From the Thursday edition of the Morning Jolt:
‘Nuke ‘Em: Get Them Before They Get You!’
Cue the air raid sirens! Head to the bomb shelters! Stock up on potassium iodide pills! Get the home game version of “Nuke ’Em!”
THE NUCLEAR OPTION IS COMING!
Lawmakers are expected to convene in the late morning to decide whether to end debate and advance to a final vote on Judge Gorsuch. If the Democratic filibuster holds — meaning fewer than 60 senators agree to proceed — Republicans have pledged to pursue the so-called nuclear option: abandoning long-held practice by lifting President Trump’s nominee with a simple majority vote. His final confirmation is expected on Friday.
Ed Whelan reminds us that Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer shrugged in 2013 when asked whether they had concerns that Republicans could someday eliminate the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees. “Let’em do it,” Reid said. “Why in the world would we care? . . . If they want simple majority, fine.”
One of the reasons it’s worthwhile to periodically check in with overtly liberal publications is they reveal the thinking of the other side. Mother Jones offers a fascinating look at how Democratic strategists think triggering the nuking of the filibuster is a loss, but the activists are convinced it’s a long-term win.
Given the possibly terrifying likelihood that awaits progressives if they lose the filibuster — not just with Trump’s Supreme Court nominee this time, but also with future fights — what’s the upside?
Some fear there is none, and that the Democratic Party is rushing toward a decision it will likely regret, at the behest of the party’s progressive and increasingly powerful base. A filibuster “prevents a revolt by the base — it’s the base here that’s not being smart,” said a political consultant who asked not to be named because of a client list that includes Democratic senators. The small donor base and activist core of the party “have boxed these folks in to a position that is not the wisest one.”
The decision to oppose Gorsuch, and to let Republicans put an end to the filibuster entirely, the consultant said, is more about survival today than long-term planning.
But it’s not hard to find a progressive activists convinced this is a winning issue for them in next year’s elections.
“This is an exercise of a raw political power grab, and the hope is that the American people see that for what it is in coming elections,” said Neil Sroka, communications director for Democracy for America, a progressive group that is supportive of Democrats’ current strategy of filibustering Gorsuch. This is a position echoed by Schumer himself. When asked at a press conference Tuesday what would happen if Republicans ended the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees, he responded, “They will lose if they do it.” That’s because the voters will see that McConnell “will do anything to get his way,” and Republicans will not be seen as acting in a reasonable or bipartisan fashion.
. . . All these potential upsides are worth the risk of losing the filibuster, because McCaskill’s hope that Republicans won’t remove the filibuster in a future Supreme Court battle is a fantasy. “There is a fiction that the filibuster isn’t already dead,” says [Neil Sroka, communications director for Democracy for America]. “Any vote that Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans take is really just the icing on the cake — this thing has been cooked since Senate Republicans defied any sense of decorum in their treatment of Barack Obama.”
Right, right. The treatment of Judge Bork, the filibuster of Miguel Estrada (“because he is Latino” as a Democratic memo put it), the attempted filibuster of Samuel Alito, Harry Reid nuking the filibuster for non-Supreme Court nominees . . . none of that had anything to do with how we ended up here, it’s all Republicans’ fault. Got it.
So the plan is to use the nuked filibuster as a winning issue in 2018, huh? Wasn’t this the plan in 2016, too, when Democrats said the failure to confirm Merrick Garland was going to really hurt Republicans on the campaign trail?
No Democratic Senate candidate has run a television commercial on the issue of Garland’s nomination. No major Democratic figure mentioned his nomination during the party’s convention in Philadelphia. Neither Garland nor the Supreme Court even came up in Monday’s first presidential debate. Hillary Clinton barely mentions Garland on the campaign trail, and has indicated that she might nominate someone else if elected.
The public’s lack of interest in Garland’s nomination must come as a rude surprise to his biggest supporters, who confidently contended for most of the year that Republicans were making a terrible error and that their stance would cost them dearly at the ballot box.
“Not only are Republicans losing on this issue, they can’t even keep their own voters in line,” Paul Waldman declared in May. “I think the vast number of voters in states with vulnerable Republicans are expressing disapproval over the failure of the Senate to treat Garland fairly and my sense is this expression will only grow over the next several weeks and months,” Nan Aron, president of the Alliance for Justice, said in August. “[Senate Republicans] have this death wish, and that’s what it is. They are going to end up losing really, really big,” Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said the same month.
No one knows how 2018 will shake out, but clearly Republicans didn’t get punished by voters for allegedly “defying any sense of decorum in their treatment of Barack Obama” in 2016.