You know, I'm not naive about this process. I've worked in this process for 30 years. There's always been politics in this process. But what has happened here in the past year and a half is a new twist.

Just trust me. I'm a nice guy. I say I'm a fair judge. Trust me, confirm me, and then you'll have 40 years to figure out whether I was telling the truth.

Hi, and welcome to another special edition of Amicus, Slate's podcast about the Supreme Court.

I'm Dahlia Lithwick, and I cover the courts and the law for Slate.

Now, it doesn't happen all that often that a U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearing turns out to be only the fourth most urgent news story on Capitol Hill in a week.

But between Jim Comey, the fight over health care, meltdown in the House Intelligence Committee, you may have missed a little bit of the nuance of the four-day marathon hearing we just had for Neil Gorsuch.

Well, never fear, friends. We had Slate sat through the whole damn thing, so you didn't have to.

And we are delighted to bring you this bonus episode of Amicus to review it.

Joining me today are Mark Joseph Stern. He also covers the law and the courts for Slate. Hey, Mark.

Hi, Dahlia. And we are delighted to welcome for the first time on the show. Ron Clayne, he served as a senior White House aide to both Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. He oversaw Clinton's judicial nominations. He directed judicial selection efforts. And he led the team that won confirmation of Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the Supreme Court.

Ron, welcome to Amicus. It is a thrill to have you here. It's a thrill to be here. I'm going to ask you guys the simplest question that I was asked in every radio hit I did this week.

Given the sort of lose-lose setup for this proposition for Democrats, did anyone on the Democrat side win?

Was there a win?

Given that Judge Gorsuch pretty much looked lovely and kind, and that was the only issue seemingly before the committee. Did Democrats lay a glove on him? And you start, Ron.

Well, look, I think that some of the Democrats did quite well. These hearings have morph from being really genuine question and answer sessions into something more like oral argument at the Supreme Court, where the senators are asking questions, but really making arguments in the form of questions. And I thought that in that regard, if you think about it that way, I thought Senator Franken did a really good job of laying out the case against Judge Gorsuch on a number of points. I thought Senator Globuchar as well

really made a kind of comprehensive case against him. Chris Coons pointed out some of the

inconsistencies and some of his views and approaches. Senator Leahy laid some good bear traps, too.

So I don't think the hearings were a success in terms of learning anything new about Judge Gorsuch that we didn't know before they started.

But I do think they laid the groundwork for growing Democratic opposition to his nomination.

And, of course, the hearings ended with an announcement from Chuck Schumer that he would be leading a filibuster against Judge Gorsuch.

So if you're a Gorsuch opponent, the hearings seem to rally the cause against his confirmation.

Mark, do you feel that I guess I should just betray my own feeling, which is if the Democrats were going to filibuster, why show up at all?

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