Kavanaugh: The Most Unpopular Supreme Court Nominee in Decades

Sept. 1, 2018. - Brett Kavanaugh: The Most Unpopular Supreme Court Nominee in Decades.- Mother Jones.

When Brett Kavanaugh appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee next week for the hearing to consider his nomination to replace retired Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court, he will officially become the most unpopular person to sit in that seat since Robert Bork. Bork’s nomination was scuttled in 1987 because of what were seen as his extreme legal views.

Polls continue to show that, of those paying attention, few Americans are supportive of Kavanaugh’s nomination. In the week or so after President Donald Trump nominated Kavanaugh to fill Kennedy’s seat in July, polls from Fox News to Gallup to Pew showed that fewer than 40 % of respondents thought he should be confirmed.

According to the polling site FiveThirtyEight, those numbers ranked him alongside Harriet Miers, the former White House counsel nominated to the court by President George W. Bush, whose name was withdrawn after massive opposition from her own party, and far worse than even Clarence Thomas, whose nomination was dogged by sexual harassment allegations against him. Kavanaugh is even less popular than Trump’s previous Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch.

A month and a half after his nomination, after massive advertising and political campaigns from advocacy groups on both sides of the spectrum, Kavanaugh’s approval ratings aren’t much better, and in some cases, they’re worse. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll conducted at the end of August found that only 33 % of voters supported Kavanaugh’s confirmation, while 29 % opposed it.

Those unfavorable ratings are driven in large part by women, who rightfully see Kavanaugh as a threat to reproductive rights. The White House and Kavanaugh’s backers have tried to push back on that narrative by highlighting his hiring of female clerks and his record coaching his daughters’ basketball team, but those efforts don’t seem to making much of an impact.

A CNN poll conducted between August 9 and August 12 found that only 28 % of women polled thought the Senate should confirm Kavanaugh, compared with 47 % of men. The same poll found that low numbers of women see Kavanaugh’s legal views as mainstream, especially compared with men. Fifty % of men polled thought Kavanaugh’s views were mainstream, compared with 35 % of women...

MORE, https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/09/brett-kavanaugh-the-most-unpopular-supreme-court-nominee-in-decades/

->Grassley is pushing for the Kavanaugh confirmation vote THIS WEEK, or the next week, according to this article today.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142154908