The chair of the Democratic National Committee said Tuesday that Sen. Jeff Sessions should be considered too extreme to win confirmation in the Senate as Donald Trump’s attorney general.
Shortly before Mr. Sessions confirmation hearings were set to kickoff, interim DNC Chair Donna Brazile provided a likely preview of what’s to come from Democrats, saying the Alabama Republican’s “extreme views are directly at odds with the mission of the office he seeks.”
“Sessions is worse than unqualified for the job — he stands for everything our Attorney General should be fighting,” Ms. Brazile said in a statement. “Still more troubling is the fact that the Senate is rushing to hold this and other confirmation hearings before the Office of Government Ethics has finished reviewing the candidates’ financial and ethics information, increasing the likelihood that they could be compromised by their business ties or personal past.”
Mr. Trump’s nomination of Mr. Sessions has angered liberal activists who have labeled him a racist and has put some of his former Senate colleagues in the awkward position of having to dismiss the relationships they have developed working side-by-side with the veteran lawmaker over the years.
“Over the course of his career he has called protections for people with disabilities ’dangerous’ and unnecessary,” Ms. Brazile said in a statement. “He has fought against women’s rights and women’s equality, voting against paycheck fairness, the Violence Against Women Act, voting to defund Planned Parenthood, and questioning the constitutional legitimacy of Roe V. Wade. He said he does not believe that grabbing women by their genitals against their consent is sexual assault.
She also said he applauded the gutting of a the Voting Rights Act, has opposed LGBT rights and has a “long history of making discriminatory and racially charged remarks.”
“Thirty years ago, the Senate rejected Sessions’ appointment to a federal judgeship because he was deemed too extreme then,” she said. “If they confirm him now, Republicans will be turning back the clock on all the progress we’ve made as a nation. Donald Trump could not have nominated a worse candidate.”
Ms. Brazile took the reins of the DNC after Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz stepped down after hacked DNC emails showed party favoritism for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont in the presidential primary.
Ms. Brazile has pinned much of the blame for Democrats disappointing showing in the Nov. 8 election on depressed turnout that she said stemmed from “voter suppression” efforts in swing states that Mr. Trump won.
• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.
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