I hope the Democrats don’t make the mistake of trying to prove that Brett Kavanaugh should not be on the Supreme Court because he may have assaulted a young girl 35 years ago in a drunken stupor at a party somewhere when he was 17.
The problem with Kavanaugh is that the Republicans have openly and overtly announced that they are putting a party hack on the Supreme Court.
If you are young, you might be forgiven for not knowing that you are not supposed to do that. You are supposed to at least pretend that your candidate is neither Republican or Democrat, left or right, Catholic or Atheist or Buddhist. Your candidate will interpret the LAW as it is laid down in Constitution and it’s amendments. Both sides used to agree on this. That’s the why the threat of a filibuster would usually be enough to stop a nominee dead in his or her tracks. They would still tend to promote candidates that were more congenial to their vision of justice, but they would at least pay lip service to the idea that there should be bipartisan support any candidate about to get a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the land.
In face, it would have been considered shameful if a candidate had been elected without at least some votes from the minority party.
It is remarkable that the Republicans, who would hate real “originalism” if it French-kissed them in the ass, have gotten away with repeatedly claiming that they alone among the political parties want a candidate who does not impose his own views upon government but only defends the intent of the original framers of the constitution– slave-owners and all. So when the Supreme Court rules that black children have just as much right to an education as white children– where the hell does it say that in the Constitution? No where. All right– there was an amendment. But the amendment doesn’t specify that schools must be equally funded for all races. So the court–as implied by “originalists”– is imposing its own views onto the constitution. When the court rules that corporations are persons who have the right to free speech, along with those who don’t have millions to spend on lawyers and pr firms, well…. wait a minute. No, that kind of interpretation we like. When it rules that a corporation does not have to pay back the wages owed to a woman who was paid less than a man for the same work for 20 years, by golly, that’s jurisprudence! Because nowhere in the constitution does it forbid paying women less than men.
How about this: in 1789, there was no law against abortion for at least the first 15 weeks.
There should be an outcry and Republicans should hold their heads in shame that not a single Democrat seems ready to vote for Mr. Kavanaugh. They should withdraw the nomination and consult with Democrats to find a candidate at least a dozen or more of them could support. So that the next time there is a 5-4 decision, at least some voters could feel that the court weighed all the facts, examined the law and the constitution, and came to a fair judgement based on principles of justice and fairness. Not which party appointed them to the court.
Incidentally, I’m not sure, in the end, that the Democrats would suffer too badly if Kavanaugh is appointed and, even better, does overturn Roe v. Wade. That would leave it to the states, again, to decide on a women’s right to choose, meaning that state elections will suddenly matter a whole lot more to both sides. I would bet that a majority– perhaps a slim one– would leave it to a woman to decide what happens to her own body.
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