Dems: Keep Your Eyes on the Prize

Talking about impeaching Kavanaugh is not good politics.

It doesn’t take a genius to see that the Federalist/Heritage judges Trump has been nominating won’t do much to improve women’s reproductive rights, immigration justice, income inequality, voting & civil rights, or human rights in general. More likely, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch and lower court judges will rule in partisan ways to lock in regressive policies for generations.

If there were a chance in hell of a successful impeachment I’d jump right on that bandwagon. But Democratic presidential candidates could have avoided the political malpractice of calling for Kavanaugh’s impeachment by holding their fire for a few hours, until the story was better understood. The NY Times excerpt and the book were bound to inflame the right wing. That would have happened anyway. Those who shot off their mouths now appear foolish and hysterical, never a good presidential look, and the GOP will surely score a few points making fun of (or feigning outrage at) Democratic posturing.

Full disclosure: I don’t believe Trump has any way of winning an election in 2020, and I can hardly wait for that election. But the game should be a big, obvious, sensible campaign on issues that affect real people (see my first sentence), and a serious drive to get out the vote, not arcane insider stuff like impeaching a judge. Sure, political junkies (like me) would love to see Kavanaugh — and others — pay a price for their dishonesty, but first we have to drive the snakes out of Washington and start to rebuild a federal government that works for all of us.

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