We begin today’s roundup with The New York Times and its editorial on the latest in the Brett Kavanaugh sexual assault allegation scandal and Kavanaugh’s denial:
As in the case of so many he-said/she-said scenarios, there’s much we don’t know and probably never will with certainty. But there are two things we do know.
First, there is no upside for women who come forward with stories of sexual harassment or assault, especially when the accused is a famous or powerful man. It doesn’t matter how credible the story is. Simply by telling it, a woman can expect to be pilloried in the press and suffer far worse on social media, if not in real life.
The second thing we know is that, while Dr. Blasey has not given the public any reason to doubt her credibility, the same can’t be said of Judge Kavanaugh, who hasgiven misleading or inaccurate testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee over the years. Is he telling the truth now when he says nothing happened?
Ryan Cooper at The Week:
Kavanaugh has denied the assault ever took place — which also bears directly on his morality and honesty right now. It is certainly possible he is right and Ford is lying or misremembering the event. But the very first public thing Kavanaugh did as a Supreme Court nominee was lie straight through his teeth, preposterously asserting that: "No president has ever consulted more widely or talked to more people from more backgrounds to seek input for a Supreme Court nomination."
At a minimum, this story deserves careful consideration at next week's hearing. But if the moral debauchery of the Republican Party is any guide, deceit is much more likely in the offing.
Writing at The Atlantic, Caitlin Flanagan recounts her own attempted rape and says she believes Kavanaugh’s accuser:
I told no one. In my mind, it was not an example of male aggression used against a girl to extract sex from her. In my mind, it was an example of how undesirable I was. It was proof that I was not the kind of girl you took to parties, or the kind of girl you wanted to get to know. I was the kind of girl you took to a deserted parking lot and tried to make give you sex. Telling someone would not be revealing what he had done; it would be revealing how deserving I was of that kind of treatment. [...]
on Sunday morning, sitting in the Santa Monica Elks Lodge, watching a friend get inducted into the Santa Monica High School Hall of Fame, I took advantage of a lull in the program to scroll through my news feed, and quickly found the Washington Post report that broke the news about Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who wrote the letter. I read about two different psychologists noting that Ford had told them about her distress over the incident long before Kavanaugh was nominated. I read about the polygraph test. She’s telling the truth, I said to myself, in a way that was neither outraged nor political, just matter-of-fact. The event she described is completely believable, but the psychologists’ notes sealed the deal. Maybe some new piece of evidence will come to light to change my mind, but with the facts on the ground as we now have them, I believe her.
The Daily Beast has details on how Trump isn’t that tied to Kavanaugh but is tied to the optics of it all:
There has been no talk within the ranks about pulling the nomination and going with an equally conservative—if not less controversial—pick, even if it would remove a major complication from the Republican agenda just 50 days before the midterm elections. To do so, aides and operatives insist, would be a disaster of much greater magnitude: inviting Democrats to launch more aggressive challenges to future judicial nominees and depressing the very base of conservative voters needed in November.
Don’t miss this USA Today editorial:
If true, this goes way beyond youthful indiscretion. If true, it amounts to sexual assault.
Yes, the incident allegedly happened in the early 1980s, which puts Kavanaugh at a grave disadvantage. But her accusation and his flat denial suggest that someone is not telling the truth right now. And if that someone turns out to be Kavanaugh, it speaks directly to his fitness to sit on the Supreme Court. [...]
History might well repeat itself with another he-said, she-said standoff. But the Senate has an obligation to seek out the truth before it rewards Kavanaugh with a lifetime appointment to the nation's highest court.
Here’s Paul Krugman’s take on Kavanaugh, tax policy and more and how the GOP has become the party of bad faith:
In fact, what’s really hard is to come up with significant areas of politics or policy where Republicans are acting in good faith, where their deeds really correspond to the principles they claim to have. Offhand, I can’t come up with any examples.
Why has the G.O.P. become the party of bad faith? Mainly, I suspect, because its core policy agenda of cutting taxes on the rich while slashing social programs is deeply unpopular. So to win elections it must obscure its true policies — like the Republicans now claiming, falsely, that they want to protect Americans with pre-existing medical conditions — and constantly pretend to stand for things it doesn’t actually care about, from fiscal probity to personal responsibility.
And on a final note, here’s Dana Milbank’s analysis of the process of it all:
This is what happens when you try to jam through a nominee to the highest court in the land for a lifetime appointment. Republicans on the Judiciary Committee were so effective at keeping Kavanaugh’s pre-judicial paper trail under wraps that for Republicans, as well as Democrats, he’s a pig in a poke. This isn’t to say a more robust confirmation process would have uncovered Ford’s allegations, but the short-circuited process has left lawmakers in a position where they don’t know what they don’t know about Kavanaugh. [...]
Grassley, whose confirmation process might have been titled “Avert Your Gaze,” was inclined to continue his secrecy. Though both accused and accuser offered to testify, Grassley tried to satisfy his Republican colleagues by having private “staff calls” with both Kavanaugh and Ford, then continue with the vote.
He didn’t persuade them. Instead, they will have a public hearing in which 11 Republicans on the Judiciary Committee — all men — question a woman who has alleged attempted rape. It’s an unpalatable choice, but for a group that already tried hard to shield Trump’s nominee from scrutiny, sweeping the matter under the rug wasn’t an option.