‘Jaded’ liberals struggle in anti-Kavanaugh fight
Opposition to nominee moderate Democrats have deemed well qualified has been difficult
The two dozen or so liberal activists who had gathered in a darkened cafe on a sticky evening recently were wrestling with a familiar challenge: how to persuade Susan Collins, Maine’s moderate Republican senator, to vote no.
She had already helped sink her party’s effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and activists this past Tuesday understood that they need to rally the same fervent clamor and rejectionist energy to pressure her to vote no again — this time on the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee.
The problem, so far, isn’t so much with her as with them. “How do I respond if they are so, so jaded?” asked Susie Crimmins, recounting with frustration her difficulty persuading a pair of neighbors who lobbied Collins on health care to come back out. “They say she won’t listen.”
The confirmation fight over Kavanaugh was once billed as the mother of all Supreme Court battles, a fight to the death with the court’s ideological balance on the line. Advocacy groups raised seven-figure war chests, warning that Kavanaugh poses an existential threat to abortion rights, the Affordable Care Act and checks on presidential power. Activist ground troops were put on call.
And with Republicans clinging to a singleseat Senate majority, anti-Kavanaugh forces figured they needed just to hold Democrats together in opposition while turning two Republican senators against the nominee — or just one, if Sen. John McCain of Arizona remains unavailable for a final vote as he battles brain cancer.
Yet across the country this August, energizing and sustaining on-the-ground opposition to a nominee whom most Republicans and some moderate Democrats have deemed well qualified has been difficult, especially when liberal energy is intensely focused on midterm elections less than 90 days away.
“It’s kind of like, how do we go on? It’s so hard,” Barbara Nelson, a liberal activist from Stanton, Iowa, said after a town hall meeting in Corning, Iowa, where Sen. Chuck Grassley, a Republican who serves as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, had met with constituents who were evenly divided over the nomination. “My only hope is that if you just keep saying it often enough, maybe they’ll start believing it.”
In Washington, Democrats have struggled to score points against Kavanaugh, a 12-year veteran of the federal bench, pouring considerable energy into a fight with Republicans over access to papers from the years he worked in the White House. Court-focused organizers have found themselves competing with an almost daily barrage of other Trump administration actions, and have struggled to sustain pressure through the summer doldrums. An advertising blitz without real grass-roots support can go only so far with seasoned politicians. “I always want to hear from my constituents,” Collins told reporters Wednesday after an unrelated event in Orono, Maine. “What is not effective is when these advocacy groups spend millions of dollars on attack ads jamming my phone lines with out-of-state callers.”
Even Washington organizers concede things will need to pick up.
“We have a ways to go in terms of achieving the level of mobilization that we need to see,” said Brian Fallon, the executive director of Demand Justice, a group that promotes progressive judicial nominees, even as he argued that there was a path to defeating Kavanaugh’s nomination.
Fallon and others are hoping that an August blitz centered on the Senate’s nearly two-week recess can provide a jolt. Larger national advocacy groups — including Planned Parenthood Action Fund and Protect Our Care — told reporters Monday that they had more than 100 “actions” planned in key states, from letter writing and phone banks to rallies.
In Alaska, voters have been inundated with broadcast and online advertisements targeting Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican who, like Collins, supports abortion rights. And in Nevada, Sen. Dean Heller, the most endangered Republican senator up for re-election, has faced a similar barrage.
The National Rifle Association, the Judicial Crisis Network and Americans for Prosperity have matched liberal groups, putting up millions of dollars to target the airwaves and mailboxes of many of the swing states where they believe they can drive a decisive wedge between vulnerable Democratic senators and their party. The Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion group, held recent rallies in Indiana, Missouri and North Dakota, Republican states where Democratic senators are up for re-election.
“It’s premature to consider anyone a lock,” said Brian Walsh, the president of America First Policies, which is working for Kavanaugh’s confirmation. “Until I hear the words ‘I will vote yes,’ nobody is a lock.”