Kavanaugh in Extremis

This is just my gut talking, but I have a feeling Team R would be nuts to push this.

I’ve learned, over more than 30 years, not to put my trust in either princes or the power of Utero-Americans. At least a few hundred times (most recently in late October of 2016), I have heard the words “The women of America will not permit–”

It has almost always been the preface to a righteous stomping.

The head of NOW putting something at the top of their agenda was the political equivalent of the SPORTS ILLUSTRATED jinx. (I remember telling Eleanor Smeal “You might want to check that Teddy Roosevelt quote– you seem to have it reversed. ” Pros underpromise and overdeliver– not the other way around.)

The vibes this year are different. Normally when I link to Rebecca Traister, it’s for comic relief. She’s overstating here (the article is an adapted version of a book she’s hawking), but not by all that much.

This year, the percentage of women nominees to Congress was nearly 50% higher than any previous cycle. If you don’t count incumbents (almost all of whom won), the percentage nearly doubled.

We’ve had the election of a guy who brags that he confiscates cats. We’ve had the #MeToo movement. We’ve had the school shootings. We’re had neo-nazis gone wild.

The odds that this confirmation hearing will go down as quietly as the Long Dong Silver hearings are nil. Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Klinton and Altria Gillibrand are running for president in 2020. They’re going to seize this opportunity.

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And sending out Orrin Hatch and Chuck Grassley– two of the senile old windbags who called Anita Hill a scorned woman with hate in her heart– is so tone deaf that it beggars description.

But then there aren’t a lot of options. Team R. doesn’t have one women Senator on the Judiciary Committee. In fact, it’s sort of an All-Star team of the worst possible people you could have:

* John McCain’s grieving widow, Lindsay Graham

* A preening dirigible named John Cornyn, who pontificates when the senate elevator operator asks him to pick a floor,

* Lee Harvey Oswald, Jr– whose Q rating is lower than Colon Cleansing and is currently running for his life against Beto O’Rourke and needs every vote he can get.

* Landlocked Susan Collins, who spends every other day saying he isn’t sure if he’s still a Republican (Ben Sasse of Nebraska).

* The aptly-named Jeff Flake.

* Derek Guth’s gift to us all (John Kennedy), who looks like a cross-dressing Dianne Feinstein and got pantsed by Jimmy Kimmel for lying about Obamacare.

I respect McConnell a lot– he’s far better at his job than Chuck U. Farley. But the guy really should have put Joni Ernst, Deb Fischer or Shelley Moore Caputo on the committee.

I get why he didn’t put Susan Collins or Lisa Murkowski on– he doesn’t trust them. But he’s gonna need someone in a skirt.

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It also didn’t help to have Cuck Gassy roll out a list of 65 crisis actresses who say they attended an all-boy’s boarding school and never saw “Bart O’Kavanaugh” rape them. That went over about as well as all the women from SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE who told us what a great guy Al Franken was.

It didn’t help that he rolled out the list about 15 minutes after the letter became widely known, either– making it seem like they knew it was going to be necessary.

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Team R. can easily ram this through… but if they do that, they’re punting the Senate races in Arizona, Missouri, North Dakota, Nevada, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia and Wisconsin (all of which they assumed they could win).

Kyrsten Sinema, Jacky Rosen, Phil Bredesen and O’Rourke would be pickups– and Claire McCaskill, Heidi Heitkamp, Joe Manchin and Tammy Baldwin could relax.

(I’m not sure Jon Tester of Montana and Joe Donnelly of Indiana can hang on, but angry women flocking to Team D will make it more likely.)

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The pussy-grabber’s inclination will be to deny it and attack, but that would be quite foolish.

There are (I’m told) 25 other people they could have picked who have the same opinions as this joker, but aren’t carrying the baggage. So pull this guy back and choose someone else. Announce you’re shocked to find gambling in the casino and nominate Amy Barrett, Allison Eid, Joan Larson, Margaret Ryan or Diane Sykes.

Or fight and die.