Accuser should skip rigged hearing.
Aboycott at the high tier of government is in order. Democratic senators should walk out of Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing. No nominee to be an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court should be allowed to glide through a sham of a proceeding without a protest.
Christine Blasey Ford also should stay away. She is the woman who says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her in the early 1980s, when both were in high school.
I don’t pretend to know if she’s telling the truth. Maybe she can provide circumstantial evidence to buttress her account.
What Blasey Ford can’t do is change closed minds. The Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee are a rubber stamp for President Donald Trump. They are ready to steamroll Kavanaugh’s nomination and hand him a lifetime appointment to the court.
So Blasey Ford should sit out the hearing and its predetermined outcome.
She would feel enormous pressure and pain if she told her story on national television. A private hearing with the senators would only embolden her critics. “What’s she hiding?” they would ask, though in terms less kind.
Already the 85-year-old committee chairman, Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa has said there’s no need for the FBI to look into Blasey Ford’s charges. Grassley wants this hearing wrapped up so Kavanaugh can be confirmed and sworn in.
Any investigation by the Senate itself would be feeble. Partisans fill the Senate and their staffs all have a rooting interest in Kavanaugh’s nomination.
This is shaping up a lot like 1991, except Republicans have no need to attack Blasey Ford the way they did Anita Hill.
Hill testified in graphic detail against Clarence Thomas during his confirmation hearing for the Supreme Court. She said he had sexually harassed her.
Thomas countered that he was the target of a “high-tech lynching.” His sound bite was carefully planned and delivered early in the process in hopes of setting a tone that he was a victim.
It was an odd claim. Both Thomas and Hill are black. Lynchings were not crimes that black people perpetrated against other black people.
Still, I couldn’t tell then and I don’t know now which of them was lying.
Thomas got the upper hand in the hearing by saying he was the target of prejudice because of his conservative views.
This caused Democrats who were already on their heels to back away from a fight with Thomas. They would have rather returned all their PAC money than discuss sexual harassment during a televised hearing.
The late Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts was especially vulnerable to criti-
cisms of hypocrisy regarding his treatment of women. Nothing Thomas was accused of doing compared to the Chappaquiddick incident, in which a young woman died when Kennedy’s car veered off a bridge and into the water. Kennedy, who claimed he had escaped from the submerged car, inexplicably waited nine hours to report the crash.
Only two women were in the Senate when it confirmed Thomas on a 52-48 vote. Eleven Democrats and 41 of 43 Republicans voted for him.
This time the Republicans have the majority. They don’t need to be tough with Blasey Ford the way they were with Hill.
They can let Blasey Ford speak, ask her gentle questions and then vote for Kavanaugh.
Without any real investigation, the Republicans know they will end up with two different accounts of Kavanaugh’s conduct and character. A stalemate is all they need to get him on the Supreme Court.
Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing is government at its worst — a superficial examination of a nominee who’s accused of a serious crime during his youth.
The outcome is not in doubt, and Grassley hasn’t even banged his gavel to resume the proceeding.
Blasey Ford has nothing to gain and much to lose by participating in this charade.
Ringside Seat is an opinion column about people, politics and news. Contact Milan Simonich at msimonich@sfnewmexican.com or 505-986-3080.