Republicans won a great, pyrrhic victory with Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation
If 1991 ushered in the Year of the Woman, 2018 is setting us up for the Decade of the Woman
The Republican Party just experienced an enormous victory over the weekend. A pyrrhic victory, but a meaningful one.
On Saturday, the U.S. Senate voted 50-48 in favour of confirming Brett Kavanaugh as an associate justice to the Supreme Court. For a while, his nomination appeared to be in turmoil: Christine Blasey Ford, who testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee late last month, accused Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her back when they were teens. Two other women — Deborah Ramirez and Julie Swetnick — came forward with their own allegations, but the committee did not give them the opportunity to speak.
After the completion of a last-minute supplementary FBI background check (which the Democrats allege wasn't much of a "check") the Senate voted to confirm Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. This marked the completion of the Republican long-term strategy of creating a solidly conservative majority on the Supreme Court. Calls for his impeachment began before he took his oath of office. That anger may resonate to next month's midterms, and beyond.
Kavanaugh is not the first Supreme Court justice to face allegation of sexual misconduct, of course. Back in 1991, Clarence Thomas faced accusations of sexual harassment from Anita Hill, who was subject to questioning at the hands of an all-male Senate Judiciary Committee. The adversarial display galvanized many American women to do what they could to change the system, and the following year — the so-called "Year of the Woman" — saw a record 47 women elected to the House, and four to the Senate.
But if 1991 ushered in the Year of the Woman, 2018 is setting us up for the Decade of the Woman.
Ford's testimony did not spark a global conversation about gender, power, sexual harassment and the representation of women in the same way Hill's testimony did in 1991 because that conversation is already happening. It has stemmed from the sentencing of Bill Cosby, the resignation of Al Franken and the downfall of Harvey Weinstein. We're already steeped in the lessons of #MeToo, and the Ford episode has demonstrated that, even now, some political leaders still don't get it.
My parents watched Hill testify live, and I watched Ford do the same. The lack of change is what will be galvanizing, and indeed might already be: women are running in record numbers for the upcoming midterm elections: 234 (of which 182 are Democrats) for the House and 22 (of which 15 are Democrats) for the Senate. These are exponentially larger than the 1992 numbers in the wake of Hill's testimony, a feat made even more impressive by the fact that it is a midterm election, which usually sees less engagement and turnout.
Granted, many Republicans viewed Ford's accusations as part of a larger Democratic agenda, motivating them to become just as politically engaged. A NPR/PBS poll shows only a two point difference in the parties viewing the November elections as "very important."
But a win doesn't tend to rouse momentum in the same way as does a defeat. The Republicans won. The Senate confirmed Kavanaugh. GOP motivation thus has four weeks to wear away, but Democrats will continue to fester in defeat.
People care, and they are furious. We saw that in the hundreds of people who descended on the Hart Senate Building in protest of Kavanaugh's nomination, the thousands who donated to a $3 million fund to support a Democratic challenger to Sen. Susan Collins (one of the Senate's deciding votes) and the 2,400 law professors who signed and presented a letter opposing Kavanaugh's nomination, futilely, to the Senate ahead of the vote.
This is the most important takeaway from Kavanaugh's confirmation: change comes from motivation, and nothing motivates better than anger. These acts of opposition are not easily quantifiable really until election day, but the House is certainly in play in November. The signs suggest that women will show up to vote — and to be voted for — which could drastically change the face of government (and eventually, the institutions it informs) going forward. The Republicans should enjoy this win while it lasts.
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