The Feinstein Flop
Senate Democrats have now made the mid-term elections a toss-up by allowing Diane Feinstein, the aging Californian, to hoist shame upon the party during the Kavanaugh confirmation process. Once known for un-wavering support for liberal constructs, such as presumed innocence, the right to privacy and due process, the political party has now lost its way in broad daylight. This is not a good time to fall apart as an opposition party. Democrats should read on.
While I voted for President Trump, I still think he needs robust opposition because his is a change presidency that could go too far. So far, so good - but let’s agree he must be held in check. His worst tendencies must not get the better of his office, and Democrats cannot just cede the moral high ground. But - - this is what Democrats on the senate judiciary committee have done.
Thanks to their private chicanery and public incivility, Trump’s approval rating just hit 50% (source: Rasmussen poll). And their women good/men bad strategy backfired. Republican women are now more committed to voting in the mid-term elections than their Democrat counterparts: 83% to 81% (source: NPR/PBS Marist). The out-party is supposed to rebound right about now. All they had to do was keep their noses clean and the House was theirs. But no - they had to act un-American. How did simple advice and consent turn into a political train wreck?
The short answer is this: Democrats appeared patently un-American to the electorate. They blabbed their intention to fight any nominee to the death. They whined and delayed in public. They were rude to a sitting federal judge. They associated their party with gonzo protesters. They sat on an allegation that should have been shared with the Republican committee chair at once. They violated a woman’s request for privacy and presumed a man’s guilt. It was a textbook cluster f*ck.
Americans expect the minority party to behave reasonably and (at the very least) responsibly. When many Democrats declared early they would not accept any Trump nominee for the Supreme Court (before Kavanaugh was even named) it just reminded 63 million Trump voters of the Left’s unreasonable agenda: anti-business, anti-church and anti-small town. Their tactics - the constant calls for delay, the hundreds of rude protesters and their verbal mistreatment of a sitting federal judge - struck even political independents as patently irresponsible. To wit, 58 percent of independent voters wanted Kavanaugh confirmed after the FBI could not corroborate the allegations of sexual assault (source: Harvard Harris poll).
Americans might not know every iota of congressional due process, but 75 percent believe Diane Feinstein was wrong to sit on Christine Blasey Ford’s letter (source: Harvard Harris). The senator’s interview with the judge took place in her office while she had Ms. Ford's allegations in hand. It would have been fair treatment to alert the man and ask for his side of the story. It would have been responsible (and un-partisan) to have given the letter to Chairman Grassley. But no - Feinstein opted to spring the letter’s existence right before the Senate Judiciary Committee was set to vote on the judge's confirmation.
An overwhelming majority of Americans believe sexual assault is a serious crime that should be reported to state law enforcement and tried in state courts. Most Americans also believe women should feel safe reporting sexual misconduct. Assuming one believes Ms. Ford’s memory, which senate Democrats still do, the letter’s leak to the press and the public hearing trivialized her sexual assault. Senator Feinstein may proclaim her own innocence, but she was party to forcing the weepy Ford into publicity the senator promised to prevent - a clear violation of Ms. Ford’s right to privacy.
Every American expects the judicial construct of presumed innocence to be applied equally to prevent judgement by the angry mob, who were present throughout Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation process. Few Americans bought into Senator Hirono’s (D-HI) spin that these hearings were a mere job interview (in which a mere preponderance of evidence could disqualify the judge). In fact, as Senator Collins (R-ME) eloquently explained Friday, senators must base their confirmation decision on a clear preponderance of evidence.
Susan Collins explained she required clear and convincing evidence. It was not enough that Ms. Ford’s story was credible: that is, it could be true. Collins correctly noted an absence of clarity (no time and place of the assault that might trigger others to recall the night) and too little that was convincing (such as Ford’s best friend not remembering the party or even knowing young Kavanaugh): which were needed to decide Ms. Ford's story must be true.
When senate Democrats ignored the presumption of innocence, I wondered how that might be perceived by black Americans. The film To Kill a Mockingbird came to mind: a white, teenage girl accusing a black man of sexual assault (with no corroboration), inciting an angry white-southern mob. After almost 4,000 blacks were lynched in the US between 1877 and 1950 - many for false accusations of sexually assaulting white women - the film alerted white audiences to what black communities knew all too well: an accused man - be he black or conservative - is entitled to a presumption of innocence until proven guilty to ensure true justice is not replaced by mob rule.
Don’t look now, but 36% of black Americans now approve of President Trump (source: Rasmussen poll). To be sure, black employment and rising wages are important factors, but that does not explain this sudden spike. It is plausible that watching liberals unfairly judge a conservative was a seminal moment for many black voters. If Democrats lose the black vote, then they have only themselves to blame. Bottom line: if a political party acts un-American, they cannot be trusted to govern America.