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Sen. Mazie Hirono and Sen. Richard Blumenthal are the first two Democrats to come out and say they will refuse to meet with Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett before her Senate confirmation hearing. Let’s face it, the minds of senators have been made up and none of them are open to persuasion one way or the other. ACB’s confirmation vote in the Senate will be strictly along party lines. This is why Americans hate politicians.
Mitch McConnell has the Republican votes banked in the Senate for ACB’s confirmation. Democrats are essentially only expected to meet their obligation to advice and consent. If some don’t want to meet with the nominee for a personal one-on-one interview, so be it. Many Republican senators passed on a private meeting with Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, including Mitch McConnell. Two Republican senators who did meet with him, Sen. Kirk and Sen. Ayotte, both lost their re-election campaigns. Ayotte said at the time she still opposed putting his nomination up for a vote, though she met with him as a courtesy. The difference then, as opposed to what is happening now, is that ACB’s nomination is going to come up for a vote while a vote on Garland was never going to happen. McConnell said so from the start of the process. Senate leadership and the White House was controlled by different political parties. It was bare-knuckles politics. It doesn’t matter, technically speaking, if Democrats meet with her in their offices before her hearing or not.
Senator Hirono has already announced she will not vote in favor of ACB’s nomination. That isn’t breaking news, given her hyper-partisan voting record and how she treated Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing. She said she will wait and question ACB during the hearing when she is under oath. Sounds like a cheap shot about ACB’s relationship with honesty, right? She tweeted out a thread on her reasoning. Her main concern is the same as other Democrats. Their talking point is that ACB will take away health care insurance and the Affordable Care Act will go away.
I will not support the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court for the following reasons:
— Senator Mazie Hirono (@maziehirono) September 26, 2020
She will vote to strike down the Affordable Care Act after being rushed on the Supreme Court in time to hear the case on November 10.
Millions of Americans will lose their health care – catastrophic in the middle of a pandemic.
— Senator Mazie Hirono (@maziehirono) September 26, 2020
And, there’s the pro-abortion stance of Democrats, particularly Democrat women.
She has a long history of being anti-choice and an explicit willingness to reverse SC precedent – endangering the protections of Roe v Wade. A woman’s right to control her own body is at stake.
The president expects her to support any challenge he mounts to the election results.
— Senator Mazie Hirono (@maziehirono) September 26, 2020
Barrett has an ideological agenda she won’t acknowledge and an expressed willingness to overturn Supreme Court precedent.
Her agenda poses a direct threat to health care, a woman’s right to control her body, the rights of LGBTQ Americans, and other individual and civil rights.
— Senator Mazie Hirono (@maziehirono) September 26, 2020
I oppose her nomination and will fight to deny her a lifetime position on the United States Supreme Court, and in doing so, will tell the American people the danger she poses to hard-won rights.
— Senator Mazie Hirono (@maziehirono) September 26, 2020
Senator Blumenthal has his own thread about why he won’t support ACB and it is pretty much the same as Hirono’s. Health care insurance, abortion, and the fact that ACB is a conservative woman. It would be redundant to include his whole Twitter thread here. Suffice it to say the war on conservative women continues from the left. Blumenthal did add another dimension to his rant, though. He calls her nomination “illegitimate”.
I will oppose the confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett, as I would any nominee proposed as part of this illegitimate sham process, barely one month before an election as Americans are already casting their votes. Americans deserve a voice in this hugely consequential decision.
— Richard Blumenthal (@SenBlumenthal) September 26, 2020
Senator Debbie Stabenow was a guest on Fox News Sunday this morning and while she did congratulate ACB for her nomination, she, too delivered the Democrats’ talking point that ACB will “be the vote to end the Affordable Care Act” and then she took it a step further. Stabenow stated with no hesitation that “The number one priority of Donald Trump has been to take away people’s health care.” And, “Common sense tells you he will put someone on the court that has given all kinds of clue on how she will vote.” When pressed on “all kinds of clues”, Stabenow had no proof to offer.
I appreciated Senator Kennedy’s response to Stabenow’s interview – “Sell crazy somewhere else, we’re all stocked up here.”
Two Republican senators, Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, have both come out in opposition to moving forward with a nomination before the election. Collins is in a tough re-election battle and this is a pander to Independents in her state. Her race is in the toss-up column on Real Clear Politics. Murkowski isn’t up for re-election this cycle, she’s just an ardent Never-Trump Independent now. Murkowski hasn’t however said she will not vote for ACB when the vote comes up. She wants it both ways.
So, let Hirono and Blumenthal make their political tweets against extending common courtesy to a Supreme Court nominee. It doesn’t matter – in fact, the more who say they don’t want to bother with private meetings the quicker the nomination process will go. Move on to the confirmation hearing and get the process completed.
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