Alright.

I still have some real questions about some of Justice Kavanaugh’s other testimony.

And, beyond that…

*deep breath*

Yes, I think that the preponderance of evidence standard was not met, and that it would have been unjust and imprudent to block Kavanaugh’s confirmation without meeting that standard. We cannot terminate nominations on the basis of 30-year-old he-said/she-saids.

But I will be forever ambivalent, because, when I get right down to it, and I look this he-said/she-said square in the face… I don’t believe Kavanaugh’s story. I believe Dr. Ford. If you held a gun to my head and forced me to pick the true account based on the limited evidence we have, I’d pick Ford’s story every time and twice on Sundays.

Again, there’s not enough evidence to act on it. I get that. I’m not calling for Kavanaugh’s impeachment. But I’m always going to have a slightly queasy feeling about him — a feeling I don’t have about Gorsuch or Roberts or even Thomas (whom I DID believe).

Oh? You appeared to exonerate Kavanaugh by your own standard. What remains to be ambivalent?

Other than the five-paragraph update at the end? I don’t think so. I have a great deal of ambivalence about how it turned out, as I suppose I would have no matter what happened.

Yes, I found this very compelling and most encouraging. I take sworn statements seriously, whatever side they’re for!

I also came across a friend who is not very politically engaged but told me he DID play a drinking game called Devil’s Triangle (similar but not identical to this one) in the early 2010s. And someone sent me a link to a book from 2004 that named “boof” as a synonym for “fart.”

So, yeah, I’m very pleased with how that turned out, and at some point need to re-evaluate whether the stand I took here was the correct one.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/brett-kavanaugh-boofing-devils-triangle_us_5bb6998ce4b028e1fe3c224c

Admittedly, this could a more-specific, more-dangerous-to-the-doer version of people-editing-the-Devil’s-Triangle-wikipedia-page to make his testimony look good. But it also seems very reasonable that local early-80’s slang is not reproduced on the internet with high fidelity, and that these are among the few people who would actually know.

If we take his classmates seriously, I don’t think there is any case that he perjured himself. Of course, the case that he is way worse than ACB remains, so I’m still on board with swapping them!

I appreciate the thoughts!

It’s certainly possible Kavanaugh will be stopped anyway by something in the investigation (I’d actually give higher odds of that than you do), but I think you overestimate the chances that the Democrats will be able to hold the seat open until January. The GOP has the Senate through the end of the lame duck. That’s loads of time. And I don’t see even Sen. Collins getting cold feet about a nominee in that scenario. So I put the odds of Dems winning the nomination battle outright, without a compromise, at… maybe 1%.

And I think the odds of a supermajority impeachment are extremely close to zero over the next ten years. In the House? Sure, could happen. In the Senate? The last time a partisan supermajority occurred there was in 1964, and I think it is simply impossible on today’s map. (That lost supermajority depended on small-state Dixecrats.)

You’re still right that compromising here would forfeit Democrats their 1% chance at swinging the Court. If they want to stop Kavanaugh because they think he’s illegitimate, that seems worth it to me. But their mileage may vary.

So the Dems give up Feinstein, which is a loss for them, but trading BK for ACB is also a loss, since you give up a ~6% chance of swinging the court without court-packing or Thomas dying.

So this seems like less of a “compromise” and more of a “unilateral disarmament”. Unless you think that Dem voters will be more pleased by killing BK than they would be by letting another shortlister get on the court. This seems plausible, but I’m not at all certain that it’s the case.