Confirmation vote for Ketanji Brown Jackson set tentatively for Thursday evening
Fox News congressional correspondent Chad Pergram reports the latest updates on the confirmation vote for Biden Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson on 'Your World.'
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson will receive enough votes in the Senate Thursday afternoon to join the Supreme Court as the first African American woman Justice.
Aside from moderate Sens. Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Mitt Romney, most Republicans will vote "no." Though Jackson is, by any reasonable standard, qualified by experience, intelligence, and character for the Supreme Court, Republicans still have valid grounds to oppose her.
The main reason has nothing to do with Jackson and everything to do with the confirmation process itself. Democrats decry Republican opposition as further evidence of the polarization of the confirmation process.
SCHUMER REVEALS TIMELINE FOR FINAL VOTE ON KETANJI BROWN JACKSON SUPREME COURT CONFIRMATION
Some outside commentators, and even perhaps some Democratic senators, suggest that questioning Jackson’s fitness for office amounts to sexism, racism or both.
"I am hearing from people, not just Black women, who are relating to me their stories about having to come into a room where you’re more qualified than the people who are sitting in judgment of you and having to endure the absurdities of disrespect that we saw Judge Jackson endure," Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., said.
But these Democrats are suffering from intentional amnesia. They have forgotten the confirmations of Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Barrett.
Senate Democrats sought to besmirch their good names with attacks on their personal backgrounds, such as accusations of teenage sexual assault by Kavanaugh and of strange religious beliefs for Barrett.
Democrats then proceeded to vote against all three in lockstep: 43 out of 46 Democratic senators against Gorsuch; 46 out of 47 against Kavanaugh; and a perfect 45 out of 45 against Barrett.
Senate Democrats could not believably claim that they voted against the Trump justices because of their lack of qualifications. All three Trump justices easily met normal standards for qualifications: good law schools; all three clerked at the Supreme Court; all three held important positions in the legal profession.
Gorsuch and Kavanaugh had served for more than a decade as appeals court judges and Barrett taught law at Notre Dame before joining the federal courts. Even if Senate Democrats could justify their vote against Kavanaugh on Me Too movement grounds, they cannot explain their opposition to Gorsuch and Barrett as anything other than ideological or political.
With that immediate past in mind, Republican senators could vote against Judge Jackson solely on the ground of institutional incentives, regardless of her fitness to be a justice.
If Republican senators confirm Jackson solely because of her qualifications, while Senate Democrats see fit to vote against nominees based on their ideology, Republicans will have engaged in unilateral disarmament in the war over judicial confirmations.
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They will have shrunk from a conflict that Senate Democrats started long ago with their successful 1987 campaign to sink the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Robert Bork, perhaps the most qualified conservative nominee possible – a judge on the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., Yale Law School professor, and Nixon administration solicitor general.
Democrats then raised claims of sexual harassment against Clarence Thomas (for whom I clerked), in a campaign that has seen no end even after he joined the Supreme Court.
Relative Republican modesty during the Clinton years did nothing to assuage the Democratic judicial furies. In 1993, the Senate confirmed Ruth Bader Ginsburg to a seat held by conservative Byron White by 96-3. In 1994, most Republicans again voted to confirm a Democratic-nominated justice, Stephen Breyer.
Nevertheless, Democrats greeted George W. Bush’s nominees with ideological opposition. Half of Senate Democrats voted against John Roberts (22 out of 44) in 2005, even as all their hopes for preserving Roe v. Wade depend on him.
Almost all Democrats voted against Samuel Alito (40 out of 44) in 2006. If anyone introduced ideological politics into Supreme Court confirmation votes, it is Democrats, not Republicans.
Perhaps the confirmation process has permanently spiraled down into a regular partisan affair where senators will vote against nominees simply because of the party of the president who nominates them. But if any hope exists to return to a focus on professional records and intellectual qualities, it will be because Senate Republicans match Democrats tit-for-tat in their maneuvers.
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In a system where no higher authority can end the conflict between Republicans and Democrats, as in the Senate, deterrence or even mutually assured destruction is the only tactic that will cause each side to return to a position of restraint.
Only by threatening to oppose nominees based on politics can Republicans end politics in the confirmation process.
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