People protest Judge Brett Kavanaugh's nomination outside the Supreme Court building in Washington, Sept. 24, 2018. If Democrats take two seats in the Senate, they could block any new choice President Donald Trump sends up, or at least force him to pick a candidate more to their liking.ERIN SCHAFF/The New York Times
Brett Kavanaugh has experience at this kind of thing.
Remember Ken Starr’s probe into Bill Clinton’s relations – non-sexual, the then-president initially claimed – with Monica Lewinsky? Justice Kavanaugh was one of the probers.
He recommended going after Mr. Clinton with full force. He drew up a list with some of the most hard-hitting, sexually explicit questions imaginable. So if Justice Kavanaugh takes offence to hard cross-examination at the Senate hearing with accuser Christine Blasey Ford, Democrats can claim they are only following his own script.
In what is shaping up to be the mother of all Supreme Court nomination battles, Justice Kavanaugh has been busy doing rehearsals for his appearance and reportedly getting angered at bare-knuckled questioning. This was even before the latest lurid accusation, it being the charge by Deborah Ramirez that he flashed her while he was a freshman at Yale University.
The cherubic 53-year-old Justice Kavanaugh, a community do-gooder with a whistle-clean reputation until recently, looked to be in the advantageous position to get confirmed to the highest court a few days ago. That has changed.
Although there is no corroboration for the Ramirez charge, it feeds more doubts about him. Meanwhile, Michael Avenatti, the publicity-seeking attorney for adult-film star Stormy Daniels, says more is to come. He claims he has a client about to make another allegation against Justice Kavanaugh.
Public opinion, which senators are watching closely, has turned against Justice Kavanaugh. Even in a Fox News poll, the majority of Americans, though certainly not Republicans, say he should not be confirmed.
The stakes are enormous not only for the Supreme Court, which may or may not come out of this with a right-tilted ideological bias for a long time to come. It also will surely have significant bearing on the November midterm elections. The country’s left-right schism is already stark. This case threatens to take it to a new level. If Justice Kavanaugh is not confirmed, U.S. President Donald Trump’s base will be at the point of taking to the streets. If confirmed, the other side will be outraged.
To the judicial and political stakes, add cultural. The case is central to the #MeToo movement. It will be emphatically empowered with a defeat of Justice Kavanaugh, weakened with a confirmation.
Given the atmosphere of the times, Justice Kavanaugh cannot expect a repeat of the hearings of 1991, when court nominee Clarence Thomas faced sexual-harassment charges form Anita Hill. The Senate judiciary committee is stacked with white males, as it was back then. But they will likely be less aggressive in their questioning of Prof. Blasey Ford than Ms. Hill. The Republicans have a gender problem. With their obsolete attitudes, they trail badly among women voters. They cannot be seen to be hostile toward Prof. Blasey Ford.
But they may not have to be. Given the glaring intensity of the moment, given her inexperience as compared with Justice Kavanaugh in a public forum, she could wilt under the pressure.
With White House and Republican Party support, Justice Kavanaugh is claiming “grotesque and obvious character assassination.” But the Republicans won’t hold a substantive hearing to try and prove it. They won’t allow for a brief FBI investigation, not even now that there is more than one charge. They won’t allow Mark Judge, who was in the room with Justice Kavanugh when the alleged sexual aggression took place, to be called to testify. They want the hearing rushed and over with.
Although the case for Prof. Blasey Ford appears to have picked up momentum over the past few days, the Ramirez allegation, based on such thin evidence, could backfire and help Justice Kavanaugh’s cause. While admitting there were holes in her story, the New Yorker magazine decided to run it anyway, touching off more rage on the right that it’s a political hit job. It means that, in this inquiry, journalism is under the gun as well.
Trump spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway, inverting a phrase once used by Hillary Clinton, calls the case against Justice Kavanaugh, “a vast left-wing conspiracy.”
One thing is clear. One person is lying, the other isn’t. But don’t count on the Senate hearing to determine beyond a reasonable doubt the real culprit. In the tribally divided United States, the upshot will not be closure on this case. It will be more rancor, malice and division.
Lawrence Martin