Senior Democrat Dick Durbin When Asked About Kavanaugh Impeachment: 'Get Real'
Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois did not mince words this week when asked if fresh sexual assault allegations leveled against Justice Brett Kavanaugh would have Democrats seriously considering articles of impeachment.
“Get real,” the Senate Minority Whip told reporters Monday, according to Politico.
Having voted against Kavanaugh during a historically slim 50-48 Supreme Court confirmation last October, Durbin warned his fellow Democrats to turn away from their strategy of, often empty, threats of impeachment — particularly with the 2020 presidential election close at hand.
“We’ve got to get beyond this ‘impeachment is the answer to every problem,’” Durbin said. “It’s not realistic.
“If that’s how we are identified in Congress — as the impeachment Congress — we run the risk that people will feel we’re ignoring the issues that mean a lot to them as families.”
The uproar surrounding the judge began anew this week when two New York Times reporters published an exposé detailing claims a nude Kavanaugh had allowed friends to push his penis into the hand of an unwilling female during a drunken dorm party at Yale University decades ago.
The exposé was a companion piece for Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly’s new book, “The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation” in which the reporters attempt to verify misconduct allegations against Kavanaugh and build a stronger foundation for the case against his confirmation.
The veracity of this claim was quickly challenged by Federalist reporter Mollie Hemingway.
BOMBSHELL: New York Times corrects Kavanaugh smear to note alleged victim does not recall any such incident. pic.twitter.com/yigeOyOCzo
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) September 16, 2019
Having received an early copy of the book, Hemingway pointed out on Twitter that a key detail had been left out of the Times’ companion piece: the alleged victim has no memory of any such incident, as Pogrebin and Kelly concede in the book.
The Times would later be forced to issue a correction on those grounds.
But this did not stop Democratic presidential primary candidates Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris from calling for Kavanaugh’s impeachment on Twitter.
Last year the Kavanaugh nomination was rammed through the Senate without a thorough examination of the allegations against him. Confirmation is not exoneration, and these newest revelations are disturbing. Like the man who appointed him, Kavanaugh should be impeached.
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) September 15, 2019
The Kavanaugh hearings last year opened old wounds for many survivors of sexual assault. Allegations must always be taken seriously. pic.twitter.com/zNhw5skC6I
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) September 17, 2019
Durbin was not the only prominent left-wing figure to suggest the Democrats should focus on policy and avoid further attempts to re-litigate key moments of President Donald Trump’s election and presidency this election season.
Journalist Piers Morgan, who has taken a hard stance against the American left’s “unbearable” recent total war approach to political discourse, railed against progressives on similar grounds Monday in an op-ed for The Daily Mail.
Morgan argued this fresh Kavanaugh “smear” is just another example of progressives, both in the media and in the legislature, making Trump’s case for re-election.
“Once again, a shocking piece of shoddy journalism has played right into Trump’s hands,” Morgan wrote.
The left’s “Trump-bashing mania is a commercially successful strategy” in the short-term, he wrote, but it will come at a political cost.
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