Impotent Dems

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and other “Morning Joe” panelists hammered Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and other Senate Democrats for agreeing to proceed with confirmation hearings for Brett Kavanaugh.

[...]

“I do not understand what these Democrats are thinking,” Scarborough said. “I don’t understand their lack of fight.”

“This process is illegitimate,” he continued. “It started illegitimately, as you said, with Merrick Garland, and now the Republicans have basically hidden 150,000 documents from Democrats that they have been begging for over the past several weeks. No judge in America would allow an opposing side to dump 150,000 documents on another party in a lawsuit the day before hearings started or a trial is started. I’m completely baffled. why do Democrats — why are they even showing up?”

[...]

“I don’t understand, just walk me through this,” [MSNBC contributor Sam] Stein said [to Sheldon Whitehouse]. “I hear from a lot of frustrated progressives who do follow this very closely. They hear you guys say this is illegitimate, they hear you guys note that the president is (implicated in) a co-conspirator crime, that there’s an investigation going on and that this shouldn’t proceed.”

“Yet the Democrats on the committee are not taking the most aggressive steps, they are not stepping out of the hearing as (host) Joe (Scarborough) illustrated and not releasing the documents that are supposedly committee confidential,” Stein continued. “What is the disconnect here? Why are you guys not fighting this more aggressively if you think this is such an existential threat?”

  Raw Story

As far as I'm concerned, this continuing rolling over makes the Dems complicit with the GOP.

But perhaps they don't really think it is an existential threat. Perhaps they're just screaming about it for party politics sake and don't really have a problem with Kavanaugh. Dems are a dead party.

Whitehouse insisted there was no reason to step outside the normal process for debating Supreme Court nominations.

“I can’t speak for others, but I think the committee process is the best place to make these points,” the senator said. “I don’t think Americans, frankly, respect people very much who walk out of their jobs when there’s a fight to be had, and I think it’s important we take this forum and have that fight.”

“Other people disagree, and I think that’s a very fair disagreement,” Whitehouse added. “I’m not criticizing them, but my feeling is when there’s a fight in front of you, go have it.”

Which is exactly the point of Stein and Scarborough (and Michael Avenatti*), among others. Dems aren't fighting. They're just crying foul.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

*

According to a Tuesday Politico report, the younger, aggressive Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee compromised with the older ones who hew more closely to tradition and decorum, deciding to attend but to hijack to proceedings less than a minute into Sen. Chuck Grassley’s (R-IA) opening statement.

[...]

[They are] remaining in lockstep, reportedly huddling in Sen. Dick Durbin’s (D-IL) office Tuesday night to hammer out strategy for the next day of hearings.

  TPM