Power Grab - Jason Chaffetz Page 0,30

the part of the Voting Rights Act the Court had struck down. Eventually the Washington Post fact-checker gave Clinton four Pinocchios for her claim.

Besides being factually inaccurate on the legal details, Clinton’s narrative was clearly hyperbolic. The effects of the Supreme Court decision were not broad enough to have the impact she described. Such a notion may resonate with progressive voters in America’s Blue cities whose exposure to conservative voters is limited to stereotypes. But for your average American voter who is not racist, the argument that Clinton lost because of racist voter suppression is an outrage. The claim is a way to quickly shut down debate and win the argument without actually having to take a position against election security.

We shouldn’t be surprised to see Clinton attach herself to this narrative. We have seen not-so-subtle foreshadowing that this narrative will play a huge role in the 2020 election cycle.

Why else would Democrats choose a failed gubernatorial candidate to offer the party’s rebuttal to the State of the Union address? Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams blames her 54,000-vote loss on voter list maintenance or—as she calls it—voter suppression. The fact that her opponent, as secretary of state, removed voters who had died, moved, become inactive (usually because they died or moved), or used names that did not match their government ID is being characterized as an act of racism and suppression. Trotting out Abrams on the national stage was one signal that Democrats will ramp up this narrative for 2020.

In the world of political narratives, these stories we tell help us decide who is right and who is wrong. The power of a good narrative is among the most potent tools in the political arsenal. In fiction, narratives help us determine which characters are the good guys and which ones are the bad guys. They help us take a side in a conflict, assign motives to the actors, and determine whether justice was done.

Narratives can be true, false, or a matter of opinion. They help us make sense of our world, but as Hillary Clinton demonstrated, they can also be used to manipulate us. In the age of Donald Trump, the spinning of increasingly implausible narratives has gone into overdrive.

Without congressional majorities, Democrats in the first two years of the Trump administration were limited in their ability to initiate the types of investigations that help build election-year narratives. But even in the minority, they demonstrated just how far they are willing to go to take down this president. Traditional norms no longer apply. The confirmation hearings of Justice Brett Kavanaugh were a window into the scorched-earth approach Democrats will take to tell the stories that protect their power.

Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein of California, ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, would be the Democratic lead in the confirmation hearings. To this point, Feinstein had been very outspoken about her principles when it comes to congressional oversight, posting to her website in 2009: “So amid all the quarreling and confusion, I say this: Let’s not prejudge or jump to conclusions. And let’s resist the temptation to stage a Washington spectacle, high in entertainment value, but low in fact-finding potential.”

Unfortunately for Feinstein, the Kavanaugh hearings would pit her stated principles against her partisan interests. To disrupt the Kavanaugh nomination, Feinstein and her Democrat colleagues would have to cast off long-standing traditions and violate some of their own deeply held beliefs. They would do it. This confirmation hearing would be like nothing that had come before it. No one would contest that congressional hearings are inherently political. But this time Democrats would have to cross lines they had never crossed before.

Having lost the presidency, Democrats in July 2017 were now facing a second existential threat as President Donald Trump would have the opportunity to replace retiring swing justice Anthony Kennedy. A qualified and energetic young conservative could occupy that seat for three decades. Having gambled and lost on the president’s first Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, Democrats were now without the filibuster that would have given them the votes to block Kennedy’s replacement. They needed to do something drastic. They needed a narrative that would be disqualifying. Without a valid reason to reject the president’s nominee, they would have to create one.

The Kavanaugh Spectacle

The coordinated attempt to commit reputational murder for political gain is becoming a favorite trope of the left. The trope is effective, but only if people believe it. We should familiarize ourselves with the basic components of this screenplay, because we’ll