The Democrats would absolutely not confirm a progressive version of Brett Kavanaugh

And that’s exactly as it should be.  Kavanaugh has lied repeatedly under oath.  He has made it perfectly clear that he isn’t even going to pretend to maintain the appearance of a non-partisan judge (“what goes around comes around”).  And of course he has been credibly accused of multiple instances of sexual assault.  Any one of those circumstances should by itself be disqualifying for any nominee.

What is most despicable about the GOP’s reaction to all this is that they aren’t even faced with a difficult moral choice. After all, it’s not as if bouncing Kavanaugh means they lose the seat.  I will readily admit that if the shoe were on the other foot, and nixing the nominee meant losing the seat, then progressives would be faced with an agonizing moral dilemma.

BUT THAT’S NOT THE SITUATION.  If a progressive nominee turned out to be as outrageously unfit as Kavanaugh, but could be replaced with another progressive nominee who was actually someone who should be a judge, then of course that person would be replaced, immediately and without hesitation.  Democrats and progressives are needless to say far from perfect, both individually and collectively, but we’re not currently members of an amoral cult that values “winning” above maintaining even a shred of personal or political decency.

In principle it would be quite simple to waste the surplus labour of the world by building temples and pyramids, by digging holes and filling them up again, or even by producing vast quantities of goods and then setting fire to them. But this would provide only the economic and not the emotional basis for a hierarchical society. What is concerned here is not the morale of masses, whose attitude is unimportant so long as they are kept steadily at work, but the morale of the Party itself. Even the humblest Party member is expected to be competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph. In other words it is necessary that he should have the mentality appropriate to a state of war.

Nineteen Eighty-Four