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For 1 Hour, Democrats Fought Kavanaugh With Fire, Then They Melted Back To Their Natural Gooey State

The Kavanaugh confirmation hearings started with a bang, but the pistol was armed with blanks

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Senator Dianne Feinstein wearing her “unique threat to the rule of law and democracy” face.

They were led by Kamala Harris. Before Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley could even welcome Brett Kavanaugh’s family to the hearing, Harris interrupted him and demanded to be recognized.

Last night, the night before confirmation hearings on a potential justice who will lurch the Supreme Court to the right, Republicans dumped nearly 50,000 documents on their Democratic colleagues. No Senator could possibly have had time to read even a handful of those documents in preparation for the hearings. Harris, never looking more like a 2020 presidential candidate, asked for the hearing to be postponed until the Senators could be prepared to continue.

Grassley ignored her.

Then came Richard Blumenthal. He asked for an immediate vote to adjourn the hearings, giving the late-night document dump. Grassley said no.

What followed was an hour of pretty much every Democratic Senator on the Senate Judiciary Committee asking for an adjournment or a vote on such a motion.

The Republicans were caught off guard. While they hold an 11-10 advantage on the Judiciary Committee, not all 11 of them were there in the room when Harris and Blumenthal made their motions.

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But Grassley held the line. He determined that their motions were out of order because the Committee was not in “executive” session. Cory Booker asked that the Committee convene in executive session. Grassley told him no. Sheldon Whitehouse, Mazie Hirono, and Amy Klobuchar all made impassioned statements about the necessity for the Senate to review the documents that had been made available, and objected again about documents that had not been made available.

Grassley let them talk, but did not budge. Eventually, some of the older Democrats stopped using their statements to talk about “process” and started criticizing Kavanaugh on the merits. This allowed some Republican Senators to get in on the statement making. And Grassley maintained that everybody would have their chance to make whatever statements or ask whatever questions they had in the normal course of events.

But he wouldn’t adjourn or postpone the hearing.

Blumenthal and Harris renewed their motions. They were denied and ignored again. And then, after every Democrat had the opportunity to make their objections, Grassley launched into his opening statement. He welcomed Kavanaugh and his family to the hearing, he declared that the process had been the most open and transparent in history, despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary, and opined that Kavanaugh was well on his way to becoming the next associate justice on the Supreme Court.

After Grassley finished, the crucial moment came. Democrats had well laid out how the Republicans were absuing the rules of the process. They had well explained how they could not possibly be prepared to conduct a full questioning of Brett Kavanaugh when so many documents were dumped upon them the night before. Some had even brought up that a president under the cloud of multiple investigations should not be able to pick his own potential judges. With Grassley finished, it was Senator Dianne Feinstein’s turn to speak. She is the ranking Democrat on the Committee.

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With all the groundwork laid for why the hearing should not continue, Feinstein folded like so many Democrats have when faced with an opportunity to fight. She allowed the hearing to continue. Her opening statement was, well, just like any opening statement from any minority party in any Supreme Court confirmation hearing. Oh, Feinstein expressed “frustration” with the process, but she did nothing to stop it.

She played her role, desperate to appear like an “adult.” And the rest of the Democrats soon followed along, like children: still red-faced after their pre-bed tantrum, but dutifully listening to their bedtime story.

The Democratic “resistance” lasted barely an hour.

There was no walk-out. There was no civil disobedience (from the Senators, people in the viewing gallery were getting kicked out for protesting every 10 minutes). For all of their words about how the process was abnormal and unfair, Democrats played their roles within that process like cardboard cutouts of real opposition.

One of the constant problems Democrats have had in response to the Trump era is that their rhetoric far outpaces their actions. They’re willing to pull the occasional stunt or two, but when it comes to long-term resistance or disobedience, Democrats fold.

Either Donald Trump is a uniquely unqualified President whose very existence in office is a threat to democracy and all of the non-white peoples of the country and the world. OR HE’S NOT. He’s just some guy whose policies you don’t like.

Democrats talk about Trump like he’s the former, but act like he’s the latter. The actions Democrats have taken to stop Trump are not materially different than their actions to stop Bush and Cheney and their war in Iraq. (Well, the actions Democrats took to stop the war after they all voted for the war because Democrats never actually seem to have convictions when it is unpopular for them to have them.) They’re going to bitch and moan and get some soundbites in on Kavanaugh, just like they had some mean things to say about Samuel Alito. Then he’s going to get confirmed, just like Alito did, and offer arch-conservative opinions for 30 years.

“What do you want the Democrats to do,” asks the Democrat who always votes for these weak ass Democrats.

I want them to go to the mattresses. Sitting in that hearing room gives the hearing legitimacy. I want the Senators to walk out. I want them to protest. Piper freaking Perabo got her ass kicked out of the confirmation hearings, but Dianne Feinstein couldn’t? Are you kidding me? Chuck Grassley should have needed to call in AIR SUPPORT to keep control of the hearing.

Grassley would have had to beat me to shut me up. With his fists. I’d have made these Republicans spill my actual blood if I was on the Committee. Lord knows they’d be willing to, but I’d make them prove it.

That’s how you behave when you are facing a unique and unprecedented threat to our way of life. King went to jail. Gandhi refused to eat. MONKS LIT THEMSELVES ON FIRE.

Don’t you think *that* would have “postponed” the confirmation hearings? If Dick Durbin burned himself on the committee floor? Maybe Grassley would have had to convene in executive session in order to get leave to call the fire department? At the very least, the hearing would have had to be adjourned for the day.

But Democrats don’t have that kind of strength, at least not the ones who get elected. Democrats want outcomes they are willing to risk NOTHING to achieve.

“What about the midterms?” That’s the line. Trump is (allegedly) an illegitimate president planted here by a foreign adversary to weaken our country… but don’t do anything that might make Joe Manchin’s life more difficult!

Democrats want us to believe that putting them back in power is more important than any issue. If you care about guns or gays or Dreamers or justice, you’re supposed to be highly motivated to vote Democrat. What have Democrats done to defend those issues in the two years since Trump was elected? Well… nothing. But we’re supposed to believe that’s because Democrats are afraid of using what power they have for fear of not being given… more power.

Kavanaugh is going to be confirmed, because Republicans know how to use their power. The Democrats are going to lose this confirmation battle, one way or another.

But WHICH way matters. They could go out like martyrs, with such fury and righteousness that it inspires others to take up the mantle against the oppression that they say we are facing. Or they could go out like… Democrats, in one last desperate and cloying attempt to win back soccer moms in the Midwest with pithy soundbites and the offer of reasonable compromise.

Today, we saw which path the Democrats are most comfortable with. They gave you one hour of real fight, then crawled for the rest of the day.

And when their policy of appeasement fails to win them back the Senate this November, they’ll tell you, “but let’s try the same thing for 2020.”

Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

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