What Can Democrats Do About Amy Coney Barrett?

 The short answer - hidden from most people apparently - is not much. Because of Murc's Law, many on the left assume that anything bad that happens in politics happens because Democrats allowed it or caused it to happen. The reality is that the GOP has the votes and they will confirm Amy Coney Barrett. As a result, marriage equality, abortion rights, contraception coverage, the Affordable Care Act and pretty much anything you want to consider progressive achievements of the last quarter century are on the chopping block.

The only proper response is to plan on ending the filibuster and adding at least two seats to the Court, but there's no need to telegraph that before the election. Right now, the public is overwhelmingly opposed to Trump filling this seat. They see the double standard for what it is. This has lead some Democratic strategists to say that Democrats should focus entirely on process arguments against her. Basically saying that this is a naked power grab and potentially even boycotting the hearings entirely.

I would argue that while they should make process arguments, they need to highlight some of Coney Barrett's positions. Legal access to abortion is largely popular with the public at large. Frankly, if Coney Barrett were to be confirmed and the Democrats were not to add two justices and the Roberts Court overturns Roe v Wade, it could be a case of the dog that caught the car. But Coney Barrett's views extend all up and down the culture wars. She's a Second Amendment fundamentalists as well as an anti-LGBTQ zealot. 

The clear thing to hammer her on is her past stated opposition to stare decisis, a presumed deference to precedent.  Most conservative justices pay lip service to the idea of preserving precedent. They usually go back on that when it suits their ideological preferences, but at least when trying to get confirmed you get the argument that they will only call "balls and strikes." Coney Barrett has argued that justices should, in fact, overturn established precedence when they feel strongly against it. 

Rather than make inflammatory arguments attacking her (extremist) religious views, Democrats should focus on her willingness to overturn the Affordable Care Act. They could drag in Roe and Obergfell as they see fit, but the effort should be to cast Coney Barrett as someone who will overturn existing law and acts of Congress to suit a REPUBLICAN agenda. Make her a partisan, not a Catholic zealot.

Ultimately, unless some huge smoking gun comes out - like she calls Mormons cultists and Romney and Lee break from her - Amy Coney Barrett will be on the Supreme Court for the next four decades, pronouncing against laws that disagree with her convictions rather than the law and precedent. The only solution is to make it clear that this is who she is and therefore preemptively justifying the addition of two new justices in January.