While there has been a litany of well-placed criticism against Democrats in the era of Trump for their fecklessness and refusal to unify in their opposition in meaningful ways, Congressional Democrats announced on Friday that they intend to filibuster the nomination of Supreme Court would-be Neil Gorsuch.
The seriousness of the filibuster was made clear when Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer announced that he, too, would filibuster the nominee.
“[Gorsuch] was unable to sufficiently convince me that he’d be an independent check[on Trump]. [He is] not a neutral legal mind but someone with a deep-seated conservative ideology. He was groomed by the Federalist Society and has shown not one inch of difference between his views and theirs.”
Gorsuch has consistently refused to state the specifics of his beliefs concerning major court cases and who has a dark legal history of siding with employers and corporations over individuals. But maybe more important than that is not who Gorsuch is, but rather who he isn’t, and who the people who put him there are.
Most prominently in Democrats’ mind is the fact that the spot Gorsuch is attempting to take should have gone to moderate Merrick Garland, nominated by President Obama this time last year. Instead, Senate Republicans refused to even hold a hearing to consider Garland, accusing Obama of being a “lame duck” president and claiming that they wanted to American people to play a role in the selection of the next SCOTUS judge via the presidential election in November.
But beyond even that major issue is the issue raised by Senator Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday, which is that Congress has no business holding a hearing to confirm a SCOTUS nominee when that nominee was selected by a President who is currently under investigation by the FBI.
“But is the Senate really going to pretend there’s no cloud over
@realDonaldTrump & move on w/ the Gorsuch nomination like things are normal? . . . Lifetime appointments can wait.”
The consequences of this nomination are severe – Gorsuch is poised to be an even more conservative judge than his predecessor Antonin Scalia, and what’s more, Gorsuch is just 49 years old. If he is installed in the lifetime position as Supreme Court justice, he will shape the nation’s constitution and laws for decades to come.
