Trump Updates to the Midterms:

• President Trump has quietly sent emissaries to meet with Seventh Circuit Appeals Court Judge Amy Coney Barrett to assess her willingness to stand in as a replacement for Judge Brett Kavanaugh.

• The New York Times has revealed that Trump acquired a large part of his wealth the old fashion way through inheritance and fraud and not through the hard work and the ‘art of the deal’ that he so often evokes.

• Trump’s mocking of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford during his Mississippi campaign rally last Tuesday night, after acknowledging her compelling testimony a week ago, parallels his lukewarm and aggressive advocacy, in turn, for his SCOTUS nominee, Judge Brett Kavanaugh.

• Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is bluffing and bullying the public and his members with his assertion that he has the votes to confirm Judge Kavanaugh; he has not yet gotten to 50.

• As we go to press, it is not clear that the FBI is fully investigating all leads and sworn documents that provide independent corroboration about Kavanaugh’s drunken behavior, especially those from his Yale classmates, close associates, and friends.

• Kavanaugh may be holding a “trump card” to get him onto SCOTUS in that he, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, FBI Director Christopher Ray, and White House Counsel Don McGahn have been close acquaintances for two decades as they have worked together in and around the federal government in the D.C. area.

In the classic 1994 movie Pulp Fiction, movie star Samuel L. Jackson played the murderous gangster, Jules Winnfield, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. His role has recently been reprised on a widely viewed, spliced together Instagram post where he briefly interrogates Brett Kavanaugh (BK) in a slightly profane spoof while giving the back of his hand to Senator Lindsey Graham, BK’s most bellicose defender during the Ford-Kavanaugh hearing. Jackson’s Winnfield character whipped both their behinds without breaking a sweat. As we reach the final day of the additional week-long investigation of BK, the Democrats could borrow some backbone from Sam Jackson’s character if they hope to derail the BK SCOTUS train headed their way.

There is robust evidence that BK is a lying, scheming, pu**y-grabbing, gang raping, penis-in-the-face waving, sexual predator who is also a hard liquor and beer drinking, belligerent, violent, and sloppy, blackout drunk. And this information has come from his Yale University friends and associates who solidly confirm the narrative carefully laid out in the testimony of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. What more do the Democrats need to secure two NO votes from several skittish Republicans, while holding their caucus together? The nation and the majority of women have already turned thumbs down on BK’s nomination as the late Republican Sen. John McCain, and current Sens. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, did on their Senate colleagues’ arrogant attempt to overturn Obamacare in 2017 with no replacement.

Besides what is noted above, BK’s Yale classmate, Kerry Berchem, a partner in the prestigious D.C. law firm, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Held, has produced text messages documenting the nefarious efforts of BK and his support team (that is assisting him in in his effort to secure the SCOTUS appointment). They have attempted to dissuade attendees at the drunken Yale dorm party where Deborah Ramirez, BK’s second accuser, has purported that BK thrusted his penis into her face, to offer perjured testimony stating that the incident did not occur. This and the aforementioned examples need to be packaged by Democrats to show BK’s questionable character (lying under oath, etc.) and crude behavior as he seeks a lifetime appointment to the highest judicial body in America.

However, there is little coherent leadership to this effect. Democratic Senators Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, and Elizabeth Warner appear to be consumed with using the Ford-BK hearing as a platform to burnish their images as frontrunners for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. Perhaps unintentionally, they are taking their eye off the ball in that a Justice BK would be the key vote in reversing generations of slow but steady progress toward a more equitable nation—most of it led by Democrats.

He would deal a death blow to women’s reproductive rights (which are already under siege) by being the kingpin in overturning Roe v. Wade. BK could retard the voting rights of minorities at the same time they are rapidly becoming the collective U.S. demographic majority. That is one of the reasons the Republicans are pushing for BK to be confirmed for the court term that began this week. He would become the fifth vote in defeating the political gerrymandering challenges from North Carolina, Wisconsin, and other states that are currently on the SCOTUS docket.

Most troubling will be the adverse impact on K-12 public school teachers and other public-sector workers, substantially populated by women, who are already being victimized by low pay, decaying school facilities, harsh working conditions, and a declining ability to collectively bargain in their workplaces. The 2018 Janus v. AFSCME decision is a major step in the latter direction. It is instructive that last spring’s teachers’ strikes and protests took place in Republican-controlled Red states (Arizona, Kentucky, North Carolina, Oklahoma, West Virginia, etc.) which were a staging ground for what is to come as shown by the evolving policies of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

BK would also join the Supreme Court’s pro-religion crew, Alito, Gorsuch, Roberts, and Thomas, who would move our nation toward a theocracy, like Iran’s, replacing our existing democracy. This view was affirmed by the Supreme Court’s Masterpiece Cake decision which permitted a baker to refuse to bake a cake for a same-sex couple’s wedding, affirming LGBTQ discrimination, which seemingly contradicts SCOTUS’s 2015 same-sex marriage decision. BK will cement the Republican firewall against racial and gender equality turning us into a modern-day, apartheid political structure that previously prevailed in South Africa.

These are some of the reasons why his SCOTUS confirmation needs to be scuttled. BK is a Trojan horse for the further diminution of American democracy. They need to treat him with the decisive pushback as Samuel L. Jackson’s Pulp Fiction character, Jules Winnfield, did in the Instagram post. It is do or die time for the future of the Democratic Party.