Photo Courtesy of the Texas Tribune
Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Tom Perez, sat down with Reid Epstein at the Texas Tribune Festival to speak about the control of Congress, what his party stands for today and the Judge Kavanaugh hearing.
During their discussion, Epstein asked Perez, “Quite a hearing in the senate; Brett Kavanaugh. It seemed to show how divided we are as a country, so the question to you as the leader of one of the parties; How can this be put back together?” Tom Perez answered, “I can’t help but reflect on yesterday and the profile and courage that Dr. Ford was. Her life will never be the same. She will never be anonymous again. She’s endured death threats. They had to move out of their home. The authentic that she exuded. IF you look on social media, the amount of women who courageously told their own stories yesterday of watching the courage of Dr. Ford and then you contrast that with the Trumpian performance of Judge Kavanaugh. It seemed to me at times that his audience was an audience of one - ‘Donald Trump, don’t give up on me.’ When he said that this was a conspiracy that this was payback from the Clintons for impeachment — that was incredibly Trumpian. As someone who spent a good part of my career at the justice department, under Republican and Democratic administrations as a career prosecutor, I can’t help but be overwhelmed by the Kangaroo court. Mark Judge is a witness to this who hasn’t been subpoenaed. Why are they afraid of an investigation? — This is a lifetime appointment. This is the real deal. If they want to ram rod it through as they appear to want to do, he will be justice throughout his tenure and the court will be a lesser court and we will be, I think, a lesser land and the legitimacy of the court will be undermined… His temperament yesterday did not present the temperament of someone who should be on the high court.” Epstein then asked, “Can you be a good democrat and wind up voting for Judge Kavanaugh?” “Listen I think this is a McCain moment. The real question presented in the next few days, for me, is whether we will see, as we saw in the Affordable Care Act, and then you say, at the end of the day McCain say, ‘I’m not voting for this. — We have to get back to regular order.’ Regular order for a Supreme Court nomination does not involve dumping forty-two thousand pages of documents before a hearing. Regular order does not involve refusing to investigate credible allegations of a very serious nature. If I were a democrat in the senate, I would vote against his nomination for a host of reasons. The question in the days ahead is, will we have a McCain moment?” Lastly, he added, “If a woman had done yesterday, in terms of the, ‘shrill,’ we would have a series of stories today that would be remarkable.”
Photo courtesy of Texas Tribune
0 Comments
|