What Should Democrats Do About Gorsuch?

In this week’s politics chat, we discuss the politics of President Trump’s pick for the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch.

micah (Micah Cohen, politics editor): Welcome! This is a special post-Supreme Court pick chat, so we’ve invited our resident SCOTUS expert, Oliver Roeder, to join us.

On the agenda for today:

General impressions on the politics of Trump’s pick.What’s the deal with Gorsuch? Mainly: How would he affect the court’s ideological makeup? What issues could he tip the balance on?What are his confirmation chances? How hard will Democrats fight to block him?

Everyone ready?

clare.malone (Clare Malone, senior political writer): Are we going to talk about “the handshake”?

micah:

Maybe Trump was expecting to bring it in for the always manly handshake-to-hug?

harry (Harry Enten, senior political writer): Better to get an awkward handshake than no handshake at all, like Judge Hardiman got.

clare.malone: Well, Gorsuch handled the hand assault with aplomb. As a couple, they were not into the hug genre, I have to say. Respect. Hugs are overused in modern America.

micah: OK, that might be a record for one of these chat’s being derailed away from substance.

clare.malone: Sorry I’m not sorry. I have real thoughts: Gorsuch is a continuation of Trump/Stephen Bannon’s two-week “wow ’em” show for the base.

harry: Gorsuch is a great pick for conservatives. He’s also well-qualified (we’ll get into that a little later), so you can’t say this was a purely political pick.

ollie (Oliver Roeder, senior writer): One way to quantify the ideology of a federal judge like Gorsuch, as compared to those sitting on the Supreme Court, is something called “judicial common space” scores. This is essentially a mashup of justice voting records, the ideology of the nominating president, and the ideology of the judge’s home-state senators. By that measure, Gorsuch falls somewhere to the right of where Justice Antonin Scalia, who died last year, sat, ideologically.

micah: Ollie, you’re not really supposed to bring actual data into these chats.

ollie: Sorry not sorry.

clare.malone: Trump wants movement conservatives to feel taken care of quickly, to feel that there is real change from the Obama era — they are giving them the impression that the Trump era is comprehensively and quickly moving to change American life for the better. I think it’s a smart impressionistic move — make the people feel the feels.

natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): I guess I think this is very much a Politics 101 pick. Straight down the fairway. Exactly how you’re supposed to play it. Pick someone who fits your base’s ideological priors but who is well-qualified enough that he isn’t likely to create extra vetting problems. Caveat here being that Gorsuch hasn’t been exposed to the vetting wolves yet, so maybe this will all look foolish in a week.

clare.malone: And young.

natesilver: Yeah.

ollie: The youngest nominee since Thomas.

micah: So why do we automatically say he is “well-qualified”? I’ve seen that everywhere — including on our site.

clare.malone: Because America is classist, and we think that Ivy League = smart.

*Often Ivy League does mean smart.

natesilver: Ivy league shmivy league

ollie: One thing that’s underreported, Clare, is that he attended the University of Colorado at Denver for a summer. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

clare.malone: But, like, have you met the Harvard legacy admit crowd? Oof. I wouldn’t let them touch my stock trades with a 10-foot pole.

micah: I’m super freaking smart, and I didn’t go to an Ivy League school. TULANE UNIVERSITY FOR LIFE!

harry: I think we say well-qualified because (i) the American Bar Association gave him that seal — “unanimously well qualified” — when he was nominated for his current job; (ii) he draws comparisons to Scalia, who was widely regarded as very well-qualified; and (iii) check out this op-ed from former President Barack Obama’s solicitor general.

clare.malone: He’s also a Marshall scholar. So. That’s impressive.

micah: OK, fine … he’s well-qualified.

clare.malone: And people say he’s an engaging writer.

harry: Elena Kagan said he is a very good writer! And that’s what makes the politics so wonderful from Trump’s point of view: Many on the left in judicial circles like the guy, and conservatives like the record.

natesilver: Hmm. You have to justify that “many on the left” claim, Harry. So far, it’s one dude. It seems like people on the left don’t have a lot of great arguments against his credentials. But that’s different than saying they celebrate his jurisprudence, or whatnot.

harry: I think you’re reading too much into my words. They like the guy for his intellect.

clare.malone: He seems “not scary” to liberals, I think is what Harry might be getting at — in the Trump era, when a nominee seems not Mike Flynn-esque, they’re going to take a chance and say, “Maybe he’ll turn out less conservative on things than we think he will?”

ollie: SCOTUSblog put together a list of reactions to the nomination. Not exactly a comprehensive gauge of reaction, but the “against the nomination” list is a bit longer.

natesilver: I think the Democratic base is likely to regard him as being very scary within a week or so. He has a very conservative reading of the Constitution, which they won’t like.

harry: Are we getting into confirmation chances?

micah: Not yet.

natesilver: No, but I think people should be aware that credentials matter to elites, more so than to rank-and-file voters. Which doesn’t mean they aren’t important.

micah: I think that’s probably true, Nate. But I think Clare’s right that for Democratic elites (who will be voting on the nominee), it matters that Gorusch is a “normal” conservative.

harry: With a record like Scalia’s, I don’t suspect there’ll be much support on the left for Gorsuch. Then again, given the polarized times, I wouldn’t expect most liberals to vote for Trump’s nominee regardless. The question ultimately is how many Democrats vote to end a filibuster. And that’s where I think credentials do play a bigger role. Will they let this guy through? Or do they think he’s a lunatic? Is the fight here and now? Or is it worth torching someone else down the line? And I think credentials do play a role in that.

clare.malone: There is also the idea of saltiness over the Merrick Garland process, right? How much will that play in?

micah: A lot? That’s what some reporting suggests. Other reports suggest that Democrats may back off and save the real fight for a pick that would tip the ideological balance.

natesilver: A lot of this is optics instead of substance, and I wonder if we should be looking past the optics more.

micah: Hold that thought. One last question before we move to issues: There’s a theory (which I subscribe to) that Trump doesn’t win the 2016 election if conservatives aren’t thinking about this open Supreme Court seat. Basically, the theory holds that a lot of true-blue (red) conservatives held their nose and voted for Trump despite his apostasies because he promised them a justice they would love by releasing that