Democrats’ Ugly Anti-Kavanaugh Protests Are Undemocratic

Printed from: https://newbostonpost.com/2018/09/04/democrats-ugly-anti-kavanaugh-protests-are-undemocratic/

The funniest part of the Brett Kavanaugh hearing so far is a left-wing protester shouting over U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) while he was making a procedural objection over the supposed inadequacy of documents the Senate Judiciary Committee has received concerning the U.S. Supreme Court nominee.

The young woman yelling about “LGBT rights” apparently saw an elderly bald bespectacled white man and assumed he was her enemy instead of her ally.

Leahy, 78, momentarily stammers during his comments (see this CNN video at 8:46), almost as if someone had missed a cue.

Happily for Democrats, the rest of the screaming took place when the Republican committee chairman, U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, was trying to make perfunctory opening remarks.

The mob scene at the hearing this morning shows modern Democratic politics:  orchestrated, tendentious, rude, out-of-order, obstructionist statements by the people wearing suits sitting at the table up front, and ugly, rude, deranged caterwauling by the multi-colored-hair people standing at the back.

Six Democratic senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee (Kamala Harris, Mazie Hirono, Richard Blumenthal, Cory Booker, Sheldon Whitehouse, Patrick Leahy) repeatedly interrupted Grassley, starting with Harris at the get-go, talking over the 84-year-old committee chairman when he had barely gotten a few words out.

Democrats don’t have the votes to stop Kavanaugh. That’s not because they lack information about the nominee. It’s because Democrats don’t control the U.S. Senate, and there’s nothing about Kavanaugh that even squishy Republicans can use to justify opposing him. So Democrats are trying to obstruct.

This, by the way, is their right, even if the way they do it reflects a certain ugliness in our public life these days. Republicans will again be in the minority some day, and when they are they should fight just as hard as the Democrats are doing now, albeit with more dignity.

But what is this fighting about?

The reason every major judicial nomination is an invitation to fireworks is that liberal Democrats in the United States see the federal Supreme Court as a way to achieve policy objectives they can’t get through Congress, state legislatures, or statewide referendums.

A federal Supreme Court nominee who promises to merely interpret the U.S. Constitution and statutes as opposed to trying to write new laws is threatening to left-wingers because it limits their march to power through the branch of the federal government that is the least responsive to the people.

Another way of putting it:  Democrats don’t believe in democracy enough to trust it.