As Judge Ketan­ji Brown Jack­son was intro­duced to Amer­i­ca at her Supreme Court con­fir­ma­tion hear­ings, as a per­son of qual­i­fi­ca­tion and intel­lect, the nation received a quite dif­fer­ent first dose of Sen­a­tor Mar­sha Black­burn, R‑Tennessee.

It was Black­burn who went on and on about “cul­ture wars” and want­ed Judge Jack­son to define a woman. Black­burn is a per­son who judges with­out evi­dence. Wit­ness this tweet: “The rad­i­cal left is teach­ing five-year-olds that they can choose their own sex. Mean­while, they’ve put for­ward a nom­i­nee to the Supreme Court who can­not define the word ‘woman’.”

How did Ten­nessee, home to past Sen­ate Major­i­ty Lead­ers, come to elect a Tea Par­ty sup­port­er to the World’s Great­est Delib­er­a­tive Body?

A Supreme Court con­fir­ma­tion hear­ing played a role.

In 2018, Repub­li­cans deployed the “smear­ing” of nom­i­nee Brett Kavanaugh to their advan­tage in con­ser­v­a­tive states. It worked in Ten­nessee as Black­burn beat a blue-chip Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nee, ex-Gov­er­nor Phil Bredensen.

The polit­i­cal right dis­plays a cyn­i­cal mas­tery when it comes to cre­at­ing issues. Its nation­wide pro­pa­gan­da net­work ranges from rhi­nos (Sean Han­ni­ty) to tick birds (Dori Mon­son). It gen­er­ates issues from whole cloth, wit­ness Black­burn talk­ing about “woke” cul­ture, sex change, and man­u­fac­tured evils of crit­i­cal race theory.

Judge Kavanaugh was worked over the coals, legit­i­mate­ly because of a spe­cif­ic alle­ga­tion of attempt­ed rape ren­dered – hes­i­tant­ly and reluc­tant­ly – by a cred­i­ble per­son. The Jack­son hear­ings before Sen­ate Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee have shown what a real-life smear looks lie.

On the Sen­ate floor, in Tuesday’s debate, extrem­ist Sen­a­tor Tom Cot­ton, R‑Arkansas, hit a new low as he stat­ed: “The last Judge (Robert) Jack­son left the Supreme Court to go to Nurem­burg and pros­e­cute the chase against the Nazis. This Judge Jack­son might have gone there to defend them.”

The Repub­li­cans are at it again, gin­ning up issues and tar­get­ing folk rang­ing from legal ser­vices lawyers to trans­gen­der teens. It is to three ends.

The Repub­li­can “base” is a minor­i­ty of vot­ers. The fol­low­ing must be mobi­lized, par­tic­u­lar­ly in low­er turnout midterm elections.

Con­verse­ly, make it dif­fi­cult for such non-Repub­li­can con­stituen­cies as work­ing women, peo­ple of col­or and young folks to vote.

Final­ly, office­hold­ers who stray from the par­ty and Trump line must be terrorized.

Of the three Repub­li­can sen­a­tors who are vot­ing for Judge Jackson’s con­fir­ma­tion, Mar­jorie Tay­lor Greene, R‑Georgia, tweet­ed on Tues­day: “Collins, Murkows­ki and Rom­ney are pro-pedophile.” (Greene appears at ral­lies with Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Matt Gaetz, R‑Florida, object of a fed­er­al sex traf­fick­ing investigation.)

I watched the Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee hear­ing with a neigh­bor who is African Amer­i­can. She was upset at this lat­est boor­ish treat­ment of a Black woman.

So were many African Amer­i­can women across the Unit­ed States, a mass out­rage giv­en elo­quent voice by Joy Reid and guests on MSNBC.

But not enough. Polit­i­cal pro­gres­sives are roused less often, which is not good for the nation. When it does hap­pen – e.g. the Judi­cia­ry Committee’s treat­ment of Ani­ta Hill, the growth of the #MeToo move­ment – pos­i­tive social change results.

Our pro­gres­sives don’t deploy a griev­ance machine that nur­tures past upsets. Quite the con­trary, the urge is to move on and move ahead. New mat­ters com­mand atten­tion. A vast cit­i­zen move­ment fueled Barack Obama’s cam­paign for the pres­i­den­cy. He seemed to say, “I’ll take it from here.”

The activism wasn’t there to advo­cate for the Patient Pro­tec­tion Act. The troops were not turned out to defend it in the 2010 elec­tion campaign.

Recall­ing 1994 and 2010, there is in 2020 the per­il of a “three-peat.” The stakes are too high to sit this one out. Trump is far from gone. Not only is the Trump move­ment very much alive, but the Repub­li­can Par­ty is sub­servient to it.

We are faced, with cas­es con­cern­ing abor­tion before the Supreme Court, the prospect that Amer­i­cans will see a right tak­en away.

The Court has made atro­cious deci­sions in the past, such as eighty years ago when it upheld the intern­ment of Japan­ese Amer­i­cans, but most of those deci­sions have been in long-ago eras. And nev­er with a right, the right to repro­duc­tive free­dom, con­sis­tent­ly sup­port­ed in polls by a major­i­ty of Americans.

Judge Jack­son will be con­firmed by the Sen­ate, not with the eighty-plus votes earned by Ruth Bad­er Gins­berg, but with 53 or 54 votes.

She has the can­dle pow­er to excel on the Supreme Court, but like­ly nev­er will for­get her treat­ment before the Judi­cia­ry Committee.

Nor should we. Nor has one Repub­li­can, Sen­a­tor Lisa Murkows­ki, R‑Alaska, who is vot­ing to con­firm based on Judge Jackson’s “range of expe­ri­ence from the court­room that few can match giv­en her back­ground in litigation.”

But, of her deci­sion, Murkows­ki said Friday:

It also rests on my rejec­tion of the cor­ro­sive politi­ciza­tion of the review process for Supreme Court nom­i­nees, which, on both sides of the aisle, is grow­ing worse and more detached from real­i­ty by the year.

The evo­lu­tion – and pro­posed revo­ca­tion – of rights is a must-fol­low, must-act mat­ter for pro­gres­sives. The selec­tion, nom­i­na­tion and con­fir­ma­tion of fed­er­al judges is so vital to that progress. For instance, judi­cial nom­i­na­tions put for­ward by Sen­a­tors Mur­ray and Cantwell have already made the fed­er­al bench in Wash­ing­ton look a lot more like the state’s population.

I’m re-upping my mem­ber­ship in the Amer­i­can Con­sti­tu­tion Soci­ety to keep track of the process. It didn’t cease to be inter­est­ing with a Demo­c­rat back in the White House. When encoun­ter­ing a law­mak­er who wants my cam­paign dol­lars, ‘will ask whether Con­gress will take up the egre­gious eth­i­cal con­flicts embod­ies by right wing pow­er cou­ple Clarence and Gin­ni Thomas.

Just one ques­tion that Judge Ketan­ji Brown Jack­son is barred by dis­cre­tion from answer­ing: Hav­ing known the “Gen­tle­man from Texas” since both were stu­dents at Har­vard Law School, when did she first take an active dis­like to Ted Cruz?