If you had never heard of Neil Gorsuch, Donald Trump's Supreme Court pick, before Tuesday, you're about to get real familiar with him. Progressive groups, still seething over the GOP's refusal to even give Merrick Garland a hearing, spent the past month planning to rally Democratic lawmakers against confirmation. And then Trump handed them an absolute gift: the worst, most pathetically written and poorly planned executive order possible, sparking protests across the country. The chaser: Trump's retaliatory firing of a Justice Department official who, sworn to uphold the U.S. Constitution, declared his racist order unconstitutional. Politico writes:
“There is now an urgency to oppose anyone who won’t be a powerful check on the Supreme Court against the executive branch excesses and impulses,” said Nan Aron, founder and president of the Alliance for Justice. [...]
On the Democratic side, progressives are zeroing in on red-state Democrats like West Virginia’s Joe Manchin and North Dakota’s Heidi Heitkamp. Among Republicans, they’re looking at Arizona’s Jeff Flake and Nevada’s Dean Heller, who are both up for reelection in 2018, and the moderate Susan Collins of Maine.
And while conservative forces are already putting the finishing touches on a $10 million ad blitz targeting red-state Senate Democrats who will come under enormous pressure to back Trump’s nominee, People for the American Way is readying a television ad campaign of its own as a counterbalance. [...]
“There is a lot of energy in the progressive space to say, ‘This seat was stolen from a Democratic president, period. It was grand larceny,’” said Brad Woodhouse, president of Americans United for Change.
There's opposition research from American Bridge, a grassroots push from End Citizens United, and an assist planned from the Constitutionality Responsibility Project, a group organized by former Obama aides.
But honestly, nothing can beat the heat in the streets right now. Progressives are on fire and each week somehow manages to be worse than the last. Yet somehow, Mitch McConnell thinks Democrats are going to give Gorsuch the reasonable reception that he himself refused to give Garland.
"I hope we can get past that and get down to our serious work.”
Sorry, Mitch. You can take that comity and stick it where the sun don’t shine.