The Left Declares Total War

If it wasn’t already evident that even if Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed to the Supreme Court in a few days the left will carry on with a full-scale attack (including an impeachment investigation), then the email below from Harold Meyerson of The American Prospect sent out yesterday makes the matter explicit. I’ll intersperse my comments in places:

The Back-Up Way of Defeating Kavanaugh. Assume the worst: Let’s posit that within a week, despite the evidence of his abuses when young, his temperament when middle-aged, and his unyieldingly troglodytic beliefs at all times, Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed as a Supreme Court justice. That, of course, would create the first hard-right majority on the Court since 1937—a majority dead-set against modernity, equal rights for women and minorities, and any rights at all for workers. What to do then?

Comment: Actually, in 1937 was when a slightly conservative (but very inconsistent) majority on the Supreme Court ended, according to legend (subsequently controverted by historians) buckling to pressure from FDR. But as for “against modernity, equal rights for women,” would that include those earlier “conservative” decisions like Adkins v. Childrens Hospital that struck down legislation that was discriminatory against women in the workplace? It is always amusing to see leftists tapdance around the actual facts and reasoning in cases that they’ve never actually read. I could go on, but let’s continue:

There would still remain one perfectly legal and valid exit ramp from this lowdown circle of hell. In the increasingly likely event that the Democrats take the House this November, the new Democratic majority on the House Judiciary Committee could revisit Kavanaugh’s testimony last week for evidence of deception. Indeed, the senior Democrat on that committee, New Yorker Jerry Nadler—as smart and progressive a congressman as the Democrats have—has already indicated the committee, which he’d be chairing, would do just that.

Comment: Jerry Nadler-the-Hutt. (Maybe Trump will call him a “Nadlering nabob of negativism?”) I look forward to watching that.

It’s almost impossible to envision the Senate convicting Kavanaugh—it requires a two-thirds vote, which is to say, Republican support, and given that party’s commitment to anti-empiricism, all evidence will become beside the point—but a House-enacted resolution to impeach would in itself throw the Court into crisis.

First, additional revelations from a House investigation might compel Kavanaugh to resign. Second, were he to stay on the court, the Senate would have to hold a trial (unless, if the Republicans still control the Senate, they refuse to, which would lead to a constitutional impasse that would doubtless have to be decided by, yep, the Supreme Court). Third, whether Kavanaugh could continue to hear and rule on cases while all this was proceeding would be hotly disputed and, again, a matter that the Court would have to decide since there would be no one else who could decide it. Fourth, if after all this Kavanaugh remains on the Court, the legitimacy of its rulings would be questioned as never before in our history, laying the groundwork for the addition of at least two justices to the current nine should the Democrats control the White House and Congress following the 2020 election.

The Supreme Court, along with the military and the police (!), is one of the few national institutions that still enjoys the majority support, respect, and confidence of the American people according to most surveys. So now the left wants to create a “crisis” at the Court, and delegitimize its rulings. David Burge’s classic tweet comes to mind: