How Can Progressives Stand Up to Kavanaugh and Trumpism?

The confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court has capped the most brutal partisan judicial campaign in American history. For 40 years, movement conservatives plotted tirelessly and spent untold millions to install a solid hard-right majority on the court. Checked by the four appointments made by Bill Clinton and Barack Obama — and nearly undone by the sudden death of Justice Antonin Scalia — the Republicans would stop at nothing, including blocking the nomination of the moderate Merrick Garland by thwarting a constitutional process. On Saturday, they finally won by ramming through the appointment of a long-time GOP operative and conspiracy-monger who would save his nomination by brazenly lying to the world under oath about details large (not knowing about Deborah Ramirez’s allegations) and small (boofing? the devil’s triangle?) and doing so with a smug and angry smirk.

Still, terrible as Kavanaugh’s confirmation is and likely will continue to be for the Constitution and the American people, there may be a saving grace or two, but only if the Democrats can learn the right lessons and then fight as fiercely and tirelessly as the right wing has for these many years.

Let no one mistake the enormity of what’s just happened. Kavanaugh’s nasty role in the unconstitutional, partisan drive to remove President Clinton; his covered-up actions regarding both torture and controversial judicial nominations while serving in the George W. Bush White House; and his evident lack of truthfulness in previous sworn testimony to the Senate were enough to raise serious questions about his integrity. The ideological rigidity of his positions on the Court of Appeals raised further serious questions about his neutrality and open-mindedness. But those were grounds for opposition, not outright disqualification. It was his performance in response to the charges of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford that ought to have been disqualifying, as retired Justice John Paul Stevens (an old-school Republican) observed just prior to the confirmation.

I’ve heard it said on the public airwaves and in conversations with friends that Kavanaugh had every right to be angry, even furious, after being hit at the last minute with uncorroborated charges of committing a filthy and violent crime. But that argument only amplifies why Kavanaugh is unfit for the court.

Let’s hold aside for a minute that Dr. Ford’s charges were, in fact, strongly corroborated, not least by what she’d been telling intimates and therapists for years before Kavanaugh’s nomination. Let’s even assume, for the sake of argument, that Kavanaugh had nothing to do with any of the things Dr. Ford and the other two women claimed he did. Here would be an acid test of Kavanaugh’s temperament and suitability for the court, dealing with unfair charges that threatened his reputation — but by that standard, the standard invoked by his strongest defenders, he flunked miserably.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/kavanaugh-confirmation-effects-735109/