Gorsuch is even worse than Scalia and Roberts, because he may be smarter, a better writer, and personally more polished in service of his right-wing politics. It would be difficult to find a worse nominee to break this Court's current ideological impasse. He represents a tiny 1% demographic of plutocrats. By allowing such a nomination the Democrats would only compound Obama's feckless or fake strategic failure to fill the seat with a clearly progressive recess appointee when he had the chance.
Swing Issue
Of the Democrats who know enough about him to voice an opinion on Gorsuch, nearly 4 in 5 are either somewhat or strongly opposed to him. Of these, 61% know it is very important that he not be confirmed. Any Senator who, like Manchin, Heitkamp, Donnelly and Bennet, votes for cloture needed to understand in advance that he or she is going to face a campaign by progressives to remove him or her from office at the next primary or general election on the basis of this single vote. It can be safely predicted that no other vote prior to the 2018 election, other than for war or for another similar Supreme Court nominee, could be as consequential as the Gorsuch cloture vote.
Its plutocratic faction has already seriously undermined the Democratic Party by taking the risk of nominating the weaker presidential candidate in 2016 in order to preserve their corrupt control over the party. The Democratic Party extorted support from independent Sanders voters in the general election for its corrupt plutocratic candidate on the grounds that loss of the Supreme Court was too important a risk to take with their votes. The plutocracy faction could risk turning the presidency over to a clown by nominating their weakest, most disliked candidate; but Sanders voters who were cheated out of the nomination and thus victory in the general election -- the argument went -- should nevertheless not risk losing the Supreme Court by refusing to support the candidate they had opposed.
How they handled this Supreme Court appointment on which they campaigned would clearly define the Democrats' utility as an opposition party. If they could not muster the votes to defeat cloture for Gorsuch and any other nominee like him, then they would not be worth retaining in the Senate at all. The defection of four Democrats made it easier for Republicans to abolish the filibuster. They deserve pushback from progressives in this new world of a better informed electorate
It would have been better to clean the slate and remove some or all of them in favor of a new, authentic, opposition party had Democrats been incapable of rising to serve the public interest on this historic occasion. The way Democrats usually serve the plutocracy is to lose to it by a single vote. It is significant that this time seemed to be different due to public awareness of the importance of the Gorsuch nomination.
Even the inexperienced Trump knew that, aside from national security, "the most important decision a president of the US makes is the appointment of a Supreme Court justice." This is exponentially more true than usual about this particular appointment. Beyond Sen. McConnell's creation of a new political confirmation standard in 2016 for this very reason, other Republicans also reflected the same knowledge about the historic importance of this seat and of the Gorsuch appointment to fill it.
The leading right-wing activist group targeting the Court's membership announced they would spend $10 million of dark money on ads supporting Gorsuch. For the first time the plutocracy hired a prominent Wall St. lobbying firm to advance what they view as this "incredibly important nomination." In his hearings Gorsuch refused to admit knowledge of the source of this money.
This zeal on the right is unsurprising because the Gorsuch nomination will determine whether the Swamp's systemic plutocratic corruption will be perpetuated, most likely for decades. Among his other outstanding qualities for the plutocracy, Gorsuch, at 49, is also relatively young for a Supreme Court Justice. If the average age of departing justices is any guide, Gorsuch will plague Millennials throughout most of their working lives, contributing decisively to their economic inequality.
Real transfer of money is at stake in his appointment. As data from one study shows, "through neoliberal income re-distribution policies, 1980-2014 ... every nine adults in the bottom 90% contributed a total of $61,200 to each individual in the top 10%" in 2014, for example, when compared to what they would have received if everyone had shared equally in economic growth that year. Those policies enabling economic plunder by plutocrats were bought by them from corrupt politicians within the plutocratic system maintained by the Supreme Court. The profits made from that system pays for those ads to support Gorsuch in order to ensure that this class-warrior will help perpetuate the corrupt system.
Democrats who claim this is not the "Armageddon" nomination either do not care about the ripped-off 90% or are pretending that they know better than the Republicans who are mounting "the most robust campaign for a Supreme Court nominee in history." The reason Democrats take the contrary position is that the money invested by plutocrats in this campaign will finance negative ads aimed against vulnerable Democratic senators who are therefore inclined to invent excuses to lay low on the Gorsuch nomination, as they do on anything else important to the plutocracy. The two earliest traitors who need to be primaried in 2018 are Manchin (D-WV) and Heitkamp (D-ND). By taking themselves out of the plutocrats' cross hairs relatively early, they transferred the target to the backs of other vulnerable Democrats, two of whom, Donnelly (D-IN) and Bennet (D-CO), quickly succumbed. They have undoubtedly not just been paid for their votes, but even for the timing of announcing their vote, which would have had less impact if delayed until the day of the vote.
When Manchin justified his betrayal of party loyalty on grounds that "I have not found any reasons why this jurist should not be a Supreme Court justice," he answered the wrong question. That statement could apply to nearly anyone. The problem is to find a single reason meaningful to the economic interests of 90% of his constituents why Gorsuch should be a Supreme Court justice. What has he done of any remote service for the 90% who have been robbed by a system rigged in the Supreme Court to work against them?
Progressive and Independent voters who punished Democrats in 2016 for nominating an influence peddler like Clinton to lead the nominal opposition party let it be known that a cloture vote for Gorsuch, or for any other future Federalist Society nominee, will be a similar deal-breaker for the Senate Democrats. The adverse impact of a Gorsuch appointment on further entrenching plutocratic corruption will be even greater than would have resulted from electing another Clinton for four years. Gorsuch is a worse long-term threat to democracy than Trump. Just as Clinton was vulnerable in 2016, Democratic Senators from an unusually vulnerable 25 states are up for reelection in 2018.
Progressives should make it clear they will not just stay home this time, as is reported to have been a decisive factor in 2016. They needed to find a way to give collective notice that they will vote in the primary and general election to defeat any Senator who fails to filibuster Gorsuch. This is too important a juncture in history to employ half measures. The full measure requires a strategy to reliably swing the primary and general elections away from those Democrats who provide no reason for progressives to support them at this historical juncture decisive to the future of democracy.
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