That strategy unnerved some activists, who worried that Democrats would waste valuable time on a process dispute when they could be pressing Kavanaugh on abortion and other weighty topics—the kinds of issues that likely represent their only chance to sway Collins and Murkowski. “The documents argument on its own is not going to defeat this nominee,” Brian Fallon, the executive director of the progressive judicial-advocacy group Demand Justice, told me on Wednesday, during the middle of the first day that Kavanaugh faced questions from the Judiciary Committee.

Fallon, along with advocates from abortion-rights groups such as Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America, wanted Democrats to just go ahead and release the documents they had access to, rather than bicker with Republicans over whether the public should see them. “They should either go all the way with it and cough up the emails that they think are damning for Kavanaugh, or else go on to subjects that actually register with the public,” said Fallon, a former Clinton campaign spokesman and a former aide to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. “You’ve got to bring the receipts.”

The angst over hearing strategy underscored a broader frustration among progressives that Democrats, whether in the Senate or on the campaign trail, have not prioritized judicial nominees in the same way top elected Republicans and conservative activists have to energize their voters every two years. Since Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell succeeded in blocking Garland’s nomination for the final 11 months of Obama’s term, he has worked with the Trump administration to confirm dozens of young, conservative judges who will shift the judiciary to the right, likely for decades. It has been, as my colleague David Graham has written, perhaps the single biggest success of Trump’s tenure and the Republican congressional majority.

Senate Democrats have been using procedural tactics to slow down the confirmations, but they still have angered activists by occasionally cutting deals to speed things up and get out of Washington for weekends and recesses. The most recent agreement came last week, paving the way for Republicans to confirm another eight judges in the midst of the Kavanaugh hearings. “It showed a lack of urgency,” Fallon said. “How can we strike a deal like that [that] helps Trump’s takeover of the judiciary in the week leading into the Kavanaugh fight? How can you play nice with Republicans on judges at the same time they’re railroading you on the documents for Kavanaugh?”

Part of the tension within the party is reflected in a generational divide on the Judiciary Committee. On one side are Senators Dianne Feinstein of California, the ranking Democrat, and Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the panel’s former chairman, who are deferential to long-standing rules and norms of the chamber and are resistant to more dramatic protest actions. On the other are younger, more recent additions to the committee such as Booker, Senator Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, and Senator Kamala Harris of California. Like Booker, Harris is seen as a likely presidential contender in 2020.