Courts and LawDomestic Policy

A Goody Bag of Grievance

Kavanaugh Loser May Be Midterm Election Winner

Sometimes, to the loser go the spoils.

The loser in the Kavanaugh confirmation battle could easily be the political winner in the 2018 midterm election.

Nothing motivates voters more than grievance.  Say what you will about having a positive message, if you really want to turn out your base voters, the way to do it is to play to their grievances.  Get them hopping mad.  Donald Trump got himself elected president by appealing to people who felt overlooked and aggrieved by the political establishment.

Kavanaugh will either be confirmed or not.  If he is confirmed, the long term consequences will be profoundly upsetting to progressives of every stripe.  A more or less balanced Court will become a player, perhaps the key player, in the ideological wars between right and left.

The center will not hold.  Abortion rights will be curtailed, if not completely eliminated.  LGBT rights will be curtailed under the banner of “religious freedom.”  Voter suppression will be tolerated under the banners of separation of powers and judicial restraint.  Safeguards against racial discrimination will be increasingly concerned with discrimination against whites, many of whom will be hiding behind Asians who have legitimate claims that college admissions policies are designed, deliberately or not, to limit their admission.

But from a purely short-term political point of view, confirmation of Kavanaugh could be political gold for Democrats.

The narrative that Republicans, predictably insensitive to women’s issues, have crammed through the appointment to the Supreme Court of a man credibly charged with sexual abuse will be a powerful lure to voters, especially women voters.  Add to that serious questions about Kavanaugh’s credibility, judicial temperament, and willingness to become a warrior in the partisan political warfare between right and left, and you have the potential to turn a blue swell into a blue wave.

Yes, some on the right may also be motivated by a narrative that Democrats launched a supposedly unprincipled search and destroy mission against Kavanaugh.  But however much Republicans may disapprove of the tactics of the Democrats, if Kavanaugh is confirmed those tactics will have failed.  Republicans will have succeeded in getting their man on the court.

That is not the stuff of a grievance-fueled red wave.

But if Kavanaugh is not confirmed, the grievance-fuel will ignite a massive conflagration on the right.

Republicans will once again exploit male fury, grievance and fear of demographic change.  This will dovetail nicely with the more widely held concern about control of the Supreme Court.

Pretty much everybody agrees that if Kavanaugh goes down, there is not enough time to confirm a new Supreme Court justice before the midterm election.  That means we will go into the 2018 midterm with an open seat on the Court, and the threat that if Democrats take control of the Senate, Trump may not be able to get anybody confirmed to the Court for the rest of his term.

That result would be free candy for Republican operatives.  The composition of the courts, and specifically the Supreme Court, is widely understood to have been, along with immigration, the issue that most motivated Trump voters.  Due to the Republicans’ refusal to grant Merrick Garland a hearing, there was a vacancy on the Court, just as there would be if Kavanaugh isn’t confirmed.  Republican operatives played that vacancy to the hilt in 2016, and it helped get Trump elected.  In 2018, emotions will be even higher.  The fuel will burn hotter this time around, given the circus atmosphere and the extreme polarization surrounding the Kavanaugh confirmation process.

At the end of the day, whoever loses the Kavanaugh confirmation battle will walk away with a consolation prize, a goody bag filled with grievance.  Perhaps enough to swing the 2018 midterm election.

Because in Trumpworld, grievance rules.

 

 

 

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