Senate Republicans are intent on jamming through the Supreme Court nomination of Amy Coney Barrett, a right-wing extremist who is uniquely prepared for Donald Trump. See, Barrett already has experience in using the Supreme Court to steal an election—she was on the legal team that was on the ground in Florida representing George W. Bush in 2000, the election that was handed to him by the Supreme Court.
Were she worthy of actually sitting on the Supreme Court, she would vow right now to recuse herself from a Trump election challenge. (But if she were worthy of the seat, she wouldn't accept the nomination in these circumstances in the first place.) It looks like Senate Republicans are setting up this possible avenue for Trump to stay in power: a Supreme Court that selects him. They're doing it at their own peril, because the public is not at all on Trump's side on this one, and the Supreme Court isn't going to be saving any Republican Senate seats. This is further evidence of just how much the GOP has become the GTOP—Groveling to Trump Old Party. They are rushing at breakneck speed to get her on the court.
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The schedule Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham has set up starts with four days of hearings the week of Oct. 12, which gives them time to get her out of committee and to the Senate floor by the last week in October. It's also a testament to how precarious Graham's own reelection is—Democratic challenger Jaime Harrison has been a juggernaut in fundraising and is tied with Graham in the most recent Quinnipiac poll. Graham needs to wring out every Trumpist Republican vote he can and trust that voter suppression in his state means he's not swamped by voters enraged by, well, everything Republican.
That's not the only bad polling for Republican senators anxious to secure this seat. Polling in recent weeks has shown that voters trust Joe Biden more than Donald Trump to choose a Supreme Court Justice. Since Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death, polls have shown that voters believe it's too close to an election for an appointment and that the seat should be filled by the winner of the presidential race. A national poll by Reuters-Ipsos even found 49% of Republicans saying the nomination should wait, along with 84% of Democrats—who are going to be massively energized by this specific issue to vote and work to get Democrats elected in November.
Voters are inclined to punish senators for Supreme Court votes, political science professors Elizabeth Simas and Alex Badas at the University of Houston write at The Washington Post. They've completed a study in which they found "voters can and do punish their senators when they disagree with those senators’ confirmation votes." They look specifically at the 2018 midterm elections following the Republican boycott of President Obama's nominee, Merrick Garland, and the confirmation of both Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. The quick confirmation of Barrett—and the first in U.S. history this close to an election—will consolidate some Republican votes, the authors believe. But their basic conclusion is this: "the more people disagree with the way their senator voted on these Supreme Court confirmations, the less likely they are to vote for that senator."
This year voters are focused on a pandemic. They know that there is a very real Supreme Court threat that their health insurance protections will be take away. They will learn that Barrett has in public statements proven herself to be hostile to the Affordable Care Act. Hell yes, this will be a motivating issue for voters, making it a very precarious choice for those vulnerable Republicans.
