September 28, 2018

[Above, Sen. Amy Klobuchar calls out the double standard on Kavanaugh: "All we’re asking for is one week for an investigation. And you kept Merrick Garland away from this committee for TEN MONTHS." - eds]

We're in the midst of Brett Kavanaugh's testimony as I type this and I'm just going to defer to the women:

If Dr. Christine Blasey Ford had been angry, self-pitying, accusatory, hostile to half her questioners, she would have been seen as having thoroughly discredited herself. She wasn't like that. She wasn't allowed to be. She was engaging and believable, though she shouldn't have had to be engaging.

Kavanaugh has been ... well, a person I wouldn't want to sit near in a bar, much less put on the Supreme Court for the next 35 years.

I've been half-expecting him to leap over the table and slug someone -- though if he did, I don't think even half the Republicans in the Senate would abandon him. (Dick Durbin was asking for it!)

Naturally, he's a smash hit among conservatives. Jeet Heer collects the reactions:

Self-righteous self-pity worked for Nixon, it works for nostalgic neo-Confederates, and it's working for Kavanaugh, at least with the base. (I'll admit I've never understood why conservatives think whining is manly, at least when it's this kind of whining, but they do.) Kavanaugh's approval numbers among white men and non-college whites overall are probably skyrocketing, even as college-educated women defect.

The pundits will probably declare the whole day a wash. And I fear will be a wash as far as public opinion goes, which means we're probably still on course for Kavanaugh's approval (unless the overnight private polls the GOP is likely to be conducting are simply godawful for Kavanaugh).

America has learned nothing since 1991, and this will probably end the same way Hill-Thomas did. Except that Anita Hill got an FBI investigation and at least some corroborating witnesses heard, and Clarence Thomas never broke down in self-pitying sobs.

crossposted from No More Mister Nice Blog, "Whininess=Manliness"

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