Two Democratic Senators, Joe Manchin and Heidi Heitkamp, have announced that they will vote to appoint Neil Gorsuch to the US Supreme Court:
Senators Joe Manchin and Heidi Heitkamp on Thursday became the first Democrats to support the confirmation of President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch, giving Republicans two of eight Democratic votes needed to avoid a nasty fight on the U.S. Senate floor next week.
Both West Virginia’s Manchin and North Dakota’s Heitkamp are up for re-election next year in states that voted for Trump in the 2016 presidential election.
“I hold no illusions that I will agree with every decision Judge Gorsuch may issue in the future, but I have not found any reasons why this jurist should not be a Supreme Court justice,” Manchin said in a statement. Manchin met with the nominee for a second time on Wednesday night.
Heitkamp said that Gorsuch “has a record as a balanced, meticulous and well-respected jurist who understands the rule of law.”
This has got to be a red line: If you vote for cloture, we are done with you.
I can’t speak to Heitkamp, she has been off my radar, but Manchin is a deeply corrupt individual who pulled strings to get the University of West Virginia to grant his daughter an unearned MBA degree, and later, when his daughter became CEO of Mylan Pharmaceuticals, he pushed to mandate them in public schools, even as the company was aggressively price gouging.
He is a bad, bad man, and we are not taking back the Senate in 2018.
If anything there will be fewer Dems in the Senate, because there are 9 Republican seats, and 25 Democratic seats (including independents who caucus with the Dems).
There is no way that Democrats will pick up two seats in Alabama, Arizona, Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas, Utah,* and Wyoming, and not lose any of the 25 other seats.
Naah gaah naah happen.
Better to be rid of them, and best to make an example of them, so that (to paraphrase Pat Boone’s bloodthirsty call for the execution of on neo-Nazi JCC gunman Buford Furrow) those who think like them will think differently in the future.
*The Oxford Comma, bitches, it just works.