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House Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler has already thrown cold water on impeaching Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, but he also said Democrats would grill FBI Director Chris Wray about the FBI’s supposed "investigation" into sexual harassment claims against Kavanaugh. We now know that the FBI entirely ignored one account of harassment from a credible witness. We also know that at least seven people did contemporaneously hear about the allegation made by Kavanaugh's Yale classmate Deborah Ramirez that he shoved his penis in her face at a college party. So yeah, it appears it was "the talk of campus" even though Kavanaugh claimed during a Senate hearing that it wasn’t.
But getting to the bottom of just how flawed that FBI investigation was is both important in terms of the Supreme Court’s moral authority and also could be a very potent political tool going into 2020.
The conventional wisdom sweeping Washington is that a rehash of Kavanaugh would help Republicans in 2020 because it would fire up their base. The prevailing takeaway from 2018 is that Kavanaugh’s confirmation battle hurt red-state Democratic senators in Missouri, Indiana, North Dakota, and Montana (three of which flipped to Republicans). As the Washington Post's Dave Weigel writes, "A consensus of Republicans and political strategists argued that by echoing accusations against him, Democrats energized conservative voters and tipped key Senate races toward the GOP."
Plenty of Washington analysts appear to have taken that GOP analysis as gospel. But it completely ignores what happened in the House in 2018 and a very different political map heading into 2020. "Democrats also got the biggest number they've ever received in the history of polling among college educated white women in part because of Kavanaugh—and that was why they routed Republicans in suburban seats around the country," noted CNN analyst Ron Brownstein on The Lead Monday. Revisiting Kavanaugh's confirmation and uncovering whether Senate Republicans rigged the FBI investigation in his favor would only help consolidate that white female suburban flight from the GOP.
Democratic presidential candidates also embraced that fight, with six of them calling for Kavanaugh's impeachment following the new revelations. Sen. Kamala Harris, who sits on the Judiciary Committee, gave perhaps the most forceful statement, tweeting, “I sat through those hearings. Brett Kavanaugh lied to the U.S. Senate and most importantly to the American people. He was put on the Court through a sham process and his place on the Court is an insult to the pursuit of truth and justice. He must be impeached.” One could see Kavanaugh becoming part of her stump speech depending on what House Democrats turn up next month.
Warren, on the other hand, attached Kavanaugh firmly to the biggest villain in her campaign, Donald Trump. "Like the man who appointed him, Kavanaugh should be impeached,” Warren wrote, noting that his nomination was "rammed through the Senate."
The politics of Kavanaugh would arguably help Democrats more in 2020 than it would Republicans, especially if the Democratic nominee is a woman. Plenty of college-educated women were prepared to crawl over broken glass to put Democrats in the House majority in 2018, and you can bet they'll be primed to do that all over again while chewing broken glass in 2020 in order to give Trump the boot in favor of a woman.
And while the Kavanaugh fight may have hurt red-state Democrats in the Senate in 2018, it didn't appear to do so in the swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, where Democrats all hung on to their Senate seats. In fact, in Florida, exit polls asked voters whether Kavanaugh's confirmation factored into their vote—of the 56% who called Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson's vote against Kavanaugh "a factor," slightly more of those voters cast a ballot for Nelson. So even though Nelson ultimately lost his seat, his Kavanaugh vote appeared to help him on the margins.
Heading into 2020, Senate Republicans are defending nearly twice as many seats as Senate Democrats (22 vs. 12), and fury over a rigged Kavanaugh confirmation will likely not play well, particularly for Republican senators in purple and blue states like Colorado (Sen. Cory Gardner) and Maine (Sen. Susan Collins). On the down side, reigniting the debate probably won't do Democratic Sen. Doug Jones any favors in Alabama, but he already has an uphill climb to keep that seat. Michigan Democratic Sen. Gary Peters is also facing a decent challenge from GOP Iraq War vet John James, though, again, Kavanaugh didn't seem to hold a major downside in the Great Lakes State for incumbent Sen. Debbie Stabenow in 2018 (who beat the very same John James 52%-46%).
Overall, figuring out exactly whether and how Republicans short-circuited the investigative process to clear the way for Kavanaugh's razor thin 50-48 confirmation will likely help the Democratic presidential nominee, help Democrats keep the House, and perhaps even be a net plus in Senate. And maybe more importantly, uncovering GOP malfeasance would certainly give a Democratically controlled House in 2021—potentially backed by strong leadership from a Democratic president— ample reason to revisit Kavanaugh's impeachment.