The odds that Ketanji Brown Jackson would be confirmed were always in her favor, but after a year during which moderate Senate Democrats Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) repeatedly blocked Joe Biden’s radical agenda, there seemed to be a glimmer of hope that Jackson’s confirmation wasn’t a foregone conclusion in the evenly divided Senate.
Assuming Republicans were united in opposition, it would only take one of the Democrats to thwart Jackson’s nomination, but even that was always a longshot. Both Manchin and Sinema have voted to confirm all of Biden’s judicial nominees to lower courts, even the controversial ones. That said, voting to confirm a judge to a lower court isn’t the same thing as voting to confirm a judge to the Supreme Court. So, it seemed possible that maybe one of these two red-state Democrats might break with their party by voting against this radical nominee.
My money was on Joe Manchin.
Last year, Manchin joined with Senate Republicans to pass an amendment banning the use of federal funds to teach critical race theory, suggesting he might have been less likely to support her for the high court because of her past statement indicating that CRT was a factor in her decision-making as a judge. But, sadly, neither her views on CRT nor her troubling soft-on-crime record was enough to convince him to vote against her. His announcement that he plans to vote to confirm Jackson was also remarkably quick, suggesting to me that his decision on the issue preceded the confirmation hearings.
Related: Joe Manchin Announces His Decision on Ketanji Jackson’s Confirmation
Nevertheless, we anxiously await Sen. Sinema’s announcement of her intentions. Newsweek argues that Sinema remains Jackson’s final obstacle, and maybe there’s a bit of truth to that. She’s already been censured by the Arizona Democratic Party for not being a rubber stamp for the Biden agenda. Polls have suggested that Sinema will have difficulty winning the Democratic primary when she’s up for reelection in 2024. It seems unlikely that primary-voting liberals would ever forgive her for blocking the confirmation of Biden’s Supreme Court pick — who also happens to be the first black woman nominated to the court, in case you weren’t already aware of this.
Sinema has offered no hints as to how she will vote, and her office told Newsweek that the senator doesn’t preview her votes, so we won’t know for sure until the confirmation vote.
All we have to go on is Sinema’s statement following her meeting with Jackson, in which she said, “As I promised Arizonans, I am carefully considering Judge Jackson’s nomination.”
“Today, we had a very productive meeting and I welcomed hearing directly her belief in the importance of an independent judiciary, her judicial philosophy, and her approach to precedent. I look forward to watching her nomination hearings ahead of a Senate vote.”
Supporting Jackson may hurt Sinema in 2024 during the general election, but she most certainly won’t survive her primary if she doesn’t support Jackson during her confirmation vote. Sinema has been performing a cautious balancing act, where she has generally supported Biden and his agenda while only opposing a few key issues. I would guess she’s more likely to be forgiven by Republican voters in Arizona for supporting Jackson than she would be forgiven by Democrat voters for opposing her.
