How Kavanaugh’s opponents did everything wrong

Well Judge Brett Kavanaugh is now Justice Kavanaugh and depending on your point of view justice has been done the Justice, or a predator is sitting on the highest court in the land.

If you believe the latter, you’re among the 31% of the electorate (Democrats) who believe 27% of the electorate (Republicans) are sexual predators, don’t care about sexual predators, or if female are traitors to their gender.

But the fact is Democrats might have prevented Kavanaugh’s confirmation but chose instead to do pretty much everything wrong.

Kavanaugh is distrusted by a fair number of constitutional conservatives and libertarians who view him as squishy on Fourth Amendment issues and as a supporter of the feared Patriot Act.

Opposition based on the issues could have had bipartisan support and possibly convinced Republicans to move on to another nominee.

But instead the Democrats chose to argue scandal. And that’s where everything fell apart.

To begin with, though Christine Blassey-Ford delivered compelling and heart-wrenching testimony the evidence simply wasn’t there.

Her claim rested on an account of an incident 36 years old with crucial details missing, and named witnesses who did not corroborate her account.

Without witnesses or physical evidence in a case such as this, it’s one person’s word against another.

And in this case there was more than one explanation available for those who doubted her. The hard-hearted could condemn her as a liar, but the soft-hearted could plausibly believe she was simply mistaken about a long-ago traumatic experience.

A second accuser appeared, and shot herself in the foot when she claimed she vaguely remembered someone exposing themselves to her at a party – then said she thought hard about it for six days in consultation with her lawyer before she realized it was Kavanaugh.

When a third accuser appeared with a tale out of The X-Files it was an embarrassment.

The effect of this was to make it impossible for the Republicans to back down. They had to back Kavanaugh to the hilt or give the Democrats an unlimited veto over any nominee, and lose the support of their own base.

Secondly, the Democrats scared people.

One may believe Ford, and one might even be right, but the available evidence in no way justified the passionate certainty displayed by Ford’s supporters.

To put it bluntly, fanatics scare most people. The message a lot of people took was, “We can ruin you at any time with a mere accusation.”

And not just men. A lot of women were frightened for their husbands, brothers, and sons.

The mother of a slightly autistic boy told me she was terrified because her son comes off as odd a little creepy, and would be terrible at defending himself against an accusation.

Thirdly, Democrats bore the weight of hypocrisy and cynicism.

Those who supported the accusations against Kavanaugh were seen, fairly or unfairly, as the same people who excused the wife of a serial predator who covered for him. That the offense he was accused of amounted to a crude pass compared to much worse behavior they were seen as having actively excused.

Remember Gloria Steinham’s “one free grope” rule for abortion supporters?

When pressed about the much better substantiated charges Senator Keith Ellison physically abused a former girlfriend, Democrats retreated to the position that a lifetime appointment is more serious than an elected position.

Democrats were seen as moving the goalposts as the initial accusations proved thin and they started harping on tales of his college drinking. As if that were somehow unusual!

So they lost every man who de-stressed in college with alcohol and may remember getting his face slapped at least once.

You don’t have to agree and you might think it quite wrong and unfair, but you should consider that’s how a great many people see it.