The Senate’s Ill Winds Blow Across the Kavanaugh Confirmation

It was Alexander Hamilton’s hope and belief that the judiciary would be untainted by partisan politics, that its “firmness and independence” would be protected from “the pestilent breath of faction.” And for much of the nation’s subsequent history, the confirmation of U.S. Supreme Court justices has been mostly bipartisan. When Republican nominee Anthony Kennedy won his seat in 1988, not a single Democratic senator voted in dissent. When Republican nominee Clement Haynsworth Jr. lost his bid in 1969, the thumbs-down tally included 13 Senate Republicans. Even Republican nominee Robert Bork was taken down in 1987 with the help of six Republicans.

But those bygone days seem quaint, now that the pestilent breath of faction wafts like an industrial-strength is destined Saturday to ascend by what appears to be the narrowest Yes margin since Stanley Matthews was confirmed by back in 1881. On the Senate floor this morning, lamented that “the crossroads of anger and fear and partisanship” have “tarnished the dignity of this institution,” although he didn’t believe that the ruling GOP bore any blame. He instead placed the onus on the opposition party, and on the hundreds of pained young women who practiced “mob intimidation” in the marble halls.