To the Democratic delegation of the United States Senate:
Congratulations on holding firm to force the hand of the Republican leadership, but for the time being it is a Pyrrhic victory. Hopefully in time it will prove so for the Republicans as well.
To any Democrats considering a yes vote on nominee Gorsuch believing he is amply qualified to take a seat on the bench, your colleague Senator Franken put paid to that notion already. Judge Gorsuch’s responses to question have been evasive non-answers, just like every Trump nominee that has appeared before the Senate so far. Just like the answers every executive gives when indicted and cross-examined upon the advice of counsel: say nothing of substance, nothing that could incriminate you presently or later. This is not the approach of a man whose allegiance is to the truth above all. This is not a man who has a healthy belief in real justice. This is the approach of a man whose allegiance, like the Justice he could replace, is to an agenda and philosophy who will hold corporate and investor interests above human rights, who will believe that money is speech, who will hold that owners of corporations inflicting their religious beliefs on their employees regarding birth control and abortions is religious freedom and not religious oppression, who will hold an employee responsible for protecting his employer’s property interests at all costs even if it means death. This man does not actually have impeachable credentials to become a Supreme Court Justice; just ask the current Supreme Court.
If the shoe were on the other foot, if Hillary Clinton was the President and the Senate had the same composition it does today, the Republican Party would block any of her nominees and leave that seat empty for her entire term of office if necessary. After today’s filibuster vote, there is no reason for you not to do the same.
To the Republican delegation of the United States Senate:
There may be those among you who remember what your party used to be long ago. Whatever that was, your party is no longer that now. Your party proposes a budget that will strip money from needed and useful programs to throw it at a military apparatus that already has greater funding than any other just to make already wealthy defense contractors even wealthier. Your party cannot govern because a vast majority of your party has no interest in governing; their seats in Congress are placeholders for people who are doing the real governing. The leadership of your party stole this Supreme Court nomination from its rightful possessor; there is no other accurate way to view this. Your majority leader, with astounding and utterly shameless hypocrisy, stated that the American people would not tolerate the Democrats blocking a Supreme Court pick by Trump. Your colleague Senator Merkley amply demonstrated how Republican arguments last year regarding Supreme Court appointments and “election years” have no basis in fact. Indeed, with today’s vote to remove the filibuster protocols it is your own party that is hell-bent on overturning any and all rules and protocols to get its own way.
If you vote yes to appoint Judge Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, you are sending the nation in the wrong direction, backwards and not forwards. If you vote yes, you are voting in the appointee of a man who indisputably looks to be one of the worst Presidents in American history, alongside James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Warren Harding, and Herbert Hoover. Mr. Trump is under suspicion of colluding with a foreign power to interfere with the bedrock of our way of life, our system of democracy. These are not trumped up matters, and need to be taken very seriously. I doubt rushing through yet another Trump appointee will be looked upon favorably by history, certainly before the truth about any connection between the Trump campaign and a murderous dictator who routinely jails political critics is ascertained.
Please do not vote to appoint Judge Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. Justice will not be served if you do.