Republicans have said that hearings on the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett will begin the week of October 12, so a vote in the Judiciary Committee is possible by Thursday or Friday, October 16. There are mechanisms available to Democrats that could delay the committee vote a week, meaning it might not be able to hit the Senate floor until October 26, just over a week before Election Day and after tens of millions of votes will already have been cast.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, under pressure from the left, including directly from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is pledging to exploit Senate rules to slow down the debate as much as possible. One tactic available would require cooperation from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Namely, if the House passes a resolution under the War Powers Act or the Congressional Review Act, it’s privileged in such a way that any senator can call it up for a vote in the upper chamber. For instance, the House has already passed a resolution calling for the U.S. to end its support for Saudi Arabia in its war in Yemen. The House could pass another version of that resolution, and the Senate would be required to take it up. Or the House could pass a resolution under the Congressional Review Act that declared one of Trump’s recently enacted regulations to be improper. That resolution would be privileged in the Senate, meaning it gets priority ahead of other business.
So far, Pelosi has indicated little interest in employing that tactic, but a pressure campaign could change that.
Democrats could also raise multiple points of order and demand votes on rulings of the chair, etc. I broke the news of a memo circulating in the Senate last week that lays out many of these tactics, which has since been covered in the Times and elsewhere. Senate Democrats already used several procedural tools to gum up the works, including withholding consent on a government spending bill, which will force Republican senators, many of whom are in tight re-election races, to be in Washington next week.
Managing to push the vote past the election wouldn’t assure victory, but it would change the political calculus for a number of senators. It would also expose the illegitimacy of the process to a greater degree and galvanize Democratic voters. The whole fight, of course, will also fire up Trump’s base.
I recently interviewed Ana Maria Archila, who is profiled in my book, We’ve Got People, for her role in the Kavanaugh confirmation fight, which included cornering Jeff Flake in an elevator, producing a confrontation seen around the world. (We’ve Got People is available as an audio book now.) If you’re curious how progressive movement leaders are thinking about this moment, that interview, done for TYT’s The Conversation, is a good place to start. (If you have good ideas of people I should interview for The Conversation, which allows for longer, in depth interviews, let me know.)
Democrats can stop the nomination from getting to the Senate floor by refusing to advance it out of committee. They need one Democrat to vote to advance. Otherwise it cannot. https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/about/rules