Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is under fire from, ironically, the Left for not doing enough to oppose the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh.
Schumer received a letter Wednesday morning from thirteen progressive groups – including CREDO, Democracy for America, Indivisible, UltraViolet, and March for Women – stating that “anything less than a united caucus vote against Kavanaugh will be 'a massive failure of your leadership,'" according to The Huffington Post.
“The Supreme Court is on the line, and you are failing us,” the letter begins.
No senator who cares about our democracy should let a criminal co-conspirator like Donald Trump put anyone on the Supreme Court, and certainly not a nominee like Brett Kavanaugh. Kavanaugh is an extremist who will help institutionalize Trump's hate for a generation. He will end women's access to abortion, decimate Obamacare, supercharge voter suppression and gut the EPA. He could be Trump's get-out-of-jail free card when it comes to the Mueller investigation.
Your job as Senate Democratic leader is to lead your caucus in complete opposition to Trump’s attempted Supreme Court takeover and to defend everyone threatened by a Trump Supreme Court. But unbelievably, nearly two dozen Democrats have still not come out against Kavanaugh, and just last week, you helped Majority Leader Mitch McConnell fast track 15 Trump judicial nominees. That is not the leadership we need.
The Huffington Post explains:
Part of the progressive frustration with Schumer is over a deal he made with Sen. McConnell (R-Ky.) last week, when he agreed to expedite confirmation of 15 of President Donald Trump’s judicial nominees to lifetime federal court seats. The deal allowed Democratic senators to go home sooner for the Labor Day recess to spend more time campaigning.
Arguably, all those nominees could have made it through anyway, since Republicans have a majority in the Senate. But Democrats could certainly have delayed their confirmations and caused headaches for Trump and McConnell if they had fought back. And that fighting spirit is what many progressive activists want to see more of.
The progressive groups go on to say in the letter that "the only chance to stop Kavanaugh's confirmation is for every single Democrat to hold the line against him – not at the last minute when it's time to vote, but as a united Democratic caucus."
"Holding 49 Democrats is the only way we can succeed in pressuring flippable Republicans like Sens. Collins and Murkowski to listen to the Mainers and Alaskans who are demanding that they vote no on a judge who will deprive women control over their own bodies," the letter reads. "If you hold your caucus together, you force them to have to make a real choice, with very real consequences for their constituents. If you fail, you let them off the hook."
They go so far as to accuse Schumer of having a "strategy to sacrifice the Supreme Court in order to hold Democratic Senate seats" with the midterms around the corner.
"It is wrong to assume that a no vote on Kavanaugh puts red-state Democrats in electoral peril or somehow protects them from Republican attacks," they write.
Most likely in response to the letter, Schumer moved to close down the chamber floor Wednesday afternoon in protest of the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings.
“The hearings were able to continue, but only after the GOP agreed to quit floor business for the rest of the day,” The Washington Times reports. “Under Senate rules, committees need consent from both sides of the aisle to meet into the afternoon when the floor is also in session. Consent is almost always granted — but on Wednesday, Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer refused, saying he was fed up with the push to confirm the judge to the vacant seat on the Supreme Court.”
When President Trump announced Kavanaugh as his nominee, Schumer was one of many liberals and Democrats who vowed to #StopKavanaugh.
So far, aside from a series of objections by Democrats at the beginning of Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing on Tuesday, disruptions by protesters, and Schumer’s ploy to please his leftist critics, the proceedings have gone according to plan.