on the D.C. Circuit. An astounding thirty-nine of them went on to clerk at the Supreme Court, securing his coveted spot as the top “feeder judge” on the federal bench. The first time Kavanaugh had really thought about the Supreme Court was when, as a fifteen-year-old, he read The Brethren, Bob Woodward’s behind-the-scenes account of the Court in the 1970s. The stars of the book were the clerks, and he thought it seemed like a great job—even better than the job of a justice.
Kavanaugh was regularly in touch with his former clerks, hosting them at holiday parties and baseball games. Every five years they would get together with their spouses for a reunion, where the judge would introduce those who were new since the previous reunion, describing in detail where he met each clerk and what he liked about him or her. He offered personal touches, as when he recounted a funny toast given at a clerk’s wedding or reminisced about trading belts with a clerk who was underdressed on his way to interview with the chief justice.
As devoted to their mentor as he was to them, Kavanaugh’s former clerks took on the task of lobbying for his nomination, talking to anybody who would listen at the White House and in conservative legal circles. Some of them worked inside the White House counsel’s office itself. Whether from the inside or the outside, the lobbying helped. Not only was Kavanaugh now on the list, he was widely considered a front-runner.
The president met with Kavanaugh on Monday, July 2, asking him about his background and White House experience. Trump was looking for someone who could sit on the court for thirty to forty years, was exceptionally well qualified, was an originalist, and was not weak. Kavanaugh emphasized that he’d been tested throughout his career and had stood by his principles in moments of difficulty. It was a friendly conversation, not a quiz, and it was over in less than a half-hour. The president felt that Kavanaugh had shown signs of courage and decisiveness in his interview, and that kept him in contention.
Judges are not supposed to be political, but their selection and confirmation, committed by the Constitution to political actors, is unavoidably so. Court watchers knew Kavanaugh was the one to beat from the moment he was added to the list, and online bettors gave him the best odds for securing the nomination as soon as Kennedy retired.14 But there were other contenders, some of whom had serious bases of support. Other than Kethledge, Kavanaugh, and Barrett, Trump was considering Thomas Hardiman of the Third Circuit and Amul Thapar of the Sixth Circuit. He met with all of them that Monday except Hardiman, whom he’d met during the previous nomination process. He also interviewed other candidates by phone.15
Demand Justice, a left-wing interest group recently founded by Brian Fallon, the campaign spokesman for Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee in 2016, announced plans to spend $1 million in television ads against the eventual nominee, whoever he or she might be, and dropped online ads against three of the contenders within a day of Kennedy’s retirement.16 One of the targets was Amy Coney Barrett, a favorite of conservatives since her deft handling of hostile questions about her Catholic faith from Democratic senators and the media after her nomination to the appellate bench the previous year. The New York Times suggested a religious organization to which she belonged was a cult, while Senator Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat of the Senate Judiciary Committee, criticized the role of faith in her life, sneering that “the dogma lives loudly within you.”17 That tortured phrase became a rallying cry for Christian youth groups and others who were impressed that Barrett held firm under fire for her faith.
Demand Justice’s ads signaled that the left was serious. But on the right, nothing was being taken for granted. The Judicial Crisis Network was prepared to spend tens of millions of dollars, as it had already done in the effort to confirm Justice Gorsuch to Justice Scalia’s seat. JCN (of which one of the authors is chief counsel and policy director) had served as a hub of outside groups supporting conservative judicial nominees since 2005. And by the time Justice Kennedy retired, it was ready for its greatest test yet. The group would supervise an extensive research operation, organize rapid response, brief journalists and opinion leaders, and activate grassroots leaders across the country while running the most robust paid media campaign in