NYT columnist Charles M. Blow has some elegantly-put observations about the Gorsuch nomination, which Dems can mine for sound-bitable comments: “This nominee is the fruit of a poison tree and no amount of educational pedigree or persuasive elocution can cleanse him of that contamination…If Trump can impose a Muslim ban until we “figure out what the hell is going on” with national security threats, we can withhold approval of his Supreme Court nominee until we “figure out what the hell is going on” with threats to our national elections…As for the “brilliant” rollout, let’s be clear: It was a solid rollout, but the bar for Trump has been set so low that merely behaving like an adult, deferring to counsel, not stepping on your own message with idiocy and building support makes a blathering half-wit look like he’s had a stroke of genius…As for Gorsuch himself, he’s a rather standard right-of-center, religiously deferential judge…Democrats must oppose Gorsuch on principle. Democrats have grown too soft. They are still trying to fight a gentleman’s war in the middle of a guerrilla war. Their efforts to reach across the aisle keep being met by hands wielding machetes; their overwhelming impulse to take the high road ignores the fact that Republicans have already blown up the bridge on the high road.”

The usually wrong-headed National Review does have an interesting paragraph in Jonathan S. Tobin’s take on the Gorsuch nomination: “Based on “President-elect Trump and His Possible Justices,” a study by Washington University in St. Louis, the Times chart analyzes Gorsuch’s legal history as being to the right of every justice on the current court with the exception of Justice Clarence Thomas. Indeed, it asserted that he was more conservative in his opinions than Justice Scalia. The Times quoted the study’s authors as predicting that Trump’s nominee, if confirmed, would seek to “limit gay rights, uphold restrictions on abortion and invalidate affirmative action programs.” Those are fighting words for the Left and enough to ensure that even red-state Democrats up for reelection in 2018 should fear the reaction from their party’s grassroots if they were inclined to oppose a filibuster, let alone vote to confirm Gorsuch.”

With every Supreme Court nomination, most of the print and video coverage deals the nominee’s views on abortion, gun control, and other ‘social issues,’ while the critical concern of economic justice usually goes all but ignored. But, in his Washington Post column, “It’s time to make Republicans pay for their supreme hypocrisy,” E, J, Dionne, Jr. makes a case for opposing the Gorsuch nomination based on  the nominee’s economic philosophy: “Let this nomination also be the end of any talk of Trump as a pro-worker “populist.” Gorsuch is neither. Trump could have made things harder for Democrats and progressives by nominating a genuine moderate. Gorsuch may be nice and smart, but “moderate” he isn’t.” Also, notes Dionne, “The Rubicon was crossed with Garland. Conservatives complain about the treatment of Robert Bork when he was nominated to the court in 1987, and they turned the word “Borked” into a battle cry. But Bork got a hearing and a vote on the Senate floor, which he lost. To be “Merricked” is to be denied even a chance to make your case.” Dionne also provides quotes from Republican Senators Cruz, McCain and Burr saying that the Supreme Court can function just fine with only 8 justices. “If that argument was good in 2016, why isn’t it valid in 2017?,” asks Dionne.

Casey Quinlan reports at ThinkProgress that “Betsy DeVos is one ‘no’ vote away from defeat: Two Republican defections mean that Trump’s education pick is in serious jeopardy.” You can call any U.S. senator at 404-224-3121.

At The Atlantic, Russell Berman probes “How Progressives Are Forcing Senate Democrats Into Action: Lawmakers wanted to choose their battles against Trump’s Cabinet nominees carefully, but activists have a different plan: Fight them all.” While Democrats will be lucky to actually prevent any of the nomines from being confirmed, there is merit in delaying the confirmations, educating the public about the track records of the nominees and what is at stake and improving the Democratic Party’s image with progressive voters who are needed for Dems to win in 2018.

Lynn Vavreck observes at The Upshot “… For more than six decades, party identification has been shaping the vote. Political scientists have long held that party labels do more than just summarize people’s views on issues and policies. They are expressions of an identity. This trait, like many others, may be learned in the laps of our parents and in our neighborhoods when we are young, the same way we learn about our ethnicities or religions…There have been very few deviations from this pattern over the last two decades. Roughly 90 percent of partisans voted for the candidate from their party in every year since 2000…For all of its unexpected moments, 2016 looks an awful lot like all the other years: There was no meaningful shift in the pattern of intraparty voting.”

Kyle Kondik of Sabato’s Crystal Ball discusses 37 U.S. House districts in which “seats with Republican incumbents where Hillary Clinton performed at least five percentage points better than Obama in 2012, Donald Trump underperformed Mitt Romney’s 2012 share by at five points, or both,” along with districts in which Republicans did better. Kondik notes that the Democraic Congressional Campaign Committee has only targeted 17 of these 37 seats so far. Democrats must pick up 25 seats to regain the House majority and the speakership.

Frequent TDS contributor John Russo explains “Why Democrats Lose in Ohio” at The American Prospect and suggests a path forward for the state’s Democrats: “The party should have done a better job of recruiting stronger candidates, developing political strategies, and building local support..The state party’s general cluelessness should be cueing up an insurrection within the ODP, just as the establishment’s inability to change and win has done in other states…No challenges have been mounted to the Democratic leadership in this former battleground state, where Sanders received almost as many votes as Clinton…The most productive tack the Democrats could take would be to begin organizing ballot initiatives to roll back unpopular GOP legislation, such as the bill prohibiting cities from raising the minimum wage, or to enact progressive reforms, such as raising the minimum wage statewide, developing a new formula for school funding, or improving the electoral system (by using mail ballots, for example). All these direct-democracy initiatives have public support and that of Ohio Democrats’ most successful office-holders, Senator Brown and Representative Tim Ryan. Such initiatives could strengthen the party and give Democratic candidates statewide an attractive platform to run on.”

Ten writers, inbcluding Thomas E. Mann, Gavin Newsome, Rev. William J. Barber and Rep. John Lewis, offer “10 Ways to Take on Trump: What We Can Do from Congress to the Streets” at The New Republic. Here’s a sample from U.C. Berkeley linguist Geoffrey Numberg, which makes a potentially useful distinction”…Resistance calls for a broader linguistic strategy. You want to build solidarity among your partisans, but you have to reach the voters you lost in November, the people who know that Trump is an asshole but voted for him anyway out of frustration or dislike of the Clintons—as opposed to the people who voted for Trump becausehe’s an asshole, who are really a minority of his supporters.”