Kavanaugh hearings highlight corporate control of US Supreme Court
6 September 2018
The Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court are a predictably stage-managed affair.
For the Trump administration and the congressional Republicans, and the nominee himself, the sole aim in the hearings is to avoid any self-inflicted wounds, secure in the knowledge that the 51-49 Republican majority will suffice to push through the nomination. The Democrats will not only do nothing to stall it, but will supply some votes of their own to back the right-wing judge.
Hence Kavanaugh’s presentation of himself as a sincere do-gooder, who feeds the homeless at Catholic Charities and coaches girls’ basketball, not the reactionary who has given 50 speeches to the ultra-right Federalist Society during his 12 years as a federal judge, before which he played a key role in the attempted political coup against Bill Clinton led by Kenneth Starr.
Senate Democrats are seeking to make a show of opposition to the nomination to promote illusions in the Democratic Party as the “resistance” to the Trump administration and its ultra-right policies, while allowing a select group of Democrats facing reelection bids in November in states carried by Trump in 2016 to vote for Kavanaugh.
Minority Leader Charles Schumer has flatly rejected demands from civil rights, women’s and gay groups that he engage in protracted delaying tactics to block the nomination, let alone repeat the methods employed by his Republican counterpart, Mitch McConnell, who blocked Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland in 2016 so that Trump could fill the vacancy on the court with his ultra-right nominee Neil Gorsuch.
In such matters, the Republican Party is invariably the more…