Neil Gorsuch will step under a grueling national spotlight Monday as his Supreme Court confirmation hearings begin. And so will the Democrats who must vote on whether to confirm him.

Liberal groups have pushed for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s caucus to take a harder line against Gorsuch, publicly airing their disappointment with Democrats for letting the affable Gorsuch largely breeze through the run-up to his hearings. That tension could ease if the Colorado-born appellate judge stumbles or flop-sweats this week in the hothouse of the Senate Judiciary Committee. But no matter how Gorsuch performs, activists are vowing that Democrats who don’t oppose the judge will face consequences.


"This is Schumer's first actual test of leadership,” one former veteran Senate Democratic aide said in an interview. “He has to understand that, as leader, he'll be held accountable for every big fight, not just the ones that are easy to win."

NARAL Pro-Choice America President Ilyse Hogue, whose abortion-rights group has rallied with Elizabeth Warren and other liberal senators against the high court nominee, said the Democratic base wants to see senators “holding Gorsuch’s feet to the fire.”

Voters’ frustration with those who go easy on Gorsuch, Hogue added, promises to affect everything from “the support incumbents will feel for reelection bids to the volume of communication that they’ll see from their constituents."

But for now, some of the biggest players in the left's anti-Trump movement appear less than fully engaged themselves in fighting Gorsuch — even as conservative groups lavish millions to promote him on the airwaves. The Democratic super PAC Priorities USA told CNN last week that it's not planning TV ads on Gorsuch because its internal polling showed that saving Obamacare was a more galvanizing issue.

Organizing for Action, which also has devoted major resources to protecting Obama's health care law, has shown similar restraint when it comes to the Supreme Court vacancy. The group emailed its list after Gorsuch's nomination on Jan. 31 but has done little since. As it weighs a Gorsuch strategy going forward, one source said, the group plans to keep a close eye on the hearings and the confirmation process.

Even Indivisible, the anti-Trump group founded by former Democratic congressional aides that's notched big successes hassling Republicans at town hall meetings, said in a Friday note to supporters that it's "throwing all our focus to” the House’s Obamacare-repeal vote.

Still, Indivisible executive director Ezra Levin said the Supreme Court nomination is also in the group's top tier of issues this week. "We believe Gorsuch is an extreme pick on just about any issue you want to look at," he said.

Activists’ ability to twist arms against Gorsuch depends to some degree on how successful Democratic senators are this week at finding pressure points in his record. The liberal Center for American Progress last week seized on Gorsuch’s 14 months in President George W. Bush’s Department of Justice, when he played a key role in defending the White House’s harsh treatment of terrorism suspects.

“The Senate must demand answers from Gorsuch” about that period of his record, CAP vice president Michele Jawando said in a statement, “before even considering whether to confirm him.”

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Adam Bozzi, a spokesman for the pro-campaign finance reform End Citizens United political action committee, predicted that the hearings also would help focus outside-the-Beltway attention on Gorsuch.

"I wouldn't expect him to flail” like [Education Secretary] Betsy DeVos did — she made the case on her own that she was not qualified for the job,” Bozzi said in an interview. “But his answers themselves will show that he’s too extreme for this. He's going to have to stand on his record, which isn’t good."

Gorsuch’s hearings, however, will begin on the same day that FBI Director James Comey testifies publicly before the House Intelligence Committee; they’ll also compete for attention with a week of House Republicans whipping support for their plan to repeal former President Barack Obama’s signature health care law, with a vote expected Thursday.

Democrats are enjoying a significant degree of party unity on health care and the investigation into President Donald Trump's ties to Russia, as well as on the White House's budget and travel ban order. With moderates and liberals in their caucus unified on those issues, Democrats have less incentive to focus on a more internally contentious fight against Gorsuch — especially when they're still concerned that Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) could trigger the so-called nuclear option and kill the right to filibuster Supreme Court nominees if they block the judge.

Another longtime ex-Senate Democratic aide warned that filibustering Gorsuch is "not a slam dunk" for the party.

"Activists really care about this," the aide said about the Supreme Court. "The everyday voters who should care about this don’t."

Even some of Gorsuch's biggest opponents on the left acknowledge that the Hill's frantic pace this year threatens to steal attention from the Supreme Court confirmation fight. Hogue accused the Trump administration of cultivating a "strategy to try to distract from the hearing." Still, Democratic senators are aware that the grass roots will be watching the Gorsuch confirmation vote for a long time to come.

"It might take until Gorsuch is ruling on the Muslim ban later this year” for Democratic senators who backed him to face harsh scrutiny, the first veteran Democratic aide said. “But it’s not a question that people involved in the Trump resistance are going to get to the point where they say, 'What the hell happened with Gorsuch?'"

Schumer, a former Judiciary Committee member, underscored his own "strong presumption against" Gorsuch last week but he notably declined to commit to a filibuster. Perhaps for that reason, Republicans perceive Democratic reluctance to taking on Gorsuch and project confidence in his eventual confirmation.

"No one makes me nervous" on the Democratic side of the aisle, said Leonard Leo, a senior official at the conservative Federalist Society, who is advising Trump on the Supreme Court. "Because we're prepared."