Amy Coney Barrett
“Who does the laundry in your house?’’ asked a United States Senator of the nominee to the Supreme Court.
That was the question that made me semi-nauseous last week during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to a lifetime appointment to the highest court, replacing the departed Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
It wasn’t the nominee’s unwillingness to discuss climate change or any other issue.
It wasn’t the absurd dimension these committee hearings have taken on, with the cameras and the breathless media coverage. No questions really get asked. We just hear speeches from senators getting on TV so they can get-re-elected back home.
It wasn’t the Democrats’ timidity in asking Barrett about her adherence to a form of Catholicism that forces women to be subservient to men.
It wasn’t the weak display by Senate Democrats, who lost to the Republicans at every turn. The lone exception was Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who passionately laid out the dark trail of money and influence that leads to these right wing nominees. Democrats still come to a knife fight with a nerf gun. And the Republicans know it.
It wasn’t the parading of Barrett’s children before the cameras in their suits and dresses, sitting before the cameras as props for a hypocritical, cynical, multi-decade campaign to take over the Judicial branch of government. By the way, they won.
And it wasn’t the absurdist notion of “originalist’’ or Barrett calling herself a “textualist,’’ meaning that the law should be interpreted according to the words in the Constitution and nothing more. I guess that means women shouldn’t have the right to vote, blacks are still three-fifths of a person and there is no right to privacy because it’s not in the original text. Just remember - when Barrett rules in the majority against Roe v. Wade and your daughter or granddaughter can’t find a Planned Parenthood office anywhere in the southern U.S., you might wonder what happened.
The Democrats clearly decided they did not have the votes to defeat the nomination in committee. So they turned the hearings into a referendum on the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare). They clumsily brought up examples of people in their states who would suffer if the ACA were repealed.
I get it. They were giving up on the nomination but laying the groundwork to take over the Senate by convincing voters that the ACA is in danger, which it is. This trade of a Supreme Court seat for a Senate majority may seem to them the best option. But it is a trade that Republicans will take every time. Why? Because Supreme Court seats are lifetime appointments. And the Republicans have proved expert at stonewalling Democratic presidents. And taking over the Judiciary helps them execute the plan to reduce regulation, cut Medicare and Social Security and cut taxes for powerful corporations. That’s always been the plan.
And that plan is easier to execute when the leader of the Democrats on the committee is the 87-year-old Diane Feinstein, lost and befuddled while welcoming Barrett to the committee and practically supporting the nomination.
But it was the question about the laundry that was so maddening. The question came from an actual U.S. senator - John Kennedy, a Republican from Louisiana. After revving himself with that Louisiana drawl, Kennedy said, incredulously - “Who does the laundry in your house?’’
It seemed that all of the Republican misogyny and backward looking came wrapped up in that question. An old white senator from the Deep South harkening back to the old days when women did the laundry and all the household work. Now that women are working, Kennedy was shocked that she could balance it all. His fake folksiness hides an angry conservatism bent on returning to a time that never was. His question revealed his amazement that a woman could have seven children, serve her man, be a judge and get the laundry done. It was almost as bad as South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham referring to the good ole days of segregation, which he did by the way.
And then there was Barrett’s answer. She laughed and said she and her husband are trying to get their kids to take more responsibility. It was like a scene out of the TV show Mad Men, when the wife giggles at the racist joke by her husband’s business partner at the country club. Everyone’s just getting along.
Barrett’s non-answer on the laundry question, her cowardice when she had a chance to tell the U.S. Senate that laundry has nothing to do with her work, that her husband shares household duties, or that she and her husband get help running the household, said everything about what kind of judge she will be. Very strong in telling poor people they are SOL (shit out of luck) because it doesn’t say so in the original Constitution. But when it comes time to stand for what is right, she shrugged.
It revealed her core belief system, that there is a hierarchy in her home; that her Catholic faith in fact does influence her legal thinking. Funny - why is it there are no liberal “textualists?” Because textualism gives conservatives the excuse to be judicial activists in search of the America to which they wish we could return. A time when everything was fine for people like Amy Coney Barrett - everyone in their place, being polite and safe at the club.
Barrett is a stalking horse for a 50 year campaign to turn back the clock on progress and everyone knows it.
