I just read that Lindsey Graham suggested that Trump renominate Kavanaugh next year should his nomination fail this year. I assume that means that even Graham thinks there is a decent chance at this point that Kavanaugh won’t make it this time around. The idea he was putting forward was a “take it to the voters” campaign. He specifically mentioned Missouri, North Dakota, and Indiana, presumably putting pressure on Heitkamp, McCaskill, and Donnelly.
I don’t see how this helps his side. The only way it makes any sense for those three to vote yes is if Kav already has all 51 Republicans. If any of those three are the deciding vote in favor of Kav, they will lose their base in far greater numbers than they might gain any moderate voters. If he’s hoping to gain their votes after they are re-elected, that also makes little sense, since by then those three won’t have to worry about reelection until 2024.
So Trump has changed his tune. Mere days after saying nice things about Ford and her testimony, he’s now at rallies mocking her and saying these are “scary times” for our young men falsely accused. Poor, innocent, entitled-toxic-masculinity-sexual-abusers. Cue the world’s smallest violin.
This only suffers from the fallacy of relevancy. It is scary times for the falsely accused. But the vast majority of the famous accusations in the past few years have been pretty well corroborated so inserting it into a Kavanaugh discussion is irrelevant.
But pushing the needle toward belief will inevitably increase the number of falsely convicted (either in formal court or in the court of public opinion). Some think that it is worth it since there are more than an order of magnitude more correctly prosecuted than falsely. But that doesn’t mean that the falsely accused should shrug and say “sure, that’s only fair, this is better for society as a whole isn’t it?”
We had an opportunity to have a national dialog on sexual abuse; instead, we get an opportunity to politicize it and somehow make it a story about false accusations. That’s some real leadership, Donnie.
I’d love to see the numbers: number of reported cases of sexual abuse (and conviction rate); numbers of unreported cases of sexual abuse; and numbers of false accusations. Somehow, I expect that the 3rd number would be an insignificant sliver on that pie chart. But that’s the one that Donnie wants to talk about.
There is, fortunately, a system in place for weeding out false and poorly corroborated accusations before one is sent to prison. It doesn’t always work, but it usually does.
I never hear anyone saying “I am worried that I’ll be falsely accused of armed robbery.” Or murder, or pretty much any crime EXCEPT rape and sexual assault. Funny, that.
Why do you think that is? There is a whole slew of crimes that get immediate police attention based on the verbal claim of one individual. Somehow that individual is believed without question. But once it enters into the realm of sexual assault? Well, now that THAT is just “he said - she said”. Why is that?
Eyewitness testimony often inaccurate and this reality has to be dealt with in all cases without physical evidence.
The fact that it is called out primarily an issue in the case of sexual assault and rape demonstrates the bias. The rate of discovered false accusations does not differ greatly between these types of violent crimes.
Not being a District Attorney I’m just pulling this out of thin air, but: I’d guess that most sexual assaults occur without witnesses and without forensic evidence; get into the fuzzy area involving the definition of “consent”; and bump up against societal and psychological pressures against the victim reporting in a timely manner.
I suspect Collins and Murkowski and Flake have been offered something really juicy for their votes (am I missing one?). No way they will vote “no”. 99.9% chance Kavanaugh is affirmed.
Yes, he will. And then we will have yet another hallowed American institution that half of the populace will have no faith in, his charming Cujo impersonation of last week nothwithstanding.
I haven’t posted to this thread before, because most of the time, my reaction to the question in the thread title has been “hell if I know.” Even those brief moments where it’s seemed obvious to me how it was going to shake out…it didn’t.
Lot of confusion going on on the Senate side of the Capitol right now, a lot more than if Mitch had this nailed down yet. He might have it nailed down by morning, but…hell if I know.
I have a feeling McConnell and the president are willing to offer a lot of future favors/promises to see this done and affirming Kavanaugh. I think the current senate jockeying is the senators seeing how much they can get before voting “yes”.
McConnell does not want a repeat of a McCain-like no vote happening again.
I am mentally prepared for Kavanaugh to be confirmed, but as we get closer to the vote, I think it’s more and more possible that he won’t be. Lawyers and Christian churches are coming out against Kavanaugh. I have to feel that the church part, at least, resonates with a lot of Trump’s base and his handlers have to understand that.
The Republicans actually benefited from the FBI’s “investigation,” particularly since they were able to control the direction in which it went. Thus, they can now say “Hey, we had an investigation - case closed.”
We’re going to have a complete sham court, in addition to a sham senate and sham presidency.