Cool-headed deliberation is the job, after all.

Not that I think Kavanaugh shouldn’t be voted down or anything, but I’m not sure how much the rage, the obfuscating about drinking habits, etc, isn’t just a political performance. But I also think that public performances by politicians should be taken simply on their face – I’m of the view that the public persona is a better understanding of the genuine person in these kind of cases. So I don’t have any real objection to your conclusion, but I am seeing it is nearly hopeless to reach the other side at this point.

There is an irony here in that since Kavanaugh helped launch an obviously illegitimate politically motivated campaign into a politician’s sex life, of course he is pissed off now to be on the receiving end of what he perceives to be the same thing. The irony comes from the fact that his hypocrisy in the matter intensifies his anger instead of the other way around.

Ultimately, I think the best feasible outcome is for Kavanaugh to be quickly confirmed, to have more allegations leak out (even if he hasn’t actually raped anyone I’m pretty sure there’s a lot more inappropriate sexual conduct in this past), for Republicans to pay a price at the polls in November and then for a Democratic house to open an investigation on his finances (dwarfed, of course, by the investigation into Trump’s finances). The sexual assaults of Kavanaugh and Trump will probably move the needle less than their financial crimes (which I have no doubt of Trump’s guilt). the Dems need a House win in 2018, but they also need to win really big in 2020.

I don’t think Kavanaugh’s anger was a response to the accusation, but rather to the way it (and other accusations) was handled by the Democratic Party and the national media.

“Of course, even the most reasonable person might be irately incredulous when he first learns about the allegation against him. But a reasonable person who has had a chance to think things through does not respond to those who are concerned about the allegation—and about doing right by the alleged victim—the way Kavanaugh has responded. A reasonable person who has had the chance to reflect might think, “This is very bad for me, and unfair since I didn’t do this thing. But of course other people don’t know that I didn’t do this thing, and so, even though it is bad for me, it’s right that they should ask me about it.” Still, a reasonable person might lose their temper even after going through this process of reflection, in a moment of intense questioning for example. But a reasonable person does not maintain a baseline of bombastic rage, and a reasonable person certainly does not endorse such a reaction as the appropriate response.”

I think this is broadly correct. I’m not sure I would go as far as you in defining what the perfect victim reaction should be to some one if they were falsely accused of attempted rape during their teenage years half a lifetime later in a way that was going to resist trying to prove a negative. I think the range of reasonable reactions is pretty wide BUT REFLECTIVE OF GENERAL TEMPERAMENT. And the sort general temperament reflected here isn’t good for a judge on the Supreme Court. I’d give a lot of leeway for that kind of reaction for lots of other jobs.

I find it more than plausible that Kavanaugh fancies himself as deserving of the privileges and feelings of superiority that are often part and parcel of being a member of the entitled meritocracy in this country, although I suspect he subscribes to the principle of noblesse oblige by way of easing his conscience, hence the frequency of first-person references (as a possessive pronoun) to a “lifetime of public service,” the “coaching of young girls” and so forth. In addition, we might plausibly if not reasonably infer that he believes his feelings of contempt, anger (if not rage), and defiance (for example) are justified because the accusations of sexual assault and accounts of his drunken behavior have spilled over onto and thus sullied the images of sanctimonious purity with which he and his supporters have painted his roles as a “son, husband and dad.” That portrait, in conjunction with the “good name” his legal career has—in both his mind and the minds of his supporters—etched in stone, serve as sacred artifacts or insignia of his meritocratic entitlement. Still, one wonders how a person of his intelligence and “fine breeding” as it were, can live in good conscience with an abundance of evasions and lies that typically add up to denial and self-deception.

I’ll hazard a guess: the (often perverse) moral psychology intrinsic to substitutionary atonement doctrine in Catholicism which, I believe, is intimately tied to the Church’s teachings and practices of sacramental confession requiring “disclosure of sins (the ‘confession’), contrition (sorrow of the soul for the sins committed), and satisfaction (‘penance,’ i.e. doing something to make amends for the sins),” are at least a necessary condition to a possible if not plausible psychological explanation. Assuming Kavanaugh is a “good Catholic,” the moral psychology of substitutionary atonement in conjunction with the act of confession permits him to view his past behavior in a far more forgiving and excusing light than the rest of us (at least those of us who do not believe in substitutionary atonement or practice sacramental confession) and again, in his mind at least, thus serves to rationalize or pardon his expressions of anger and defiance at those believed responsible for soiling the sacred signs associated with his “good name”(as well as the conspicuous lapse in the kind of judicial temperament one associates with a candidate for the Supreme Court). One result of putting things in this psychological and theological framework is that it suggests or implies the possibility that Kavanaugh does not see himself as truly evading moral responsibility, for such responsibility as is relevant was assumed and faced in the theological precincts and moral psychological context of his Catholic faith.

Good to see Harvard doing the ethical thing by not inviting a white-collar waterboarder back to teach for an 11th year
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2018/10/2/kavanaugh-is-out/
https://www.justsecurity.org/60238/brett-kavanaugh-risk-return-torture/

“Kavanaugh’s behavior in response to the inquiry gives us a completely independent, completely adequate reason to think he is unqualified for this job.”

This is the thrust of the recent group letter submitted by a rather large number of law professors.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2018/10/04/unprecedented-unfathomable-more-than-law-professors-sign-letter-after-kavanaugh-hearing/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.027b3cc216ba

as well as his friend and former defender, Benjamin Wittes

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/why-i-wouldnt-confirm-brett-kavanaugh/571936/

I think its a dispositive point.

In fact I think you give him and his position and the “but he was under stress” argument a lot more credit than it deserves.

I’ve seen judges dealing with defendants and litigants who get defensive, mouthy, and start back talking. They’re generally MASSIVELY more brutal than the Senate was with him, and the defendants and litigants are usually in a lot more jeopardy than he was.

By the norms of his own profession as I’ve observed them, he can’t maintain the same professional demeanor his profession expects from those who are within its power.

I mean maybe being an overly sensitive bully who can dish it out but not take it is a very judicial way to be, but that’s not something we should be proud of or encourage.

I agree completely with what you have to say–and you said it much more calmly and much better than I could have.

And I also agree that his finances got way too little attention.

And I’m afraid we’ll have him around for decades…

“If the boot was on the other foot – if a liberal judge had the same personal conduct, and if there was a realistic chance that failure to confirm him would result in the senate changing hands before a replacement could be rushed through, a hardline conservative being selected in his place, and Roe vs Wade being overturned, etc – would you still oppose his confirmation?”

The situation isn’t parallel, right. If Kavanagh isn’t appointed, we get a different conservative judge. So its actually kind of hard to excuse the reaction to all this by saying, “oh well, there’s more at stake for them”.

Still, I think its a good question. I agree with the OP, and, yes, I think I would oppose confirmation if the judge were exactly like Kavanagh except being liberal even if it seriously risked a hardline conservative judge being put in place. Unless I was confident that the alternative would be equally unfit for office, I suppose.

But its hard to know for sure when you’re not in the situation. For what its worth, I spend the Clinton/Lewinsky period feeling that I was living in a lunatic asylum, as people around me insisted first that Clinton was telling the truth (when he was obviously lying) and then that what he did was no big deal (when if it had been anyone else they’d have recognised it as abusive behavior, even independently of the lying). That said, I thought (rightly as it turned out) that Democrats were acting against their own (and my) interests by supporting him.

A well-argued and persuasive post: thank you. But since the polarisation of US politics has now reached the point that it has, perhaps the time has come for another look at the system for appointing Supreme Court judges, however difficult it might be to make changes

Yes. There’s even a name for it in the language of law – judicial temperament, which Kavanaugh has shown he lacks. Beyond that he is dishonest and shows no regard for the oath he took when he took the stand.

The man is of poor character and lacks judicial temperament. He ought not sit on any court. These are conservative objections and in ignoring them, the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Republicans have stunning shown that their claimed ideology is an excuse for the pursuit of raw power.

I gather you’re thinking about stuff like this:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/10/kavanaugh-hearings-republican-women-voter-turnout.html

But I think you’re just over-thinking.

Some women really do like to make excuses for their bad boys, and
have at best mixed feelings about the many and various things
that get sold as feminism… and feminists can be remarkably
tone-deaf about talking to anyone who isn’t already on their side
(“You must *believe* women!”; “Uh, guys, ‘presumption of
innocence’?”).

As for Kavanaugh, there’s plenty of reasons to say no, just to
pick one, “torture”. People who can rationalize that away really
shouldn’t be on the Supreme court.

Anyway: a third of the United States is a right-off. Every fight
for the forseeable future is going to be a fight for the
independent/undecided middle third, and a matter of mobilizing
the liberal/left base– whose apathy is a thing of stunning awesomeness:

https://www.mcclatchydc.com/podcasts/beyond-the-bubble/article219366050.html

> “Our research has continually shown… that there is a large segment of voters, particularly millennial voters of color, who are not automatically motivated to turn out because of Donald Trump, and in many ways see the election of Donald Trump as another proof point on why voting doesn’t matter,” said McHugh.

And the undecideds are not exactly easy to understand, either:
“I just don’t know what I think about Donald Trump yet.”

Could anyone point to the part in the statement where he gets so angry he disqualifies himself as a judge? I started watching the beginning and it didn’t seem that bad (given the favourable hypotheses stated) but I admit I got bored very quickly (obviously I’d be against his appointment for lots of other reasons).

(Btw contrary to the premise of the OP it seemed to me that he doesn’t find the accusations ‘credible’, and I guess he might reasonably maintain that his reaction to (as he sees it) groundless partisan attacks won’t predict his behaviour as a judge discharging his duties. I do fear that this ‘no emotions please we’re technocrats’ stuff is part of what drives at least 50% of America’s population up the wall, unlikely as that may seem to all the cool-headed and qualified folks here.)

Not being ”cool-headed” at all –
as most of our US relatives don’t respond to ”cool-headed” at all –
They want it really ”hot” – or better said:
like loud, obnoxious drunks with prolific pukers among us –
Advise – ”anybody” to go about 30 miles.” – and only if you yell and scream at them – and tell them what J-Law wanted to tell Von Clownstick and what De Niro said – they slowly start to listen.

And sometimes I think we are faaar to nice and polite?

– on the other hand – who ever went to an average Spring Break in my homeland had to know it would end like that.

Or as Von Clownstick said:

I can honestly say I never had a beer in my life – okay –
that’s one of my only good traits –
I don’t drink
(laughter!)
I never had a glass of alcohol –
for whatever reason –
can you imagine if I had –
what a mess I be –
(again laughter)
– and that’s why I -(FF von Clownnstick) nominated Bart!

It is too depressing to think that so many people … don’t care that he is so full of rage—indeed, maybe they even join him in his rage—toward those of us who aren’t yet convinced.

I think this is the case. I do think an inflection point has been passed …

I think the temperament argument is at least cognizable. Not sure if I agree with it. I think that if you are accused of a serious crime out of the blue after several decades, it’s given the widest possible media dissemination, with most elite media outlets clearly on the side of the accuser, and your wife and young daughters thereafter are deluged with death and rape threats, it’s understandable if you get angry and defensive. But I understand the argument that a SC Justice shouldn’t be getting angry or defensive regardless of the provocation, and the partisan comments he made, while not surprising, are problematic.

As for the credibility of the accusations, let’s start with the most credible one:
1. Accused forcefully denies it.
2. No tangible evidence.
3. Corroborating witnesses named, none of whom corroborate it.
4. Accusation never related to anyone until decades later during “therapy,” and it’s still a question whether the specifically accused person was named even then.
5. Allegations suspiciously all emerged publicly at the 11th hour of the confirmation process.

Of the three main allegations this is the most credible one. The so-called second one is similar to the first but not as credible. The so-called third one, which for a time received serious reportage from elite media, is laugh out loud ridiculous.

I’ll also mention that legions of internet sleuths are unleashing a torrent of accusations not only on Kavanaugh’s alleged adolescent predilections but those of Dr. Ford as well. I’ll mention only that they exist with no further comment because, unlike this nation of panty sniffers, I have standards.

So, all that on the table, I guess I have to make clear: Brett Kavanaugh is a reactionary. He is a dumb reactionary. He was involved with some of the most nauseating crimes of the W Bush administration (you remember him, erstwhile war criminal now Resistance hero). Kavanaugh shouldn’t be allowed in the visitor’s gallery of the Supreme Court much less the bench itself.

But do you see my problem here? Not wanting a dumb reactionary on the Supreme Court, but having to reduce our collective evidentiary standards to absolute dogshit in order to do it? You see how I’m conflicted about that?

“plausibly appropriate for a criminal trial”

Yeah, here’s what our more rigorous criminal trial standard has accomplished: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innocence_Project

They’ve exonerated hundreds and, extrapolating from their numbers, there are doubtless thousands more languishing. 70% of their exonerees are minorities. That’s what we as a society have done with a HIGHER evidentiary standard than the one we’re employing here. So you see why I’m uneasy with lowering our evidentiary standards even more, right?

It’s conflicting. We don’t want a dumb preppie reactionary on the Supreme Court. On the other hand the only way to stop him is seemingly to toss all rules of evidence right out the window, ensuring that an even larger quantity of innocent black and brown men will spend their lives in prison than already are, if these evidentiary standards are more broadly applied.

Is it worth it? After all, anyone Trump nominates will certainly vote the vast majority of the time with the conservatives, just as Kavanaugh will. The Justice being replaced, Kennedy, was the Official Swing Vote, but he didn’t vote with the liberals on Bush v Gore or the attempted Obamacare repeal or many other issues of importance to liberals, and he voted with the conservatives on some decisions regarding abortion restrictions. He was good on LGBT rights. What are the chances that The Resistance can hold out for another Kennedy? That’s almost impossible to predict. Interestingly, Kavanaugh clerked for Kennedy. Did some of Kennedy’s “swing” views rub off on Kananaugh or is he just what he appears?

>I think Kavanaugh has shown himself to be unfit for appointment to the Supreme Court. Here’s why.

You thought Kavanaugh was unfit before all this, so that’s neither suprising nor particularly relevant.

>I basically thought that Blasey Ford’s testimony was credible enough that the Republicans should appoint someone else instead on the basis of that evidence alone.

What evidence? She can’t even remember what year the supposed incident happened in.

>If I’m looking to hire someone for a very important job, and I have very good reason based on credible evidence to believe he did something very bad and is unrepentant, it’s okay for me to use that credible evidence as a basis to choose a different candidate,

We don’t have credible evidence. We have a totally unfalsifiable accusation 30 years after the fact. If I showed up outside the window of your next job interview and started screaming that you had groped me back in highschool, I doubt you would agree you shouldn’t be hired.

>It’s easy to think that Kavanaugh’s behavior is just how someone would respond to a false accusation. But it’s not how someone should respond, when the accusation is credible, when others are doing right by taking it seriously, and once the accused has had the chance to compose himself and to remind himself that it’s nothing personal that some don’t automatically dismiss the allegation.

This amounts to saying “We falsely smeared you as a gang rapist in front of the entire world, but y0u mad bro?” It’s ridiculous.

>On Tuesday, our president publicly mocked a woman who credibly claims to be a victim of sexual assault.

You keep using this word, credible. The word you actually mean is “not immediately disprovable”, and the accurate term is unfalsifiable. Because that’s what’s been made, accusations so vague they can’t possibly be disproven, in a way most calculated to gin up political reaction. And you’re painting the people opposed to this witch hunt as the bad guys.

Emily Yoffe at the Atlantic – the best piece I’ve read to date on this…

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/brett-kavanaugh-and-problem-believesurvivors/572083/

“Kavanaugh’s behavior in response to the inquiry gives us a completely independent, completely adequate reason to think he is unqualified for this job. ”

No. In this situation he is not a judge, his is the accused. I would expect someone falsely accused to be hopping mad about it. If you want evidence of his behavior as a judge, he has written nearly 300 opinions. You don’t refer to a single one, nor do you refer to anything else he has written. You can start here:

http://www.loc.gov/law/find/kavanaugh.phpfd

You talk about feeling like you are living in a different reality. That is how I feel when you omit anything about Kavanaugh’s long record as a judge. It makes me suspect that either you know nothing about it or you have no coherent criticism of it. Something like this, for instance, with more detail and more deeply argued, would be a worthwhile contribution to debate:

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/outlook/article/Why-does-a-Republican-oppose-Kavanaugh-The-13279461.php

The most comprehensive article on the subject, widely cited but absent from this thread, is by Nathan J. Robinson, at Current Affairs: How We Know Kavanaugh Is Lying.

Cook County lawyer Jack Leyhane on judicial temperament: https://leyhane.blogspot.com/2012/10/a-few-words-about-judicial-temperament.html

I’ve appeared in front of judges who had awful temperament… and were good judges… and I’ve appeared in front of judges who were the distilled essence of excellent judicial temperament… and were terrible judges.

He doesn’t regard temperament as the most important thing about a judge though as counsel before the bar he appreciates it.

Read the whole thing – it’s interesting.

and –
”NRATV host Dan Bongino went on a tear Friday about the drama between Democrats and Republicans over Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, declaring: “My entire life right now is about owning the libs.”
After baselessly arguing that Democrats didn’t even read the FBI investigation of Kavanaugh and questioning whether Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) looked confident, Bongino said that he is dedicated to “owning the libs.”
“That’s it. The libs, because they have shown themselves through this Kavanaugh abomination of a process to be ― I’m talking about the libs on Capitol Hill and sadly some of these radical groups ― to be pure, unadulterated evil, what they did to this guy,” he said.
“You have to lose, I’m sorry. We win, you lose, the new rules are in effect. My life is all about owning the libs now. We have got to get this guy appointed on the Supreme Court.”
With those words, Bongino effectively became a living, breathing meme ― the face of the right-wing phrase “own the libs.”
In July, Eve Peyser in Rolling Stone described the concept of “owning the libs” as “blatant self-sabotage for dumb political reasons.” She wrote, “To ‘own’ someone on the internet is to dominate and humiliate them, and the ‘libs’ can loosely be defined as anyone to the left of Sean Hannity.”
Peyser said the phrase “own the libs” came about in 2015 when someone “tweeted at Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes, attaching a photo of himself lying face down in a dumpster.” User @randygdub then tweeted, “Thinking about the one guy who laid down in a dumpster to own libs online and hoping ted cruz does it too.”

So our whole life right now is about owning the a… holes – and the backlash to the backlash of the Republicans will be totally awesome – That’s it., because they have shown themselves through this Kavanaugh abomination of a process to be ― I’m talking about the Republicans on Capitol Hill and sadly some of these radical right wing groups ― to be pure, unadulterated evil, what they did to US.
They ultimately have to lose, I’m sorry.
We will win ultimately,
They lose, the newer rules will be in effect and I#m young enough to see it through –
They had to get this guy appointed on the Supreme Court.”

And we will ”own them” totally and absolutely!

Bad as Kennedy was, he bequeathed us gay marriage.

The fear is that the latest lineup will ratchet us back to the Lochner era, cutting down the thick forestry of federal regulation planted in the New Deal and nurtured and replenished thereafter.

Kavanaugh is the Revenge of Bork, and nothing, no law, no regulation, no precedent, that shields the weak from the strong, the minority from the majority, the poor from the rich, women from men, anyone from Christians, will survive their pitiless “originalist” jurisprudence.

It’s been argued that John Roberts might moderate his stance out of concern for his legacy. We’ve seen scant evidence so far. Gutting the Voting Rights Act in the Shelby decision was gratuitous vandalism that caused immediate harm. Why suppose that shifting the court’s balance to the right will change its central tendency?

and from Laura Bassett:

”On Saturday the Senate will likely confirm to the Supreme Court the kind of man many women have known or dated at some point in our lives ― the wealthy, entitled frat boy who cries, shouts and lies when you confront him with his behavior, because he has rarely had to face a consequence in his life. And that man will be the deciding vote on major abortion cases, potentially blocking access to the procedure for generations of women”.

SCREAM!!

Republicans pretended to listen to them….But ultimately, all of the party’s unease with the Me Too movement coalesced around the figure of poor, put-upon rich white guy Brett Kavanaugh. A line was being drawn. He was not going to be another guy who went down for a 30-year-old claim, no matter how credible the witness or how many lies he told under oath or how many more people came forward to support her claims….

The government cupped its hands over women’s mouths and turned the music up”.

Unfortunately, this was neither a criminal court nor a job interview. A supreme court nomination is now bounty, and to the victor go the spoils. But only, of course, to put judges on the court who will realize the Founder’s intent.
Our president gave the game away when he said about Franken resigning: doing what honorable people consider to be the honorable thing is now collapsing like a wet noodle. The only surprise is how circumspect he was regarding the underlying vulgarity of what he really meant to say.
This is about Trump and McConnell sticking their genitalia in a little more than half the country’s face. Plow right through indeed.
Trump will be crowing about this “win” soon, and unlike John Quiggin I am not optimistic about a long term downside. More likely they will be rewarded with a Senate majority with not a bad chance of a third appointment.

I want to suggest that getting angry is a means of affectively registering or appreciating the injustice of the world, and that our capacity to get aptly angry is best compared with our capacity for aesthetic appreciation.38 Just as appreciating the beautiful or the sublime has a value distinct from the value of knowing that something is beautiful or sublime, there might well be a value to appreciating the injustice of the world through one’s apt anger—a value that is distinct from that of simply knowing that the world is unjust. Imagine a person who does everything, as it were, by the ethical book—forming all the correct moral beliefs and acting in accordance with all her moral duties—but who is left entirely cold by injustice, feeling nothing in response to those moral wrongs of which she is perfectly aware. I don’t want to say that such a person has done anything wrong. But I do think it is natural to say that there is something missing in her; indeed, that it would be better, ceteris paribus, if she were capable of feeling anger towards the injustice she knows to exist. …

http://users.ox.ac.uk/~corp1468/Research_files/Srinivasan-2017-Journal_of_Political_Philosophy%20FINAL.pdf

Dr. Smantha Nutt is a physician and founder of War CHild Canada/USA. She wrote in today’s Globe and Mail. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-lessons-women-are-asking-men-to-learn/#_=_

@35 Wow, there’s a lot of bad faith ridiculousness here.

What evidence? She can’t even remember what year the supposed incident happened in.

So what? I would have to sit down with a calendar to work out what year a lot of stuff that undoubtedly happened to me in high school happened in, and some of those things I wouldn’t be able to pin to a specific year. Doesn’t mean they didn’t happen, or that I couldn’t produce people to corroborate them.

We don’t have credible evidence. We have a totally unfalsifiable accusation 30 years after the fact.

Many accusations are unfalsifiable. What’s that got to do with anything?

And you’re wrong here. We don’t have an accusation. We have three. Where I come from, we call that a pattern. Dare I say, even an investigable pattern.

Because that’s what’s been made, accusations so vague they can’t possibly be disproven

Even if we accepted this, which we shouldn’t, because you’re wrong on so many levels, there’s still Kavanaugh’s relentless perjury before the committee, and his shadow financial dealings. The perjury by itself should disqualify him. The financial dealings should be investigated, thoroughly, and the end result of that investigation would almost certainly be MORE perjury is discovered.

Lee A. Arnold @ 56: “Ending Roe v. Wade won’t stop abortions; it may lead to a constitutional amendment that protects reproductive rights.”

Or perhaps, more generally, an Equal Rights Amendment to assure that women are treated equally under law to men, e.g. with regard to bodily autonomy? Oh wait, that’s been tried, and is still hanging fire, still not ratified by enough states. What chance then, that the same states which have been busily closing up the abortion facilities they do have will choose to ratify an ‘amendment that protects reproductive rights’?

Jeremy Waldron (@JeremyJWaldron) tweeted at 5:37 PM – 6 Oct 2018 :
How now will signatories to the law professors’ letter treat “Justice” Kavanaugh? Business as usual for clerkships, invitations to speak, etc?as though the content of the letter was just something we all said during nomination process, not to be taken seriously afterwards (http://twitter.com/JeremyJWaldron/status/1048598037705252864?s=17)

You people are using logic and reason to explain what’s going on with the Kavanaugh hearings. What’s going on is the victory of fascism. That has nothing to do with logic and reason.
Kavanaugh was picked in order to force the bottom 90% of the proles to realize that the oligarchs are in charge. Kavnaugh was picked because of his attempted rape, not despite it. Kavanaugh was picked because he’s a viciously sadistic blackout drunk, not despite his angry drunken violence. Kavanaugh was picked to prove to the American people that their rage and revulsion against being brutalized means nothing, and that our masters can do anything they want, any time they way, and we proles are utterly powerless to do a thing about it.
Look, liberalism has been defeated. It’s on the run. Democrats have lost 1000+ elected offices over the last 8 years and they lost the presidency twice even though the majority vote favored the Democratic presidential candidate.
Having been defeated, leftists find themselves in the “pursuit phase” of combat. The pursuit phase occurs when the defeated enemy is on the run and the victorious army now accelerates the attack. The goal? Not just to defeat the enemy but to annihilate ’em. Wipe ’em out.
The pursuit phase is the point of the battle when the fleeing soldiers get shot in the back, blasted with artillery rounds as they try to flee, napalmed and blown up with cluster bombs by close air support as they frantically attempt to run away. Remember the “highway of death” in Desert Storm in 1991? Giant traffic jam of fleeing Iraqi soldiers getting blasted into hamburger by A-10 warthogs and M1A1 tanks and pursuing U.S. mobile infantry?
That’s what the Kavanaugh hearing is. The oligarchs are now in control of America, the fascists have won, so it’s time for the pursuit phase. The goal is not to win — they already did that. The object is now to break the American people, the way a 13-year-old girl gets broken when human traffickers turn her into a whore.
The goal here is to utterly demoralize the American people, to break their will, to destroy their willingness to resist. You do this by degrading the victim to the utmost possible degree, in every possible way. Human traffickers beat their victims, rape them around the clock non-stop with a gang of burly thugs, burn the girls with cigarette butts, force the victims to lick toilet bowls clean, they piss in the victim’s mouth and rape them with foreign objects. The goal is to destroy the victim, to turn her into a piece of meat, to wreck her image of herself until she thinks of herself as nothing, a lump of flesh, not even human.
That’s what’s going on with the Kavanaugh hearings. The fascists want the American people to think of themselves as lumps of flesh, utterly without agency. We are peons to be used and abused by the rich and powerful as they like. If the Kavanaughs of the world want to rape us, that’s their prerogative. If the Kavanaughs of the world want to put out cigarettes in our eyes, that’s their right — we have nothing to say about it. If the Kavanaughs of the world demand we lick their toilet bowls clean, then we must do it…and afterwards we must thank the Kavanaughs of the world for giving us this wonderful opportunity. “Thank you sir, may I have another?”
Like breaking a political prisoner or breaking some underage girl kidnapped into a brothel, the goal here is to break the American people. Facsists don’t just want obedience: they want total submission, absolute dominance, they want the proles to whimper their gratitude when the fascists beat and kill and starve them.
It’s going to get much worse. This is only the start. The barricades set up around the Supreme Court tell us that the oligarchs eagerly anticipate unleashing riot-armored muggers with badges against demonstrators. We’ll see so many women getting clubbed and tased and beaten and having their arms and legs broken and their eyes gouged out and their teeth smashed in, the Marquis de Sade would have a spontaneous orgasm. It’s all part of the program: breaking the will of the American people, forcing them to submit totally, crushing the spirit of the average American until s/he thinks of herself as nothing but a helpless piece of meat, a nonentity, a piece of human trash that can be disposed of without a thought.

Lee A. Arnold

Trump looks like a dead end.

I can’t figure out what this is supposed to mean. Is there any chance you could clarify the statement?

Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable, but juries tend to find it convincing, except, of course, when sexual assault is alleged. This is odd. It ought to be the other way around. We aren’t good at identifying strangers, especially in a brief encounter, and especially if they’re of a different race, but we’re very good at identifying people we know.

Personal accounts are given undue weight: claim that somebody got a flu shot and turned into a teenage werewolf, or that a friend of a friend was cured of cancer with coffee enemas and copious consumption of juiced vegetables, and people will believe you, even though the events involved are rare and the mechanisms inferred are implausible.

Claims of assault of a sexual nature, which are known to be commonplace and whose causes are well understood, tend to be viewed much more skeptically.

arcseconds @ 68: “If so, doesn’t this give a free reign to sexual predators? All they need to do is to make sure the[y] are not seen by anyone other than the victim.”

Bingo. … This is enhanced when the attackers are plural, and can then vouch for each other, i.e. the implicit threat to the victim is “Our word outnumbers yours; if you say anything, we’ll both/all call you a liar!” (Incentive for the victim to remain silent.)

Another enhancer is being an authority figure, even simply of a higher social rank. You may recall the prior political figure brought into controversy for past sexual assaults on girls, recent Senate candidate and former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, had been (at the time of the alleged assaults) a 30-something assistant DA, well-positioned to intimidate 14- and 16-y.o. victims into silence.

Do you think other victims and abusers (present and future), seeing how Dr. Blasey Ford has been treated, threatened with violence at home, accused of conspiracy by Senators and the new Justice-nominee, mocked by the President of the United States, have not made notes to themselves of how revelations are likely to be received concerning abuse by authority figures? Will this encourage or discourage abusers?

Raven @ 73. Exactly. Whenever there is an event that discourages victims from coming forward, that event is also encouraging abusers. And let’s face it, there are already men who expect to get away with much more than they should. The Blasey Ford-Kavanaugh fiasco reinforces their belief.

66 I suppose reasonable people may differ, anon/portly, but for a Supreme Court nominee to (a) refer to “revenge on behalf of the Clintons given (i) his own actions during the Starr/Gingrich affair (ii) having been appointed by a President who claims ‘she’ll [candidate Secretary Clinton] be in prison and instigates chants of “lock her up” at his rallies (rallies?!? – for a sitting President?) (b) utters several falsehoods concerning the manner in which the allegations were made public then claims an “orchestrated political hit… by Democrats” has indeed forfeited any claim to having a judicial temperament.

To me the question raised by the OP is not whether we should think Kavanaugh lacks judicial temperament, but whether his performance before the Senate makes this an argument “we should ALL get behind,” as GS says in 57.

I grant that it’s a an argument with some validity, but I don’t think it’s an argument that anti-Kavanaugh people should expect pro-Kavanaugh people to find very convincing.

Remember, the argument is that even if Kavanaugh is innocent, his reaction to the false charge disqualifies him. It’s immediately apparent to me that a pro-Kavanaugh person would find this a little suspicious – sort of a “heads I win, tails I win” type argument.

Although I think Kavanaugh came off poorly, I also think the situation was extreme and unusual, and Kavanaugh has to be cut some slack (again, presupposing he’s telling the truth, of course). I would vote against any nominee who held a “Fox News” type worldview, simply on the basis of lack of intellectual competence, but I don’t expect people who hold that worldview to agree with me.

I brought up the “yearbook” evidence in 64 without maybe a good reason to bring it up, so let me bring it up again. Suppose I was endeavoring to convince a right-wing friend to be more anti-Trump (a real-life situation for me the past couple of years, as it happens). Suppose this friend said to me, “this whole thing isn’t about “the truth,’ it’s about throwing anything at Kavanaugh that might stick, or work.” Then he showed me the picture of the Democratic Senators sitting next to a blow-up of Kavanaugh’s yearbook page. What am I supposed say to him?

To me the idea the “disposition” argument is too close, or too indistinguishable, from an “anything that might stick or work” type argument to make the “we should ALL get behind” it point realistic or persuasive. I’ve read that Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been critical of Trump in public remarks. Suppose at some point she gets a little hot under the collar and makes some remarks that could be interpreted as “intemperate” by Trump supporters. Would this be a valid argument that she has the wrong disposition to be a judge? That’s ridiculous, her long record as a judge tells us that, regardless of her personal political views.

Lee A. Arnold

I hope I don’t seem as if I’m nagging about this, but your meaning is still not clear to me.

When I read what you wrote about how Trump does not appeal, I reflect that there are many voters who have negative attitudes towards Trump, but it’s not clear to me whether you mean:
that this will affect how they vote when Trump is a candidate;
or that this will affect how they vote for as long as Trump is President;
or that this will affect how they vote even after Trump has left politics.

When I read what you wrote about how the Republicans need those voters, the ones you refer to who have negative attitudes towards Trump, it’s not clear to me what you are asserting about the effect of these voters’ attitudes on the election results achieved by Republicans.

It seems to me practically certain that a significant number of voters will be discouraged from voting for other candidates of his party because of their negative attitudes towards Trump, but I think something similar has been true of the majority of US Presidents so it doesn’t seem to me that the observation would justify describing Trump as a ‘dead end’. After all, it also seems to me practically certain that a significant number of voters will be encourage to vote for other candidates of his party because of their positive attitudes towards Trump.

Lee A. Arnold

A “significant number of voters” is not necessarily a winning number for the GOP to count upon.

I know it isn’t, and I didn’t suggest it was, so I don’t understand why you are making this point.

Trump voters were already numerically smaller in 2016 than Clinton voters.

Strange as it may seem, that is another fact I was already aware of. More people voted for Hillary Clinton than voted for Donald Trump; but even though that was true, it’s still Donald Trump who’s living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, isn’t it?

The GOP has been taken over by Trump but the future belongs to young, diverse, and environmental voters, a large majority of whom are not responding to the policies nor the style.

I don’t understand what you mean by ‘the future belongs’ to them. Is that the same thing as asserting that they will carry future elections, or is it different?

If you mean that there are some indicators that are encouraging for opponents of the Republican Party, then I agree that’s true, but it’s still not clear to me whether you intend a stronger claim.

”The crowd in front of the U.S. Supreme Court is tiny, looks like about 200 people (& most are onlookers) – that wouldn’t even fill the first couple of rows of our Kansas Rally, or any of our Rallies for that matter! The Fake News Media tries to make it look sooo big, & it’s not”!

tweeted von Clownstick – while he has not even 2/3 of Taylor Swifts twitter followers.

J-D #81: “I know it isn’t, and I didn’t suggest it was… Strange as it may seem, that is another fact I was already aware of. …it’s still not clear to me whether you intend a stronger claim.”

Now I’m sure that I don’t know what you mean. What is an example of a “stronger claim”? What do you have in mind?

J-D #86, I am afraid that I am still do not understand your meaning. How would the phrase “carrying future elections” be distinguished from the phrase “the future belongs to [certain] voters”, within the context of a political discussion?

Dunno, J-D @ 86; I think it’s a mighty strong claim to say ‘the future belongs to young, diverse, and environmental voters, to whom Trump does not appeal’. — Unless you specify the range of future you mean (far vs near?), and the intermediate events you assume as conditions (political correction rather than complete Trumpist takeover à la 1930s Germany… as a bit later we might have hoped the future of Germany belonged to the White Rose pamphleteers).

A claim with a lot of specific verifiable content is stronger than a claim with little content, or content which is generalised and vague.

Dialogue about a strong claim
Critic: They lost the election.
Maker of strong claim: Yes, they did. What about it?
Critic: Well, you said they’d win the election.
Maker of strong claim: That’s true, I did say that.
Critic: So your claim has been proved wrong.
Maker of strong claim: I guess I have to admit that.

Dialogue about a weak claim
Critic: They lost the election.
Maker of weak claim: Yes, they did. What about it?
Critic: Well, you said the future belonged to them.
Maker of weak claim: And it does!
Critic: But they lost the election.
Maker of weak claim: I never said they’d win the election. What I said was that the future belonged to them.
Critic: So what does that mean, if it didn’t mean that they were going to win the election?
Maker of weak claim: It means that the future belongs to them!

It’s easy to determine whether a strong claim has been confirmed, because it has meaningful content. A weak claim has less meaningful content, and so it’s harder to determine whether it has been confirmed.

J-D @ 91: Except, according to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), our planet has only until 2030 to stem catastrophic climate change, which leaves a very narrow window for those ‘young, diverse, and environmental voters, to whom Trump does not appeal’ to ‘own the future’; after that, irreversible effects will forever deny it to them: the damage done by decades of Reagan-Bush-Trumpian malignly neglectful policies will be unfixable.

This is a very long thread, and so I’m not sure whether it’s worth leaving a comment.

But one thing that sheds light on many of the differences in perception is that there is a massive misinformation machine running that all the people on the right are tuned in to. They are getting *completely* different information than we are. And they were hearing *detailed arguments* about why Dr. Ford’s evidence was scanty.

They did not consider the Yale allegations in as much depth, which had corroboration at the time. Leaving those out was a serious advantage for the GOP.

Kavanaugh supporters would claim things like –he’d been vetted 7 different times by the FBI. (They counted all his government positions as vetting him, so fallaciously assumed that the failure to uncover this charge meant it was false). There was a very elaborate narrative about how Ford couldn’t have gotten home, Ford did not collect her friend so couldn’t have been afraid, etc. Much of this is based on background beliefs that display a great ignorance of what it’s like to be in a situation where one fears for one’s life, and how a traumatic crime affects choices, and reasoning. .

They were also incensed that Avenatti was involved, and assumed that was relevant for all the charges. It all looked like a hit job to them.

They also were taken with the idea that he’d ‘made a mistake as a teen.’

Another narrative advantage they gave themselves is the one you mention– they turned the discussion into one about guilt or innocence, and drew on the inapt ideas about due process.

Even going in, before any charges, this appointment was a travesty.

My point is only that there is a gap of values but there is also reasoning from a wholly different information sets. There was an overlap between them. For them, he was being railroaded as part of a political hit, so his outrage was justified. Therefore they conclude, this says nothing about his temperament. There are many things wrong with this reasoning. But it’s good to understand how it washes away any critical look at a complex situation.

Now I think I understand. I start from the premise that there are no exact predictions of the future in politics (and maybe not many in the social sciences), and that other readers and writers here understand this already. So anyone coming to read a social sciences blog who senses a strong claim of the type you suspect, should probably check their own priors in regard to method and material.

Focusing in from there, making a prediction about specific elections is crazy — I won’t even predict the results of the US election only a month away. You can only make guesses by the current tracking polls.

I wrote “Trump looks like a dead end” in the middle of a paragraph that clearly states it is about the “long term viability of the GOP” and observes that the Democrats in the long-term have been picking up some very desirable demographics. Context is everything.

In fact I would go further and guess that even the current Republican leadership realizes he’s a dead end — they are riding this turkey for all it’s worth (judicial appointees etc.) and inventing slogans on the fly (this week, “the Democrats are the party of the mob”) (pretty much what “demo” means really) but if Trump dropped dead tomorrow they’d all be secretly very happy. Did I write, “context is everything”?

and about:
“Trump looks like a dead end”

”Taylor Swift’s decision to jump into politics over the weekend, announcing her support in an Instagram post for two Democrats in Tennessee and urging her 112 million followers to register to vote, appears to have contributed to a flurry of last-minute registrations before deadlines in many states.

In the hours after Ms. Swift shared her political views on Sunday, the voter registration site Vote.org recorded a flood of requests, both nationwide and in the pop superstar’s adopted home state of Tennessee.

More than 166,000 people across the United States submitted new registrations on Vote.org between Sunday and noon on Tuesday, with about 42 percent of the registrants falling between the ages of 18 to 24, officials at the site said.

In October 2016, 405,000 people registered on Vote.org, the largest age group being people in their 30s, said Raven Brooks, the website’s chief operating officer. That month, about 22 percent of the registrants were between the ages of 18 to 24, a far lower percentage than the 42 percent that registered in recent days.

“The bottom line is that she did significantly impact registrations, and in interesting ways,” Mr. Brooks said in an interview. “They are completely inverted from what we saw in 2016.”

“We have never seen a 24- or 36- or 48-hour period like this,” the spokeswoman, Kamari Guthrie, said in an interview, adding that the current spike even surpassed the one that occurred when former President Barack Obama mentioned the website.

Cian @ 98: “The Democratic party as currently constituted has no future, the Republican party as currently constituted has no future.”

Taken in a certain sense, this is of course true: both parties are ‘currently constituted’ of human beings presumably already of voting age (18) and thus even the youngest are likely to die off entirely within the next 80-90 years. The older and more influential members (notably elected officials like Congressional leaders) who are currently guiding and shaping the party will die off even sooner, so as ‘currently constituted’ the term is short indeed.

Of course new members will replace the old; the question is how closely or distantly the new members will resemble the old in motivation, goals, ideals, how they in turn will guide and shape their parties.

Looking at the Republicans, I am not optimistic. The young GOPlins seem as heartless and cruel as their elders.

Looking at the Democrats, well, you’ve seen the demonstrations, the new candidates (especially women!) signing up to run even where no Democrats have dared run before, and if you have not yet read the pro-Democratic discussion site Daily Kos, well then I recommend it. That looks very much like an active next generation or two.

Cian #98: “The Democratic party as currently constituted has no future”

The Democratic Party as currently constituted is not much of anything, so the future remains to be seen. Presently it looks set to get an infusion of younger people with a large number of females — all of whom are talking as if they are ready to expand New Deal-type programs. And some of the existing Democratic leadership will be very happy to act upon that, if they can. For example, they are all talking about universal healthcare, including in the leadership.

I wrote here in the week after the 2016 election that the Democrats would likely and luckily get a total makeover due to the rejection of Hillary Clinton, while Trump would split the Republicans and destroy the brand. It still looks to me like this is what is going on. I think they’ve been doomed to die ever since Reagan sent them onto a self-contradictory crash course with reality.

“Neoliberalism” (if I ran the world, I would decree that this word ought to be explicitly defined any time anyone drags it back into a discussion as some kind of big reason things are happening) is NOT dead however. This is largely because there is no seriously thought-out economic theory to oppose or to augment market economics (although it really shouldn’t be too hard to cook one up) and this always makes it easy for the money trust to argue for its own favored policies against the people who want to change things for the better. Neoliberalism will die only after its intellectual framework is seriously challenged in a way the common voter can simply and easily understand.

”They burning witches if you aren’t one –
so lock me up – loght me up
go ahead light me up –

They say I did something bad
Then why’s it feel so good?
They say I did something bad
But why’s it feel so good?
Most fun I ever had

I never trust a narcissist
But they love me
So I play ’em like a violin
And I make it look oh so easy
‘Cause for every lie I tell them
They tell me three
This is how the world works
Now all he thinks about is me
I can feel the flames on my skin
Crimson red paint on my lips
If a man talks shit, then I owe him nothing
I don’t regret it one bit, ’cause he had it coming”

A famous American Philosopher opening the AMA’s

Raven #64: ” It appears not to have required waiting”

Some states are going to challenging Roe before SCOTUS as a states rights issue, and I think also some states have already passed “trigger” laws so that if Roe is overturned, abortion is immediately criminalized in those states.

Lee A. Arnold

It’s true that sometimes a sound analysis will produce a prediction which is not confirmed in the event, perhaps because of some confounding factor that could not have been foreseen, and sometimes a faulty analysis will produce a prediction which does appear to be confirmed in the event, just by fluke. I know all that. What I still don’t know is whether, when you wrote that ‘Trump is a dead end’, it was supposed to be any kind of prediction at all. Again, when you write that the Republicans will ‘need’ the votes of people Trump has alienated to win elections in the future, I don’t know whether that’s supposed to be any kind of prediction at all.

If somebody tells me that Trump has alienated a lot of voters, I understand what that mean; if somebody tells me that as a result it will be harder for the Republicans to win elections, I understand what that means. But I’m still not clear on whether that is what you mean, or whether you mean more than that, or less than that, or something different entirely.

J-D #109: “I don’t know whether that’s supposed to be any kind of prediction at all.”

I am afraid that I still don’t understand how you would take the meaning of this sentence, “Trump looks like a dead end,” as anything other than a simile, apropos to the argot, of a median GOP strategist’s likely outlook on Trump’ unattractiveness to a growing bloc of voters — who are then listed in the sentence which immediately follows it. What are the linguistic or grammatical triggers in the original comment (#56) that make you think otherwise?

Lee A. Arnold

I agree with you about ‘Trump’s unattractiveness to a growing bloc of voters’.

Trump is unattractive to a growing bloc of voters.

That’s true, but what makes it worth announcing?