A variation of this kind of propaganda can be paraphrased as saying that the Democrats should defer to a permanent extreme right-wing majority by confirming Gorsuch for Scalia's seat. The argument goes that Democrats should only contest the next open seat, which is likely to be vacated by one of the current minority of liberals on the bench. Such apologists claim that the "next confirmation fight will be Armageddon," not this one. This is the rationale that Coons seemed to adopt without disclosing any logic by which his support for Gorsuch now could affect any future vote on a subsequent supposedly even more important right-wing nominee. Coons apparently thought he can persuade his constituents of the attractions of birds in the bush with this argument. It could not do so in 2017, when politics won the argument.
The plutocratic faction of the Democrats that uses such lame excuses prefers to be ruled by a permanent majority of plutocratic judicial supremacists. They can then blame on the Constitution the plutocracy that pays them to vote for plutocratic policies. To disguise their role, at key historic junctures like the Gorsuch nomination, they pull out of the air such idiotic "principles" as these to justify conceding power to Republicans as proxies for plutocracy.
They warn of the bogeyman that Majority Leader "McConnell will almost certainly launch the so-called 'nuclear option'" to confirm Gorsuch by repealing the filibuster rule. They argue that this is a reason the Democrats should not filibuster Gorsuch and concede to McConnell without forcing him to repeal the rule. But others speculate that the confirmation "could still all fall apart" due to lack of support for changing the filibuster rule. This flawed tactic of preemptive capitulation maintains that it will be useful to keep the Democrats' powder dry for some mythical future when they will finally fight for progressive values. Thus they would paradoxically preserve the undemocratic filibuster rule by never using it themselves. Their presumption is that if they do not force the Republicans to vote to repeal the filibuster rule for Gorsuch then Republicans will allow the rule to stay in place for the next nomination contest, which is the real "Armageddon."
This is complete nonsense, of course.
First, a rule that cannot be used for fear it will disappear if it is used had no value worth preserving. The Gorsuch appointment threatens to deliver the decisive vote on the pivotal question of legalized corruption that Republicans are willing to fight for. The plutocracy has clearly prioritized getting Gorsuch on the Court. There could be no more important use of the filibuster rule than to restore democracy by denying anyone else like Gorsuch a seat on the Court.
Second, even if the false assertion were accepted as true, that the next appointee will be even more important than Gorsuch for entrenching plutocracy, then Republicans would only be even more likely to repeal the filibuster rule for that next appointment, rather than less likely. If Democrats fail to oppose cloture this time, this same "incoherent argument" would require them to unilaterally disarm in all future contests in the same interest of preserving the abstract existence of the rule, rather than using it. Whether now or later, whenever the Democrats filibuster to deny a Trump Supreme Court nomination the Republicans will be forced to choose between the continued existence of the filibuster rule for their own long term interest or marshalling the votes to sacrifice it in the interest of having another extremist Federalist Society justice reconstitute the Roberts Court's plutocratic majority.
Third, by not ever using the filibuster rule themselves, Democrats would only preserve the rule for use by Republicans when they are next in a minority.
Fourth, further demonstrating their continued failure to serve as an authentic opposition party, by deploying such logically empty excuses for serving plutocracy, Democrats will continue to lose the support of voters at the polls in 2018 as they become seen by even more voters as a party of corrupt and hated hypocrites incapable of defending the political values they espouse at election time on the basis of unpersuasive reasons of process. Further election losses would make it even less likely that Democrats would be able to stop future extreme right-wing Trump nominees, whether or not the filibuster rule survives Gorsuch.
Historic Importance
The fact that Republicans are willing to take clear aim and threaten to shoot themselves in their own foot by abolishing the filibuster rule shows the profound significance of the Gorsuch nomination to them. There has never been, at any previous time in American history, a Supreme Court nominee who would be worse for the republic and better for the oligarchy than Gorsuch would be right now. No single appointee in the past would have had a more predictably decisive impact on perpetuating oligarchic rule and thereby drowning democracy in the swamp of systemic plutocratic corruption that now dominates both political parties as a result of Supreme Court decisions.
The Roberts 5 constituted a menace to American democracy for a decade as the most plutocratic, corrupting, right-wing Court majority since Dred Scott. Their profound damage to the Constitution, by 5-4 decisions in cases like Shelby County's evisceration of the Voting Rights Act on the basis of antebellum pro-slavery legal theory and in their line of reviled pro-corruption decisions including Citizens United and McCutcheon, was interrupted only by Justice Scalia's death last year. None of the Roberts 5 responsible for these rulings had either inadequate legal credentials -- being mostly graduates of the usual elite law schools -- or otherwise defective resumes. Yet they have all committed what Chief Justice John Marshall called "treason to the Constitution" for political advantage.
The current Court's 4-4 deadlock between this extreme right-wing Republican political faction and moderate Democratic liberals has provided the single bright spot in the failed politics of 2016. The ideologically neutralized Supreme Court has created some space for the more ideologically balanced lower federal courts to furnish some geographically scattered respite for relative political sanity, compared to the rest of the federal government.
One of the more ill-informed arguments by plutocratic liberals is that an ideologically deadlocked eight-justice Court is unsustainable or otherwise institutionally dysfunctional. The truth is just the opposite. The current partisan deadlock has removed from the Court's docket the most politicized cases that typically lead to the most illegitimate judicial supremacist decisions. The past year has witnessed relief from rule by an illegitimate juristocracy as the Court, due to circumstances not inclination, tended to remain within its proper constitutional powers.
This modest little flame celebrating the survival of the Constitution's checks and balances flickering against the descending political darkness will be extinguished if Trump is allowed to fill the Scalia seat with yet another extreme and effective right-wing political operative straight out of the plutocratic Federalist Society swamp of ideologues. Neil Gorsuch would occupy the right wing of the already extremely right-wing Roberts Five.
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