Jonathan Tobin:
“…The more they emphasize the consequences of replacing Kennedy with a more consistent conservative, the greater the depression their voters will feel when the next Gorsuch takes the oath of office in time to join the Supreme Court for the opening of the fall term in October.
The irony here for Democrats is that the “resistance” is fueled by their conviction that Trump has violated key norms and threatens the institutions of democracy. Yet if there is one aspect of his presidency that has been completely normal, it is his approach to judicial appointments. He has stuck to the list of qualified conservatives that he made public before his election. No one can pretend that his appointments are any different, in terms of their beliefs or credentials, from those that might have been put forward by any other Republican president. Rather than heralding an era of radical Trumpian madness, Gorsuch and the other Trump judges are just normal constitutional conservatives and a reminder that, his Twitter account notwithstanding, the Trump presidency is for the most part an exercise in conservative rather than extremist governance.
That’s why it’s going to be hard for Democrats to persuade any GOP senators to join them or to keep their own caucus in line, setting them up for failure and the recriminations that will follow.
Democrats aren’t happy about a post-Kennedy Court that will protect religious freedom and freedom of speech in ways they abhor and perhaps even chip away at Roe. As President Obama liked to say, “elections have consequences.”
Yet the Democrats’ more immediate concern should be the way their inevitable defeat in the coming confirmation fight will depress their base and strengthen the forces pushing their party farther to the left in the run-up to 2020. It remains to be seen whether this is a prescription for a revived opposition party or a gift to an otherwise embattled Trump administration. Nevertheless, Democratic activists are going to be judging every member of their party’s caucus on their conduct in the next few months. As their less-than-scintillating performance on the first day of the struggle illustrated, their conclusions are likely to be harsh…”