breaking news, but possibly premature

People on Gab are madly reposting links to the following article:

"BREAKING: We Have the Votes"

With the Senate Judiciary Committee holding a vote at 9:30 A.M. tomorrow, a Senate insider has told Townhall that Kavanaugh has the votes to make it out of committee and the votes to be confirmed on the floor for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. Sens. Flake (R-AZ), Collins (R-ME), Murkowski (R-AK), and Manchin (D-WV) are expected to vote in favor of Kavanaugh. All the Republicans are voting yes. Also, in the rumor mill, several Democrats may break ranks and back Kavanaugh. That’s the ball game, folks.

It was an intense and hellacious day at the Senate Judiciary Committee. Christine Blasey Ford, the woman accusing Judge Brett Kavanaugh of an attempted rape while at a high school party, told her story of her alleged sexual assault. It was intense. It was emotional. And it still lacked evidence, witnesses, and other corroborating details. It’s an unprovable allegation, which is what Democrats want; it allows them to delay and run out the clock on this nomination. The FBI investigation talking point has been beaten to death by Senate Democrats, another delay tactic that has been undercut by past remarks by none other than Joe Biden. When he chaired the committee during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, Biden famously said that FBI reports are inconclusive and should not be relied on during sexual misconduct allegations.

Brett Kavanaugh testified later this afternoon, giving an emotional and fiery defense of his character and career after it had been under a sustained assault by the Left for over a week. Kavanaugh said that the allegations—all three of them—were false and have irreparably damaged his reputation and damaged his family life. He said this process had become a national disgrace, with Democrats replacing advise and consent with search and destroy. Kavanaugh needed to come out swinging. He needed to be tough. And he did just that.

I saw a comment appended to one of many, many articles about the Kavanaugh flap that I found both charitable and rational. I can't dig the comment up or link to it because it really is buried under a pile of comment-filled articles, and I can't remember to which specific article it was appended. In essence, though, the commenter said he took away two facts from this case: (1) that Dr. Christine Ford truly had been sexually assaulted as a teen, and (2) that Judge Kavanaugh had nothing to do with it. That's approximately where I stand. Like many people forming opinions about this case, I'm basing my thoughts and feelings on a distinct lack of evidence; this is more about things like feelings and reading people. I have to do the thing I despise, which is psychologize, i.e., attempt to get inside someone's head and figure out what that person was thinking. In Dr. Ford's case, my psychologizing leads me to think that the woman would never have gone public if something hadn't happened. As things stand, half the country is already going to turn away from this affair thinking she's a damn liar. Surely, she had the common sense to know, going in, that she was in for a heap of scorn, abuse, and simple disbelief. Despite knowing that, she showed up, anyway (albeit under strict and strange cross-examination rules formulated by the Democrats), presented a written statement, and allowed herself to be questioned under oath. Dr. Ford certainly seems convinced that the man ripping at her shirt 36 years ago was none other than Brett Kavanaugh. Alas, aside from that conviction, which is based on memory and not any other sort of corroborating evidence, Ford had nothing of substance to offer. Had she presented key witnesses, she might have been more persuasive, but all we have are feelings and one person's memories and nothing else.

Someone, maybe Styx, recently observed that Anita Hill is doing fine, still doing the rounds and collecting speaker's fees as she continues to tell her own sad story—the story of how she had accused Judge Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment, and how that had come to nothing when Thomas became a Supreme Court justice. Dr. Christine Ford now has a similar life-trajectory ahead of her; she can go on for years, adding memories to her current testimony, providing details that didn't pop up during the Senate hearing, writing books about Kavanaugh that accuse him of this or that or the other thing. Half the country will see her as having been twice wronged—assaulted as a youth, then humiliated as a 50-some-year-old woman. And since, in America, we seem to fetishize victimhood, she stands to make a great deal of money from this experience.

When Brett Kavanaugh gave an angry, tearful defense of his honor, he was immediately pilloried by Democrats for not having the right "temperament" to be a justice on the Supreme Court. This is, of course, utter nonsense: the Democrats making such claims should have their good names dragged through the mud and then talk to us about how stoically they're able to take such constant, merciless abuse. I doubt I'd fare any better than Uncle Brett.

I thought, since early on, that Kavanaugh's confirmation was a given. That said, this did end up being a tough fight, but without any concrete evidence, it's all been much ado about nothing. It could be that the triumphant headline I linked to above is somewhat premature—people get wishy-washy at the eleventh hour—but I suspect there to be at least a 95% likelihood that Brett Kavanaugh will soon ascend to the Supreme Court.

Let the liberal riots begin! Because the left is all about civility.