Leading the blockade on President Obama's Supreme Court nominee is not helping Sen. Chuck Grassley back home. A new PPP poll shows he has a single-digit lead over Democrat Patty Judge, who just won her primary.
Grassley is leading, with 48 percent of respondents saying they would vote for him, against 41 percent for Judge.
Forty-nine percent of voters have a favorable view of Grassley and 42 percent have an unfavorable view. Similarly, 48 percent say they approve of the job he's doing as a U.S. senator, while 41 percent disapprove.
Judge, meanwhile, is positively viewed by 34 percent of respondents. Thirty-two percent have an unfavorable view and 34 percent are not sure.
That's not a good place for a long-term, powerful incumbent to be in. Grassley has traditionally earned bipartisan support back home, but his intransigence and hyper-partisanship is hurting him, and it's probably just going to get worse. He's going to officially shut down the nominations process this summer. He's blaming Sen. Patrick Leahy, his Democratic predecessor, for this because he says Leahy supported an early cutoff of the process in the past. Here's the thing, though: Leahy "moved nominees through the end of September 2008 when George W. Bush was president."
Grassley might—just might—be able to stop losing ground if he had a change of heart, if he allowed the process on Merrick Garland and other nominees to move forward. But he won't. In the short term, that's bad news for the country. But it can ultimately be much better for us all if Grassley loses his job and is no longer the guy who gets to decide what the federal judiciary looks like.
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