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Deplorables’ Two Biggest Concerns: Hillary and the Supreme Court

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U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton meets with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C., on January 25, 2012. [State Department photo/ Public Domain]

Daniel Henninger reminds readers in the WSJ that 63 million voted for Trump in 2016. And it was not the lunatic fringe. Their concerns after two terms of Barack Obama were (1) Hillary Clinton and (2) the direction of SCOTUS.

The Kavanaugh nomination has put both these powerful subtexts from 2016 back in play. The Democrats have managed to shift the midterm elections away from Mr. Trump’s personality and make it about the Supreme Court, the status of the law in the U.S. and the nature of Democratic rule.

The sincerity of Ms. Ford’s testimony notwithstanding, this phase of the confirmation began with no corroborative evidence against Judge Kavanaugh and is ending with no evidence. The acceptance of this no-evidence standard, not just by the Judiciary Committee Democrats but by nearly all Democrats and most of the media, is something people have noticed.

A Whiff of Anti-Catholicism

The coverage of Brett Kavanaugh’s past has also put a whiff of anti-Catholicism in the air, with the constant invocations of “Georgetown Prep,” suggesting not subtly that this all-boys school, founded by Jesuits in 1789, was an abusers’ breeding ground. To invoke a legal term, this is a slander, and many at this point resent it.

Despite a modern world created by precise algorithmic proofs, we may be entering a time driven more by inner mental states. Some are calling it an era of post-truth. For the law, I would call it an era of jury nullification. Chuck Schumer wants results without votes.

Democrats are hoping the #MeToo card will help them retake Congress, an editorial in today’s WSJ points out.

In this sense too, Mr. Trump is the left’s foil, though the Kavanaugh fight has usefully exposed the dishonesty of the loud worries about Mr. Trump’s threat to “democratic norms.”

Today’s Democratic Norms

Democrats were so worried about Senate norms that they hid Ms. Ford’s name from Republicans for six weeks, found her a lawyer, midwifed a lie detector test whose results they still haven’t fully disclosed, and then orchestrated the rollout of her accusations.

Mr. Trump’s rhetoric is too often divisive and dissembling, but no action in his Presidency comes close to matching the partisan viciousness of the Senate ambush of Brett Kavanaugh. These are today’s Democratic norms.

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Debbie Young

Debbie, editor-in-chief of Richardcyoung.com, has been associate editor of Dick Young’s investment strategy reports for over three decades. When not in Key West, Debbie spends her free time researching and writing in and about Paris and Burgundy, France, cooking on her AGA Cooker, driving her Porsche Boxter S through Vermont and Maine, and practicing yoga.