The Republican-controlled Senate has just confirmed President Trump’s 200th federal court nominee.

Democrats and the mainstream media tend to ignore forces that determine national direction — such as the federal court system. Democrats — justifiably, I should add — tend to focus attention on the multiple inadequacies, actually failures, of the Trump administration. And they highlight legislative matters. But Democrats have a history of failing to connect elections to the successful candidate’s nominees to the cabinet and, especially, to the federal court system. 

Along the same lines, the viewer-conscious, profit-motivated mainstream media find it more profitable to concentrate on actions of the executive and legislative branches of government while giving short shrift to consequences of the judicial branch, except when an especially consequential decision is handed down by the court.

Republicans are shrewd and savvy enough not to be guilty of such grievous ignorance. That’s how they win elections that they should not have won. Yes, I’m referring to the 2016 Democratic fiasco.

I find it hard to agree with John Bolton on anything. But even a broken clock is right fourteen times per week. On a recent “Meet the Press” Bolton observed that politics is about more than the individual candidate — it’s about philosophy.

On that, Bolton is perfectly correct. The problem for Democrats is that Republicans understand that, and vote accordingly. Too many Democrats, including politicians with Ivy League educations, act as if they are totally ignorant of this fact.

During the 2016 campaign, Republican voters, including Evangelicals and others who had reservations about Trump’s character, overlooked “character issues,” and voted for Trump knowing that he would appoint Supreme Court justices that held their views on issues such as gun control and abortion. 

In stark contrast, top Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, Tim Kaine, Joe Biden, and even Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, mentioned only in passing, if they even mentioned at all, the urgency of winning the election for the sake of the future of the Supreme Court and the federal court system in general. For all practical purposes, Democrats ignored the tie between elections, the federal court system and effect on real lives.

The mainstream media, including NPR, were just as ignorant on this matter. When NPR’s normally alert analysts were baffled over how Hillary could get disappointed Sanders supporters to vote for her, my wife can attest to my screaming at the radio, “Think Supreme Court, idiots!”

Sure, some collegiate Sanders supporters and others stayed home and didn’t vote because of voter suppression. Republicans in Wisconsin, for example, erected barriers and created enough confusion over requirements that suppressed the vote. But that’s not the total story. 

It’s accepted fact that Hillary did not “generate enthusiasm” among Sanders supporters and other Democrats who previously had voted for Obama. Many proclaimed that they “just didn’t like her.” Some of these voters voted for Trump. Others stayed home, as if the election had to do solely with the candidate, as opposed to her future appointees to the courts and to cabinet positions.

Is the connection between elections and the future of the court system so vague and esoteric that voters don’t, or can’t, understand it? Of course not. Trump voters clearly understood the connection between the candidate, the courts and guns — and voted. 

One must question if collegiate Sanders supporters who declined to vote because they “didn’t like Hillary,” are even college material. Ironically, those, especially younger voters, who ignored the connection between voting, the courts, and their own lives, will spend much of the remainder of their lives under a packed conservative federal court system.

It’s not as if Senator McConnell and the Republicans have concocted this plot beneath a veil of secrecy. McConnell has long boasted that his objective was to pack the Supreme Court and the entire federal court system with young conservatives who, with their lifetime appointments, would remain in power for generations. 

McConnell and the Republicans understand that even if a future Democratic president and Democratic congress manage to pass progressive legislation, it can be watered down, or nullified, by hard-right, Republican-appointed, federal judges. The continuing effort by a Republican cabal to nullify Obamacare through the courts in the midst of a pandemic clearly illustrates this point.

Recall that Obamacare initially was vigorously opposed by Republicans, and a majority of voters. Republicans hammered Democrats for three election cycles for attempting to make affordable health care accessible for those who didn’t have it.

Now that millions of Americans have access to health care for the first time in their lives, and are not disqualified for pre-existing conditions, Obamacare finally has public support. Nevertheless, in the midst of this pandemic, President Trump and some Republicans have the audacity to brazenly urge the end of Obamacare, threatening the lives of those who would lose healthcare and protection from pre-existing conditions should the Supreme Court agree.

We don’t know how the Supreme Court will rule. Attracting the fury of Republicans, Chief Justice Roberts sided with the four court liberals on an earlier case regarding Obamacare. Will the conservative Roberts continue to side with the liberals? Probably not. But the fact that beneficiaries of progressive legislation have to rely on a conservative judge to protect healthcare for low income people starkly illustrates the relation of elections to the courts, and effect on real lives.

With Trump’s 200th judicial confirmation, recent court opinions, and important ones coming down the pike, will Joe Biden and the sleep-walking Democrats wake up? If history is any guide, no.

In 2016, the death of Justice Scalia and McConnell’s refusal to even give Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, a hearing, should have woke the Democrats up then. It didn’t. After expressing some ire over McConnell’s recalcitrance, Democrats failed to connect voting for Hillary to future court nominees.

What about the media. The free press is crucial, but pardon my cynicism. The big-time electronic media pundits should do more than reinforce each other’s ignorance — as Republicans continue to eat the Democrats’ lunch.

— John Waelti of Monroe, a retired professor of economics, can be reached at jjwaelti1@tds.net. His column appears Saturdays in the Monroe Times.