My Cut on Kavanaugh

the only remotely interesting thing that has happened the last three weeks is the right doubling down on strategy with kavanaugh in a situation where normal political strategy often does not work. i'm not being critical, so don't twist and overreact. some of you can be a little bleedy when it comes to any questioning of any kind of right wing politics.

people are all like 'Kavanaugh lost his shit...." I'm all like, "no he didn't." that guy is a political operative and has been groomed from an early age in elite right wing DC circles. he is no stranger to this and is not the typical academic federal judge who shows up to these circuses and is shocked that he or she has to answer for shit they wrote in law review articles 20 years earlier. Kavanaugh knew exactly what he was getting into and knew exactly what he going to do. it was barely authentic.

the normal idea of SCOTUS candidates is to go in and appear calm and impartial and just never commit to anything and never let the doofus politicians talk you into a corner, which is usually not tuff because the brain power always favors the candidate. you basically hope and pray that you can weather the storm of whatever stupid fucking thing you wrote or did, and you get your confirmation and nobody ever thinks about you again. Bork was very qualified but had written some weird big brother shit earlier in his career, and it spooked everybody. but the hubris in these hearings is appearing to be bought and paid for by one of the parties. You want to come off like Gorsuch ideally.

Here, Kavy (I like to call him Kavy) threw out the script. No doubt he met with his stategery team and discussed how to approach this. A Bannon clone was there, no doubt, and said, "no stupid. not that. look at the POTUS. look at what he says and does. look at how he sways opinion. outrage, mockery, Clintons, conspiracy, decent man's besmirched reputation, outrage, the left, the left, etc."

And guess what? It's probably gonna work, though I wonder if he counted on some of his Yale people, who initially endorsed him, abandoning him not on the allegation but on the partisanship. in some ways, he forced their hands. the Clinton comment may have been the one that went too far with that crowd, though it clearly plays well to the base.

Nobody believes this guy is some rapey creep (not like me creep, the other kind). Not that it matters, but if you've never been around an ambitious prep school kid who thinks he's a jock and who thinks he has the world by the balls, you don't know that persona. They are like the most obnoxious iteration of the UW frat boy, only these guys are plugged in to power and they know it and they have Yuge life expectations. This is a world apart from the one we live in. Both sides of the isle. Don't twist. Whether it's Sidwell Friends, St. Albans or Georgetown Prep, kids from elite power families live life differently than we do, and they see it differently than we do.

To be clear, I don't care if he did everything she said he did, though the covering of the mouth would be a bit weird if that occurred. But there is no doubt in my mind that Kavy probably did something along the lines of what she's saying. I have my doubts about how traumatic it's been for her since then, but I know this is politics. Half my friends in HS did shit that they probably still regret; doesn't make them bad people today. Adolescence is ruff. Sorry. Get a helmet.

That all said, I don't think most people here would have liked Kavy in prep school or college. Every bit of evidence points toward a moderately obnoxious and aggressive frat boy who has had connections his entire life and has used them to the fullest extent. Nothing wrong with that; it is what it is. But I'm guessing most of us would not have liked him and would have thought of him as a dick. If he'd have been in Karate Kid, he'd have definitely been a Cobra Kai second lieutenant to Johnny. Not a bad guy; not a good guy. Just an asshole.

He's no Neil Gorsuch, who is a fucking stud in the legal world. I'll tell you that. But him being on the SCOTUS doesn't really concern me. I think he'll be just another body up there like Thomas, who has spent most of his career drafting behind Scalia, who was the classic larger-than-life justice. Maybe not. Either way, ....