Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation is a tragedy for the American people, but may be a blessing for the Democrats

If the Democrats can leverage the indignation voters are feeling towards the Kavanaugh decision, they could next month regain control of the House, which has the power to begin impeachment proceedings

Today is a tragic day for American citizens, who rely on the integrity of the Supreme Court to provide the all-important checks and balances to moderate the partisan whims of their elected officials. The Supreme Court is an arbiter of issues which Congress is unable to solve due to its party political split. The new makeup of the court – five right-leaning judges and four liberals – will erode its value and challenge its ability to uphold the constitutional rights of the people, regardless of who is president.

The confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh, amid cries from and arrests of protestors, is the most partisan in history – even Trump’s first appointee, Neil Gorsuch, secured three democratic votes. Numerous justices, including sitting justice Sonia Sotomayor and Chief Justice John Roberts, have emphasised the importance of the court remaining non-partisan. But this issue clearly eludes not just Donald Trump, who tweeted in March that the court needed more Republicans, but also GOP senators, who – with the notable exception of Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who was expected to vote no but abstained to account for another senator’s absence – voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh despite the numerous claims of sexual assault against him.

Senator Joe Manchin’s decision as the sole Democrat to back Kavanaugh betrayed him as either a misogynist for whom allegations of sexual assault are irrelevant when it comes to rich men, or a power-hungry hypocrite so desperate to cling on to his seat in the midterms next month that he’ll do anything to appease the heavily Trump-leaning voters of West Virginia.

Susan Collins of Maine, often considered a “moderate” Republican, also voted in favour of Kavanaugh, justifying her decision in a 40-minute speech yesterday which invoked notions of presumed innocence and burden of proof, and she’s not the only one to make such arguments. It seems that many of these lawmakers are incapable of telling the difference between a criminal trial and a job interview. There is no such thing as “presumed competence” for the role, and Kavanaugh has shown neither the temperament nor the reverence for truth which should surely be paramount.

His statements over the past weeks have been contradictory, overly emotional, inflammatory and partisan to the degree of bordering on conspiracy theories. Retired Supreme Court justice John Paul Stevens (also appointed by a Republican president, Gerald Ford) is one of many leading figures arguing Kavanaugh has shown himself to be unfit for the role. Robert Post, the former dean of Yale Law school, wrote that the judge has "stoked the fires of partisan rage and male entitlement" and he will now remain a "symbol of partisan anger”, and sitting justice Elena Kagan said that “it's an incredibly important thing for the court to guard [its] reputation of being impartial, being neutral and not being simply an extension of a terribly polarising process".

Kavanaugh’s attitude betrayed a sense of entitlement which many of us may find hard to wrap our heads around, but which Republicans clearly share, decrying his hardship at having to face the allegations, and claiming he was “born for the job”.

While Kavanaugh’s life would have continued on in a bubble of privilege regardless of today’s outcome, there are many people for whom his appointment will have a real impact. The symbolism of an alleged sexual predator being appointed to one of the most important roles in the land on the one-year anniversary of the beginning of the Me Too movement is inescapable. Women are angry – and rightly so. As Maria Gallagher infamously shouted at Senator Jeff Flake in an elevator last week: “I was sexually assaulted and nobody believed me. I didn’t tell anyone, and you’re telling all women that they don’t matter, that they should just stay quiet because if they tell you what happened to them you are going to ignore them.” When you add Kavanaugh to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and President Donald Trump, we now have two of the three branches of US government staffed by men who have been accused of sexually assaulting or harassing women. If Trump had his own way and Roy Moore had won the Alabama senate seat, that would have made it three for three.

While the pain of this confirmation will remain with many women forever, its timing offers a glimmer of hope to the Democrats.

Kavanaugh’s appointment could be key in making left-leaning people angry enough to get out and vote when they otherwise might not have. We’ve already seen voters in Maine raise more than $3m to challenge Susan Collins’ seat in 2020. If the Democrats can leverage the indignation voters are feeling towards the Kavanaugh decision, it’s possible they could next month regain control of the House of Representatives, which has the power to begin impeachment proceedings – Democratic representatives Luis Gutierrez and Ted Lieu have already suggested they would consider this option. In order to oust him from the court, the Senate would have to convict him by a two-thirds majority. Such a turnaround in the midterms seems unlikely, but polls are far from a guarantee in today’s complex political landscape.

Many parallels have been made to Clarence Thomas’s confirmation to the Supreme Court in 1991 despite Anita Hill’s harrowing testimony of the sexual harassment he allegedly inflicted upon her, and the so-called “year of the woman” that followed, which saw the number of women in the Senate double (from two to four), and continue to rise throughout subsequent elections. The allegations against Kavanaugh are graver and more credible, and the political backlash could be more immediate.

Regardless of how this affects the outcome of the midterms, some Democrats are thinking about playing the long game, and reportedly considering making Kavanaugh’s impeachment a key campaign issue for the 2020 election. Only one Supreme Court Justice, Samuel Chase in 1805, has ever been impeached (ironically, the charge was being too partisan), but the Senate did not vote to remove him. However, if the whirlwind of Trump’s presidency has taught us anything it’s that just because something is unprecedented does not make it unlikely to occur.

Politically speaking, Kavanaugh may be the best thing that could have happened to Democrats if his confirmation really does mobilise their supporters while sinking Republican voters into complacency. But there’s still a lot of damage a right-leaning Supreme Court can do in the interim.

Much has been made of the possibility that Kavanaugh will be the Supreme Court vote necessary to overturn Roe v Wade, the 1973 court ruling which declared women’s rights to abortion. Given his absurd view on contraception (“abortion-inducing drugs”), perhaps we should also be concerned about him overturning Griswold v Connecticut, which established an individual’s privacy in matters of reproduction.

It's also worrying that Kavanaugh employed dazzling verbal somersaults to avoid answering California Senator Kamala Harris’s question about his thoughts on Obergefell v Hodges, the 2015 ruling which legalised same-sex marriage. But perhaps the most problematic of his views is also the one that probably got him nominated in the first place: his idea that a sitting president should not be indicted for a crime while in office. If this were to become law, it would mean that if Robert Mueller’s investigation – which has already indicted or got guilty pleas from 32 people, including Paul Manafort and George Papadopoulos – turns up evidence of Trump’s illegal dealings with Russia, he may not be able to be prosecuted and therefore impeached for it.

Kavanaugh’s appointment marks the pinnacle of partisanship in the Supreme Court, and a new low for Mitch McConnell and the Republican Party, whose outrageous choice to block Barack Obama from appointing moderate Merrick Garland as Justice Antonin Scalia’s replacement in 2016 will go down in history as one of the worst examples of party politics trumping democracy.

But more importantly, it shows that there is a new normal in Trump’s America – one where women are dehumanised, yet rich white men are painted as the victims; a country where truth and integrity matter less than where you went to school. Hopefully, a Democratic win in Congress will go some way to making it worth it, but as a woman I’ll never stop wishing it hadn’t happened.