While Donald Trump has officially nominated the anti-abortion and definitely not feminist appellate court judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, positioning her to fill the seat left vacant following the death of long-serving liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg just over a week ago, there are apparently a few options left open to congressional Democrats if they hope to block Barrett’s confirmation.
The President announced his pick from the new and improved(??) Melania Brand™ White House Rose Garden on Saturday evening, the Associated Press reports.
“I looked and I studied, and you are very eminently qualified,” Trump said, calling the demonic hyper-con law professor “a woman of remarkable intellect and character.”
With a likely majority of votes in the Senate, even after senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine made clear their intentions to vote against confirming whomever the President nominates, Republicans seems poised to confirm Barrett ahead of the presidential election, just as Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have called for. But according to a memo circulating on Capitol Hill this past week, the Democrats might still have some moves up their sleeves.
According to the memo, obtained by The Intercept, congressional Democrats are entertaining a number of strategies to delay Barrett’s confirmation process until after the Nov. 3 election on the chance that the GOP will lose its majority in the Senate. To delay, Democratic senators are urged to employ a wide variety of “dilatory tactics” to slow time down to a screeching halt, from objecting to routine unanimous consent agreements to forcing roll-call votes on motions to adjourn. Democratic representatives can apparently assist in this process, the memo says, perhaps by opening up another impeachment process or something similarly major that would force Senate legislators to stop whatever they’re doing and address what’s going on in the lower house.
In other words, the famously annoying and ineffective congressional Democrats might finally be able to put their number one skill, being really fucking annoying and ineffective, to good use! Not to be bonkers naïve, but, hey—it’s worth a shot.