my one take away from the Kavanaugh case…
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.