In summary, it was a series of bluffs....some designed at a one-star level....some at a five-star level, and it appears....they all failed.
The idea early in this strategy by the Democrats was simply to impress enough negativity upon Kavanaugh enough that he'd back out. For a normal guy, I think the Ford letter business would have done that. So Kavanaugh called the bluff, and forced her to show up and provide testimony. She had several counter-bluffs ready to go (the lie detector test, the second person backing up the story, etc). Well....he counter-bluffed.
Somewhere in the middle of this mess....Senator Graham woke up and probably delivered the greatest responses of his career. Some CNN folks were able to put a dozen hours a day into a negative-Kavanaugh message. And then pieces of the Ford story started to fall apart.
The three basic problems here? (1) No witnesses to support Ford's story. (2) The high school year book which shows an entire group of people in the early 1980s who partied, and consumed booze. (3) A recovered memory, which sometimes had information and sometimes had zero information. On the last issue, you kinda wonder if there alcohol blackouts involved.
So Kavanaugh will likely get the votes. But the bigger question....did this damage the Republicans in the election? No....I think it actually damaged two to four Democratic Senators more, and their likely chances of winning might be diminished by five-percent. In the thirty states that Trump won? This strategy probably did a fair amount of damage to the Democrat's brand.
And the thing you have to worry about....two older Democratic justices in the court and if either were to pass on....over the next year or two. With a GOP count of 60-plus Senators....Trump might be able to stack one more conservative judge on the court and set up a pattern for twenty-plus years. That's serious damage to the Democratic brand.
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