On the July day Donald Trump announced Brett Kavanaugh as his pick to fill Justice Anthony Kennedy's seat on the Supreme Court, the budding nominee stood in the White House with his wife at his side reminiscing about his mom, a teacher-turned-judge, and the emerging personalities of his two daughters—one was a reader, the other liked to talk, he joked. He even took time to reach out and low-five his youngest in the midst of that acceptance speech.
Over the weekend, that entire narrative of a squeaky clean family guy and supposed champion of women unraveled. The man who had showcased his youngest daughter's basketball team at his nominating hearing and bragged about hiring female law clerks has now lawyered up and suited up to go war against a California woman who has accused him of sexually assaulting her in high school.
This is a huge problem for Republicans any way you look at it. Kavanaugh just went from being a high-minded family man accessible to many Americans to a lawyered-up political operator who's part of a world most voters can't relate to. GOP Leader Mitch McConnell had wanted to jam Kavanaugh’s nomination through ahead of the midterms to give his party a final boost with base voters heading into the midterms. But now Republicans are caught between a rock and hard spot. They will likely be forced to choose between pushing through a wounded nominee during a #MeToo moment in which they are already bleeding women or abandoning their pre-midterm bid to fill Kennedy's seat with a right-wing ideologue and just maybe losing that chance indefinitely.
Either way, the optics couldn't be worse for Republicans. Nominating someone who had that happy-family feel about him was reportedly important to Trump and Kavanaugh initially seemed to fit the bill. That's certainly how he and his handlers sculpted his image. Now he's preparing to wage a national campaign to annihilate his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, who appears to be very credible—a psychology professor of similar pedigree, educational achievement, and professional accomplishment even if in a different field. Ford’s provably talked about the assault in therapy and with her husband, passed a polygraph test about her account, and got unwillingly dragged into the public arena before choosing to go on record with her story.
Ford could not possibly be more sympathetic to millions of women out there precisely because she is telling a story of trauma that far too many women have lived. So many of those women—and so many of their close friends—have endured the pain of sexual assault and know what it's like to carry that burden forward as their abuser proceeds with their lives untouched by the harm they have caused. And this is where the men of the GOP are almost doomed to get this politically fraught situation wrong because they just don't have enough women in their ranks to navigate the pitfalls.
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Even though it looks as though both Ford and Kavanaugh will likely both have a chance to testify before Congress about the episode, Republicans will almost surely double down on pushing Kavanaugh through rather than letting voters have a say about which party they want to be in charge of filling the swing seat on the Supreme Court.
Doubling down on support for a man credibly accused of committing sexual assault will just further inflame all the college-educated female voters who have fled the GOP and also happen be one of the most reliable voting blocs in terms of turn out for midterm elections.
With any luck, Republicans will manage to eat up the next couple weeks driving hard for a nominee who ultimately sinks under the weight of his own legitimate baggage. In the process, they could simultaneously lose any chance at pushing through a new nominee before November and remind every college-educated woman why they are not to be trusted with the reins of government.