What Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh means for America

Judge Kavanaugh was confirmed in the most bitter battle anyone can remember by a majority in the Senate of 50-48.

The U.S. Supreme Court has a conservative majority for the first time since the 1930s, when Franklin D. Roosevelt threatened to pack the Court with 6 extra judges to make sure Democratic legislation was not struck down.

Previous Republican presidents often either nominated judges who turned out not to be conservative (Eisenhower nominated the former Republican Governor of California Earl Warren who turned out to be very liberal) or had their choices rejected by a Democrat controlled Senate (Reagan's choice, Robert Bork, for example).

Dan Rather, the TV anchorman who succeeded Walter Cronkite as the personification of
Middle America, took it very badly. I found his reaction below funny when I read it, funnier in fact than anything since Paul Krugman's drawn-out agony on Twitter following Donald Trump's victory, but on reflection it is very unkind to laugh. He expresses deep, sincere and high-minded feelings which he shares with a lot of nice, small c conservative, liberal Americans. 

He talks about the need for identity politics, whereas identity politics are disastrous.

For most women and many men it’s a bitter, devastating loss. Which makes it all the sweeter for the old bulls, and for the forces of power, privilege and money everywhere. A sense that the nation’s climate of justice has taken another turn toward dark clouds rises. The age-old question for the country of whether we prioritize power, privilege and money over justice takes on renewed importance. 

So I talk to the wife—the good, gentle wife—who is furious and deeply disappointed. Talk to my daughter—the lion-hearted eldest child—whose first words are, “Can we, will we survive this?” I answer, “Of course we can, and if we have the will and the spirit, we will not only, survive we will thrive. Eventually. But if, and only if, we are “get-up fighters.” Strong as she usually is, she doesn’t seem convinced. 

So, I take a walk, to be alone with my thoughts and reminders to stay steady. Among the thoughts that emerge are these: 

Cut through the clouds of the present, consider the long river of history, and one can see this as a breakthrough moment for women. To paraphrase the daughter who recently said in another context, "women have never had a better moment to be heard in politics, to make a difference.” That is, if they—and those of us men who support them—seize the moment (if they don’t miss the moment as Senator Collins has.)

In fact, he is wrong - a large number of women, especially white women, have swung to the Republicans as a result of the hearings. They feel sorry and angry for Judge Kavanaugh. He could be their husband, son or brother.

The Republicans at the 2016 elections become the party of the white working and lower middle classes and the Democrats the party of ethnic minorities and feminists plus much of the elite. Trump's voters nevertheless had en masse above average incomes so the Republicans have not lost the well to do.

This is an obvious, logical reaction to Donald Trump. It spells doom for the Democrats, even if or especially if they win control of the House next month, as they probably will.

If they do they will make a very painfully divided America much more painfully divided.

On reflection, I do not believe Dr Ford and do believe the Judge, though I think much less of him since I read Ambrose Evans-Pritchard's claim that he suppressed evidence to protect the Clintons, in the investigation into the death of Vince Foster. 

Of course I might be wrong but I think dark forces have been unleashed, as with Anita Hill's allegations against Clarence Thomas. Abortion is at the heart of it. I think hysteria over abortion rights have much to do with the allegations and who knows what things in Dr Ford's life. 

Abortion is where politics becomes very personal - it becomes about sex, about life and death and about religion. This is visceral.

Oddly enough, Brett Kavanaugh's nomination was welcomed when President Trump announced it, because he was a moderate. Catholics complained that he was not pro life enough. He is going to be more conservative now after what he has been through, just as Clarence Thomas has been all these years. 

Donald Trump, for once, was trying to avoid acrimony, but he has shown once more that he knows very well how to turn acrimony to his advantage. Mocking Dr Ford's testimony stoked up his base and triggered his opponents whose predictable reaction then stoked up his base all over again.

It might even keep the House Republican next month, though a month is a long time in politics.

Of course America has been as badly divided many times before now. Only twice did it lead to civil war. 

Of course there are very good existential reasons for the current divisions. 

And of course the Democrats cannot win if they cannot win enough white men.

The falling number of whites in the electorate is indirectly much of the the reason why Donald Trump won and the reason why the 'far right' candidate is likely to win the Brazilian presidential election, but the USA, unlike Brazil, still has a white majority. 

That white majority, men and women, can make things impossible for the Democrats if the Democrats become the party of minorities, feminists and the internationalised Ivy League educated elite. 

The wiser Democrats know this, but not how to prevent it.