As you would expect, there was plenty of bloviating by senators on both sides of the aisle today. The Democrats did their best to limit their discussion to ACA and avoid saying anything interesting, while the Republicans made the patently false claim that the Democrats were anti-Catholic bigots.
I’m not convinced that Barrett’s vote to kill ACA is set in stone; her comment about Roberts making a deal to save the legislation and the Court’s reputation is consistent with the facts and my own observations. The current case against ACA is so weak that even many conservative legal analysts have called it frivolous. Does Barrett really want to start her career on the Supreme Court by doing untold damage to the country for no obviously good reason? I would think not, but we’ll see.
Confining questions to ACA is an approach that can be described as both safe and cynical. Safe, because it emphasizes a theme that the Democrats want the voters to consider heavily in their decision making process; cynical, because they know Barrett can’t respond to any questions that involving a pending case. Personally, I hope the questions are more adventurous than that; I would ask about originalism, Heller, and Griswold, and even about any commitments made to the People of Praise that might conflict with her constitutional obligations. Will the Democrats oblige me and make the hearings at least a little bit entertaining? I have my doubts; safety first seems to be the order of the day.