Easy Choice

Saturday's newspaper column, today.

Let’s ignore whether Brett Kavanaugh’s behavior as a teenager predicts future character. After all, who among us didn’t attempt a rape or two in high school? What parents didn’t raise their children, boys and girls, to understand it’s just how things work? And what evangelical preacher son of an evangelical preacher hasn’t taught us that attempted rapists “respect” their victims when they “walk away” after the girls lock themselves in bathrooms? 

That aside, assume, for a moment, Professor Ford is being truthful. Is it hard to imagine how traumatized she’d have been? Might one understand her sense of injustice at seeing her attacker ascending to our nation’s highest court? Is it impossible to believe she’d feel compelled to speak out, for her own sake, if not for the country’s? 

Consider other possible responses. What if Kavanaugh had the human decency to say, “I don’t remember the events, but I got so drunk in those days I can’t say they didn’t happen. If so, I’m deeply sorry, and I understand the anger and hurt. I hope people can believe I’m no longer that boy.” What if, instead of attacking Professor Ford, Republicans had expressed a modicum of empathy and understanding? Might it make approval more palatable?  

None of that happened, of course; empathy and understanding aren’t who they are. Leaders and, evidently, most members of today’s Republican Party, including, amazingly enough, many women, don’t regard women that highly. Their responses to Kavanaugh’s accusers include only “she’s lying” and “what’s the big deal.” Comments coming from the Republican men on the Judiciary Committee (most of whom voted against the Violence Against Women Act) ought to appall all women and at least that subset of men who have wives, daughters, sisters, or mothers.  

Having elected a “president” who bragged about sexual predation, the reaction from the right is consistent. Trump’s amorality was well-enough known before the election that it must have been thought a positive by his voters, making their current attitude explainable. 

To characterize Professor Ford as anything but brave is to be willfully blind. She knew what she was in for, including now-routine death threats, yet decided sharing her story was important enough to risk ruining her life. Will it ruin Kavanaugh’s? Hardly. He’ll likely be approved anyway; if not, he still has a lifetime job with cushy hours and enviable pay.  

That she didn’t report the crime when it happened is no mystery. Girls have always known what to expect: insinuations and accusations, word against word; especially privileged word. Who can doubt the fear and shame, the blame and repercussions certain to follow? Republican leaders, and Trumpists, is who. 

So the question isn’t just whether Brett Kavanaugh belongs on the Court. It includes the much larger issue of how women are treated, especially by our respective political parties. Whether women who accuse men of sexual crimes should be considered truthful unless proven otherwise, or only the accused? Someone is lying. Why should that presumption apply only to the claimant? Yes, false accusations can happen; as can false declarations of innocence. Which is why not rushing to Judge-ment is called for. 

Accordingly, one might ponder the significance of Ms. Ford requesting an FBI investigation, while Kavanaugh and his backers stand against it. Maybe they’re worried about his fishy finances being addressed, too.  

But, okay. She’s lying, as are the others who’ve since come forward, because what woman wouldn’t? Besides, assaulting women is simply what guys do. As it happens, though, there remain compelling reasons to reject Kavanaugh, beginning with the gnathonic, non-independent-judiciary-ish words he spoke at his nomination ceremony, and ending with lying to Congress, at least twice, under oath. Not that Republicans ever considered the latter an impeachable offense.  

Dodging questions, claiming memory loss, offering self-righteous refusals, Kavanaugh made Neil Gorsuch seem like Moses on Sinai. Running to Fox “news” was glaringly unjudicial in itself, and pathetic as he repeated rehearsed talking points, again and again. But, having chosen him not for integrity, but for his views on presidential indictments, regulations, workers’ rights, plus his irrefragable future approval of their voter-suppression tactics, Republicans are determined to seat him, regardless.  

Whatever else is true, his performance at Thursday’s hearing, unhinged, making crazy claims about the Clintons, hyper-partisan shouting, emotional instability, says he’ll never be an impartial jurist. And that was when he was sober! His unsuitability for the Court couldn’t be more evident. 

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Bet On Brett

Saturday's newspaper column, today:

Outcome predetermined, the Senate hearings on Brett Kavanaugh were revealing nonetheless. They were the culmination and confirmation of the lengths to which the devolved Republican party has gone to gain and maintain power despite having an agenda with which the majority of Americans disagree. And they showed the depths to which that party has descended since the days of such admirable Senators as Dan Evans, Mark Hatfield, Lowell Weicker, Everett Dirksen, Jacob Javits, Margaret Chase Smith, and so many more: people with whom one could disagree respectfully, and who sought common ground. Because that used to be America. 

Third only to Trump and Gingrich, Mitch McConnell has done more damage to our legislative process and trust in our political system than any in modern times. The personification of hypocrisy, his career, by his own admission, committed to party over country. Calling it his proudest moment, he allowed not even meetings with President Barack Obama’s final SCOTUS nominee, let alone hearings and a vote, claiming precedent where none existed. And now he’s pushing a nominee whose pre-judicial career was partisan hackery unknown in any prior candidate who made it through. Kavanaugh’s boorish behavior continues today. 

Forcing hearings before the record could be reviewed, looking the other way when tens of thousands of documents were withheld, Republican Senators made clear their desperation to solidify ownership of the Supreme Court before the next election, without even pretending to the Senate’s past integrity. It’s not mysterious. 

Sure, their base will delight when Roe v. Wade is overturned, and when access to birth control is further reduced. But that’s distraction from the aforementioned truth: a majority of Americans disagree with nearly everything Republican for which they stand. Lacking a path to power by persuasion, counting on stacking the courts for cover, they turned to rigging the game. Which they’ve been doing with undeniable success. 

Because whereas Republican Party affiliation has been declining for years, among young people Democratic membership has been on the rise: about twice the number identify as D over R. Among non-whites of all ages, well, it’s unsubtle. Self-described independents now number around forty percent of voters; among them, support for Trump is at its lowest, down to barely thirty-percent. Although still above eighty-percent, approval is lessening even among Republicans. Consider: eighty-percent of twenty-percent of Americans, plus thirty-percent of forty-percent means Trump’s quantitative support is impressively exiguous.  

Importantly, it’s not just the current “president:” Republican members of both chambers, despite being in control, received a lower percentage of votes than Democrats. Yet there they are. Whether it’s the esoteric, like net neutrality and cannabis, or the broad-based, like tax reform, budget priorities, immigration, minority rights, religious separation, LGBT issues, abortion, or healthcare, Americans reject, widely, Republican priorities. How, in a democratic republic, is that possible? Ah. There’s the nub.  

Gerrymandering, voter suppression, and Constitutional quirks. The last on the list won’t change anytime soon, if ever, but between the Electoral College, created before there were political parties or announced candidates or campaigns, and the preference given to voters in small (i.e., Red) states in the Senate and the number of voters per Representative in small states, it’s easy see how the minority of the populace can become the majority in representation, intended or not. 

Worse, though, because they’re deliberate, extra-constitutional, cynical gaming of the system, are extreme Republican gerrymandering and intentionally suppressing votes of citizens who prefer Democrats. In those four states Trump won by a total of less than eighty-thousand votes, over two-hundred-thousand legal voters, mostly Democrats, were denied the right by “voter ID” laws, under pretext of non-existent in-person fraud. We’ve yet to learn if Russians hacked voting machines, but it’s as clear their fakery affected votes as it is that Republicans intend to do nothing about it.  

With popular opinion and demographics abandoning them, Republican leaders came to understand they can’t win fairly on the issues. Seeing the writing on the wall (not all of it in English), they turned to virtual electoral fraud. Lower courts, both state and federal, on too-rare occasions have overturned their most egregious efforts, but it’s not over until the Supreme Court has its say. They’ve already gutted the Voting Rights Act. Enter Kavanaugh. We know what’s next.  

Once upon a time, principled Republicans would have rejected embracing theft over cogency. Do any still exist? 

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