#1:  Phil Bredesen has made the announcement that he’s not voting for Chuck Schumer for Senate leader.  I’m not really sure how this plays out, in a 50-49 Senate.  Can Schumer organize with a 50-49-1 vote?

It’s a stand in for what he had been planning to differentiate himself from the national Democratic party — before the rape allegations, he was going to come out for the Kavanaugh confirmation.  As it were now, he’s campaigning and saying that it won’t matter if you send him on over, he’s not going to be the man that puts the Democrat in the majority.  Which is interesting, because the likelihood is that if he does win… he very well could be.  (Unless you think the Democrats are going to get to 52?)

A very odd campaign strategy, his.

#2:  Skipping over to the exciting race in Mississippi… which… looks as though it is technically going to be unresolved after the November general election — with two Republicans splitting a majority vote and one Democrat vying… somehow needing to clear that 50 plus one threshold.  George Will has talked this race up, I suppose trying to land somewhere idiosyncratic in his Never Trumper Republicanism.  And Joe Trippi sells it as a possible recurrence of the Alabama senate race, and in doing so downplays the role the teen sexual predator allegations had in tripping Roy Moore up with the splits in the party in Alabama that allowed Doug Jones to win.  (Push back to the comparison also point out that the black voters who came out in Alabama are more urbanly centered, and thus easier to mobilize, than Mississippi’s black populace… but it’s worth pointing out Thad Cochran beat back McDaniel by mobilizing what black Democrats in the primary run-off… as per the state’s odd open primary for anyone who didn’t vote in the other party in the first primary law.)

We now see Trump stumping for the mainline Republican candidate and her focusing her campaign in the area that McDaniel won against his last Republican fight, against the incumbent Thad Cochran.  Seemingly with the idea of beating back McDaniel’s non commitment to her candidacy in the next round.  Given the stakes… a distinct possibility that election day 2018 will produce a 50-49 or maybe even 51-48 balance to the Democrats — where either this race will decide if Schumer or McConnell are the Majority leader or will be a manner to salvage some party victory from a ruinous election cycle… it’s difficult to see how his voters will end up costing Cindy Hyde-Smith the election either with a spite vote for the scary Black Democrat or an apathy not vote… but then again… odd things happen.

#3:  The quest of Ted Cruz to soften his image, and become more likable.  Yes, I know… he played a game of basketball with Jimmy Kimmel.  But beyond that, what he might do is hire a bunch of angry protesters to heckle him during dinner at a restaurant.  That’ll get him some sympathy from even hardened foes.

#4:  And here’s an interesting profile of Joe Manchin, out in West Virginia.   And… sigh… the little people make him tear up so much…

“Some days, I just watch,” Manchin told me in a near whisper. “People riding a lawn mower—I envy ’em so much.” There almost seemed to be a catch in his throat. He appeared thrilled by their industriousness, their unimpeded productivity. “Not a fuckin’ worry in the world,” he continued. “Put the earphones on and let ‘er rip.”

Nothing stopping him from riding lawn mowers… oh, wait.  He lives on a boat.  Never mind.  That’s why he envies lawn mowerers.

Then there’s this…

(1)  The political game is weird.  You watch and formulate opinions, not necessarily straight forward or free of conflict, but also have to end up with an eye toward how things will be seen by the public or a segment of the public, and throw in a “theater review” portion, and the strange effects where one is defined into one of two (or perhaps three) spots from the get go.

(The good news for me is that ad sense has decided that I am alternatingly a Republican and a Democrat.  So comes all of those Republican Congressional Committee “click here if you hate the mainstream media” and all those Senator Harris “STOP KAVANAUGH” ads.)

(2)  Under that rubric, we knew that today would be a public relations debacle of one sort or the other for the Republicans.  Because the witness, Blasey Ford, is human after all.  But be that as it may…

(3) Take on step away from your politics, and never mind the reason (don’t want the batch of old white guys to be seen kicking about this vulnerable not wanting spotlight woman where every “dear” will be viewed as a slight), putting in that sex crime prosecutor is… good.  As good as we’re going to get for the “search for the truth” concern in this environment.  As it plays out here, the five minute increments of slow testimony allows for some cohesion in getting some facts out of this, as opposed to how the Democrats spend it in throwing up speeches.  Whether or not this gave any headlines, there’s at least some minutiae to look at here.  [Nit-pick situational fear of flying, and also it’s evident we’re trying to get at something of when this gets politicized.]

(4) That being said, they were wise to drop her in the Kavanaugh portion… even though they probably were planning on having her move forward with these forensics.

(5)  Memo to Lindsey Graham regarding how “we’re supposed to have you as Bill Cosby in high school”… despite years of exemplary service following:  Um… Bill Cosby got away with it for decades, in part because of his public persona of exemplary character.  Not the best example.
Also noted:  Graham has adopted the John McCain tic of using the “my friend” refrain.

(6)  On Kavanaugh’s temperament: damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t.  Personally, I want to side-step making issues of this double-bind.

(7) That being said, he loses me completely when he tasks this as being “revenge on behalf of the Clintons”.  Notably I’m not faulting him for placing it with something of a left-wing plot, but specifically citing the Clintons.  Still fighting his battles as a charter member of the Clinton era Right Wing Conspiracy.  Not good.

(8)  I like how Cory Booker, in his damnedably grand-standing content less speech for the Ford testimony, praises Jeff Flake and that even handed to the point of irritating everyone speech he made yesterday.  The Democrats need two Republicans to join them with any “no” vote, and he’s one of three who might cross over… so gotta butter him up, I suppose.

(9)  I single out Ben Sasse as the one who got to the bottom line question on behalf of the Republican side, devoid of all the irritating histrionics.

(10)  Memo to Ted Cruz, on “one of the most shameful chapters in the history of the United States Senate”.  Sure.  Except for the nineteenth century’s constant upholding of Slavery or Indian extermination.
Also noted, the politically minded misdirection of bringing up the other two allegations (and, I suppose fourth) — playing the Democrats’ punting of them as evidence or proof.

(11)  Jeff Flake again pisses everyone off with his one minute call for civility when everyone votes whatever way they vote.  THE CENTER CANNOT HOLD.

(12)  At the 5:25 mark here, Here’s a moment, under questioning by Sen. Klobuchar, that demonstrates Kavenaugh’s character, and his contempt for women.  Oh, I don’t know.  I think with the same line of questioning, Kavanaugh would have exploded about the same with a Senator Durbin, or whomever.

(13)  Let’s everyone now talk about what our attitudes toward flatulence was during our teen years.
… Noted, and understand I’m not much a fan of Supreme Court Brett Kavanaugh and see plenty to disparage in his testimony, but assessing with perfection the definitions of various widely accepted but sometimes varied teen slang terms is asking for trouble.

As a whole, I liked Christine Blasey Ford (*), Senator Ben Sasse, and Senator Jeff Flake (**), and at least understood Katherine Mitchell.  Everyone else here sucks.

(*) Understanding “in a court of law” determination… we do have the problem of reliving recovered memory, that once a detail gets in there it is fixed… hence 100 percent.

And… funny, though, the term “her truth”… or “his truth”… or on.  As opposed to a “the truth”.  But Cory Booker has his quip.

(**) My one problem with his “good people on both sides” is I’m more of the “charlatans everywhere I look” school.

ITEM #1, thanks to the Huffington Post for… editorializing:  GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski Just Got Even More Pressure To Vote Against Brett Kavanaugh
Alaska Gov. Bill Walker (I) and Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott (D) announced their opposition to the Supreme Court nominee.

Sure.  But then cometh, the final paragraph caveat… Still, it’s not clear how much Walker’s opposition to Kavanaugh will factor into Murkowski’s decision. While Murkowski has relied on independents as a base of political support in Alaska, Morning Consult found Walker’s approval rating at 29 percent and his disapproval at 54 percent, making him the fifth most unpopular governor in the country.

Gotta follow the lead of the person with the 29 percent approval rating, or you’ll be damned!

ITEM NUMBER TWO… You know who else sucks, besides (as previously pointed out)  Senator Dianne Feinstein?  #2 on my list here… Ed Whelan.
And here we do have something that dove-tails to an emerging argument against Kavanaugh that sidesteps a lot of the trying to nail down what happened 30 and 36 years ago…
THE ELITES SUCK.

The stories of Whelan and Butler have nothing to do with whether one thinks Kavanaugh and Ronell did nothing at all or behaved appallingly. They have everything to do with the current crisis of American elites in many fields, including the law and higher education. For the lawyer and the professor are exquisitely similar. Their academic pedigree is magnificent: Harvard Law School, Yale graduate school. Their position in their profession is eminent, if detached from the rest of the world. If you are a liberal, you probably do not know or care that Whelan writes often for National Review and is a leading figure in conservative legal circles; if you do not know, or care to know, much about critical theory, the writings of Butler are academic in the unflattering sense of that term. But in their world, they are, if not royalty, lords of the realm.

Their motives here are also similar: Eminent friends are being taken down at the peak of their professional career by someone who is, in their world, a nobody. It’s outrageous, and it has to be stopped. And if, by so doing, you defame a classmate of Kavanaugh’s, accusing him of attempted rape, or effectively threaten to obliterate a graduate student’s career by lending a mob of literature professors the imprimatur of the MLA, so be it. That is the point and that is the sin: the willingness to stomp hard on a defenseless little guy in order to protect your highly privileged pal.

And the somewhat intriguing argument, coming admittedly from someone who already hadn’t much use for the man and his politics and judicial philosophy… The standard for the nine people with lifetime appointments at the highest court of the land should have the person having his/her shit together by the time they’re 16… probably particularly in the realm of the privileged frat houses of private schooling.  As with everything about these politicized matters of principle… Come back to us on this when a Democrat (or the other team) appoints someone with a shaky adolescence.  (Noted, Kavanaugh denies this anyways, to some consternation from some supporters I know.)

ITEM NUMBER THREE:   According to a recent YouGov poll, 53 percent of Democrats consider Ford’s allegations credible, compared to only 4 percent of Republicans.
Meanwhile, in Minnesota, Democratic Congressman Keith Ellison is currently favored to be elected as the state’s next attorney general despite ex-girlfriend Karen Monahan’s allegations of sustained “emotional and physical abuse.” One poll shows that, while 42 percent of Republicans believe Monahan, only 5 percent of Democrats do.
I do see commenters picking at the next paragraph’s assertion / supposition that from what he can tell, the evidence amount is similar… to about the same political ends.  One thing that might account for the smaller number of Republicans believing Monahan as opposed to Democrats believing Ford… (and it’s a little hard to parse the meaning of the numbers and terms here when everything lands in a gray “Want to Hear” thing)… the stakes are bigger for Ford, so to remain consistent the party that benefits from “belief” will shed some support.

ITEM NUMBER FOUR:  Selective memory of how partisan the other side is as opposed to us…  Or, maybe then again… the “you can’t claim any moral high ground after what you did to Garland” on one crucial subtext.

ITEM NUMBER FIVE:  We’re bored here in Alabama, let’s indulge in a fantasy scenario that has Jeff Sessions as the fill in for the Supreme Court.

ITEM NUMBER SIX:  I thought Donald Trump had been doing well, so far as it went, until the great “immediate new hashtag creation” of a tweet last Friday.  No, not winning anyone over — we are at “once you’ve decided a person is an a-hole, everything they do confirms they are an a-hole”, but within divided America that group of the electorate who kept the gender gap at its standard level in the last election because their response to “Grab ’em by the pussy” landed on something like “And Hillary Clinton never over-heard her husband make similar vulgarisms to less than total response?” and then on to “Don’t tell me how I’m supposed to think!”…
and in electoral map tilted toward low population density where Republicans have all but conceded the House anyways but are protecting all that they can…
Well… the instant swipes at anything he’d say were (from what I could see) coming across as petty.  The whole thing where you need a decorder ring to pick out the ever obvious subtexts when Trump defends the man and says “We’ll hear from her”… But then he finally got around to finally confirming the instant reaction — and made it a line in his political rallies.  And gave the shadow boxing “hashtag resistance” what they needed.
So, okay.  #3 — Donald Trump Sucks.

Understand, I don’t know.  Maybe this is so key to his brand that, politically speaking, he just needs to roll with it.  Then again, the same raw politics works with Feinstein.

ITEM NUMBER SEVEN:  Commenting, despite the fact that I haven’t watched the Bruce Kavanaugh interview on Fox News — and, actually, I’m not entirely sure that contra to the griping of “soft ball lobs from friendly source” — there isn’t some value in just having him put down his framing as he needs it…

Now we have something to bat about.  The “Virgin until long after college” line gets the immediate response that that doesn’t prove anything on sexual assault… but stick with it on its terms, and we are at that land of “conjecturing the environment” — it is a curious framing, because now that just invites the great unleashing of winky nudgy yearbook references and better corroborated stories.

ITEM NUMBER EIGHT:  All right, now it’s #4:  Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer suck.  It’s been widely discussed and determined that it takes three allegations for them to pierce the “he said / she said” nature, and remove that”doubt” — and this is at the heart of the “believe all women” mantra.  Which is why it’s a shame that this is what we have dredged up.  Unless there’s something more to the story…
Oh, yeah.  For the sake of feminism, as per the slate article here, we do need to be sure to give Jane Mayer credit.
In the last election, Governor John Kasich of Ohio got into some hot water for giving the recommendation to women entering college to avoid the partying with the binge drinking.  Victim blaming, they called it.  I suppose he might have granted the same premise for young men entering college to alleviate some of the problem, for the overall stodgy upright suggestion.  (And I will give you the suggestion… the dorm environment sucks.)  But the perils of drunk college partying.  And supposing it happened at all, it all slides out of people’s memory and into a kind of “hearsay” legend… that took six days for the would be victim to decide whether or not it was accurate.

I’m trying to determine whether to put Brett Kavanaugh as “sucky figure #5.”  (Or am I splitting the two New Yorker writers into two?)  I would need to watch the damned Fox News interview, (though maybe that’s just theater review), — and digest further what strikes me as probable falsehoods for what would otherwise be a reasonably defensible position… how far does he go with the “choir boy” act … but as it were

“It is not accurate to say those who knew him at the time dispute this,” Farrow said. “We talked to a roommate from the time that was living with him when this alleged incident took place who said he was frequently drunk, that he took part in activity that made him unsurprised by this claim and that he found this woman credible.”

That’s… Not… corroboration.

ITEM NUMBER NINE:  Having to pivot in Tennessee.   Blackburn’s campaign is also trying to pressure Bredesen to say whether he would vote for Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s embattled nominee for the Supreme Court. Bredesen has spoken favorably about Kavanaugh’s experience, and political operatives in Tennessee believe he was preparing to announce his support for the judge before Kavanaugh was accused of sexual assault.

Somewhat easy stance to take for his attempted distancing try, in that he wouldn’t have been in any position to vote for him.

Now we are at:

While Bredesen didn’t specify how he would vote, he said Kavanaugh’s accusers should first be heard, and said both parties’ responses to the nomination process “disgusts” him, noting that dozens of senators have already announced how they’ll vote before hearing from Kavanaugh’s accusers.
“They’ve taken what is an important and serious obligation under the U.S. Constitution and turned it into a circus,” he said.

I imagine he’s in close contact with Joe Manchin and Joe Donnelly.

“I’m very open. I haven’t closed any doors at all on Kavanaugh. I just want to make sure there’s a fair, open and civil hearing,” said Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, perhaps the most conservative Democrat. “The man has to have a chance to clear his name, but these ladies have the complete opportunity to tell their story.”

Mailings from Heidi Heitkamp suggest she’s settled on the  “No other choice” and frame it in the broadest term possible, and is running against intemperate remarks by his opponent.

ITEM NUMBER TEN:  Do love the self-unaware glibness of internet denziens here. See…

  While unrelated to Cruz’s enthusiasm for elevating an attempted rapist to a role that will define women’s rights for a generation, one protestor spoke truth to power and said, “Beto is way hotter than you, dude.”

Sometimes quoted as…

“Beto is way hotter than you, dude,” another shouted in reference to Cruz’s Democratic opponent in his re-election fight, Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke.

O’Rouke’s tweet can be read as “dude.  Not helping.”  But be that as it may, the real issue is how the objectification that comes with this “hotness” as against the issue brought up on sexual assault allegations.

Wait.  Rudy Giuliani.  Backing over to Larouche’s famous interview at the time of the attacks… Where does he stand in the whole “Mossad did it” idea?

At the very least, Giuliani appears to have been rehabilitated from the days they printed this:

Missing from the media portrait were: the Giuliani Family as Mafia; his unrelieved gangster-like assault on the poor as Mayor of New York City; his corruption-ruined communications system at the World Trade Center on 9/11; the obscenity of his milking that disaster: all this is waiting to be discovered by any casual inquirer, waiting to explode his candidacy. So the obvious question follows: What is the thinking of the powers who are sponsoring him?

ITEM NUMBER THREE: NB finishes his three part memoir shaking off the current political moment.

ITEM NUMBER FOUR

Marsha Freeman…

The only thing I know for certain… my only firm opinion coming out of the great big Kavanaugh hearings …

Dianne Feinstein sucks.

I think I can float one principle here: the nature of a last minute eleventh hour “October Surprise” revelation of even the most credible and heinous of accusations of sexual improprieties in a partisan entrenched environment… breeds cynicism.  It’s why I was wincing at the local alt weekly’s glib cutesy cut off snub printing of a letter positing the “mighty suspicious coming only now” line on Roy Moore.  (That and a false victory narrative against Trump where the polls had Moore behind by 10 points and then pulling even with the aid of Trump’s backing).  Understand, in that case I didn’t have any reason to believe that the eleventh hour allegations were sat on through the Republican primary where it may have served to get the more sure Republican on into the Senate.  (Joe Trippi has a contrary view on how that Alabama senate race played out, but also an election narrative to create for a client in Mississippi.)

But here.  Feinstein doesn’t broach the topic, moving through avenues available for her during those 9th and 10th hours — since August –  and possibly privately… which would have risked not gaining (potentially) a maximum political points for this whole thing… and may have granted Murkowski and Collins the chance to step off the Republican reservation and given Trump the chance to then switch to that “anti-choice” Federalist Society woman he had floated for the eventual placement as Justice on the Supreme Court.

Now we’re trapped in an interesting conundrum.  The looming “He Said / She Said”.  Everyone sits in their epistemological bubble, the issue divided by party and gender — and everyone sits picking the arguments from the other side that they find most mockable or exasperating.

“She has nothing to gain here”.  Sure.    Except we just went through a (now made utterly moot and pointless) process of political grand standing with Senators declaring themselves Spartacus and fathers of school shooting victims throwing themselves at Kavanaugh and acting shocked at a confused response.  Such were the existential stakes.

And now he puts up his long winded “Family Man” status and long record of women clerk hires and upstanding citizen — at least since high school — and she puts up the memoirs of regrettable drunken party culture from the only other person who was on that scene.  (And, yes, sadly, it’s possible that it just wasn’t a big enough thing in his life to remember this one.)
And, yes, Stephen Colbert gets a little too cute with his Chuck Grassley “take down / evisceration.”  (Arguably maybe even Orrin Hatch — we are in a “Made up your mind” mode.)

Yes.  Circumstantial evidence is suggestive of the high possibility.  Sure, Kavanaugh’s letter signed from a bunch of women from his high school years is implausible.  And, yes, Trump is now having to set aside his crass rules of “Always on the attack” line to join in with some fine point needling, with a host of lawyers and pundits and politicos now studying close up and counting any slight transgressions… (“Call her by her name!”)

And therein lies the problem.

A certain irony.  If there’s any political backlash on this rebounding against Democrats and Democratic women, as opposed to what’s probably mostly a head wind supporting them nationwide, it’d fall on perhaps the two most vulnerable “red state” Democrats of the six who are in the “Trump Country not running wholly with the national party” status — and unlike most of the others haven’t a firm enough established brand –  Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Claire McCaskill of Missouri.  It may not work much for the others either.  Remember, this electorate has already proven to be unimpressed by the the “Hollywood Star laden reading the repeating script” ad model.

I really wish I had noted something about Maria Butina at the time her story about being an alleged honeypot for the Russians in ensnaring the NRA and NRA backed politicos…

… which was that the story her lawyer professed on NPR…

of a maybe naive Russian right wing populist Putin lover who wanted to expand a gun culture from America to Russia and so circled in those circles…

… and who could get a little cheeky with her texting for easy misinterpretations.

Actually did indeed sound credible.  Maybe it’s because of some books on modern Russian culture I’ve been reading that allows me to identify her as a “type”.

As it were, this charge has been dropped, and the wacky hijinx of the sensationalist story that has everything Trump era liberals have as a boogey man and fits into assumptions of targeted enemies… remains in the archives of Stephen Colbert and “NRA is awfully silent” stories that pop up at the top when you look up her name.