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Supreme Court Twitter Poll Backfires Spectacularly on Senate Democrats When Kavanaugh Routs Ginsburg

DSCC deletes poll, rejects democracy

Justice Brett Kavanaugh / Getty Images
May 5, 2019

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee deleted a Twitter poll it had posted Friday asking users if they preferred Supreme Court justices to be like Ruth Bader Ginsburg or Brett Kavanaugh.

Why? The wrong justice was winning.

The DSCC's account finally cried uncle when users overwhelmingly chose Kavanaugh, whom President Donald Trump nominated last year, over Ginsburg, the 86-year-old progressive icon who's been on the court since 1993.

It wasn't clear when exactly it was taken down Sunday afternoon. One screenshot showed Kavanaugh leading 71-to-29 percent with more than 230,000 votes cast in the decidedly unscientific poll.

https://twitter.com/HapkidoBigDad/status/1125113433656000513

Republican National Committee spokeswoman Elizabeth Harrington mocked the DSCC for deleting the poll, tweeting Democrats were "refusing to accept voting results (again)."

Asked journalist Yashar Ali: "Who thought this was a good idea?"

https://twitter.com/yashar/status/1124888053527601152

This result could probably be chalked up to one account: @ComfortablySmug. Often referred to online simply as "Smug" and known for his trollish humor, he encouraged his followers—or "minions"—to swarm the poll on Saturday with Kavanaugh votes. The results were finally embarrassing enough that the DSCC had to delete them, but screenshots saved the episode for posterity.

Senate Democrats lost the majority in the 2014 midterms and have yet to regain it; Republicans currently hold 53 seats in the chamber. Trump has seen both of his Supreme Court picks, Kavanaugh last year and Neil Gorsuch in 2017, confirmed largely on party lines.