I can't stand watching most of these things but I get little clips here and there that come in one of the only news aggregates that I still pay attention to. The pure partisanship that exists in our high levels of government is on full display there when we watch as Democrats try in vain to smear anyone that has been appointed or anointed by Donald Trump.
Appointees only need a simple majority in order to get appointed and there are currently 53 Republican Senators and 45 Democrat Senators. The other two are independent but from what I can tell they tend to side with Democrats especially since one of the independents is Bernie Sanders, who as you may recall ran for President as a Democrat in 2016.
As you might expect, when Democrats vote to try to keep someone out of office it is almost always going to be overruled since the Republicans have a majority and only need 51 votes of their 53 in order to get the person into office. Therefore, seeing the way in which some Senators just go all in on attacking someone who is likely to get into office anyway, is pretty embarrassing to watch.
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This was particularly noticeable and cringe during the hearings regarding RFK Jr. I only saw clips from a few of the Senators that were grilling him but the presentation from Bernie Sanders regarding a "onesie" that is for sale for babies on a website that is from an organization that RFK Jr. had something to do with when it started called the "Children's Health Defense." Kennedy responded with "Senator, I have no power over that organization anymore, I resigned from the board.... I have nothing to do with it anymore."
Sanders, like everyone else that talks to the people getting confirmation interrupted Kennedy when he was speaking and attempting to explain his standpoint on vaccines.
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These arguments are just so stupid because it really appears as though the various Senators aren't really trying to get to the bottom of anything but are merely using this time to grandstand for personal gain and notoriety. I am quite certain that Bernie Sanders, as well as everyone else in that room, had no idea that these onesies were for sale "for 26 bucks" on that website before some aides in various offices were told to go out and find whatever dirt they possibly can on the person sitting in the chair.
It is also unreasonable to expect someone that sits on the board of an organization to be aware of every little thing that goes on in it and I really think that the Senators know this too. In all likelihood, Kennedy is going to get appointed along with everyone else that sits in these meetings as throughout the entirety of the existence of the United States, very few appointees have ever been rejected. If you look though this comprehensive list of rejected cabinet appointees a vast majority of them removed themselves from consideration before it even came to a vote. The last time someone was rejected by vote was 36 years ago and the one previous to that was an additional 30 years before that that one. So ask yourself, what is the point of these meetings other than for each Senator to attempt to get a clip onto the news for their own personal gain?
Now I am not stating that this is exclusively a Democrat cringe issue, when the shoe is on the other foot the Republicans do exactly the same thing and it is just as bad. Back in the days before the internet we were not subjected to this circus and I think we were better off because of that lack of knowledge. I would be willing to bet that the various Senators were less dramatic with their presentations back when they knew there was very little chance that people in the public were actually going to see it or hear it.
Politics is just so silly sometimes and I feel like what we are seeing right now with the people on the left attacking the appointees just because they were appointed by the other side, and the people on the right for the most part entirely supporting them, it just a spectacle that makes our government look even more ridiculous than it already did appear.
I'd like to say that we can do better than this but this just seems to be the current nature of politics in the United States and perhaps the rest of the world as well.