A dead end for Democrats

ow that Democrats have scored a victory by defeating President Donald Trump’s plan to repeal and replace Obamacare, they smell blood in the water. But in pledging to block Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch, they may be overplaying their hand and inviting bigger problems down the road.

The resistance to Gorsuch is based not on the nominee’s background, qualifications, or courtroom experience. Those are impeccable. He breezed through his confirmation hearings without any gaffes or slipups. No, the Democratic opposition is fanned by the suspicion that Gorsuch will somehow put the law ahead of his personal feelings.

This bizarre attitude was summed up by Democratic Senator Kamala Harris of California, who said: “Judge Gorsuch has consistently valued narrow legalisms over real lives.” In other words, a good judge should base his rulings on outcomes and not on the law itself. …

One of Barack Obama’s legacies as president is the “empathy rule” in judicial selection. Before nominating Sonia Sotomayor to the nation’s highest bench, in 2009, Obama said an important consideration was “that quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people’s hopes and struggles as an essential ingredient for arriving at just decisions and outcomes.”

Democrats have now turned that criterion into a weak excuse for filibustering Gorsuch’s nomination.

This is a dead end for Democrats. Refusing Gorsuch a straight up-or-down vote will force majority leader Mitch McConnell to do away with Senate rules that require 60 votes to break a filibuster. That means Trump can choose as his next Supreme Court nominee someone far more contentious and less empathetic than Gorsuch, and Democrats will have no one to blame but themselves.