How will the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett affect the United States Senate?

Top Sen­ate Repub­li­can Mitch McConnell’s efforts to jam the nom­i­na­tion of Amy Coney Bar­rett to the Supreme Court before Tuesday’s elec­tion were relent­less to the point of seem­ing des­per­ate – turn­ing the “advise and con­sent” role of the Sen­ate into a farce, dele­git­imiz­ing the nom­i­nee, and break­ing Sen­ate rules in the process – but he had his way on Mon­day, when the upper cham­ber of Con­gress con­firmed Barrett’s nom­i­na­tion by fifty-two votes to forty-eight votes.

The ele­va­tion of Bar­rett enlarges the Supreme Court’s right wing bloc and could have the effect of secur­ing minor­i­ty rule for the Repub­li­cans for years to come.

The vote itself demon­strat­ed the extrem­ism that now defines the Repub­li­can Par­ty; only one Repub­li­can (Susan Collins of Maine, who is fac­ing a tough re-elec­­tion fight) vot­ed against rub­ber-stam­p­ing Barrett’s absurd­ly rushed nom­i­na­tion, while every oth­er Repub­li­can sen­a­tor blithe­ly got in line… even Lisa Murkowski.

The vote also showed how unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic the U.S. Sen­ate has become. The fifty-two sen­a­tors who vot­ed “yes” rep­re­sent 152 mil­lion Amer­i­cans, while the minor­i­ty of forty-eight rep­re­sent more than 170 million!

Mitch McConnell seemed to want to draw atten­tion to the dis­par­i­ty in his com­ments after the con­fir­ma­tion: “The rea­son we were able to do what we did in 2016, 2018 and 2020 [refer­ring to three Supreme Court nom­i­na­tions] is because we had the major­i­ty.” In 2016 and 2018, Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­ate can­di­dates won 56% and 60% of the vote respec­tive­ly, and yet Repub­li­cans held on to control!

How­ev­er, McConnell and his cronies can­not rely on the struc­tural­ly rigged archi­tec­ture of the Sen­ate to help them for­ev­er – polls sug­gest that Democ­rats are on the cusp of reclaim­ing con­trol for the fist time since 2014, which is part of the rea­son for their haste to con­firm Barrett.

As Sen­a­tor Eliz­a­beth War­ren put it, “they have real­ized a truth that shakes them down to their core: The Amer­i­can peo­ple are not on their side.”

McConnell’s rush may have actu­al­ly harmed his party’s prospects. Although polling is unclear over whether the rushed con­fir­ma­tion helps or harms the Repub­li­cans, the fact is that McConnell chose to focus on pack­ing the Supreme Court, rather than con­firm­ing any leg­is­la­tion that would help the vic­tims of COVID-19.

The nov­el coro­n­avirus that caus­es COVID-19 has been par­tic­u­lar­ly dev­as­tat­ing in a num­ber of states with close Sen­ate races, and vot­ers are unlike­ly to reward their Repub­li­can incum­bents for obsess­ing over the Supreme Court while slam­ming the brakes on get­ting much-need­ed pan­dem­ic relief to constituents.

The Biden team seems aware of the pos­si­bil­i­ties that McConnell’s ruth­less dis­re­gard for the Amer­i­can peo­ple could bring. Joe Biden’s cam­paign sched­ule has seen him vis­it a num­ber of states (includ­ing Texas, Iowa and Geor­gia) where Democ­rats have a pos­si­bil­i­ty of win­ning Sen­ate seats.

His pres­ence will like­ly boost enthu­si­asm for these candidates.

The great irony for Mitch McConnell is that his ruth­less deter­mi­na­tion to secure rule by the few through ger­ry­man­der­ing and the courts could ulti­mate­ly result in all his work being undone. The Repub­li­cans’ unhinged rad­i­cal­ism in these last days of Trump has per­suad­ed many Democ­rats (even many “insti­tu­tion­al­ists”) that major changes are need­ed to make the coun­try more small “d” democratic.

Sup­port is grow­ing for projects like expand­ing the Supreme Court and giv­ing state­hood to Puer­to Rico and the Dis­trict of Colum­bia – projects that would like­ly spell doom for the Repub­li­can Party’s con­trol of nation­al politics.