The Kavanaugh Factor and the Midterm Elections
To the Point
KCRW
4.4 • 583 Ratings
🗓️ 10 October 2018
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Republicans have secured their long-term goal: a right-wing majority on the U.S. Supreme Court. There are conflicting expectations for rulings on abortion, immigration, voting rights--and the powers of both the White House and Congress. In this divided nation, public trust in the rule of law is also at stake. How will the bitter battle over Brett Kavanaugh impact next month’s midterm elections?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello again, I'm Orman Alney. After weeks of bitter debate and controversy, Justice Brett Kavanaugh is now sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court. He was sworn in by President Trump in a ceremony that Hillary Clinton compared to a political rally. |
| 0:20.6 | Kavanaugh's lifetime tenure is under a cloud, |
| 0:23.9 | and it's not just about conflicting versions of what happened between him and Christine Blasey Ford. |
| 0:29.5 | It's also because of his own testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. |
| 0:33.7 | This whole two-week effort has been a calculated and orchestrated political hit, fueled with |
| 0:39.5 | apparent pen-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election, fear that has been unfairly stoked |
| 0:47.5 | about my judicial record, revenge on behalf of the Clintons, and millions of dollars in money |
| 0:53.7 | from outside left-wing opposition groups. |
| 0:57.1 | Now, that testimony and the partisan nature of it will have a lasting impact, |
| 1:01.5 | retired Justice John Paul Stevens, appointed by Republican President Gerald Ford at age 98 from |
| 1:06.6 | his retirement home in Florida, said that he was convinced by it that Kavanaugh is not fit |
| 1:12.4 | to serve. |
| 1:13.2 | His performance during the hearings caused me to change my mind. |
| 1:18.1 | I think there's as several commentators, Larry Tribe, among them who's a professor at Harvard, |
| 1:25.1 | have written pieces in which they suggest that he has demonstrated |
| 1:29.9 | a potential bias involving enough potential litigants before the court that he would not be able |
| 1:38.0 | to perform his full responsibilities. Justice Kavanaugh, of course, did not go to Harvard. |
| 1:43.0 | He went to Yale. He will be sitting on the high court bench next to Ilana Kagan, who hired Kavanaugh to teach at Yale Law School when she was dean. Here's what his new colleague said in the aftermath of his confirmation. You know, this is a really divided time. And part of the court's strength and part of the court's |
| 2:03.6 | legitimacy depends on people not seeing the court in the way that people see the rest of the |
| 2:13.6 | governing structures of this country now. In other words, people thinking of the court as not |
| 2:18.4 | politically divided in the same way, as not an extension of politics, but instead somehow above |
| 2:25.1 | the fray. |
... |
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