I don’t know if Democrats planned all this — my first instinct is they’re not smart enough — but even if Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed to what will become a farcical Keystone Kourt, they already have won more than they lost in this confirmation fight.
Not all Republicans are stupid (and no, not all stupid people are Republicans, it just seems that way sometimes). The smart ones know perfectly well that the party’s mishandling of Kavanaugh’s confirmation process is going to cost them bigly in November.
That’s the beauty of the trap the Democrats have sprung. Given these circumstances — a powerless woman accusing the GOP’s chosen man — there was no possibility a party of old white men would be able to hide their contempt for women. Kavanaugh himself could lie in his hearing about having no opinions about issues that everybody knows he holds opinions on, but every Republican in office would have to keep his yap shut for their misogyny to stay hidden. You’d need infinite universes to find one where that would happen. Their heads say “Shut up,” but they just…can’t…control…the rage.
I have no expectation that any of this will keep Kavanaugh off the Kourt, but confirmation won’t end the pampered little cretin’s nightmare. Once Democrats are in control of either house of Congress, they can open investigations into these allegations with an eye toward impeachment. More than 60 federal judges throughout history have been removed as a result of such investigations, usually for breaking the law.
Hillary Clinton has an essay in The Atlantic that I missed last week, in which she maintains that American democracy is in crisis and says the problem isn’t just Trump. Then, in typical technocratic fashion, she lays out “five fronts in the war on democracy,” as if anybody in modern America would read a list five items long. (Maybe she should write a listicle, “Top 10 GOP Attacks on Democracy.”) Her analysis is right as far as she goes, but she manages to condemn Republican billionaires without condemning the corporate money Democrats of her type have come to rely on.
While most Republicans have tied themselves tighly to Trump, one ambitious person is charting her own course toward the White House, effect on the world be damned: UN Ambassador Nimrata “Nikki” Haley. This article shines some light on her under-appreciated awfulness.