The mounting evidence, from people inside the White House itself, that Captain Trump may be erratically steering the nation toward an iceberg is both clarifying and somewhat terrifying. [...] the consistent cascade of curtain-peeling revelations grows harder to ignore and more frightening to contemplate.
And each round of White House denial rings more hollow than the last, particularly given the Trump Twitter rages that so neatly echo the behavioral profile of the man offered by these insider accounts. [...] How and when the Trump administration ends is unknowable at this point. But its current course is looking increasingly unsustainable.
[A] Kavanaugh confirmation will set us up for multiple constitutional crises.
After all, if Kavanaugh is confirmed, we will be trying to navigate a turbulent era in American politics with a Supreme Court in which two seats were effectively stolen. First Republicans refused even to give President Barack Obama’s nominee so much as a hearing; then they will have filled two positions with nominees chosen by a president who lost the popular vote and eked out an Electoral College win only with aid from a hostile foreign power.
Would a Justice Kavanaugh conduct himself with the caution appropriate to such a fraught situation? Well, miracles of personal redemption do happen. But it’s very unlikely. On the contrary, every indication is that if he makes it, he and his fellow justices will abuse their power at every level.
Michelle Goldberg points out the “corrupt bargain of the adults in the room” in the Trump administration:
What we have here, in miniature, is the corrupt bargain Washington Republicans have made with a president many of them privately despise. They know Trump is unfit, but he gives them tax cuts and right-wing judges. Those tax cuts and right-wing judges, in turn, strengthen the president’s hand, buying him gratitude from rich donors and potential legal cover. Republicans who participate in this cycle seem convinced that the situation is, and will remain, under their control. [...]
A vote for Kavanaugh is thus a vote to give Trump a measure of impunity. Republican senators who know the president is out of control have a choice — they can maintain a check on his ill-considered autocratic inclinations, or solidify right-wing power on the Supreme Court for a generation. It’s obvious which way they’ll go. Maybe they’ll tell themselves having adults in the room at the White House makes it O.K.
Russell Berman writes about Senate Democrats and their Kavanaugh strategy:
The choice for Democrats was never about whether to fight Kavanaugh, but how far they would go in waging it. Republicans hold a 51–49 majority in the Senate and can confirm him with only their votes after having eliminated the 60-vote threshold for Supreme Court nominees to install Gorsuch last year. (That move extended a rules change for lower-court judicial nominees engineered by Democrats in 2014.)
To defeat Kavanaugh, Democrats must hold their ranks together—which include several red-state members in tough reelection campaigns—while flipping GOP Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who support abortion rights and do not want to see Roe v. Wade overturned.
Here’s a piece by Cristian Farias on the sycophancy of Kavanaugh:
When asked by Connecticut’s Richard Blumenthal if he condemns questioning a judge’s impartiality on the basis of his or her ethnicity, as Trump did with Curiel during the presidential campaign, Kavanaugh chose to dodge and save face rather than display judicial courage. “The way we stand up is by deciding cases and controversies without fear or favor,” he replied. [...]
For all his credentials and judicial record, which he’s repeatedly defended as worthy of a Supreme Court seat, Kavanaugh hasn’t done a good job explaining his sycophancy toward Trump.
On a final note, don’t miss Eugene Robinson’s latest where he points out we’re already in a constitutional crisis:
The whistleblower wrote that “there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment” by which Trump could be removed, but “no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis.”
After this week, however, it’s clear that we’re already in a constitutional crisis of frightening proportions. The Cabinet will not act. Congress, under GOP control, will not act. The internal “resistance” can only do so much.
Voters are the last line of defense. You must save the day.