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No, I did NOT watch Blasey-Ford and Kavanaugh today
but only read summaries after the fact, mostly in the Failing New York Times (whose circulation seems to grow every time Trump does another outrageous thing).
Republican Senators, and Judge Kavanaugh, are right to worry about a system in which a party that objects to a nominee on partisan grounds can scuttle his/her nomination by making up an uncorroborated accusation of wrongdoing from decades before. That would be a Bad Thing for Democracy, I think we can all agree. But the fact that that hypothetical situation would be bad doesn't tell us whether or not we're actually in that situation now.
Republican Senators and Judge Kavanaugh have made much of the Democrats' "timing" -- bringing up this accusation "at the last minute", after the main hearings were over, just in order to delay things, and other accusers with hard-to-prove-or-disprove stories coming out of the woodwork even later. But really, if the accusations had come up two weeks earlier, would anything have been different? Republicans on the Committee would still not have called any other witnesses, and they still wouldn't have asked the FBI to investigate the charges, and they still would have tried to wrap things up as quickly as possible before other similar accusations could pop up. But even if Senator Feinstein did choose the timing to maximize disruption and delay, as they say she did, so what? What matters is whether the accusations are true or not. If they're true, then it shouldn't matter when the charges came out; Kavanaugh was a drunken, sexually aggressive jerk in high school who has repeatedly lied under oath about it this month, and both of those facts should be considered in deciding whether he belongs on the Supreme Court. If they're not true, then it shouldn't matter when the charges came out; they're irrelevant to his confirmation.
I do not "believe" Dr. Blasey-Ford. I do not "believe" Judge Kavanaugh. It's clear that at least one of them is either lying or seriously mistaken, but I have no basis for "believing" either of them, having no priors about the credibility of either. Obviously, he has more incentive to lie about this than she does -- if he's lying, it's in order to get a lifetime seat on the Supreme Court, whereas if she's lying, it's in order to keep someone she hasn't seen in 35 years from getting a lifetime seat on the Supreme Court. Let's look at the probabilities, given the fact that Dr. Blasey-Ford has come forward with these accusations.
Case 1, the null hypothesis: Dr. Blasey-Ford does not believe she was sexually assaulted by Brett Kavanaugh. Then there must be some other reason for her to go to such lengths, risking her own and her family's safety, to accuse him: either she really really hates him for some other reason, or she's a really passionate partisan who seeks even a slim chance at blocking a Trump nominee, at considerable cost to herself. I haven't heard any evidence of either of those things, nor have I heard any other plausible explanation proposed for her actions.
Case 2, the alternative hypothesis: Dr. Blasey-Ford honestly believes she was sexually assaulted by Brett Kavanaugh. Then one would expect her to be traumatized for months or years (as sexual-assault victims frequently are), and not to report it either to her parents or to law enforcement (as young sexual-assault victims frequently don't), and to try to put it behind her for many years until her attacker forces himself into her consciousness by being in the national news (as Anita Hill did) -- in short, to behave exactly as she has done.
Dr. Blasey-Ford's behavior is very unlikely given the null hypothesis, and quite plausible and likely given the alternative hypothesis, so we can pretty firmly reject the null hypothesis, and ask next whether she is correct that she was sexually assaulted by Brett Kavanaugh.
Case 2a, null hypothesis: she believes it but is mistaken (either she was sexually assaulted by somebody else she mistook for Kavanaugh, or the whole episode is a figment of her imagination). Republican Senators and conservative bloggers have suggested several other people it might have been, including (I gather) two different anonymous people who confess to having been the one who assaulted Dr. Blasey-Ford at that party, which sounds like a stretch to me. However, she certainly knew him at the time, and would have recognized him, and she describes herself as "100% certain" of her identification, so mistaken identity is moderately unlikely. In this case, one would expect Kavanaugh to (honestly) deny the accusations, as he has done.
Case 2b, alternative hypothesis: she actually was sexually assaulted by Brett Kavanaugh. What we know about memory formation in traumatic situations makes it quite plausible (though not certain) that she remembered clearly her attacker's identity and that of the other boy in the room while forgetting more peripheral issues like the date of the attack and whose house it was. In this case, Kavanaugh might acknowledge the charges and apologize for his adolescent behavior (it does happen sometimes), or flatly deny them (as many other high-profile men have done in recent years when accused of sexual harassment or assault and their careers were on the line). For that matter, if we're in case 2b but Kavanaugh honestly doesn't remember the episode (due to drinking or some other reason), he would again probably deny the charges.
Dr. Blasey-Ford's behavior is moderately unlikely in case 2a, and likely in case 2b; Judge Kavanaugh's behavior is almost certain in case 2a, and still quite likely in case 2b; it doesn't give us much information. We can't really reject either case, although 2a seems somewhat more implausible.
Republican Senators, and Judge Kavanaugh, are right to worry about a system in which a party that objects to a nominee on partisan grounds can scuttle his/her nomination by making up an uncorroborated accusation of wrongdoing from decades before. That would be a Bad Thing for Democracy, I think we can all agree. But the fact that that hypothetical situation would be bad doesn't tell us whether or not we're actually in that situation now.
Republican Senators and Judge Kavanaugh have made much of the Democrats' "timing" -- bringing up this accusation "at the last minute", after the main hearings were over, just in order to delay things, and other accusers with hard-to-prove-or-disprove stories coming out of the woodwork even later. But really, if the accusations had come up two weeks earlier, would anything have been different? Republicans on the Committee would still not have called any other witnesses, and they still wouldn't have asked the FBI to investigate the charges, and they still would have tried to wrap things up as quickly as possible before other similar accusations could pop up. But even if Senator Feinstein did choose the timing to maximize disruption and delay, as they say she did, so what? What matters is whether the accusations are true or not. If they're true, then it shouldn't matter when the charges came out; Kavanaugh was a drunken, sexually aggressive jerk in high school who has repeatedly lied under oath about it this month, and both of those facts should be considered in deciding whether he belongs on the Supreme Court. If they're not true, then it shouldn't matter when the charges came out; they're irrelevant to his confirmation.
I do not "believe" Dr. Blasey-Ford. I do not "believe" Judge Kavanaugh. It's clear that at least one of them is either lying or seriously mistaken, but I have no basis for "believing" either of them, having no priors about the credibility of either. Obviously, he has more incentive to lie about this than she does -- if he's lying, it's in order to get a lifetime seat on the Supreme Court, whereas if she's lying, it's in order to keep someone she hasn't seen in 35 years from getting a lifetime seat on the Supreme Court. Let's look at the probabilities, given the fact that Dr. Blasey-Ford has come forward with these accusations.
Case 1, the null hypothesis: Dr. Blasey-Ford does not believe she was sexually assaulted by Brett Kavanaugh. Then there must be some other reason for her to go to such lengths, risking her own and her family's safety, to accuse him: either she really really hates him for some other reason, or she's a really passionate partisan who seeks even a slim chance at blocking a Trump nominee, at considerable cost to herself. I haven't heard any evidence of either of those things, nor have I heard any other plausible explanation proposed for her actions.
Case 2, the alternative hypothesis: Dr. Blasey-Ford honestly believes she was sexually assaulted by Brett Kavanaugh. Then one would expect her to be traumatized for months or years (as sexual-assault victims frequently are), and not to report it either to her parents or to law enforcement (as young sexual-assault victims frequently don't), and to try to put it behind her for many years until her attacker forces himself into her consciousness by being in the national news (as Anita Hill did) -- in short, to behave exactly as she has done.
Dr. Blasey-Ford's behavior is very unlikely given the null hypothesis, and quite plausible and likely given the alternative hypothesis, so we can pretty firmly reject the null hypothesis, and ask next whether she is correct that she was sexually assaulted by Brett Kavanaugh.
Case 2a, null hypothesis: she believes it but is mistaken (either she was sexually assaulted by somebody else she mistook for Kavanaugh, or the whole episode is a figment of her imagination). Republican Senators and conservative bloggers have suggested several other people it might have been, including (I gather) two different anonymous people who confess to having been the one who assaulted Dr. Blasey-Ford at that party, which sounds like a stretch to me. However, she certainly knew him at the time, and would have recognized him, and she describes herself as "100% certain" of her identification, so mistaken identity is moderately unlikely. In this case, one would expect Kavanaugh to (honestly) deny the accusations, as he has done.
Case 2b, alternative hypothesis: she actually was sexually assaulted by Brett Kavanaugh. What we know about memory formation in traumatic situations makes it quite plausible (though not certain) that she remembered clearly her attacker's identity and that of the other boy in the room while forgetting more peripheral issues like the date of the attack and whose house it was. In this case, Kavanaugh might acknowledge the charges and apologize for his adolescent behavior (it does happen sometimes), or flatly deny them (as many other high-profile men have done in recent years when accused of sexual harassment or assault and their careers were on the line). For that matter, if we're in case 2b but Kavanaugh honestly doesn't remember the episode (due to drinking or some other reason), he would again probably deny the charges.
Dr. Blasey-Ford's behavior is moderately unlikely in case 2a, and likely in case 2b; Judge Kavanaugh's behavior is almost certain in case 2a, and still quite likely in case 2b; it doesn't give us much information. We can't really reject either case, although 2a seems somewhat more implausible.