Sen. Chuck Schumer's deal that walked seven Trump nominees to the judiciary this week is going to allow eight more next week. That's 15 lifetime appointments from the unindicted co-conspirator to the federal courts. In August alone, Trump will have gotten more confirmations than President Obama did in more than a year's time when Democrats held the Senate; they only got 14 confirmed.
It's a deal, right? So Schumer must have got something in return? Well, it looks like the reward was a very long Labor Day break for the 10 Democrats running for re-election to get home and campaign. There wasn't any reason at all for those 10 Democrats to stick around D.C. this week—Schumer could have just had one or a handful of senators around to force McConnell to eat up hours and hours of floor time in the cloture process. Apparently, they also got two Obama appointees who Republicans had blocked for years, a Democrat, Mark Pearce, re-nominated to the National Labor Relations Board, and a "tiny fraction," in the words of Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey, of the documents from Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's Bush years that Republicans have been withholding.
The only clear "win" there is the two Obama judges, against the nearly three dozen Trump's gotten so far. The Pearce nomination to the NLRB is just that—a nomination, not confirmation. And Democrats already have a Freedom of Information Act filing to get all of the Kavanaugh documents, and have threatened to sue to obtain them. Those threats don't look particularly serious when Schumer is so willing to cave so easily on confirmations.
The capitulation is baffling to activists, even those who know Schumer well. "Mitch McConnell is in the middle of stealing the federal courts for conservatives, and Democrats continue to bring a butter knife to a gunfight," Brian Fallon, executive director of the progressive judicial group Demand Justice, told Bloomberg. "It is hard to think of a more pathetic surrender heading into the Kavanaugh hearings." Fallon used to be Schumer's spokesman.
Since Schumer apparently isn't going to lead on this one, the grassroots has to. We'll be the ones to whip against this potentially disastrous nominee.