Challenge for Democrats: Don't let GOP bury news about Trump nominees with crazy hearing schedule

Republicans are planning on flooding the zone on Wednesday, Jan. 11, with confirmation hearings on six of Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees … while Trump himself finally holds a press conference, at which he’s supposed to explain whatever joke of a fig leaf he’s planning to slap over his massive conflicts of interest between his business and the presidency. The plan is obvious: Republicans hope that the deluge of news will make it easier to hide the ugly things that come out.

Democrats know that this is the plan:

“They’re jamming them together so that they receive less scrutiny and attention individually,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) told Real Clear Politics. [...]

Schumer said Thursday on the Senate floor that he brought his concerns about Wednesday’s packed schedule to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), noting that it was “mostly unprecedented in the modern era of Cabinet considerations.”

Question for Democratic leaders: What are you going to do about it? How are you going to keep the truth about these nominees from being buried? There are hopeful signs that Democrats are ready for a fight:

Aside from Wednesday's blockbuster confirmation hearing schedule, Democrats were still expected to delay scheduling votes on confirming those nominees until as late as March, according to the Washington Post.

O’Connor, the Berkeley professor, noted that Republicans used a similar tactic after Democrats killed the filibuster in 2013: submitting written questions to nominees after the hearings to slow down the confirmation process.

Republicans wrote the book on obstruction. Democrats should absolutely learn from the masters.