fierce fight in the judiciary committee every step of the way over this nomination. democrats i think went as hard as they could against this nomination. it does not seem to have been successful in the end. are there other things that you think democrats could have done or should have done better? was this a winnable fight? well, it s hard to win when you re not in the majority. and that s why elections matter. i will tell you what was so inspiring to me is my daughter was 8 years old with me back in 1991 watching clarence thomas/anita hill hearing. and today she is a mother with two young daughters. and she sent me a text during the first hearing and said to me, mom, look at the democratic side. unlike when you and i were watching it many years ago, i can turn to my young daughters and say there are women on the democratic side there are diverse voices. they are listening and they are fighting. don t ever think we haven t made progress. and i keep that in my heart. when i think ab
it was unaddressed by senator collins this afternoon. it s really the elephant in the room, and the prospect of a supreme court justice having in effect an enemies list i think is truly petrifying for our democracy. and what s the remedy? if you are worried that he s going to follow through on what he was threatening there, obviously the judge has written an op-ed in the wall street journal in which he says he regrets some of the things he said. he didn t specify what things he said that he maybe shouldn t have said. maybe that threat was one of the things that he regrets. is there any way to try to assuage these concerns or to try to have any sort of corrective if he chooses to follow through? the wall street journal op-ed was in effect an attempt to offer cover for senators like collins and flake and manchin, but here s the awful truth, that
context of other very controversial nominations? well, it isn t trivia because it does show how close this is and how little real support, little enthusiasm there is for kavanaugh. and, you know, i think this is by far the most controversial nomination in modern times. we always thought in recent years that would be true of clarence thomas, but take a look at what thomas said. you remember he was saying this is a high-tech lynching. he was quite indignant. that was nothing like kavanaugh s rant when he came back to testify and was talking about the system being changed, the search and destroy, and saying that this was politics, revenge on behalf of the clintons. that was much more angry, much more lack of judicial temperament, a lot more partisan. compared to clarence thomas in terms of the relationship with the president who selected him, clarence thomas had a courtly relationship with george h.w.
back in 1991, the thomas vote happened not in an election year, but at the time it happened at a time that gave women plenty of time to decide that they might want to run for office themselves in response to what they had seen happen with that nomination. women who say they re new to political activism and planning to get involved in this year s elections for many reasons. this year just took on a whole new tone with the changes in the supreme court and the big elections this fall and the chances that we have to really turn the tide. many women were enraged last fall at how anita hill was treated by an all-male senate committee after accusing supreme court nominee clarence thomas of sexual harassment. within days, this ad placed by a woman s group posed the question what if? what if women had sat on the committee instead? for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. as republicans crow tonight over
for revenge, some of the republican commentators today are crowing about the fact that they believe kavanaugh has been radicalized by this experience, and they hope he behaves as a anti-democratic vengeful radicalized judge on the bench. what should we look to in history in terms of understanding how the public may view the court in that context? because it s still our supreme court, even if it does change with his elevation. yeah. the court loses respect for itself, it loses legitimacy. oftentimes that happens when the court comes up with a ruling like plessy versus ferguson saying that you can have separate and equal and segregation in american life is fine. and the other thing that i think lowers respect for the court, rachel, is the fact that kavanaugh goes to the court with much more serious allegations against him than was the case with clarence thomas. and this is not in 1991. this is in the age of the me too movement.