It is rapidly becoming apparent that Trump is not going to govern as a maverick outsider, but is instead a tool of the far right. Nothing illustrates this better than his Supreme Court pick, where he nominated a far-right jurist when he could have made a bold move to heal the nation.
Trump could have put up Merrick Garlend, and come off looking like Solomon. In one fell swoop he would have healed the “stolen seat” wound and bolstered the legitimacy of the Supreme Court. And no Democrats would have voted against. Garland was the consensus choice, the man Republicans in the Senate advised Obama to pick back in 2010, and Obama did pick in 2016. So it is not correct to pretend that there was no choice Trump could have picked that Democrats would have supported. Any moderate conservative would have gotten over the 60-vote threshold. But we are well past any pretense of bipartisanship or even token attempts at compromise.
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