Congressional Democrats need to get better at their jobs, especially the public relations part. Republicans are excellent at PR. Democrats are not. Look at the situation. After Justice Antonin Scalia’s death in February 2016, Republican Senators—in an unprecedented move–refused to have a hearing for President Obama’s nominee to fill the position on the Supreme Court.
After a Republican won the presidency, they pushed through the confirmation of Trump’s ultra-conservative nominee, Neil Gorsuch. To confirm Gorsuch Republican leaders made another unprecedented move. They changed the rules of the Senate to eliminate the 60-vote margin needed to unblock the vote on Supreme Court nominees. The Senate Democrats came off as the bad guys for filibustering Gorsuch’s nomination.
Although there was some apparent tit-for-tat in the air—Democrats resenting that the Republicans would not hold a hearing for Obama’s nominee—all but a few Senate Democrats opposed Gorsuch by his record.
I am hoping that the Senate Democrats will abandon their traditional habit of not explaining their actions to the public. They should have made several things about Gorsuch more widely known:
- Gorsuch has expressed admiration for Hans von Spakovsky, one of the most rabid opponents of voting rights.
- In his decisions on the Tenth Circuit Court, he has consistently favored businesses over consumers and businesses over employees.
- During Gorsuch’s hearing in March, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously overturned a decision written by Gorsuch on the Tenth Circuit. Gorsuch had ruled that a school district had satisfied its duties to a disabled student when it provided the student with benefits de minimis (Latin for “as long as it provided the student with a little more than nothing”).
- Gorsuch admits to being an originalist, which means that he holds the ultra-conservative view that the Constitution must not be interpreted according to modern issues, but according to the original and literal meaning and intent of the founding fathers who wrote the Constitution. On its face this is absurd. Adhering to an originalist perspective would mean putting African Americans back in slavery and limiting the vote to white men who own property.
- On the other hand, conservatives do not use an originalist perspective about gun rights. The literal meaning of the second amendment is that it grants the right to bear arms to state militia and not to individuals. But of course, that is an argument for another day.
While the Democrats asked right questions and attacked Gorsuch on his record in the hearings, they did not make much of an effort to explain to the public why they opposed this person as a Supreme Court Justice.
Crooked con men and conservatives in the Congress know something that Democrats and progressives do not. They know that if you want someone to know something you tell them and you tell them—over and over.
Con men make their living by fooling enough of the people enough of the time. Republicans are currently controlling our government because they have the same talent. They understand how to have people know what they want them to know. In the Judge Gorsuch case, they presented him as a well-qualified unblemished nominee, although he is way out of the mainstream in his judicial rulings.
Democrats need desperately to understand that most political matters involve a battle over public opinion—in other words, whose ideas and philosophies dominate in public. Going on two generations, if not longer, Democrats have been missing in this fight.