Cory Booker Aside, Democrats Stranded Ketanji Brown Jackson

The third day of hearings for Ketanji Brown Jackson's confirmation to the Supreme Court came to a close on Wednesday after 10 hours filled with character attacks about child pornography from Republican senators. With just one more day of testimony remaining, it is worth noting that this entire circus is being performed to try to pick off two or three Republican votes and perhaps one Democratic vote. One of the reasons Lindsey Graham is screaming and spitting about the briefs that were filed on behalf of the Gitmo prisoners is that he must vote against her now because he voted to confirm Jackson less than a year ago. Time has reduced Graham to a pile of free-floating umbrage held together by hair.

If we can all agree that the purpose of this farce is to try to flip some people. If we can all agree on what the GOP agenda has been, I am still perplexed by the Democrats. They have the votes to confirm. They are going to change the course of American history. What are they afraid of?

I wrote about the failure of the Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats to connect this hearing to what is going to be a catastrophic series of progressive losses at the Supreme Court this term, and the almost staggering inability to lay out any kind of theory for progressive jurisprudence. My colleague Mark Joseph Stern wrote today about a broadside attack on the idea of a right to marry, as well as the fact that Americans have the right to use birth control and not be forced to have it. More mysterious than this coordinated GOP project to undermine LGBTQ rights, marriage equality, contraception, and abortion was the almost complete silence from Senate Democrats on these issues of substantive due process, privacy, and bodily autonomy. The hearing might have been an opportunity to explain why the same doctrine is at risk in this term. The Democrats behaved as if the future of the courts, the Senate, and democracy was unimportant, while the Republicans framed the hearings as if they would lose the court.

The decision was made to confirm the nominee. Take the victory. There was a sense of underreaction for those of us who were watching and waiting for Democrats to back the nominee. Jackson looked alone fending off the attacks on her because she was alone, at least until Sen. Booker offered up a powerful corrective to the hatred being leveled at her.

Sen. @CoryBooker to Judge Jackson: "I'm not letting anybody in the Senate steal my joy...Don't worry, my sister. Don't worry. God has got you. How do I know that? Because you're here and I know what it's taken for you to sit in that seat." pic.twitter.com/m7cGjLrftZ

— CSPAN (@cspan) March 23, 2022

Dick Durbin's inability to control some of the most shocking bully and abuse from Cruz, Graham, Tom Cotton, and Hawley left observers speechless. You need to start givingling at some point. There was a sense that the Democrats were unwilling to go to the mat for their nominee, who was being savaged by Cotton and Graham.

If you have been subjected to abuse, you don't need to hear from people in power that you arebrave or that you are intimidating. You really want someone to stand beside you and throw a punch. Virtually everything Democrats did felt insufficient to the moment, even after a handful of such moments. It felt inexplicable more than that.

This actually matters as well, given the opportunity to do anything at all about the information war that started with Hawley trying to make a mockery of a respected federal judge, and that ended with 10 Republicans signing a letter demanding confidentiality. The first rule of parenting is consequences. Leaving misinformation and lies will only encourage them to grow, so if we learned anything after Jan. 6, 2021, it should have been that. If there are no consequences for the distortion and lies of craven opportunists like Hawley, seemingly sane Republicans will eventually and eagerly join their clown car. Jackson went from being a crackpot to acceptable in a week. That happens when you don't engage in a lie.

Jackson was put through by Republicans. The relentless shouting that she should answer questions she had answered multiple times was appalling, the snide insinuation that she wasn't bothered by violent child pornography because she was okay with it was appalling. To be subjected to an all-out inquisition about not having clairvoyance about which sex offenders would reoffend by some of the same people who invited and justified the Jan. 6 attacks on the Capitol beggared belief. Graham intimated that this kind of insult had been leveled at Barrett, which was false to the point of absurdity.

It's impossible to not let this happen and take some responsibility on the side that holds the gavel. I don't pretend to know the strategic goals of Democrats. If the goal was to force this extraordinary woman through the human spanking machine in order to save her life, it would have been accomplished. I don't know what the broader goal was. If there was a better narrative than the fact that she was brave, I might have missed it. I hope the Senate Democrats are able to take a stand if there is some looming terror. Jackson told us that she had learned to do almost entirely alone during her freshman year at Harvard. She persevered, and she was authentic and powerful to boot. In spite of everything, Jackson showed the world how lucky we will be when she is confirmed as a justice.