Chris Coons: “Thank you, Mr. President. I come to the floor to express my opposition to the nomination of Judge Kavanaugh to serve as…”

“Thank you, Mr. President. I come to the floor to express my opposition to the nomination of Judge Kavanaugh to serve as Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. I come with a profound regret. I come today with profound regret that this body has transformed from one that historically confirms Supreme Court Justices with broad and bipartisan support to one in which rules, norms, and courtesies fall away to serve the objectives of the majority and one in which Justices are confirmed by the absolute narrowest of margins. I know I am not the only one to feel this way. We can simply wish for the bygone era of consensus to return, we can give speeches about bipartisanship with no hope of making progress, but to wish for it without doing the work of reaching across the aisle is empty talk without action, and as one who tries to inject some spirit of bipartisanship in what has been the most bitter and most divisive and most partisan fight I have seen in my 8 years here, I wanted to reflect for a moment before we close today on my views on the nomination of Judge Kavanaugh, the process that got us here and where we go next. First, in this process, in this nomination, I saw barrier after barrier placed in front of consensus and bipartisanship and the proper functioning of the Senate Judiciary Committee on which I serve. These barriers prevented us from fully and effectively performing the advice and consent function to which we are called by the Constitution. We have to do better.…”