Dear Democrats.
Many of you are basing declaration of figurative war against Trump’s Supreme Court nomination, Neil Gorsuch, both pre- and post- announcement, on the Senate’s failure to confirm Obama’s nomination, Merrick Garland. Some of you are claiming that the GOP “stole” the seat from your party and your president, and thus you feel entitled to simply obstruct, obstruct, obstruct. The risibility of the notion of “theft” in this case aside, I offer a reminder of the circumstances behind Garland’s non-confirmation.
Lets roll the WABAC machine to November, 2014. Your party went into the mid-term elections with a comfortable Senate majority of 53 of 100, plus the two independents caucusing on your side of the aisle. Your party had President Obama in the White House, a man it adored.
While your party went in with a slight numerical disadvantage, with 21 of your seats up for re-election vs the Republicans’ 14, you managed to win only 9 of those 21, while the Republicans held onto all of theirs. This qualified as a rout, initial disadvantage notwitstanding. This dropped you to a 45+2 minority, and with this demotion went your control over the Supreme Court confirmation process.
The rest, as they say, is history. Obama nominated Garland to replace Scalia, a replacement that would have changed the Court’s ideological mix substantially. Did you really think the Republicans were going to confirm Garland when they had just been put back in a position of power in the Senate? Did you really think they’d ignore the voters’ mandate that the mid-term election represented?
Well, perhaps you did. It’s obvious that Obama ignored the message of the 2010 election, when the Tea Party movement led to an epic reversal in the House, and it’s obvious that Obama ignored the message of the 2014 election, given his ever-increasing penchant for executive action over efforts at bipartisanship.
So, here we are, with Trump nominating someone who, by all accounts, is a worthy ideological successor to Scalia. Someone who was confirmed 95-0 by the 2007 Senate (in which the Democrats held an even bigger majority of 55+2). Someone whose confirmation won’t change the ideological balance of the court. And, someone whose selection is about as good as I, a libertarian, could hope for from the Untethered Orange Id (he’s not perfect, but no one is, and he’s a damn sight better than Garland).
Your leaders vowed opposition before Gorsuch was even named, suggesting that the encroaching avalanche of negatives the Left will offer might be taken with a grain of salt. Still, this is how the game is played, and if your team feels its path back to power is in pure stone-wall obstructionism… well, future elections are the only true validation of that strategy.
Nevertheless, the cold reality, the hard truth you are refusing to bear witness to, is that the reason you are sitting here, just about powerless to stop Gorsuch’s confirmation (hold that thought), is because your party lost the Senate in 2014.
Obama, just three days into his first term, informed GOP Congressman Eric Cantor, that:
Elections have consequences, and at the end of the day, I won.
Obama held onto that to-the-winner-go-the-spoils partisanship with a “Republicans to the back of the bus” approach. Taking his boss’s lead in the Senate, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid engaged in a long campaign of strict management of the Senate’s docket, refusing to permit undesirable legislation to even come up for votes. Most relevantly, he also invoked the “nuclear option” for most Presidential nominations back in 2013, eliminating the 60-vote cloture rule required to overcome filibusters, and changing confirmations to simple majority vote. This is, of course, now biting the Democrats in the ass, as the GOP majority can approve Trump’s nominations far more easily. The Dems are reduced to engaging in petty stall tactics that are little more than theater meant to virtue-signal to their supporters. Most importantly, the Dems’ defenestration of a four decade old rule sets a precedent for the GOP to change the filibuster rule for Supreme Court nominations.
The Democratic Party might want to consider treading a bit more lightly here. Yes, the party base has an ocean’s worth of rage towards Trump and all things Trump, but it really hasn’t come to grips with the fact that Trump is merely the most obvious of the 1000+ rebukes it has suffered in the past 6 years, and it is facing a massive structural disadvantage in the 2018 Senate elections. The Dems have 25 seats up for re-election vs 8 Republican seats. While Trump could have a train-wreck of a Presidency and give the Dems an advantage in that regard, it takes a lot of wishful thinking to believe that the party is going to regain the Senate in 2018. Even with that notion in mind, what are the odds that the GOP is going to let the Dems filibuster Gorsuch for two years? What are the odds that, should things look iffy for their retention of the Senate, the Republicans won’t go “nuclear” on the Supreme Court confirmation rules and install Gorsuch prior to any potential change?
I’ve argued before, on these pages, that the Democrats are better off looking to engage Trump than to embrace a party-in-exile stonewall opposition. Trump’s not a traditional partisan, and part of his victory is rooted in capturing historically Democratic votes in the Rust Belt. He’s also a deal maker, no matter the bull-in-a-china-shop persona, and Dems are more likely to get some of what their constituents want (the calm ones, not the caterwaulers) by being part of the process.
Unchecked one-party rule is not good for the country. When the President is a strong personality, it invests far too much power in the Executive Branch, and there’s no voice to call out shenanigans. The Press, after this initial bout of hysteria blows itself out, might actually revert to its proper Fourth Estate watchdog role (then again, it might not – emotional outrage makes for better ratings than rational criticism), but for the Press to do so, the Left needs to signal that it wants to be involved, not simply engage in self-satisfying but useless obstructionism.
Thus, I’d suggest fair treatment of Gorsuch, a demonstration of maturity from the Democratic Party and Democratic Senators, and a vote on merits. He’s going to get confirmed anyway, so you might as well be part of the process. Moreso, I’d suggest that the Left realize its failure to get Garland installed in SCOTUS is a result of its own electoral failures. All elections have consequences, not just the one for the Presidency.
Loading ...
And, right on cue: http://nypost.com/2017/02/01/gop-changes-senate-rules-approves-trump-cabinet-picks/
I look at the Garland issue and wish the Republican had allowed his nomination to reach the floor and then vote it down. The problem is there are Republican Senators that will not hold the party line (maybe that is good). What I see is that the Democrats don’t have any issues with defectors, just look at the ACA (also known as ObamaCare) and how the Blue Dogs fell into line, and then lost in the next election. What hold does the Party have over its members and why do the Democrats use it more effectively.