Eyes on 2020, three US Democrats make a mark in Senate hearings

WASHINGTON DC: The much-anticipated and nationally televised Senate confirmation hearing for Donald Trump's latest Supreme Court nominee provided a golden opportunity for three Democrats touted as 2020 presidential prospects to make their mark.

All three made the most of it.

The confirmation hearing for Judge Brett Kavanaugh had scarcely begun when Senator Kamala Harris jumped in with a point of order.

The daughter of a cancer researcher from India and a Jamaican economics professor, Harris coolly interrupted the Senate Judiciary Committee's Republican chairman -- a man 31 years her senior -- to complain that thousands of pages of Kavanaugh's record had been provided to Democrats only hours before the hearing.

Her Democratic colleagues then quickly joined in, turning what normally might have been a sedate and relatively civil hearing into a running and at times fiery partisan skirmish.

And that was only the first of three days of high-voltage hearings that allowed Harris and ambitious fellow senators Cory Booker and Amy Klobuchar to position themselves as fervent defenders of American -- and Democratic Party -- values.

Whether their outpouring of energy changed anything is less clear.

The Senate's Republican majority is thought to offer a clear path for Kavanaugh's confirmation to the high court, where he is expected to provide a decisive conservative vote on explosive issues like abortion and same-sex marriage.

"It is all about the 2020 Democrat presidential primary," John Cornyn, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, groused on Twitter.

The three senators have yet to express official interest in running for the presidency. But their words and actions during the hearing were revealing.

There are only three African Americans in the 100-seat US Senate, but two of them -- Booker, 49, of New Jersey, and Harris, 53, of California -managed to place themselves squarely in the spotlight during the Kavanaugh hearings.

As junior members of the Judiciary Committee, they had to wait hours before being able to question Kavanaugh on Wednesday.