At Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation hearings last week, Democrat after Democrat insisted that it was irresponsible and selfish of Republicans to hold said hearings instead of focusing on passing a coronavirus relief bill. They did so while filibustering a stopgap bill put forward by Senate Republicans and while Nancy Pelosi refused to even a consider a $1.8 trillion compromise deal offered by Donald Trump’s White House. The latter was endorsed by voices as liberal as California’s Ro Khanna, who backed Bernie Sanders in the 2016 and 2020 presidential primaries.
Now that the hearings are over though, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is ready to tell the truth. Schumer and his caucus don’t care about passing a stimulus bill, they are just bitter that Republicans will be confirming a new Supreme Court justice using the power granted to them by the voters and Constitution, and further legitimized by precedent. “I am forcing a vote to adjourn the Senate until after the November election,” Schumer announced on Twitter Monday night, adding that “we are not going to have business as usual here in the Senate while the Republicans try to use an illegitimate process to jam through a Supreme Court nominee.”
I confess to having enjoyed watching Schumer and his cohort fumble for politically viable reasons for opposing the eminently qualified Barrett’s nomination, but his implicit admission that this was always about power and never about getting down to the people’s business takes the cake for biggest self-own.