Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell goes into this session thinking he's going to have vulnerable red state Democrats, up for re-election in 2018, bucking their party to give him the support he needs in order to jam very bad stuff through the closely divided Senate. Once again, they're proving him wrong.
Red-state Senate Democrats, under political pressure to back Jeff Sessions for attorney general, are rebelling against his nomination to be the nation’s top law enforcement official by citing his opposition to a 2013 domestic violence law that overwhelmingly passed Congress four years ago.
Sessions’ issues with the law, the Violence Against Women Act, may be an insurmountable hurdle for a trio of moderate Democratic senators — Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Jon Tester of Montana — whom pro-Sessions forces have targeted so that one of Donald Trump’s most high-profile Cabinet picks can head to the Justice Department with some bipartisan cover.
They'll get one Democratic vote for Sessions—West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, because he's Joe Manchin. But that's awfully slim "bipartisan cover." Democrats alone can't stop this confirmation—no Republican has stepped up in opposition to the racist in their midst. But refusing to give him any more Democratic support means the Republicans will own what they're about to create by putting this profoundly disqualified man on the job.