Whoever Crafted the Kavanaugh Hearing Trap Is an Evil Genius & I Love Them
I know: isn’t the confirmation of Kavanaugh on rails, and it spells doom for all progressive initiative for the next 30 years?
Maybe.
But consider what cramming this cloaked right-wing dickwad through would cost the GOP:
Already, white suburban soccer moms were not liking this guy because he was a bit too up into their reproductive system for their liking. But that’s kind of a scorched battleground right now, and hard to get any oxygen or new movement on this issue. The battle lines have long since been drawn, and nobody is budging an inch on the abortion issue.
But comes now a sexual assault? One that has echoes of Trump? And in a hearing that is hourly bringing up more references to Anita Hill?
Everyone - even single-celled organisms living in volcanic vents in the Marianas Trench - now knows that the Congressional Republicans are motivated only by whether or not anything will help them cling to their seats. This is why they tolerate Trump. If they go against him, they get voted out.
But now comes the Kavanaugh hearing, and well, they can real opinion polls (or they have actually intelligent staffers who can explain what numbers & facts are to them). From the Washington Post:
After the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings gave the country a window into workplace sexual harassment — and featured a committee composed entirely of white men skeptically questioning the African American woman detailing what she suffered at Thomas’s hands — the next election, in 1992, was dubbed “The Year of the Woman.”
That year, 24 women were newly elected to the House, and the number of women in the Senate tripled — from two all the way up to six.
(snip)
However this turns out — a new round of hearings to address these charges is looking increasingly likely — women will not learn much they don’t already know. But they will watch and get angrier, as well they should.
Republicans are already facing a dramatic gender gap in this year’s elections. In The Post-ABC News’s most recent poll, Democrats led on the generic-ballot question (whether you plan to vote for a Democrat or a Republican for Congress) among men by 45-44, essentially a tie, but among women, Democrats led by a stunning 25-point margin, 58-33. Trump’s job approval shows something similar: In the most recent Gallup poll, his approval among men was 47 percent, but among women it was only 35 percent.
When this is all over, Kavanaugh may still be confirmed. But once women have the chance to make clear at the polls what they thought about it, Republicans may wonder whether it was worth it.
The numbers are coming back from the overnight polls on this, and that is why the GOP is running shit-scared. A month and a half before the elections, and white men in congress are about to do THIS?
This is really showing their collective asses to women, particularly white suburban women who work in offices where their bosses shit all over them (aka 99.9% of working white suburban women).
MORE:
“This is not just Kavanaugh that is on trial. It is the Republican majority that is on trial,” said Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster who has been working on Senate races. “There is certainly a significant danger for Republicans if they are seen as railroading the nomination through at this stage or not providing a real public airing of the facts.”
The fact that Mitch McConnell has even agreed to hearings on this shows that the GOP can read the polls too, and they are telling him that railroading the witness in the Senate will further infuriate independent white women, and motivate them to come out in November and punish the GOP.
This sexual assault case give the “squishes” in the GOP the cover they need to vote against Kavanaugh - that means that Murkowski & Collins can have plausible deniability when voting against the Great Evangelical Hope.
Basically, if the GOP kills the Kavanaugh nomination - then the Senate switches hands in November, and then the next nominee faces a Democratic majority that filibusters this until Trump is out of office.
If they push Kavanaugh through, they face a 100-seat wipeout in the House, a wipeout in the Senate, a wipeout in Governor’s races, and a wipeout in 2020.
Whoever designed and timed this for the Democrats is an evil fucking genius. And I love them for it. This is Roger Stone-level ratfucking.