All Your Wildest SCOTUS-Blocking Fantasies, Crushed
James Wallner, a former Senate Republican aide who currently serves as a senior fellow at the R Street Institute, suggested an unusual alternate approach for Democrats. In his view, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer should follow a counterintuitive strategy and immediately move to discharge the nomination from being considered by the Judiciary Committee to allow for an immediate floor vote. In Wallner’s view, Schumer should advance the argument that there is no time to adequately consider the nominee no matter what happens, so why not get the process done with.
In Wallner’s view, if 51 Republicans call Schumer’s bluff and support an immediate floor vote then it at least gets the presidential election back to focusing on the pandemic. However, if that doesn’t happen, he argues that it gives Democrats the opportunity to “find cracks” in the Republican coalition and put them on the defense by recasting the debate about whether there is a sufficient amount of time for a vote to take place rather than whether the Senate has the authority to confirm a nominee before an election.
