decisions in the board room. do you agree his defeat was a watershed moment in supreme court nomination fights? i have to say first of all, i wish i had as much hair as i did back then. i do think it was a watershed moment but not for the reasons everyone tends to state. it was a watershed moment because it was an opportunity for the country to hear competing views of basic constitutional questions like the one i was testifying about there about whether the constitution even though it doesn t say anything about bedroom privacy or sexual choice or the right to raise your children or any number of other rights is broad enough to encompass them. that was the first time the country on national television heard all of those ideas ventilated and the fact that judge bork was ultimately rejected because he rejected all of those rights and in that way, frightened the american people, many of them, about his
sure there s a black woman on the supreme court to make sure we, in fact get equal representation. it s not a joke. it s not a joke. i would push very hard for that. politically supreme court nomination fights can come with huge risks, but they also present big opportunities to unite a political party. just look what it did for trump and the republicans in 2016. it even worked to a degree in 18 with the senate races. but the debate over breyer s successor is a point to rally around. if it is an african-american jurist, it may go a long way to improving his standing among african-american voters.
against the city of philadelphia on the contentious issue of same-sex adoption, and that s the path they chose. so a lot of these warnings, it just really show house hyperbolic these supreme court nomination fights are too often. joe, thank you for saying that, just because you look at what happened a couple of years ago, with justice kavanaugh and the sliming was such an egregious low point in american politics, and for those of us that know and respect justice kavanaugh, he did what we always expected him to do is uphold the law and rule according to the law and not as an ideologue. and you look at justice amy coney barrett, who we all warned was going to usher in a new era of the hand maid s tale, and not ruling as an ideologue, but a judge, following the law, and these justices ruled there was not standing. they did not let their political
this week. reporter: that s right. first of all, on the coverage, if they re running we re covering them, right? kamala harris, she had a little bit of a press conference yesterday of the she ll go to oakland, california, on saturday and make a formal speech but where will she go in between, south carolina, and that s really important. let s go over the map and timing. let me previous face this by saying these dates are iffy. they change, they could move up. they could go into january or february. february 3rd, iowa caucuses, february 11th new hampshire primary, these are always the first four states usually they go all in a month. here s let s pop-up what happened in past nomination fights. barack obama wins the iowa caucuses in 2008, beats hillary clinton. she actually finishes third behind john edwards. he then loses in new hampshire very shockingly at the time,
as republicans had in 2018. the senate map is laid out pretty well for the democrats. but it s going require that they can start winning seats in red states. and that s going to require the democratic party coming more to the center on immigration, nor the center on some other issues if they are going to win in some of those red states. well like states like missouri where claire mccaskill lost, states like tennessee where democrats had a shot but still ended up loeg. m mika, that dynamic democrats who are running for president pulling the party to the left and chuck schumer and democrats want to take over the senate in 2020 and have a say in supreme court nomination fights, they will want to try to pull the party to the center. that s something we ll be seeing all of 2019 and 2020. also fascinating is nancy pelosi s role in all of this. i think she s up for the job,