WASHINGTON: A top Republican senator with close ties to President Donald Trump said on Thursday he believed Democrat Joe Biden had a “good chance” of winning the presidency in the Nov 3 election. “You all have a good chance of winning the White House,” Lindsey Graham, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told Democratic colleagues at the opening of a hearing on Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett.

“Thank you for acknowledging that,” responded Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar, to which Graham added: “Yeah, I think it’s true.”

Graham’s comments though did not change expectations that conservative Barrett would gain easy confirmation to the supreme court in the Republican-controlled Senate.

Opening the fourth and last day of hearings on Barrett, Graham set a committee vote on the nomination for Oct 22, later than originally expected.

That would leave only a short time for the full Senate to meet and vote on her nomination before the election.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly said he wants Barrett confirmed before the election, to have all nine justices seated if the court needs to hear any election-related litigation.

Democrats sought to postpone filling the seat left vacant by the death last month of liberal icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg, arguing the winner of the election should be able to choose who will fill it.

Published in Dawn, October 16th, 2020