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Senate Democrats were stuck.

There was never much they could do to sidetrack the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett for the Supreme Court.

They could complain about the process, contending Republicans went back on their word.

They could blame their favorite foil.

(Senate Majority Leader Mitch) McConnell is angry. Why? Because we Democrats have exposed that he has defiled the Senate as an institution, more than any other person in this generation, thundered Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

LISA MURKOWSKI ANNOUNCES SUPPORT FOR AMY CONEY BARRETT DURING RARE SATURDAY SENATE SESSION

They could invoke the ghost of Merrick Garland.

Democrats could cite Senate precedent.

Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett Oct. 21, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Jim Lo Scalzo/Pool via AP)

They could talk aboutlooming Supreme Court cases on Obamacare and Roe v. Wade.

But sometimes in politics, you just cant tip the field in your direction. The odds simply arent in your favor.

Such was the case with Barrett.

Barretts confirmation hearing came and went. Nothing nefarious arose about her past.

MCCONNELL TEES UP FLOOR VOTE ON AMY CONEY BARRETT NOMINATION AFTER SCHUMER ATTEMPTS DELAY TACTIC

Thats notable. Not because its Barrett. But just because thats the way things just seem to go down on Capitol Hill.

Weve had other charges arise just after a Supreme Court confirmation hearing concludes. Consider the allegations leveled by law professor Anita Hill at Justice Clarence Thomas in 1991. That came after Thomass hearings wrapped up.

An eerily similar scenario unfolded in 2018 with now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Allegations from Christine Blasey Ford also emerged after Kavanaughs hearings were complete.

But Barrett is hurtling toward confirmation.

And theres nothing Democrats can do about it.

There probably never was.

Democrats were hamstrung both by choice and circumstances.

Progressives railed at Democrats. They raged at Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.,the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, for appearing too deferential toward Barrett. And, way too conciliatory toward Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

Grahams locked in a tight battle to hold his seat against Democratic challenger Jaime Harrison. Many Democrats hold particular enmity for Graham lashing out at the left during the Kavanaugh hearing two years ago. Thats to say nothing of Grahams transmogrification from a Never Trumper back in 2015 to the presidents golf buddy.

Thats why some on the left would have preferred a political brawl over Barrett.

Nothing crystallized that left-wing groups viewed as wrong with the Barrett confirmation process. Feinstein hugged Graham perhaps drawing the ire not only from NARAL on political grounds, but from health experts on pandemic grounds.

AMY CONEY BARRETT CONFIRMATION: WHAT TO EXPECT IN THE SENATE OVER THE NEXT FOUR DAYS

This is one of the best sets of hearings that Ive participated in, Feinstein complimented Graham.

Now some liberal groups want to strip Feinstein of her seniority on the committee. If Democrats win the Senate this fall, Feinstein is poised to become the first female chair of the Judiciary panel. But some on the left would prefer replacing her with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., or even Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. Leahy used to lead the Judiciary and has the most seniority of any senator.

Its not unheard of for the Senate to sideline senior lawmakers from a chairmanship. But thats usually due to health concerns.

Unseating Feinstein would be messy.

Schumer was terse when asked about Feinsteins future.

Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., speaks during a news conference after boycotting the vote by the Republican-led panel to advance the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to sit on the Supreme Court, Thursday, Oct. 22, 2020, at the Capitol in Washington, as other Democratic committee members look on. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Ive had a long and serious talk with Sen. Feinstein, Schumer said about concerns of her stewardship on the Judiciary panel. Thats all Im going to say about it right now.

Democrats frankly dont want to rock the boat at this stage. Theyre content with their standing in the polls just before the election. Despite a push from the left, Senate Democrats feared Barretts hearings could devolve into a melee. They didnt want anything mirroring the 2018 cage match to confirm Kavanaugh.

They also worried about how a raucous hearing could impact Democratic vice presidential nominee and Judiciary member Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif.

So Democrats pulled the political and parliamentary levers they had.

LIBERAL GROUP CALLS FOR FEINSTEIN TO STAND DOWN FROM JUDICIARY COMMITTEE ROLE AFTER GRAHAM HUG

They boycotted a committee vote to send Barretts nomination to the floor. In place of senators, Democrats left gigantic cardboard cutouts of constituents with health care stories in their seats in the committee room. The Democratic side of the dais resembled the third base mezzanine at Citi Field, adorned with picture cutouts of Mets fans.

The boycott today, frankly, is a stunt to appease the left-wing, activist base thats angry, said Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. Theyre angry that the Democrats are not able to stop this nomination.

But Cruz was wrong. The Democrats stunts did nothing to mollify the left.

Democrats met opposition from their own side when they attempted to conduct a socially distanced press conference on the Senate steps, explaining their committee absences. Boisterous demonstrators some decked out in scarlet togs from The Handmaids Tale hectored Democrats as they tried to speak.

Should we just go forward? asked Schumer over the din.

I wonder if its going to stop, said Feinstein.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.,tried to reason with the activists but got nowhere.

You showed up and legitimized the process, shouted one protester.

This division is emblematic of problems which could await Democrats should Joe Biden win the White House and Democrats capture the Senate. Theres a growing schism between liberal and moderate Democrats. Democratic wins next month could exacerbate the division as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and others try to lug the party to the left on economic and environmental issues.

This fracture is similar to internecine fights Republicans have wrestled with since the tea party emerged in 2009. These days, mainstream GOPers have to deal with President Trump and QAnon.

But theres some Republican dissent on Barrett as well.

Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Susan Collins, R-Maine,immediately expressed concerns about the Senate moving at breakneck speed to confirm any nominee so close to an election. Murkowski Saturday acknowledged she lost the fight to delaythe confirmationand would vote yes on Monday to confirm Barrett on her merits.

I oppose the process that led us to this point, but I do not hold it against her, Murkowski said.

Collins supported Kavanaugh two years ago and took heat for her decision. Collins is locked in a pitched battle for re-election this fall.

AMY CONEY BARRETT HEARINGS LEAVE REPUBLICANS PROUD, DEMOCRATS DECRYING SHAM

Murkowski opposed Kavanaugh but ultimately voted present on the nomination in 2018. That was an effort to offset an absence by Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont. Daines supported Kavanaugh. But the vote fell on the same day his daughter was getting married in Montana.

There are 53 Republicans in the Senate. If Collins is a nay, that means Barretts nomination likely has a maximum of 52yeas one vote past the bare minimum necessary for confirmation

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill on Oct. 20, in Washington. (Photo by Stefani Reynolds/Getty Images)

On Friday afternoon, Schumer tried to toss one last monkey wrench into the parliamentary gearboxes. For the first time since 2010, the New York Democrat shifted the Senate into a brief, secret session. Schumer said senators should have a candid discussion about what Republicans were trying to do to confirm Barrett.

The doors to the Senate chamber were closed and locked. Cameras were turned off. Reporters and most aides were shooed out of the gallery and off the floor.

The Senate usually only meets in a secret session to consider grave national security matters or even articles of impeachment although there was no closed session in the impeachment trial of President Trump. The Senate mostly met in secret during the 1790s. Schumers maneuver was reminiscent of a 2005 tactic by then-Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.,slipping the body into a closed session to discuss faulty intelligence which sparked the war in Iraq.

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But even Schumers move for a secret session lacked impact. During the closed session, McConnell,R-Ky., simply called a vote to immediately re-open the doors. Which the Senate promptly did.

Democrats were again stuck. Their left flank is crying for more. But theres nothing they can do to derail the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett.

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Democrats, trying everything, fail to derail Amy Coney Barrett confirmation - Home - WSFX

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On March 27, 2020, the House of Representatives passed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act via a voice vote. The bill amounted to trillions of dollars in aid for hospitals, businesses, and individuals affected by the coronavirus. An overwhelming majority of membersleft, right, and centersupported the initiative, but it was not unanimous. Rep. Justin Amash (L-MI), a Republican turned Libertarian who opposed the bill, took to Twitter to blast his former GOP colleagues for hypocrisy. Just ten years after the Tea Party movement, he wrote, Republicans in Congress are defending a $500 billion corporate welfare fund for a select group of large companies.1

Thisviewthat Republicans had betrayed their principles by supporting a large,deficit-financed relief packageis hardly the majority opinion on the right,but it is nevertheless worth asking if it is true. Just as there are noatheists in foxholes, are there no economicconservatives in a national crisis?

The answer inevitably depends on how one defines the phrase economic conservatism. As Amash understands it, it implies a commitment to minimal government involvement in the economy, regardless of the circumstances. Amashs view, while no doubt honestly held and certainly worth consideration, has never been the dominant understanding of economic conservatism in the Republican Party. And while conservativism can mean virtually anything to anybody at any point in time, there is a voluminous historical record of speeches, party platforms, and laws that clearly establishes the parameters of Republican orthodoxy on economic conservatism.

Republican economics, as we might understand it, has had a strong and consistent orientation toward business. It sees the success of American business as the key to national unity, domestic prosperity, and international security. In that view, supporting business is an essential government function. The party has never really advocated for a minimalist government but rather a government that supports private industry.

The intellectual origins of this approach stretch back to the period before the Republican Party existed, in the political philosophies of leaders such as Whig Henry Clay and Federalist Alexander Hamilton. After the collapse of the Whig Party following the Compromise of 1850, ex-Whigs in the North combined their economic policies with a free-soil approach that restricted slavery in the territories to form the Republican Party. The triumph of the Union made the free-soil position obsolete, but the party continued its commitment to Whig economics.

While the specifics of Republican policies have often changed since the Civil War, the partys core commitment to supporting business has remained consistent. Indeed, the evolution of many policy positionsfor instance, on the debate over free trade versus protectionismhas closely tracked American business changing needs. While there is no doubt a lot to criticize about the connection between the party and business interests, Republican support of the CARES Act was consistent with its historical beliefs.

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'Reasonable encouragement to our home industry': The Republican Party's response to the coronavirus - American Enterprise Institute

A CHARITY which suppors child health and medicine across Moray and Grampian has urged people to come together to support its work.

The ARCHIE Foundation 2020 has had a tought 2020 but insits its specialist support, staff, equipment and facilities the charity funds are too vital to put at risk.

Thats why the charity is calling on supporters to host virtual afternoon tea parties or coffee mornings through the month of November to raise funds for the charity and to increase awareness of the vital support and services it provides for local babies, children and families across the north and north east of Scotland.

The ARCHIE Foundation has been helping sick children for over two decades, funding key roles and projects at Royal Aberdeen Childrens Hospital and also in more recent years at Highland Childrens Unit and Tayside Childrens Hospital.

The charity also supports babies born too sick or too early through its Friends of the Neonatal Unit at Aberdeen Maternity Hospital and through its Grampian Child Bereavement Network the charity provides bereavement support for children who have lost a loved one.

Many families receive support from different parts of the charity at different stages in their lives.

Premature babies who start their journey in the neonatal unit often receive further treatmentand care inRoyal Aberdeen ChildrensHospitaland sadly too many children every year experience the loss of a loved one.

Community fundraising officer Emily Findlay, who herself received support from The ARCHIE Foundation as a youngster, ran her own virtual baking fundraiser during lockdown and is keen to engage the wider community in doing something similar.

I had so much fun baking cakes and even delivering full afternoon teas during lockdown! Im really keen for other people to get a taste of how fulfilling it can be to produce something amazing and through that to raise funds for a much loved local charity.

"As a team were going to host our own event on November 17 to mark World Prematurity Day and we would love to see other people doing the same either on the same date or any day in November that works for them.

If you are interested in running your own virtual afternoon tea go tohttps://archie.org/events/afternoontea/ to download your free fundraising

information pack or email hello@archie.org or call 01224 559559 for more information.

Get a digital copy of the Grampian Group editions delivered straight to your inbox every week and read the full newspaper on your desktop, phone or laptop.

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Hold a virtual afternoon tea party to raise funds for the ARCHIE Foundation - Grampian Online

In invoking One Nation, he aimed to turn the Tories rhetoric against them - though Disraeli probably didnt envisage the equal sharing of misery.

Doubly unhelpfully for advocates of Starmers strictly time-limited approach, Nicola Sturgeon has just extended Scotlands two-week circuit breaker another week.

It also didnt help that the PM was on belligerent form, taking every opportunity to kick the Khan down the road. If the Mayor of London had been a punchbag, he would have been battered to a pulp by the end of PMQs. Mr Johnson greeted even glancing references to TfL or the continued closure of Hammersmith Bridge with the gung-ho enthusiasm of Master Rashford facing an open goal.

The whirling haymakers began the moment Catherine West (Labour, Lewisham East) bewailed the prospect of Congestion Tax being forced onto 4 million extra Londoners already facing the Double Whammy of Covid and financial ruin.

The Current Mayor of London had effectively bankrupted TFL before coronavirus had even hit and left a massive black hole in its finances, roared the PM, every inch the defiant general.

Any expansion of the congestion charge is entirely the responsibility of the BANKRUPT current LABOUR Mayor of London.

Any London transport-related question, however disobliging, received the same response. Over 60s deprived of free travel? Barnes residents facing a 15 a day car charge? Its all the fault of that pesky Mayor.

Sadiq-bashing is a favourite blood sport of Londonerseverywhere: played with friends, neighbours, and especially vigorously in black cabs. So these were fatally overpitched deliveries, easily knocked for six even by a batsman with a lacklustre recent average.

From then on, political jargon flooded the chamber. How can we help female grassroots sport build back better? asked one Tory MP. Another praised the PMs "commitment to doubling down on levelling up, surely the result of an office bet to see how much politician-speak could fit into a single sentence.

Was it the language, or simply the lack of any real opposition? Whatever the cause, I was reduced to despair. What should have been a massacre turned out like a tea-party. A plague on both their houses.

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PMQs should have been a bloodbath instead it felt more like a tea party - Telegraph.co.uk

The number is etched in Sharon Hirschs mind: 391. Thats how many votes she lost her 2018 race against Republican state Representative Matt Shaheen by, in Collin Countys House District 66. If 10 more people in each precinct had voted for her, she calculated, she would have won. It really stunk to lose. Im not gonna lie, Hirsch says.

The district is centered in Plano, a suburban city just north of Dallas with a population thats grown by 50,000 since Republicans took control of the state House in 2002. Collin County has long been a bedrock of GOP conservatismhome to Ken and Angela Paxton and other influential tea partiers.

But the fact that Hirsch came so close was a sign to the former administrative staffer at Plano Independent School District that this once-ruby red suburban turf was changingand fast. Two years before she came within a few hundred votes, Shaheen, first elected in 2014, had beaten his Democratic opponent by nearly 20 percentage points. Hirsch, a longtime Democratic activist in the area, promptly decided to challenge him again in 2020. The district is diversifying and she believes his politics are out of step with a community that prides itself on strong public schools and good parks, and is turned off by the rise of right-wing Trumpism. Apart from the 2019 school finance bill that passed out of the House near-unanimously, I cant think of any bill that he has supported that has been something good for the community, she says of Shaheen, one of the most conservative members of the Texas House and a leading proponent of the bathroom bill legislation targeting transgender people. (Shaheen declined to be interviewed by the Observer.)

The Democratic effort to flip the Texas House this year runs straight through District 66, the sort of suburban district that just a few years ago was seen as unwinnable for Democrats. As immense population growth has changed the political and demographic contours of the area, the districtand others like itare now competitive. After flipping 12 House seats in 2018, Democrats need to flip only nine more this year in order to take control of the lower chamber, which would give them an official lever of power in state government for the first time in nearly 20 years.

Record turnout levels have Democrats, who tend to do better when more voters cast ballots, feeling optimistic about their chances. With one week still left of early voting, Texas has already surpassed half of the total vote in 2016. In Collin County, nearly 45 percent of registered voters290,701 in allhad already voted as of October 21, one of the highest turnout rates in the state. Democratic candidates are raising huge sums of money, groups in Texas and nationally are funneling in unprecedented amounts of cash, and grassroots activists are mobilizing voters on the ground.

Beto ORourkes historic 2018 U.S. Senate run provided a blueprint of competitive House districts for Democrats in 2020. The partys targets are the nine Republican House districts that ORourke won. But Dems are also making serious runs in 13 other GOP districts where ORourke came within 10 percentage points of Senator Ted Cruz. Almost all of these seats are in the suburbs of Dallas, Fort Worth, and Houston, and the vast majority of Democratic candidates in these races are womennotable since many of these districts are swinging so quickly because of suburban women fleeing the Republican Party in droves, thanks in large part to Trump.

This is going to be a complete referendum on the president, says Brendan Steinhauser, a Republican campaign consultant. The typical meat and potatoes Texas voter is turned off by the current version of the party, especially Trumpwhich is bad news for Republican incumbents, he says. Theres just more of a, Were going to punish everybody sort of approach.

Democrats are facing a critical question when it comes to flipping the House: If not now, then when? If they succeed, Democrats would provide a critical check against Republican attempts at gerrymandering heading into the 2021 redistricting cycle. But if they fail, the GOP will remain in unified control of Texas government, free to once again gerrymander themselves into power, making a Democratic House takeover unlikely for years to come.

There is just so much at stake, says Matt Angle, a veteran campaign operative and director of the Lone Star Project, a Democratic advocacy group. It really is extraordinarily the degree to which a lot hinges on Democrats being able to net nine seats.

Republicans trifecta control of Texas is one of the longest stretches of one party-rule of state government in the United Statesand the most consequential. Texas has long been the biggest red state in the nation, and the GOP agenda here has set the tone for the national party.

Although George W. Bush wrested the governorship from Democratic incumbent Ann Richards in 1994 and Republicans flipped the Senate in 1996, the state House remained a bastion of Democratic control through the end of the century. The GOP finally took hold of the House in 2002, gaining 16 seats and a conservative majority that elected longtime Midland Representative Tom Craddick as Speaker. Tom DeLay, who would later become a ruthless U.S. House Majority Leader known as The Hammer, infamously orchestrated the takeover by funneling money from corporate interests around the country into a PAC called Texans for a Republican Majority. DeLay would eventually be indicted for money laundering and criminal conspiracy related to campaign finance violations and disappear from politics.

Once in power, Republicans initiated an unprecedented mid-decade redistricting of Texas congressional map. The resulting gerrymandering would lead to the defeats of several conservative and influential Democratic members of Congress and further expand Republicans majority in the U.S. House.

Riding the coattails of an Obama-led surge in 2008, Texas Democrats came just within just one seat of taking back control of the House. Republican state Representative Linda Harper-Brown narrowly held onto her Irving-based seat by 19 votes against Bob Romano, a Democratic contender with little campaign funding or party support. Had Romano won, Democrats would have split control of the Texas House down the middle: 75-75. Democrats vied to finish the job in 2010 and take back control. But this didnt go as planned, as anti-Obama backlash fueled a conservative tea party takeover in the midterms across the country. In Texas, Republicans picked up 23 state House seats, securing themselves a supermajority of 99-51.

The next year, they locked in that power by once again drawing aggressively gerrymandered legislative and congressional maps that diluted the power of Black and Latinx votersby either packing into heavily Democratic districts or cracking up communities across several GOP districts. Lower courts have repeatedly found these maps to be racist.

Now, the upcoming redistricting cycle is the biggest factor animating the fight for the Texas House. If Democrats dont take the House, Republicans could draw new legislative and congressional maps next year that, once again, entrench GOP power at the expense of minority communities who have accounted for the largest share of population growth in the past decade, and wipe out as many Democrats who ousted Republicans in recent years as possible.

If Republicans have complete control once again, we know what they will do because theyve done it before, Grand Prairie Representative Chris Turner, who chairs the Texas House Democratic Caucus, told the Observer. This is our best chance to achieve some balance in the state government and begin to turn this around.

Typically, a GOP-held House and Senate collaborate on drawing legislative and congressional maps with little resistance. With a split Legislature, redistricting would likely become gridlocked. If the Legislature fails to draw new state House and Senate maps, then the task falls to what will still be a GOP-dominated Legislative Redistricting Board.

But if the Legislature fails to draw a new congressional mapwhich after the Census count, will likely include adding at least two new districtsthe courts will draw the map, which could be a more preferable outcome for Democrats.If they control the Texas House, [Democrats] can effectively force the issue into courts by refusing to go along with a Republican map, says Michael Li, a redistricting expert and senior counsel at the Brennan Center. [The courts] dont draw the perfect map but they also dont draw a wildly discriminatory map. It wont be perfect but it would be a thousand times fairer.

The amount of money flooding into Texas House races reaffirms the stakes of this battle. Several national Democratic groups have made the Texas House one of their top priorities in 2020. Democrats are outraising Republicans in the most competitive House races for the first time since the GOP won the House in 2002. There is no more important battleground for fair maps than Texas, says Garrett Arwa, director of campaigns at the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, which was founded by former Obama attorney general Eric Holder. The group has put more than $800,000 into Texas House campaigns.

Forward Majority, a national super PAC focused on flipping state legislatures for Democrats, has committed the most cash to the cause. The super PAC announced this week that it was doubling down on its initial $6 million investment in 12 Texas House races, bringing its total spending to more than $12 millionits biggest state investment this cycle. In 2018, the group spent just $2.2 million in Texas.

And since Beto ORourke launched Powered by People in January and made flipping the state House its top priority, the group has attracted more than 6,000 volunteers who have made more than 25 million phone and text contacts with potential Democratic voters.

In the face of the blue money wave, the national GOP has swooped in to supplement Texas Republican donors. The Republican State Leadership Committee raised $5.2 million from July to late September, according to the latest campaign finance filings. Casino magnate and Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson and his wife contributed $4.5 million. Texans for Lawsuit Reform, a tort-reform PAC that is financed by business moguls, is also spending millions to help hold the House. And Governor Greg Abbott is dipping into his massive campaign war chest to provide support as well, with plans to spend a mid-seven-figure on 24 House races and on statewide TV ads, even as his aides try to downplay the likelihood of a Democratic House takeover.

Back in the suburbs of North Texas, where ORourke won the district by 6 points in 2018 after Trump won it by 3 points in 2016, Hirsch is determined to prevail. During her campaign in 2018, she says she saw a level of enthusiasm from Democratic voters that was previously unseen in Collin County. Thats only become more apparent in 2020. We have a county of a million people and growing, and we have no Democrats in office, she says. The five state representatives, one state senator, and county elected officials are all Republican, and its been that way for as long as she can remember. Theres no diversity in representation. We deserve that.

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If Not Now, When? Dems Fight for the House Will Shape Texas Politics for Years - The Texas Observer