By Kyle Smith
Wednesday, November 07, 2018
Joe Manchin, who won reelection last night in West
Virginia by 19,000 votes (three points), has excellent cause to believe his
vote for Brett Kavanaugh saved his Senate seat. Meanwhile, in Montana,
incumbent Democrat Jon Tester may prevail but after voting against Kavanaugh,
he is at the moment trailing Republican challenger Matt Rosendale by 0.7
percent. Kavanaugh opponents Claire McCaskill in Missouri, Joe Donnelly in
Indiana, and Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota all went down in flames.
Two of these Democrats lost because Kavanaugh ripped off
their masks and revealed them to be mostly party-line Democrats, not moderates
who habitually reach across the aisle. A moderate Democrat should not have
hesitated to vote for Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court, given that he was
obviously qualified and given that Christine Blasey Ford simply had no evidence
or corroboration for her sexual-assault claim. Indeed, what skimpy details she
offered changed in key respects and four people she placed at the house party
at which the assault allegedly occurred failed to support her version of
events. One of these four people is a lifelong friend of hers.
Even assuming Ford had never stepped forward, virtually
all Democrats could never support someone like Kavanaugh because they are at
their core the party of abortion. Heitkamp and McCaskill refused to support
even a 20-week abortion ban. Donnelly did back the ban and generally is
supportive of President Trump, with whom he votes 53 percent of the time
according to a 538.com analysis, but in a state as deep-red as Indiana, that
isn’t enough. Donnelly’s vote against Kavanaugh was the last straw for Indiana
voters. Democrats knew how important the seat vacated by Justice Anthony
Kennedy was but gambled that the voters wouldn’t pay that much attention to a
vote against Kavanaugh. They gambled wrong. Polls suggested Donnelly was likely
to win a squeaker. He was ousted by Mike Braun, whose margin is ten points with
89 percent of precincts reporting.
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