Democrats must fight Trump's supreme court pick tooth and nail

Trump is expected to announce his supreme court pick at any moment. This time, I hope Democrats don’t let us down again

As we wait for the name of Trump’s new US supreme court nominee, the name that keeps rising in my throat like bile is Merrick Garland.

Garland, of course, was Obama’s failed 2016 nominee to America’s top court. He was blocked by Republican leaders on Capitol Hill, who refused to budge on filling the supreme court vacancy until after the elections. Confident that Hillary Clinton would win, Democrats shrugged and went back to sleep.

For that reason, Garland is someone the Democrats prefer to forget. Unlike Garland, who was a centrist, it is certain that Trump’s choice will be rightwing, no matter how thin the nominee’s paper trail. The Republican base is already mobilized for a bare-knuckle fight. And though the Democrats have liberal billionaire Tom Steyer’s money and pledges from activist groups to try to block the nomination, my prediction is that Trump will win a second seat on this already right-tilting court.

My certainty is based on my reading of the Democrats. Senate Democrats simply do not know how to wage a bare-knuckle fight any more. Without Nancy Pelosi, I doubt they could have won and saved Obamacare, the last truly important battle they won.

The extreme right wouldn’t be so perilously close to consolidating a clear legal victory if the Democrats had played their cards differently when Antonin Scalia unexpectedly died in February, 2016. Instead of picking a liberal who would have excited the Democratic base, which had already taken up arms to reject the mainstream Hillary Clinton and embrace Bernie Sanders, President Obama opted for a “safe” pick. In picking Garland, Obama turned to someone so qualified and in the judicial center that even the Republicans would feel obliged to vote for him. Or, at least, that was the theory behind the choice of Garland.

The Garland nomination should be studied by anyone who wants to understand the differences between the leadership of Republicans and Democrats. McConnell, the Senate majority leader, didn’t just boldly announce that there would be no vote on the nominee. He demanded that his Republican colleagues refuse to even meet with Garland. Then he stuck to his guns.

Though Susan Collins, the woman we now place our hopes on to block a staunch anti-abortion supreme court justice, defied McConnell and met Garland, the majority flicked her off like an annoying bug and kept his ranks in line. When he most needed her vote, to confirm Neil Gorsuch after Trump won the White House, Collins was a yes. (Don’t place too much trust in her now, even with Roe v Wade on the line. Collins, a Maine moderate, is already saying some of Trump’s candidates meet her standard that they consider Roe settled law.)

The Democrats, meanwhile, basically threw up their hands. Briefly they considered tying the Senate in knots and shutting down the government over McConnell’s refusal to move the Garland nomination. But the Democratic leaders, even the sometimes feisty Harry Reid, decided such a move would be too risky and too irresponsible. It might hurt Hillary. They were afraid of getting covered in mud. Some of them even voted for Gorsuch after Hillary lost.

Now, though they are vowing to fight, the few Democratic senators and aides whom I have consulted are saying there is little they can do to stop the new nominee. They sound defeated at the starting gate. That is no way to win a knife fight. They have not learned anything from the Garland episode. They still sound unwilling to burn the house down in order to prevent a catastrophe for the country, a US supreme court that will march the country rightward for at least a generation more. A supreme court where Clarence Thomas will be in the mainstream, not on the fringe. A supreme court that overturns Roe v Wade and lets the states decide whether to allow a woman to have an abortion.

There are signs that a few Democrats do, at least, realize how McConnell snookered them in 2016. The Huffington Post recently captured their voices in a piece headlined Democrats Regret Not Fighting Harder for Obama’s Supreme Court Pick. Here is a sampling of what they say, looking back on Obama’s botched chance to change the country’s legal course: “We should have shut down the Senate,” Democratic senator for Hawaii Brian Schatz said Tuesday. “We made a calculation that we were going to win the 2016 [presidential] election and confirm a nominee. And it didn’t work out.” And: “Hindsight’s 20/20,” said New Mexico senator Martin Heinrich. “I think I would have liked us to take an even harder line.”

But Connecticut’s Richard Blumenthal is more typical of the defeatist, Democratic attitude, “[McConnell] had the votes then. He has the votes now. Self-immolation was not an option. I have no idea what we could have really done.”

If they had taken the risk and if Obama had nominated a firebrand worth fighting for, the Democrats could have forced and risked a shutdown. They could have made a principled case that the future of fair jurisprudence was at stake. They might have ignited the support and enthusiasm of labor, women, and minorities, the constituencies needed to win the election in November. Instead, they sat down, lost a supreme court seat and the election.

Why don’t the Democrats know how to fight anymore? It’s complicated. This generation of Senate Democrats often seem cowed by the right-wing and beholden to monied interests who care more about the wellbeing of corporate America than the conservative wolf at the door. Baby boom Democrats like Blumenthal, who dishonestly portrayed his own personal Vietnam war history (Blumenthal received repeated draft deferments but spoke of his “service” there decades later) seem never have come to terms with not serving in that unjust, unwinnable war. Other Democrats of this generation seems obsessed with being viewed as “responsible” and moderate.

Meanwhile, they have lost the devotion of their party’s core constituencies, especially young voters. These voters are woke and virulently anti-Trump. They abhor police misconduct, endemic sexual harassment, babies snatched from their parents at the border and the rise of white nationalist, fascist forces on the right. These and other causes have awakened them. They just stunned the Democratic party and its establishment supporters with the primary victory in New York of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Senate Democrats need to pay attention and take a page out of Mitch McConnell’s playbook and organize their hearts out, like Ocasio-Cortez. It’s time to fight fire with fire.

• Jill Abramson is a Guardian US columnist