s new conservative majority.
As senators voted on the confirmation of President Donald Trump’s controversial nominee, angry protesters shouted from the gallery, “Shame!” Kavanaugh’s lifetime appointment was approved by a 50-48 vote. He was promptly sworn in at a private ceremony at the Supreme Court and is expected to be sitting on the bench Tuesday.
Republicans are triumphant and Democrats enraged. “The anger is real,” Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, warned on ABC’s “This Week.”
But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said backlash to Democratic tactics and protests had increased the prospects that Republicans will hold control of the Senate. “Our energy and enthusiasm was lagging behind theirs, until this,” he said with a smile on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
Political strategists calculate that Kavanaugh’s confirmation could boost Democratic efforts to gain control of the House, however, by rallying voters who believe the president and Senate Republicans refused to treat seriously women’s accusations of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh.
California professor Christine Blasey Ford alleged Kavanaugh tried to rape her at a house party when both were high school students in Maryland. Polls have shown particularly strong support for Ford among bettereducated women voters, an important electoral force in suburban districts that are seen as in play this year.
Democrats need to flip 23 Republican-held seats to win a majority.
“Change must come from where change in America always begins: the ballot box,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said on the Senate floor just before the roll call on Kavanaugh.
Trump also used the moment to rally voters to turn out. “You don’t hand matches to an arsonist, and you don’t give power to an angry left-wing mob,” he tweeted. “Democrats have become too EXTREME and TOO DANGEROUS to govern. Republicans believe in the rule of law - not the rule of the mob. VOTE REPUBLICAN!”
The outcome has reinforced Trump’s unchallenged standing as the leader of the Republican Party.
There are four weeks to go before the midterms, time enough for some additional disclosure or new catastrophe. That said, the consequences of Kavanaugh’s confirmation seem guaranteed to deepen the demographic divisions that have fueled an increasingly fierce partisanship in American politics – divisions by gender, by generation, by geography.
Officials on both sides suggested there could be continuing fallout.
If Democrats win the House, the judiciary committee will open an investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct and perjury against the justice, according to New York Rep. Jerrold Nadler, who is in line to be the committee’s chairman. And Trump, himself accused of sexual misconduct by several women, said the women who stepped forward should face unspecified penalties for making what he derided as “fabricated” allegations.