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Posted by
Olog-hai
on Sat Jul 14 19:57:47 2018, in response to The nominee is Brett Kavanaugh, posted by DanD124 on Mon Jul 9 21:21:30 2018.
San Francisco Chronicle
Resisting Trump's Supreme Court pick isn't worth Democratic Senate seatsWillie Brown | July 14, 2018 | Updated: July 14, 2018 11:46 a.m.Democratic senators in swing states have a tough choice ahead of them on Judge Brett Kavanaugh, President Trump's Supreme Court pick. Their base may not forgive them for voting "yes," but there may not be enough of that base to offset the backlash from voting "no."
My advice is the same I gave to Assembly members when I was speaker and a vote like this came up: Go with whatever will get you re-elected.
No one vote, not even for a Supreme Court justice, is worth costing your party a Senate seat for six years. Especially when the other party is more likely to hold the seat not for just six years, but for decades.
So if someone like West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, facing a difficult campaign in a state Trump won by 42 points in 2016, thinks voting "no" on Kavanaugh won't cost him his job, fine. But that may not be a realistic hope.
And remember that a "no" vote will almost certainly be symbolic, because the Republicans are likely to have Kavanaugh's confirmation in the bag.
To paraphrase Gen. George Patton, in war the point is not to die for your country, but to make the other guy die for his country.
In politics, it's much the same.
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