Greg Sargent/WaPo:
This is Trump’s most insulting — and revealing — lie about Brett Kavanaugh yet
Of all the absurdities we’ve been asked to swallow throughout the Brett M. Kavanaugh saga, perhaps none is more insulting than this one: the sight of President Trump rooting his defense of Kavanaugh in the idea that Kavanaugh has been treated with profound unfairness and is the true victim in this situation.
Proceed, senators:
Oh, and you know whose accusers go back, oh I don’t know, 35 years?
Hey, hey, hey. Brett Kavanaugh isn’t Bill Cosby, but why didn’t they come forward? We know why.
Mary Shannon Little/USA today:
Christine Blasey Ford's silence on Brett Kavanaugh is normal, not a reason to doubt her
The Rape Abuse and Incest National Network reports that 1 in 4 of female students ages 18-24 experience rape or sexual assault, but that only 20 percent of them report it.
According to the Justice Department, girls ages 14 to 17 experience the highest rate of sexual assault among all groups: close to 11 percent. For all children under 18, only about 13 percent of sexual assaults are reported to police.
Ford’s silence is the norm, not the exception, and has nothing to do with her veracity.
I was sexually assaulted twice while attending a small Catholic college in the late 1970s. Except for close friends from whom I sought comfort afterward, I told no one for decades. I broke this silence when my now adult daughters were teenagers. They, like Ford, were attending an all-girls school and socializing with boys, like Kavanaugh, who attended all-boys schools. Our discussion was precipitated by one of them returning from a Friday night mixer stumbling drunk.
So many stories like this.
Melinda Henneberger/USA Today:
Don't judge Brett Kavanaugh accusers. I covered the police and didn't report my own rape.
Why didn’t I report my rape to the Dallas police 34 years ago — when my job was covering the Dallas police for a local newspaper? Because I knew he was right when he asked, strictly rhetorically, whether they would believe new-in-town me, whose reporting they didn’t always appreciate, or well-off and well-connected him, who hahaha obviously didn’t have to rape anyone.
And who was it who had shown up at whose door again? I had gone to his house, it’s true. After he called to express an only-in-retrospect suspicious level of mortification that he couldn’t pick me up for our dinner date because his car had broken down, so would I mind coming by for him instead? I didn’t make it past the foyer, and the floor was marble I think, though if that’s wrong I must be lying, because according to what I read on Facebook, real rape victims remember every detail.
NY Times:
Mormon Women’s Group Calls for Probe of Allegations Against Kavanaugh
As turmoil grows over sexual misconduct allegations against Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, casting doubts over his confirmation to the Supreme Court, a group of Mormon women is calling on senators to suspend his confirmation proceedings until a thorough investigation is completed.
The Mormon Women for Ethical Government, an activist women’s group formed in response to President Trump’s election, issued a statement on Monday aimed at influencing the four Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee who are also members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They are: Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee of Utah, Jeff Flake of Arizona, and Mike Crapo of Idaho.
NY Times:
What Teenagers Think About the Allegations Against Brett Kavanaugh
Leyla Fern King, a high school sophomore in St. Louis, Mo., was asked by her mother this week what she thinks about Brett M. Kavanaugh: If he was guilty at 17 of sexually assaulting a girl at a party decades ago, should he still be held accountable?
“He should,” said Ms. King, who is 15, “because you’re definitely supposed to know right from wrong by my age.”
Ron Brownstein/CNN:
There's a suburban tsunami driving 2018
Converging crises are compounding the risk that Republicans could suffer historic 2018losses in suburban communities that could harden a starkly polarized alignment in American politics.
Precisely as sexual abuse allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh threaten to deepen the GOP's already cavernous deficit with well-educated white women, the chaos that erupted with Monday's uncertainty about the fate of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appears likely to compound the concerns of independent voters who want Congress to provide more of a check on President Donald Trump.
Even before these developments, Republicans faced a perilous environment in white-collar suburbs rooted in discontent among college-educated white voters, especially women, over Trump's tempestuous style, belligerent language and portions of his agenda. Both the Kavanaugh controversy and the Rosenstein speculation could reinforce two of the central sources of that suburban anxiety: concerns that Trump does not respect either women or the rule of law.
Eric Cantor’s old district.
Dan Drezner/WaPo:
What everyone misses about American elites
The first one is banal but still important: American elites do not admit that they are elites. Let me use myself as an example here. I have degrees from Williams and Stanford. I’m a full professor at one of the top international affairs schools in the country. I’ve published six books and have a regular writing gig for this august newspaper. I live a comfortable life — not quite the “Crazy Rich Asians” definition of comfortable, but pretty comfortable. By most standards, I should stand up and declare myself to be a member of the American elite. But no one does this, because to declare oneself a member of the elite is to say, quite plainly, that one occupies a higher social station than others in America. And in a country that still clutches fiercely to an egalitarian ideal of society, this is neither an easy nor a comfortable declaration to make.
This is one reason it has been so trendy for folks to bash American elites. Part of it is that these elites have made massive mistakes — see Chris Hayes’s excellent “Twilight of the Elites” for more on that point. Part of it, however, is that it is easy for some elites to bash other elites by defining the term in a way that excludes oneself.
Good one, wannabe Todd Aiken.
Maybe he’s right.
Politico:
Kavanaugh’s friends promoted him. Now they have to rescue him.
White House aides and allies who encouraged President Donald Trump to choose him for the highest court have a lot to lose.
Brett Kavanaugh isn’t the only prominent conservative whose reputation is threatened by allegations of sexual misconduct lodged against the Supreme Court nominee.
White House aides and allies who vouched for Kavanaugh’s squeaky-clean public image and encouraged President Donald Trump to choose him for the highest court have a lot to lose, too — including the president’s trust, which has allowed them to wield enormous influence over his nominations to the federal bench.
They include Federalist Society executive director Leonard Leo, Ethics and Public Policy Center President Ed Whelan and White House counsel Don McGahn, all of whom were longtime personal friends of the judge before Trump tapped him to replace outgoing Justice Anthony Kennedy in July. All three personally attested not only to Kavanaugh’s legal chops but to his character as well.