When Brett Kavanaugh appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee next week for the hearing to consider his nomination to replace retired Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court, he will officially become the most unpopular person to sit in that seat since Robert Bork. Bork’s nomination was scuttled in 1987 because of what were seen as his extreme legal views.
Polls continue to show that, of those paying attention, few Americans are supportive of Kavanaugh’s nomination. In the week or so after President Donald Trump nominated Kavanaugh to fill Kennedy’s seat in July, polls from Fox News to Gallup to Pew showed that fewer than 40 percent of respondents thought he should be confirmed. According to the polling site FiveThirtyEight, those numbers ranked him alongside Harriet Miers, the former White House counsel nominated to the court by President George W. Bush, whose name was withdrawn after massive opposition from her own party, and far worse than even Clarence Thomas, whose nomination was dogged by sexual harassment allegations against him. Kavanaugh is even less popular than Trump’s previous Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch.
A month and a half after his nomination, after massive advertising and political campaigns from advocacy groups on both sides of the spectrum, Kavanaugh’s approval ratings aren’t much better, and in some cases, they’re worse. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll conducted at the end of August found that only 33 percent of voters supported Kavanaugh’s confirmation, while 29 percent opposed it.