Democrats Concede They Have Few Tools to Thwart Trump on Supreme Court

(Bloomberg) -- Democrats concede they have few tools to hold up President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, and instead are looking to put the controversy over the Republicans’ unprecedented move to voters on Nov. 3.

Several Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee said that they will have little opportunity -- or much appetite -- to use Senate procedures to gum up the confirmation process, and that they can’t stop a vote if Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has 51 Republicans behind him.

Nor are there plans to make a political statement by boycotting the confirmation hearings, which could come as soon as two weeks after Trump names his pick to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Saturday.

Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat who is a member of the Judiciary Committee, said Republicans hold the cards.

“We’re very clear eyed, our tools are limited,” he told reporters. “We have no magic panacea, right? We can’t force the Republicans to keep their word anymore that we can force them to care about the health care of their constituents.”

Campaign Push

But, he said, “we can make our case there in the committee and publicly to the American people.”

The two parties are making the court vacancy a part of the campaign and strategists from both sides say it will energize the Democratic and Republican bases. An ABC/Washington Post poll released Friday found that 57% of American adults favor letting the winner on Nov. 3 pick the next justice. But that is colored by a wide partisan split, with 90% of Democrats favoring waiting and 80% of Republicans wanting action now.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, is weighing an unusually fast-paced schedule that would begin hearings on Oct. 12 and possibly move rapidly toward a full Senate vote the week of Oct. 26 -- just days before the elections.

McConnell hasn’t publicly committed to a timetable for a confirmation vote, but has said there’s sufficient time to get it done before the Nov. 3 election.

Tradition Question

If Graham moves on such a schedule, he would have to work around a committee rule that lets Democrats delay a panel vote by a week -- perhaps by breaking with tradition and scheduling the initial meeting for a vote right as the hearings end. Democrats say they can’t stop him from forcing a quick committee vote if he shuns traditions.

“I’ve been around here a few years,” said Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democratic leader and a senior Judiciary member. “You can slow things down, but you can’t stop them. There comes a point.”

Blumenthal said Graham is planning hearings that lack “legitimacy,” but he and Durbin both said Democrats shouldn’t refuse to attend. It’s more important, they said, to create a public record of the confirmation and to fight back in the hearing room.

“Ruth Bader Ginsburg never gave up,” Blumenthal said. “Neither should we. She confronted odds that everybody thought were impossible in her legal career. In the cases that she argued before the court as a justice, dissenting. And that ought to be our spirit.”

Schumer’s Approach

Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Tuesday hinted some dilatory tactics might be in store when he deployed what’s called the “two-hour rule,” blocking hearings that afternoon. He told reporters that the Senate won’t go on as usual when Republicans are planning to push through a court pick right before an election for the first time in history.

But Schumer didn’t deploy the rule for the rest of the week. Nor did he object to unanimous consent requests on unrelated items or use other slow-down tactics, like forcing McConnell to call roll call votes to show the Senate had a quorum present.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi provided initial intrigue by telling ABC’s “This Week” program that Democrats in the House “have our options” in stalling a confirmation. “We have arrows in our quiver that I’m not about to discuss right now.”

Some Democratic activists have been calling for the House to impeach Trump again or begin such proceedings against Attorney General William Barr.

But Pelosi has since underscored that Democrats are not interested in impeachment as a strategy to delay Senate action on a nominee. Pelosi also has said she would not seek to use as leverage congressional action on government funding to hold-up confirmation.

“We wouldn’t even think of threatening to shut down government,” she said on Monday, giving a list of needs facing the country, amid fires raging in the west, storms active along the Gulf Coast and the ongoing pandemic. “It’s not a lever.”

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