Trump milks the Kavanaugh backlash
Published in Politico
Over the past several years, Republican voters have been much more animated by Supreme Court appointments as the single most important issue in choosing a presidential candidate. In 2016, according to exit polling, 56 percent of Trump voters listed that as the key factor in backing his candidacy whereas just 41 percent of Democratic voters called it the most important issue.
Progressive leaders hope this will change for the upcoming presidential election. Several 2020 Democratic presidential candidates have called for Kavanaugh’s impeachment — though top Democratic leaders have been killing that idea behind the scenes.
“An important message from the Kavanaugh confirmation is that the sham process that the Republicans used to minimize transparency and curtail investigations and to do all they could to hide his record, that cannot become normalized,” said Daniel Goldberg, legal director of the Alliance for Justice and former chief of staff at the Department of Justice’s Office of Legislative Affairs under President Barack Obama. “I have not seen progressives galvanized around the issue of the courts like I have in recent years.”