What Happened In The Brett Kavanaugh Hearing
That’s A Wrap
Today’s roughly nine-hour hearing on the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court is over, and I’m not sure we’ve seen anything quite like it in modern U.S. history. We’ll have more coverage of this story in the days ahead. For the moment at least, Republicans appear to be planning to bring Kavanaugh’s nomination up for a vote — first in the Judiciary Committee, then for the full Senate — in the very near future.
In the meantime, if you want to see how everything unfolded, just start at the bottom of this live blog and scroll up. I also asked our team to give their main thoughts on everything that transpired:
Nate: Well, Kavanaugh and the GOP really went with a three-pronged strategy on Thursday:
1. Show a lot of emotion and indignation;
2. Just openly lie — let’s call it what it is — in response to questions about your drinking habits;
3. Complain a lot about the process.
I’m not sure how No. 1 will play with swing voters — especially women swing voters — but the Republican base will like it, and Trump apparently liked it too.
No. 2 is potentially damaging if you’re actually interested in the truth of allegations or about Kavanaugh’s overall credibility, but maybe Republicans senators aren’t.
And No. 3 won’t be persuasive to swing voters at all, but I trust that the Republicans’ indignation about the process is at least partly sincere, so it might give wavering senators an excuse to vote for Kavanaugh — Ben Sasse certainly seemed willing to take that as an excuse, for instance.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/live-blog/brett-kavanaugh-hearing/
