Indivisible meetings are spreading like wildfire across the country. Spirited protests against Donald Trump's racist Muslim ban persist this week, including in places like Minneapolis, MN, and Columbia, SC. But some beltway pundits are floating crap like, "Democrats are in real danger of overplaying their hand right now," and some people are arguing they should wait for the next Supreme Court pick to go to the mat. That's what UC–Irvine law professor Richard Hasen told NPR:
He suggests it might be smarter to save the political clout for the time when any of the court's three oldest justices — 83-year-old Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 80-year-old Anthony Kennedy, and 78-year-old Stephen Breyer — might retire. If any of them were to leave during the Trump administration, he notes, that "would really change the balance of power on the Court."
There is no world in which Democrats should wait to fight this fight. Here's three things to keep in mind:
1) If the Democrats don't mount a filibuster effort to block Neil Gorsuch, they risk demoralizing a base that's more energized right now than it has been at any time since it united to elect the nation's first black president.
2) Some argue the effort is doomed because even if Democrats hold the caucus together to deny Republicans the 60-vote threshold to advance the Gorsuch nomination, McConnell could change the rules to require a simple majority vote. LET HIM DO IT! It will absolutely incense progressives who are already on fire. That's great for Democrats in 2018.
3) It's infinitely better for Democrats to force McConnell to “go nuclear” sooner rather later because it benefits Democrats to fight this battle BEFORE the 2018 midterms. A radicalized Democratic base—that knows their lawmakers fought for them and McConnell simply changed the rules at his whimsy—will be more motivated to hit the polls in the midterms than at any time since 2006. This will not change the crappy 2018 math for Senate Democrats, but it could certainly help deliver control of the House to Democrats (not to mention all the state legislative races that could shift). Make no mistake: Regaining control of the House would be the single most important legislative lever we could possibly have to blunt the assault Trump and the GOP are mounting on our democracy.
But, if Senate Democrats choose to cede ground on the Gorsuch nomination, Hasen is exactly right about this:
"If [Senate Democratic leader Charles] Schumer and the other Democrats roll over, what is potentially likely to happen is that there will be some Democrats on the left who will try to primary these senators — who will try to act like a Tea Party on the left and try to enforce some ideological discipline on senators who are not willing to take a broader stand," Hasen says.
That could have dire consequences for Democratic numbers in the Senate in the election two years from now. In 2018 Republican incumbents are defending only eight Senate seats, while Democrats are defending 23, 10 of them in states carried in the 2016 election by Donald Trump.
Get that? “Dire.”
Rolling over = worse math for Senate Democrats.
Fighting like hell = better math for House Democrats.
There is no world right now in which rolling over makes more sense than fighting like hell.