No one can win this mess

When a Supreme Court seat is up for grabs, no one expects reason and cooler heads to win the day.

But in this particular case heads have become decidedly over-heated, with emotion and activism driving the process.

The 11th-hour revelation of an attempted sexual assault allegation against Brett Kavanaugh from 35 years ago — exposed a week after hearings had completed — has cast a pall on the process, one that puts both Democrats and Republicans into no-win situations.

This is now the judicial equivalent of a trade war — regardless of whether or not he is confirmed, everyone loses.

Here’s an unemotional look at why.

Public distrust and disgust. This process has exposed just how useless the confirmation hearing process is. Democrats complained profusely about the lack of sufficient documents provided the committee, but what the public saw was a nominee who carefully did not answer most questions and a cadre of 2020 hopefuls in the Senate using the camera time to seize their supposed Spartacus moments.

We learned little about Kavanaugh the judge, and that hardly serves the public interest. Whether the perception is of Republican withholding or Democratic grandstanding (and, reverse that when the shoe’s been on the other foot), neither side looks particularly honest.

Neither side cares about #Metoo.

Democrats seem more than willing to use the #Metoo climate to pressure Republicans into caving on Kavanaugh, hoping the mere specter of an allegation scares them off. That’s flawed for a few reasons.

For one, Republicans have demonstrated a lamentable lack of concern for either the optics or moral implications of sexual assault or harassment allegations against one of their own. Whether Roy Moore, Donald Trump or countless others, the party has shown little backbone beyond denouncing bad behavior that should otherwise be disqualifying. Growing a backbone now, when Kavanaugh’s been accused by one person, whose only witness to the incident by her own account denies it happened, would be, yes, out of character, but also supremely dumb.

But Democrats too have let #Metoo down. If the priority had been justice for Christine Ford, Sen. Dianne Feinstein wouldn’t have waited months to