Democrats should boycott the confirmation process

With announcements by Senators Romney, Grassley and Gardner, the outcome of the confirmation process for Trump’s third nominee to the Supreme Court is a done deal. There is nothing Democrats can do but alienate swing voters in swing states by criticizing a Catholic mother of seven who taught law at Notre Dame, or a first-generation Cuban-American from a state where Cuban-Americans are a substantial voting block. Biden currently has a substantial lead among Catholic voters and they are critical in the rust belt. He is already underperforming with Latino voters. Furthermore, both of the most likely nominees are, on paper, qualified and opposition can only make Democrats look unreasonably partisan to low-information voters — by logical inference, swing voters.

However, neither should Democrats legitimize a sham process where people like Sen. Lindsey Graham have already committed to confirmation of a yet-to-be-identified candidate in complete contradiction to arguments made by the same Republicans in 2016. Democrats should follow the example of Sens. Collins and Murkowski and Republicans in 2016 by refusing to even participate in the confirmation process. They should cite the blatant hypocrisy of doing so and the futility of weighing in on a predetermined outcome.

Democrats should boycott the whole process. Let the Republicans hold hearings amongst themselves. Let the Republicans vote to rubber stamp Trump without Democratic participation. I’m sure Sens. Doug Jones and Joe Manchin would prefer to abstain on principle rather than vote against a female candidate who, aside from her political agenda, will be an appealing personality.

Nor should Biden or the senators criticize the nominee personally. Their criticism should be directed to the hypocrisy of one set of rules for Democratic nominees and a different standard for Trump’s nominees. Their concerns should be limited to the fact that this appointment will seal the elimination of insurance coverage for 100 million Americans with pre-existing conditions and facilitate Trump’s baseless challenge to an election he is likely to lose. They should not accede to the Republicans’ unfounded contention from four years ago that you cannot confirm a nominee in an election year because there is no Constitutional basis for such an argument. They should simply state that for this nominee and this nominee alone they will follow the precedent set as recently as 2016. They should not commit to a future practice.

Finally nothing can be gained by alienating a nominee who will certainly be confirmed and then sit in judgment of the election Trump is likely to lose. Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh are examples of how embittered and vindictive Justices can be when attacked by a party during the nomination process with no possibility of success. This nominee may be critical to the issue of whether Joe Biden’s election is legitimate and alienating her before she assumes her inevitable position is not a good legal strategy.

Get out of their way. Get this over with before Trump can get the headlines he craves. Get the discussion back to where it belongs—on 200,000 plus dead Americans, most of whom didn’t have to die, and Trump’s unfitness for office.

Fifteen minutes in the spotlight at a confirmation hearing, for the sole purpose of appealing to the Democratic base, is not worth putting this monumental election at risk.

Terry Trieweiler is a retired Montana Supreme Court Justice. He lives in Whitefish.