Short of some serious coronavirus cases sidelining a couple GOP senators, Republicans are likely poised to secure the votes to jam through the Supreme Court nomination of Amy Coney Barrett before the election. That reality was clearly driving Democrats' entire strategy Monday to the Judiciary Committee hearings, which included every single Democratic senator highlighting the story of someone who has been personally touched by getting health insurance through the Affordable Care Act.
As voters cast their ballots—which is already happening in record-breaking numbers this cycle—Democrats want them to remember that Republicans will stop at nothing to strip 20 million Americans of health care and more than 100 million of preexisting conditions coverage. And the question Democrats want voters to be asking is, who do you want running the country if Republicans finally succeed in their decade-long obsession with killing Obamacare by securing a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court?
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“Republicans finally realized that the Affordable Care Act is too popular to repeal in Congress,” Sen. Kamala Harris of California, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee and a member of the Judiciary panel, said Monday in her opening statement. “So now they are trying to bypass the will of the voters and have the Supreme Court do their dirty work.”
In fact, that's exactly what Republicans are seeking to do on a multitude of issues—lock in a conservative court for decades that can effectively overturn any progressive legislation passed by a Democratic Congress and a duly elected Democratic president.
But nowhere is that strategy more immediately consequential than on the Affordable Care Act. In the week following the November election, the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in yet another case driven by Republicans' near-singular fixation with striking down the law.
And while Republicans may yet manage to ram through Barrett's confirmation at a breakneck pace, they appear to have critically misjudged the politics of making such an unprecedented move so close to a presidential election. In fact, whenever Republicans aren't huddling about their confirmation scheme, they appear to be spending the rest of their waking hours fretting over their electoral prospects in November—which have been entirely upended by the gusher of money flowing from small-dollar donors to Democratic candidates across the nation.
"On a call with lobbyists and donors last week, [Mitch] McConnell grumbled that GOP incumbents were getting beaten financially across the board in every competitive race," writes Politico.
GOP Judiciary chair Lindsey Graham of South Carolina has taken to begging Fox viewers for a little donor love in a race where his Democratic challenger, Jamie Harrison, raised a record-setting $57 million in the third quarter.
"Liberals hate my guts. I’ve been a friend of Trump," Graham said Monday morning on Fox, before offering up his campaign website. "Help me fight back. I’m going to stand up for [Barrett]. I hope people will stand up for me."
Sounds pretty desperate, Lindsey.
Texas Sen. John Cornyn told donors in a call last week that if Trump's approvals slumped any lower in the state, his race could get competitive real quick. And Democrat MJ Hegar’s $13.5 million haul in the third quarter has slashed Cornyn's cash advantage.
Surely, it was no accident that Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse devoted a good portion of his opening statement to directly implicating Cornyn in the GOP's plot to overturn the ACA through the courts. Although Sen. Cornyn has been claiming Barrett's confirmation isn't about overturning the ACA, Whitehouse noted the district court judge in Texas who initially struck down the law in the case headed to the Supreme Court was a former Cornyn aide. Oh, and coincidentally, the circuit court judge who wrote the majority opinion on appeal upholding that ruling was introduced in committee by Cornyn.
“Sen. Cornyn has filed brief after brief arguing for striking down the ACA," Whitehouse said, noting that Cornyn also led the failed Senate bid to repeal the ACA in 2017. "He has said ‘I’ve introduced and cosponsored 27 bills to repeal or defund Obamacare and I’ve voted to do so at every opportunity,’” Whitehouse added. "Please don't tell us this isn't about the Affordable Care Act."
Midway through Whitehouse's pretty damning walk down memory lane, Cornyn, watching from across the dais, removed his mask, as if he might mount a defense. But in the end, all Cornyn could do was try to shrug off Whitehouse's onslaught with a dismissive chuckle. For Republicans, Whitehouse charged, there would be "no washing your hands" of the demise of the ACA.
By the end of his time, Whitehouse sure had Cornyn's attention and, according to Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, other GOP senators can expect more of the same.
"Democrats will not stop telling the stories of Americans who could have their health care ripped away," Schumer promised in a Monday evening tweet.
Hanging the fall of the Affordable Care Act specifically and irrevocably on vulnerable Republicans and McConnell’s GOP majority is the best strategy Democrats can deploy. Voters can undoubtedly use a refresher on the GOP’s relentless march toward depriving tens of millions of health care coverage amid a flourishing pandemic.
Plus, Republicans surely thought they would get to fight this nomination battle on religious and moral grounds related solely to abortion. They were sadly mistaken.