The Corbynization of the Democrat Party and the reshaping of the judiciary both will have generational impact.

Much focus the past week has been on the anti-Semitic accusations of dual and disloyalty from Democrat Representative Ilhan Omar, backed by the progressive wing of the party, particularly Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Democrats not only have been unable to deal with it, they connived to water down a planned resolution condemning the recent anti-Semitic outbursts of Omar.

This Corbynization of the Democrat Party got all the attention, but but there was other news mostly under the media radar: Republicans in the Senate continued to confirm judicial nominees over Democrat protests, and the pace may pick up.

In a March 5, 2019, update, Carrie Severino of the Judicial Crisis Network had the prior week’s action:

Last week the Senate voted to confirm the first judicial nominee of the 116th Congress, Eric Miller (Ninth Circuit), by a margin of 53 to 46, and more confirmations are expected this week. Later this afternoon, the Senate is scheduled to vote on the confirmation of Allison Jones Rushing (Fourth Circuit). Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has also filed for cloture on the nominations of Chad Readler (Sixth Circuit) and Eric Murphy (Sixth Circuit). Also last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to advance Neomi Rao (D.C. Circuit) to the Senate floor. On Thursday, the committee is expected to vote on the nominations of Joseph Bianco and Michael Park, President Trump’s nominees to the Second Circuit.

Since that update, Readler was confirmed, to the screams of Democrats, Democrats vow Judge Chad Readler will be 2020 issue:

Democrats say they will remember the Wednesday afternoon vote to confirm Chad A. Readler, one of President Donald Trump’s most contentious judicial nominees. The 52-47 vote to install Readler on the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Ohio could easily be lumped in with many other Trump choices pushed through the Senate by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. But Readler’s connection to the Justice Department’s decision not to defend the 2010 health care law and its pre-existing condition protections in litigation led by the state of Texas struck a particular chord, as Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions ranking member Patty Murray said ahead of the confirmation vote.

What’s really worrying liberals is not just that Trump is nominating judges they don’t like (i.e., the judges are not liberals who will be anti-Trump), but according to Jennifer Bendery at HuffPo, that they are young:

To some observers, the age of these nominees is part of a bigger problem of Republicans not taking the review process seriously and blowing through Senate customs to confirm as many of Trump’s circuit court nominees as possible. Circuit courts are often the last word in federal court cases. The Supreme Court hears only about 100 to 150 appeals of the more than 7,000 cases that come before the nation’s 13 circuit courts each year…. McConnell has made judicial confirmations a top priority and has already helped Trump dramatically reshape the federal courts. To date, Trump has gotten 31 circuit judges, 53 district judges and two Supreme Court justices confirmed. That’s so many circuit judges ― more than any other president confirmed by this point in his first term ― that 1 in 6 seats on the U.S. circuit courts is filled by a judge nominated by Trump.

Things may just be getting started. According to Politico, Mitch McConnell may be ready — finally — to do what is necessary to get around unprecedented Democrat obstruction:

President Donald Trump’s stream of judges is about to become a torrent. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his GOP caucus have long prioritized confirming conservative judges to lifetime appointments. But they’re about to accelerate their ability to unilaterally approve many nominees in dramatic fashion…. … the GOP is also preparing to pull the trigger on the “nuclear option” and change Senate rules once again with a simple majority to allow much quicker confirmation of lower court judges in the coming months. “The committee is working to put [judges] out on the floor and as soon as they come to the floor the leader’s making it a priority to move them,” said Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, McConnell’s top deputy. “It’ll be a high priority for the foreseeable future. I mean, it’s one of the things we can do that we don’t need the House’s help with.” … “What you could witness under Senator McConnell’s leadership is a situation where an incoming president has very, very few open seats to fill,” added Leonard Leo, a conservative legal advocate who frequently advises Republicans on judicial nominations.

As Ed Morrissey notes at Hot Air, what Politico refers to as McConnell using the nuclear option, really isn’t. The nuclear option already was triggered by Harry Reid in last 2013 for all judicial confirmations below the Supreme Court. What McConnell is doing is shortening floor debate, which has been used by Democrats to stall for the sake of stalling:

How do you write an analysis about a fight in the Senate over judicial confirmation rules without once mentioning Harry Reid? Politico’s Burgess Everett and Marianne Levine even manage to make use of the word “nuclear” to describe Mitch McConnell’s long-awaited effort to shorten debate on circuit-level judicial confirmations from thirty hours to two. However, the man who pioneered the simple-majority rule change never gets any credit in this lengthy analysis, let alone his full due as the author of nuclear warfare in the upper chamber…. One has to wonder whether McConnell will really pull the trigger, though. He’s been threatening this move for a year and a half, and still the 30-hour rule remains in place.

Bringing the federal judiciary back to its proper role is one of the great and relatively underreported stories of the past two years. By the end of Trump’s first term (and even assuming there is no second term), the use of the judiciary as a super-legislature through which liberals achieve political goals they cannot achieve at the ballot box will have been severely limited.

So two things happened at the same time, each of which will have a generational impact. Democrats continued their transition to the British Labour Party, and Republicans continue to reshape the federal judiciary to return it to its constitutional purpose.



