November 26, 2018 09:27 AM UTC

Campaigning On Kavanaugh: Now Democrats Have The Ball

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• by: Colorado Pols

The New York Times’ Carl Hulse put out a marrowy story Sunday recapping the political aftereffects of Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court–both as they played out in the recent midterm elections, and looking ahead to 2020:

Republicans saw the poisonous fight over Brett M. Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation as pure gold in the midterm elections, calling it “Kavanaugh’s Revenge.” Senator Bob Casey saw it a little differently in his own re-election bid — as a less-than-decisive issue in what was supposed to be a marquee race…

In the end, the most contentious Supreme Court confirmation drama in decades resulted in a split midterm decision that suggests that Democrats might have gained ground in their fledgling efforts to make the court as mobilizing an issue to their voters as it has long been to Republicans.

Republicans believed that the battle over Kavanaugh’s confirmation would be a mobilizing factor for base GOP voters. But while there is anecdotal evidence to suggest it may have helped in some already red states like Missouri, the post-Kavanaugh future for Republicans politically is a minefield of angry suburban women who were not impressed by the GOP’s handling of the sexual misconduct allegations against him.

Nationally, exit polls showed that more voters opposed Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination than supported it, and that women were far more likely than men to be against his confirmation. [Pols emphasis]

With 2018 behind them, Democrats plan to build on that anti-Kavanaugh sentiment and leverage it against Republicans who are expected to be at the center of the battle for Senate control in 2020. Activists believe they set the stage for voters to remember the fight two years from now. Among the Republican incumbents they intend to focus on are Senators Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Cory Gardner of Colorado [Pols emphasis] and Susan Collins of Maine, whose support was seen as crucial to Judge Kavanaugh’s approval.

Although retaining control of the U.S. Senate is considered the sole bright spot of the 2018 midterm elections for the Republican Party, the reality is that the specific Senate seats up for election in 2018 made holding the Senate a very low bar for Republicans to meet. To the extent that the battle over Kavanaugh’s nomination either helped or at least did not hurt Republicans competing in relatively safe Republican states, the effect in swing and blue states appears to be the exact opposite–and in 2020, those are the battlegrounds.

Representing a state that has swung even farther away from Cory Gardner’s right-wing agenda than when he narrowly won his seat in 2014 in a massive “post-truth” insult to voters’ intelligence, Brett Kavanaugh is just one among a long list of grievances against Gardner Colorado voters are eager to address at the polls in two years. The 2018 blue wave that swept Colorado’s suburban battlegrounds indicates strongly that Gardner is on the wrong side of the Kavanaugh political equation–and a whole lot of other equations, too.

With Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court for the rest of our lives, ending Gardner’s career may be small comfort.

But along with their vote for the next president, it’s the action Colorado voters can take.