Kavanaugh confirmed, a major win for Trump
EPIC BATTLE OVER HIS APPROVAL IS CERTAIN TO AFFECT MIDTERM POLLS
Judge Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed as a US Supreme Court justice yesterday, handing Donald Trump a major victory after weeks of shocking allegations, rage-fuelled hearings and rancorous protests that have further divided America.
The Republican-controlled Senate voted 50-48 in favour of Kavanaugh. The White House has said he will swiftly be sworn in.
The final vote in the Republican-controlled Senate fell almost entirely along party lines, confirming Kavanaugh to the lifelong position — and tilting America’s highest court in a conservative direction.
The acrimonious battle over his confirmation is certain to influence next month’s midterms, pitting energised female voters angered by the treatment of Kavanaugh’s accusers against conservatives who see him as a man wrongly accused.
The victory capped a triumphant week for the president. He strong-armed a new trade deal with Canada and Mexico, which the markets loved, marked the lowest unemployment rate in the US since 1969, at just 3.7 per cent, and secured the second ultra-conservative supreme court nomination of his administration, after putting Neil Gorsuch on the bench last year.
But to many Kavanaugh will be forever tainted by accusations from Christine Blasey Ford, a research psychiatrist, that he sexually assaulted her when they were teenagers at a high school party, and by doubts over his honesty during intensely emotional and partisan testimony at a Senate judiciary committee hearing, which brought his youthful drinking habits into question.
The bitter political fight crystallised the polarisation of the Trump era. It also became a cultural litmus test of the yearold #MeToo movement, which inspired women to speak out about incidents of sexual harassment, as it collided with the patriarchy of a political establishment dominated by ageing white men.— Agencies
The confirmation battle over Kavanaugh’s nomination has left the country deeply divided, politically polarised and with many people hostile toward those of opposing views. But after nearly two years in office, this may be the best week of Trump’s presidency.
He promised so much success that everyone would be tired of all the winning. But after 20 months that proved more arduous than United States President Donald Trump had once imagined, the week just gone by may have been the best of his presidency so far.
The all-but-assured confirmation of Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court capped a week that also saw the president seal an ambitious and elusive new trade agreement with Canada and Mexico, one of his top campaign promises. And the latest jobs report out on Friday put unemployment at its lowest since 1969.
None of this necessarily changes the fundamentals of an often-chaotic presidency that has defied norms and struggled with scandal, but it gives Trump a fresh narrative to take on the campaign trail just a month before critical midterm elections that will determine control of Congress. With the investigation by the Special Counsel, Robert Mueller, turning quiet during campaign season, Trump has an opportunity to redirect the conversation onto more favourable territory.
“From his standpoint, it’s been a good week after many bad ones,” said David Axelrod, who was a senior adviser to former president Barack Obama. “For a self-proclaimed perpetual ‘winner,’ he will have had some big wins to tout. The jobs figure, other than wages, and the afterNafta [North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement] are positive.”
Still, in Trump’s scorchedearth presidency, even victories come at a cost. The relationship with Canada was deeply scarred by his brutal negotiating tactics, while America has been ripped apart by the battle over Kavanaugh’s nomination, fraught as it was with gender politics that Trump seemed eager to encourage and anger on the Left and the Right.
Reaching new agreements
Until recent days, he proved more effective at blowing up agreements than reaching new ones. He pulled out of an AsiaPacific trade pact, a global accord on climate change and a nuclear deal with Iran, but he has made no progress in negotiating replacements, as he suggested he would. His most significant legislative achievement was last year’s tax-cutting package, which was forged in large part by Republican congressional leaders who had their own reasons for pushing it through.
The past few weeks, however, saw Trump seal a revised trade agreement with South Korea and replace the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico, which not long ago seemed as if it might be beyond his reach. The continuing fall in unemployment to 3.7 per cent was built on the recovery he had inherited from Obama — something he refuses to acknowledge — but the booming economy has become one of his strongest political assets. And with Kavanaugh nearing confirmation yesterday, he showed he could push through an important nomination that many predicted was likely to fail after allegations of sexual misconduct.
“It’s a wonderful week. We’re thrilled,” Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s counsellor, said in an interview. “It shows that his perseverance and his tenacity and his adherence to campaign promises and principles are paying dividends.”
Whether the string of success for Trump will translate into support on the campaign trail could be the defining test of the next few weeks, though.
3.7% unemployment rate currently in US, lowest since 1969
20 months, the time since Trump made it to the White House