This really isn’t that complicated. There are only two possible outcomes to the Kavanaugh nomination Either Brett Kavanaugh will be confirmed, or he won’t. There are only two sides here, Democratic and Republican, and each outcome will provoke a largely predictable reaction from each side. This isn’t pure speculation, there is polling data, and even voter psychology information to draw from. And right now, there is only one outcome that offers any hope for the Republicans. If that.
The Democrats
Kavanaugh gets confirmed — With the completion of the palsied FBI investigation, and the natural herd mentality of Republicans in general, this is becoming the most likely conclusion. And if it happens, you can forget about the blue wave, we’ll likely have a flood of biblical proportions. Women voters will drop everything to make their voices heard, and polling shows that GOP women hate Kavanaugh almost as much as Democratic women do.
The Republicans broke one of the most basic tenets of electoral politics. Never do stupid shit right before an election. The old saying is that “time heals all wounds,” and never is this more true than in politics. Especially in the era of Trump. How many times has Der Gropinfuror committed some political atrocity, only to have it completely forgotten by the next atrocity two weeks later? But the simple act of nominating a justice close to an election, while it may have been blatantly rubbing the Democrats nose in it, was not the fatal strategic error.
It was the candidate. If Trump hadn’t gotten greedy, if he had listened to McConnell, and nominated a bland, middle of the road, conservative POS candidate like Neil Gorsuch, none of this would have happened. The Democratic outrage would have been restricted to the candidates willingness to overturn Roe v Wade. But with Kavanaugh’s sexual assault allegations not conclusively disproven, it brings fresh outrage from a whole spectrum of women who may otherwise have been passive. Mark my words, if Kavanaugh is confirmed, House Democratic candidates will be running in part by their willingness to use congressional oversight to get to the bottom of the whole Kavanaugh debacle.
Kavanaugh is defeated — Brett Kavanaugh is the Democratic dream nominee, because, no matter what the outcome is, the result is a net positive for Democrats to tun on. As I stated above, if Kavanaugh wins, the Democrats stoke outrage at his confirmation. But if Kavanaugh loses, the Democrats can run on accomplishment. As well as the Democrats over performed in the 2017 Virginia state elections, and the special elections since Trump won, accomplishments electorally have been few and far between.
But stopping Brett Kavanaugh is a signature achievement. That’s like trading in your Subaru for a Mercedes. The Democratic rallying cry writes itself; “Look! If we can do this when we’re in the minority, just think what we can accomplish if we’re in the majority! You want a check on the excesses of El Pendejo President? Vote Democratic!” Nothing succeeds like success, and a Kavanaugh rejection would have the side benefit of demoralizing Republicans 30 days out from the election.
Tge Republicans
Kavanaugh is confirmed — Although this is obviously the ultimate desired outcome for Republicans, and one that Mitch McConnell is working feverishly to obtain, in the current conditions it is short sighted, and may well work out to be counter productive for the GOP.
Right now, polling shows that the enthusiasm gap between Democrats and Republicans is narrowing quickly. Part of this is normal, historically Republicans don’t tend to get really interested in an election until the baseball playoffs start. But the GOP chorus, conducted by Glorious Bleater, is heralding this as a grassroots uprising in favor of Brett Kavanaugh. It may well be, but, depending on the outcome, it may well only be temporary.
Two things are already known about Republican voters. They respond to fear, and urgency. And right now Trump is stoking both of those things like a steam locomotive going up the Rocky Mountains. And the results are showing up in the polling. But what happens when Kavanaugh gets confirmed?
Most likely, the Republican voters go back to sleep. Once Kavanaugh is confirmed, the crisis is over. Republicans are bullies by nature, and they are totally results oriented. If Kavanaugh wins, they won’t pay the slightest bit of attention to the ludicrous set up for the Kavanaugh-Blasey Ford hearing, with five minute increments for questioning, or the sham FBI follow up investigation. They’ll spurt Pabst Blue Ribbon from their noses, elbow each other in the ribs, and laugh and brag about how easily they threw down on the libtards, and carried the day. Hell, Trump has been promising them a red wave anyway, and a positive outcome on Kavanaugh could well fortify that in their minds, and lead to complacency. And with Kavanaugh over and done with, and everybody back home campaigning, there isn’t another artificial crisis to be manufactured. What are they gonna run on, their tax cuts? They can’t really run on Kavanaugh, especially Republican House members in suburban districts.
And one more thing to consider. It is my firm belief that once Kavanaugh is confirmed, or any conservative justice, most of the evangelicals will wave a cheery goom-bye to Donald Trump. As a greedy, unscrupulous, profligate hedonist, Trump flies in the face of everything the evangelicals cynically profess to believe in. Once the Supreme Court is generationally tilted to the right, the evangelicals will scrape the Trump shit off of the bottom of their shoe without a second thought.
Kavaanugh is defeated —
This outcome alone provides a glimmer of hope for the GOP in the upcoming election. This allows the Republicans the optimal running strategy. They can stoke GOP base anger and outrage over the underhanded smear tactics of the Democrats that destroyed the good name of an innocent judge, and pile on more fear about what new horrors the next two years may hold if the Democrats prevail in either chamber of congress. A Kavanaugh defeat makes it possible for GOP leadership to turn him into a martyr, and a rallying cry to man the ramparts, and defeat the filthy infidels. Personally, I find it rather ironic that a political party that professes to hate Islamic terrorism so much would stoop to the traditional terrorist tactic or martyrdom, but hey, you gotta go with what you got.
But even that may not be a sure thing. I heard two different GOP political strategists yesterday, one on CNN and one on MSNBC, both saying that there were fears among senior GOP leaders that a Kavanaugh defeat could actually be catastrophic for the GOP in November.
This is because Trump and the GOP are hopelessly incompetent, and impotent at governing. They have already failed miserably at repealing Obamacare, turning clerical workers into mini-me’s of Trump with their tax cuts, and even building a stupid, frigging wall. All of these things are factors that led to depressed GOP enthusiasm going into November. If they can’t even get a stupid Supreme Court nominee through the Senate when they don’t need any Democratic help, what’s the point? Why bother going out in the cold to vote for these chuckleheads, when they can’t even be trusted to remember to take the garbage out on Thursday night?
That pretty well seems to sum it up. By picking pretty much the worst possible nominee in the world for a Supreme Court justice, Trump has taken what should have been a purely partisan, but non controversial exercise, and turned it into yet another existential threat for the GOP heading into what was already rough waters in November. We’ll know about the Kavanaugh results in 72 hours or less, and the impact of that result in 33 days.
