When White House aides raised the issue with Judge Kavanaugh, he adamantly denied it and told them he did not even remember her.
.. They did what had never been done in a Supreme Court confirmation and put him on television to be interviewed, choosing Mr. Trump’s favorite network, Fox News.
Judge Kavanaugh, joined by his wife, seemed flat and mechanical as he retreated to the same talking points denying the allegations. Mr. Trump, who styles himself a master of television, thought his nominee came across as weak. Getting the clip of him denying the charges into the media spin cycle was important, but it was not enough.
.. The tide seemed to turn, oddly enough, when a third woman emerged with even more extreme allegations. Michael Avenatti, a brash and media savvy California lawyer who has been careening from one Trump administration brush fire to another, produced a statement from a woman alleging that Judge Kavanaugh in high school attended parties where women were gang raped. The woman, Julie Swetnick, said she was herself gang raped at one such party, though not by the judge.
Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, rushed to the floor to insist that “Judge Kavanaugh should withdraw from consideration.”
Senator Susan Collins of Maine, a key swing Republican, was so troubled that she took a copy of Ms. Swetnick’s statement, highlighted and marked up, to a meeting of Republican committee chairmen. Senator John Cornyn of Texas went through it point by point with her to debunk it.
.. The Republican senators got into a lengthy conversation about Mr. Avenatti and how he could not be trusted and concluded that Ms. Swetnick’s claims did not add up. Why would she as a college student repeatedly go to high school parties where young women were gang raped? No one came forward to corroborate the allegation, and news reports surfaced about past lawsuits in which Ms. Swetnick’s truthfulness was questioned.
“This was a turning point,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina. “That allegation was so over the top, it created a moment that was scary, quite frankly. But that moment was quickly replaced by disgust.”
The involvement of Mr. Avenatti, who represents Stephanie Clifford, the former porn star known as Stormy Daniels, particularly galvanized Republicans, reinforcing the idea that the allegations against Judge Kavanaugh were a political setup. One Republican congressional official called Mr. Avenatti’s involvement “manna from heaven.” From the other side, a Democratic congressional official called it “massively unhelpful.”
the notion that Mr. Avenatti tipped the scale was “wishful thinking” by Republicans who were bent on confirming Judge Kavanaugh at all costs.
.. credited Ms. Swetnick’s story with forcing Republicans to request an abbreviated F.B.I. investigation. “If it would have just been Dr. Ford,” he said, “I don’t think the investigation takes place.”
.. But Judge Kavanaugh’s angry outburst rallied Republicans. He went so far in expressing rage that he blamed the allegations on a plot to take “revenge on behalf of the Clintons” and he sharply challenged two of the Democratic senators about their own drinking.
During a break, Mr. McGahn told him he had to dial it back and strike a calmer tone. When he returned to the committee room, Judge Kavanaugh moderated his anger and apologized to one of the senators.
.. When Mr. Durbin asked Judge Kavanaugh to turn around and ask Mr. McGahn to request an F.B.I. investigation into the charges against him, Mr. Graham erupted in a ferocious, finger-wagging lecture. Other Republican senators began channeling their inner Trump and lashing out on Judge Kavanaugh’s behalf as well.
.. Ms. Collins said she would find it hard to vote yes without a sworn statement from Judge Kavanaugh’s friend Mark Judge denying that he saw what Dr. Blasey described.
.. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the Judiciary chairman, got a fresh statement from Mr. Judge within three hours to satisfy her.
.. the three joined other Republican senators in Mr. McConnell’s office to discuss what the F.B.I. investigation should look like. The three undecided Republicans settled on four people they wanted to hear from
Ms. Ramirez, Mr. Judge and two others identified by Dr. Blasey as being elsewhere in the house at the time she was allegedly assaulted.
.. That night Mr. Graham went to dinner at Cafe Berlin with Ms. Collins, Mr. Flake and Ms. Murkowski. They discussed whether a limited F.B.I. investigation might assuage them.
The list of four witnesses they selected, however, later struck Democrats as so constrained that they demanded a more expansive investigation. In the end, the F.B.I. interviewed 10 people, but not many others Democrats recommended.
.. Ms. Murkowski was struggling with what to do. She asked the committee staff to question Judge Kavanaugh’s friends about their understanding of terms from his yearbook like “boofing” and “Devil’s Triangle” to see if they matched his.
.. “The tactics that were used completely backfired,” said Mr. McConnell. “Harassing members at their homes, crowding the halls with people acting horribly, the effort to humiliate us really helped me unify my conference. So I want to thank these clowns for all the help they provided.”
.. Less helpful may have been Mr. Trump’s decision to mock Dr. Blasey during a rally in Mississippi
.. White House aides insisted that the president’s outburst fortified Republicans.
.. Trump and other Republicans accused sex-crime victims protesting Kavanaugh as protesters paid by George Soros
.. The GOP Senate whip, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), called the victims a “mob” and echoed the bogus claim that they were paid protesters. They deny victims’ very existence; they are non-persons — props sent by opponents to ruin a man’s life.
.. Graham snorted that he’d hear what “the lady has to say” and then vote Kavanaugh in.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said he’d “plow right through” (more like plow over) Ford’s testimony and confirm Kavanaugh.
Republicans’ defense of Kavanaugh — that Ford and others were props of a left-wing plot and therefore lacked agency of their own — evidences the party’s attitude toward women.
.. You cannot say a party that embraces a deeply misogynistic president who bragged about sexually assaulting women and mocked and taunted a sex-crime victim; accepted a blatantly insufficient investigation of credible sex crimes against women in lieu of a serious one that the White House counsel knew would be disastrous; repeatedly insulted and dismissed sex-crime victims exercising their constitutional rights; has never put a single woman on the Judiciary Committee (and then blames its own female members for being too lazy); and whips up male resentment of female accusers is a party that respects women.
.. What’s worse is that Republicans who would never engage in this cruel and demeaning behavior themselves don’t bat an eye when their party’s leaders do so. Acceptance of Trump’s misogyny — like their rationalization of the president’s overt racism — becomes a necessity for loyal Republicans.
.. One either agrees or ignores or rationalizes such conduct, or one decide it’s a small price to pay (“it” being the humiliation of women) for tax cuts and judges. It’s just words, you know.
.. The Republican Party no longer bothers to conceal its loathing of immigrants, its contempt for a free press, its disdain for the rule of law or its views on women. Indeed, these things now define a party that survives by inflaming white male resentment. Without women to kick around, how would they get their judge on the court or their guys to the polls?
And just as in the early decades of the 20th century, when a conservative-dominated Supreme Court repeatedly struck down progressive economic policies like child labor and minimum-wage laws leading up to the New Deal fight, Democrats fear that the new majority will systematically crush their achievements — not just hollowing out past gains like abortion rights, but also striking down programs they hope to enact if they regain power, like expanding Medicare or efforts to curb climate change.
.. Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said on “Fox News Sunday” that he intended to help House Republicans in swing districts campaign on the issue over the next month, saying their Democratic opponents should be asked whether they supported impeaching Justice Kavanaugh and “Do you want an outcome so badly that you would basically turn the law upside down?”
.. Still, many liberals are quietly looking forward to reviving the fight if they win a House majority and subpoena power, rather than resigning themselves to waiting for a conservative justice to leave the court. The oldest of the five, Justice Clarence Thomas, is just 70.
Many are vowing, for example, to try to uncover more files from Justice Kavanaugh’s time as an official in George W. Bush’s White House in hopes of finding more evidence to support their accusations that he lied under oath about his actions.
.. As soon as Justice Kennedy announced his retirement in June, someliberals began calling for Democrats to prepare to expand the court by two justices when they regain power, permitting a future Democratic president and Democratic-controlled Senate to try to transform the court’s controlling faction from its five Republican appointees to six Democratic ones.
.. Carrie Severino, the chief counsel and policy director of the conservative Judicial Crisis Network, deemed it wishful thinking that Democrats would uncover irrefutable evidence of perjury by Justice Kavanaugh. She said it was “inconceivable” that the Senate would convict and remove him, and warned that even such an effort would damage the rule of law by delegitimizing the court as an institution that stands apart from partisan politics.
.. “Although Roosevelt lost that battle, he eventually won the war by serving three full terms as president and appointing eight of the nine members of the court,”
.. Lee Epstein, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis who studies the judiciary, predicted that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., aware of the danger to the court’s legitimacy, will try to guide it into staying quiet for at least several years.
.. if the five conservatives stick together and severely circumscribe a future Democratic majority’s ability to govern, he wrote, “Democrats will face some difficult questions about whether to try court-packing or other forms of exotic procedural extremism in order to secure the authority to govern.”
In that case, he said, the silver lining for liberals is that Justice Kavanaugh was confirmed, as opposed to being withdrawn and replaced by an untarnished but ideologically similar nominee. The cloud over his presence, Mr. Yglesias predicted, will help the left’s “necessary delegitimization” of the court.
.. Amy Chua, a professor at Yale Law School, became a target of social media scorn when The Guardian reported she told students that it was “not an accident” that Kavanaugh’s clerks “looked like models.” But that didn’t really spur a close look at Justice Kavanaugh’s hiring practices. Instead, Ms. Chua bore the brunt of the firestorm.
.. Ms. Chua and Lisa Blatt, a feminist attorney, have faced enormous pressure to denounce him, with reputational consequences that their male counterparts are unlikely to face.
.. A bigger man than Justice Kavanaugh would have apologized to Renate Schroeder Dolphin for turning her into a high school joke.
A more responsible Senate Judiciary Committee would have taken their claims seriously and demanded a thorough, fair investigation.
And all of us could direct the same energy and opprobrium that we level at moderate women at the men who prejudged the outcome of this process and proceeded accordingly.
Judge Kavanaugh, accompanied by his wife, was as aggressive and aggrieved as Dr. Blasey was reticent. Reading a new statement, not shared in advance, he called the proceedings “a national disgrace.” He raged; he barked. His eyebrows arched, his features twisted, his plosives smacked against the microphone. He fought off tears, exhaling hard and taking steadying drinks of water.
Call this a generalization — it surely is — but the two statements could not be a clearer contrast in how men and women are socialized and pressured to speak in public. One gender is rewarded for being furious, the other for not being “shrill”; one for hot emotion, the other for warm. (The first time Judge Kavanaugh’s voice broke, he was describing his daughter saying that they should “pray for the woman,” Dr. Blasey.)
.. Republican senators — taking the reins back from Ms. Mitchell after she opened a line of questioning into their nominee — railed at the Democratic push against him. Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican — who told cameras during the break that he felt “ambushed” by Dr. Blasey’s testimony — thundered that this was “the most unethical sham since I’ve been in politics.”
.. The Democrats — several of them potential presidential candidates in 2020 — pushed the judge on his willingness to accept an F.B.I. investigation (with some detours into the meaning of slang like “ralph” and “boofed” in his high school yearbook).
.. Chris Wallace, on the conservative redoubt Fox News, said that the news story had led two of his daughters to tell him “stories that I have never heard before about things that happened to them in high school.”
.. Mr. Kavanaugh’s future as a nominee depends on one avid TV watcher, President Trump, who was reportedly disappointed that Mr. Kavanaugh didn’t swing hard enough in his numb, repetitive interview on Fox News Monday.
Mr. Kavanaugh’s fury, however deeply felt, may well have been voiced for the benefit of the Cable News Watcher in Chief (moments after the hearing, cable news excitedly reported that the president had tweeted his support).