The Hill’s Alexander Bolton reports: 

Senate Democrats say they want to avoid a replay of the bitter fighting that characterized Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s 2018 Senate confirmation hearings, which centrist former  Sens. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) thought cost them their reelection bids that year. […]

“I’m sick and tired of losing,” said one Democratic senator. “We had a Kavanaugh 1.0, which has informed people’s approach this time.”

“We’re not going to go down that road again. People know what happened to Joe Donnelly, they know what happened to Claire McCaskill and they know what happened to [former Sen.] Heidi Heitkamp,” the senator said, referring to the North Dakota Democrat who lost her reelection bid weeks after Kavanaugh’s confirmation vote.

You can add in Florida, where Republican Rick Scott beat incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson by 10,000 votes out of eight million ballots cast, as another Senate seat likely lost because of unfair attacks on Kavanaugh by Democratic senators and the media.

Republican senators Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins now oppose a confirmation vote before the 2020 election, so those 2018 Senate gains — in which the GOP went from a 51–49 majority to a 53–47 majority — are the only reason Republicans now have the votes to move toward a vote on Amy Coney Barrett.

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