What Happened In The Brett Kavanaugh Hearing

He’s speaking in a lot of absolutes — We didn’t run in the same circles, I didn’t know her, etc —that seems like a pretty dangerous strategy.

In preparation for today’s hearing, Kavanaugh submitted some evidence to support his claim that he wasn’t at the party where Ford says she was assaulted: his calendar from the summer of 1982. The problem is that while the calendar certainly does a good job of filling us in on the general scope of 17-year-old Kavanaugh’s summer — he went to parties, played sports, and traveled to the beach (the calendar even notes when he was grounded) — it doesn’t offer definitive proof that he wasn’t at the party in question, since Ford says she doesn’t remember the exactly when or where it was held.

Kavanaugh’s defense appears to be that because there was no party on the calendar that matched Blasey’s description, he must not have gone. But it seems entirely possible that the calendar is not an exhaustive chronicle of everything Kavanaugh did all summer — in other words, it’s a very tough sell to say that because a party didn’t appear on a 17-year-old boy’s calendar, he wasn’t there. And there are a few pieces of information in the calendar that could actually help Ford. Someone named “Judge” makes an appearance — perhaps a reference to Mark Judge, who Ford claims witnessed the assault — as well as a person named “P.J.,” another student who Ford said was at the gathering where she was assaulted.

One risk they’re running here is that with this rather openly angry and indignant and frankly fairly partisan approach, Collins, Flake and Manchin, etc. can cite “temperament” as a reason to oppose Kavanaugh — even though they’re really opposing him for other reasons.