Moderate Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill will vote against Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court, narrowing the number of potential Democratic votes the nominee can secure.
There are Important PrinciplesTM in play here.
The Missouri senator, who is up for reelection this fall in a conservative state, cited Kavanaugh’s views on “dark, anonymous money that is crushing our democracy.”
Claire hates "dark, anonymous money that is crushing our democracy" so passionately that she's silently allowed it to pay for the lion's share of her anti-GOP campaign ads this year. That aside, that's the only reason Claire's a no on Kavanaugh. The current travesty of both justice and anything within 20,000 light years of morality did not enter into her thinking.
She said that the “troubling” allegation of sexual assault leveled against Kavanaugh did not influence her decision.
At all.
“He has revealed his bias against limits on campaign donations which places him completely out of the mainstream of this nation.
Because EVERYONE knows that the single most important political issue facing this country, the issue that worries, no, terrifies every single American citizen, from the oldest to the youngest, is how
He wrote, ‘And I have heard very few people say that limits on contributions to candidates are unconstitutional although I for one tend to think those limits have some constitutional problems,’” McCaskill said. “Judge Kavanaugh will give free rein to anonymous donors
To contribute to Republicans
and foreign governments through their citizens to spend money
On Republicans.
to interfere and influence our elections with so-called ‘issue ads.’”
In other words, issues like abortion, say. But that's not the only thing that's got Claire's American and union-made panties in a bunch.
McCaskill also said she was “uncomfortable” with his views on executive power
But mostly it's the money.
but said that her fear that Kavanaugh’s place on the bench would loosen political spending restrictions was the “determining factor.”
Politico notes that this should not surprise anyone. Claire's a good Democrat apparatchick who votes the way her party tells her to. But I guess you'd have to be a Missourian to see the obviously political calculation in all this.
It's important to remember a basic fact about Missouri politics. For the most part, elections here are won or lost in two places. Suburban Kansas City and suburban St. Louis. The cities of Kansas City and St. Louis are solidly in the Democrat camp while outstate Missouri is almost completely red and will be for generations.
Missouri suburbs, containing a significant chunk of the state's population, are generally in play.
So the key for any local politician is to excite your own base and get them out to the polls while simultaneously doing everything you possibly can do damp down the enthusiasm of the other party's base. Which goes far to explain Claire's cynical attempt to put the best possible personal spin that she can on her vote.
Because Claire's statement positively screams something at me. The current Democratic attempt to defame and smear Judge Kavanaugh may just be resonating here and in a way that is not at all favorable to McCaskill's reelection chances.
Hence Claire's attempt to justify what every Missourian knows that she was going to do anyway as a question of Important PrinciplesTM and most certainly nothing whatsoever to do with the current hysteria and how dare you think otherwise.
Will it work? I have my doubts but stay tuned.
1 comment:
I wondered about Missouri when the state recently cancelled its right to work law. Re-electing McCaskill would be a sad sign of the state of the state.
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