The Senate’s questioning of Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson has now concluded, and things look about the same as they did before the hearings began. Though Republicans did their best to smear Jackson as some sort of pedophile-supporting radical, nothing happened that would seriously threaten her candidacy. Barring some wild twist, she is going to be confirmed. In that sense, then, the Democrats’ handling of Jackson’s nomination has been a success. They picked a highly qualified, historic candidate, and they are going to steer her onto the court with relative ease.

In every other sense, though, the Democrats have handled Jackson’s nomination the way they handle most things: terribly. The hearings shone a harsh light on two of their biggest failings as a party: their inherent conservatism and their political ineptitude.

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