Schumer Loses Control: Mike Braun Forces Democrat Donnelly to Cave, Meet with Judge Kavanaugh

Republican businessman and U.S. Senate nominee in Indiana Mike Braun has forced the hand of his red state Democratic opponent Sen. Joe Donnelly (D-IN) in the first major defection of the Senate Democratic Conference in the confirmation battle over Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Braun, as reportedly exclusively early Tuesday by Breitbart News, lit up Donnelly for failing to meet with Kavanaugh in the same timeframe in which he met with President Donald Trump’s first Supreme Court nominee, now Justice Neil Gorsuch. Despite a promise–now broken–by Donnelly to apply the same standard to Kavanaugh he did to Gorsuch, Donnelly had not met with Kavanaugh inside 15 days from the nomination by President Trump–as he did with Gorsuch–and Braun lit up Donnelly for the double standard in a Breitbart News exclusive.

Braun took the Breitbart News on Tuesday morning and blasted Donnelly even further via Twitter:

.@SenDonnelly promised to use the Gorsuch approach to evaluate Brett Kavanaugh, & today he has broken his word. It only took 15 days for Donnelly to meet with Gorsuch, yet 15 days into Kavanaugh’s nomination he still won’t meet with @POTUS's nominee. https://t.co/IsjzQbybRY

— Mike Braun (@braun4indiana) July 24, 2018

Less than 24 hours later, though, Donnelly caved in and agreed to meet with Kavanaugh–becoming the second Democrat to do so and the first who had initially resisted but later caved.

“Donnelly has consistently said he would carefully review and consider Judge Kavanaugh’s record, meet with him, and follow his confirmation hearing,” Donnelly’s office said Tuesday, according to The Hill newspaper.

Donnelly’s cave does not yet mean he is a yes vote on Kavanaugh, but he is one of a handful of Democrats who voted for Gorsuch last go-around. Many Republicans expect Donnelly will eventually–along with several other Democrats like Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), the other Democrat who has already as expected agreed to meet with Kavanaugh despite leftist pressure not to–cave again and vote for Kavanaugh’s confirmation.

But the hard-charging Braun is surely going to make the entire process painful for Donnelly. While exuberant in a statement celebrating the cave of Donnelly in agreeing to meet with Kavanaugh, Braun made it clear that Donnelly is not off the hook yet.

“Democrat Senator Donnelly had to decide if he would stand with liberals in Washington or meet with President Trump’s highly qualified nominee, and I’m glad he will at least meet with Judge Kavanaugh,” Braun said. “While I strongly support this nomination, I have no doubt Donnelly will wait until the liberal wing of his party gives him permission to support Judge Kavanaugh.”

Perhaps more importantly in this whole development is the fact that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has now officially–very early in this process, before a confirmation hearing has even been scheduled, never mind had–lost control of his Senate Democratic Conference. Manchin’s defection in meeting Kavanaugh was to be expected. Donnelly’s was not. Therefore, pressure is going to build on other red-state Democrats up for re-election as their elections loom. If they refuse to meet with Kavanaugh and eventually oppose his nomination or continue to drag out the process by not issuing statements of public intent to vote for Kavanaugh in the end, the political price to pay back home in their red states that President Trump won handily in 2016 against Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton cannot be understated.

Schumer has tried, per The Hill newspaper report on Donnelly’s defection, to keep a lid on his conference by forcing them to block Kavanaugh until the White House produces a million pages of documents from Kavanaugh’s time in George W. Bush’s White House.

“I have told my caucus that I’m waiting, and I think most of them are following me,” Schumer said, per a New York Times story cited by The Hill.

But Schumer may be losing followers fast. Losing Donnelly and Manchin this early in the process on such a basic thing like meeting with the Supreme Court nominee foreshadows worse times ahead for the Democratic conference, especially those from red states up for re-election, and for its leader Schumer.