SCOTUS under Trump

I assumed that she share the letter without the authors name, to prevent leaking. Feinstein is on the intelligence committee, she’s not stupid about these things.

Your explanation is the nice charitable one it may even be true. I think she knew that a last minute bombshell was far more likely to result in delaying a vote until after the election. As political dirty tricks go in the Trump era go it is no worse than 5 or 6.

Yeah, there’s definitely a rohrschach blot aspect to this ;)

It was just locker room rape, everybody does it.

Everything old (and sucky) is new again. Wonder if we’ll see Anita Hill redux.

Going to be an interesting showdown if she does. It’s one thing to read allegations, and another to hear someone talk about them on national TV.

More significantly, per 538, Mitch McConnell was never much of a Kavanaugh fan. If two of Flake/Collins/Murkowski/Corker decide to vote no, or if Flake – on the committee – wants to push back a vote until an investigation can be done…well, McConnell is likely to tell the White House to think about giving the senate a new nominee.

Probably the best-case scenario for the Left: Kavanaugh withdrawn, and another conservative put forward and approved…but it’s a conservative whose views on whether the President is sacrosanct and protected from indictment and testifying are much less clearly defined than Kavanaugh.

Keep in mind that the current version of ‘this woman should be heard’ actually being proposed is that she speak on the phone to committee staffers. That’s why the WH is on board with her ‘being heard’.

Well at least Kellyanne is finally getting fired.

It might be better than that. If they withdraw Kavanaugh - which is now a distinct possibility - it’s doubtful that they can nominate and approve another before the election recess. I’m not saying they wouldn’t try, or that they wouldn’t try to approve a nominee in the lame duck session, but this is suddenly quite a bit more dicy than it looked a week ago.

They’ve probably got two weeks to come up with a new nominee and they can get it done. They’ll even be willing to do it with a lame duck senate in December if need be.

Republicans have been waiting for 40 years to get a more reliably Republican fifth vote onto the bench. They’re not going to stand in the box and watch strike three here.

Yes, that’s what I said.

The question is whether they have 50 votes to do it in a lame duck session.

Narrator: They do.

This nomination despite the flags before Ford came out was going to get confirmed - and he still might. (And even if the nomination gets pulled he’s still an appellate judge.)

The lame duck session is going to be scary as fuck.

Maybe, but you’ve got a weird definition of ‘best case scenario’. The best case scenario is that the Kavanaugh appointment collapses, Republicans can’t get another nominee to a vote before the elections, Dems take the Senate, and two Republicans balk at the idea of a lame-duck confirmation. Like you, I doubt very much that happens, but it is the outcome Dems should be playing for.

That is a lot of variables. A less pedantic person would understand that, and understand the context of “Probably the best case scenario” in my post being one that falls well short of that “Everything happens like a dream” scenario which even you doubt would happen.

“…it wasn’t necessary to repeat the objections already noted in the comment to which he/she was responding, as if those objections didn’t actually appear there.”

You keep using that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.

This is interesting.

I wonder how he square his belief in the overwhelming power of the presidency, and the way that congress stymied Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland. Would have enjoyed watching him answer that one during confirmation, and then justify why he isn’t protesting his nomination until Garland gets his.

I watch Phillies batters do it all the time. It’s not out of the realm of possibility.