So, are you nauseous yet?
The confirmation hearings have been everything I predicted–and worse. Here is a list of what I consider to be the errors on both sides:
- Trump shouldn’t have nominated such an obvious GOP partisan, but he did.
- Kavanaugh should have been willing to answer reasonable questions about his judicial philosophy, but he wasn’t.
- If it was even appropriate to go down that road, the Ford information should have been introduced earlier, but it wasn’t.
- The senators who expressed opinions about the credibility of the parties should have kept quiet until the hearing was over.
- The FBI should have been called in to do a proper investigation, but it wasn’t.
- Kavanaugh should have been less smarmy and more forthcoming about his hard-partying youth, but he wasn’t.
- Kavanaugh never, never, never should have given an interview to Fox News.
- The final vote should have been delayed until a real investigation was done and all of the parties interviewed, but it won’t be.
And so, the likely outcome is that somehow, magically, all the Republicans find Kavanaugh credible, all of the Democrats find him incredible, he is ultimately confirmed, the GOP loses moderate female votes in November, Kavanaugh is remembered for the rest of his life as a Bill Cosby in waiting by half the population, and the Supreme Court’s reputation for fairness and probity is damaged substantially.
Somewhere, Vladimir Putin is laughing, and not just at Trump.