Prepare for more Democratic meltdowns.

Because now, not only does it appear that Republicans have the votes to move the Senate confirmation process forward, but at least one of the Republicans who had been against moving the process forward this close to the election, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), just twisted the knife into the Democrats’ hopes.

Murkowski said that whether she was in favor of moving forward or not, it was going to proceed, and she was not ruling out that she might confirm the Trump nominee.

From Alaska Public:

“I know everybody wants to ask the question, ‘will you confirm the nominee?’” she said outside the Capitol, as her Republican colleagues were gathering for their weekly policy lunch. “We don’t have a nominee yet. You and I don’t know who that is. And so I can’t confirm whether or not I can confirm a nominee when I don’t know who the nominee is.”

Whoops. Sorry about that, Democrats. Sounds like she’s willing to vote now that the process is going ahead and that she’s still willing to confirm the candidate if she feels the person is qualified.

Murkowski left out a small hope for them.

“If I had felt that there was a rush to move this through because you’re up against a deadline that is hard and fast, like an election, and that a nominee had not been thoroughly and fairly evaluated through our process, then I’m going to have to look at that,” she said.

But if the candidate is Amy Coney Barrett, for example, Murkowski has already seen and voted on her background since she’s on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit. That doesn’t mean she’ll necessarily vote for her for the Supreme Court and Democrats will no doubt throw all kinds of smears at her as an extremist. But it does mean that Murkowski has already vetted her to some degree.

One more point, Sen. Susan Collins’ language was also very circumspect, so don’t rule out that she might vote, as well. She just said she thought the person elected on November 3 should appoint, but she didn’t say she wouldn’t vote if there was, in fact, a vote. She’s in a tough reelection battle, so she may get a pass from Cocaine Mitch if he feels they have enough without her. They may simply end up voting for the nominee or not voting, rather than voting no.