I asked readers to estimate their probability that Judge Kavanaugh was guilty of sexually assaulting Dr. Ford. I got 2,350 responses (thank you, you are great). Here was the overall distribution of probabilities.
1. A classical statistician would have refused to answer this question. In classical statistics, he is either guilty or he is not. A probability statement is nonsense. For a Bayesian, it represents a “degree of belief” or something like that. Everyone who answered the poll (I did not even see it, so I did not answer) either is a Bayesian or consented to act like one.
2. A classical statistician could say something like, “If he is innocent, then the probability that all of the data would have come in as we observed it is low, therefore I believe he is guilty.”
3. For me, the most telling data is that he came out early and emphatically with his denial. This risked having someone corroborate the accusation, which would have irreparably ruined his career. If he did it, it was much safer to own it than to attempt to get away with lying about it. If he lied, chances are he would be caught–at some point, someone would corroborate her story. The fact that he took that risk, along with the fact that there was no corroboration, even from her friend, suggests to me that he is innocent.
4. But that could very well be motivate reasoning on my part, because I was in favor of his confirmation in the first place. By far, the biggest determinant of whether you believe he is guilty or not is whether or not you wanted to see him confirmed before the accusation became public. See Alexander’s third chart, which shows that Republicans overwhelmingly place a high probability on his innocence and Democrats overwhelmingly place a high probability on his guilt. That is consistent with other polls, and we should find it quite significant, and also depressing.
I think it would have been said under even stricter or more explicit caveats, in line with the frequentist approach to statistics. Something like, “In a data set capturing the experience of thousands of sufficiently similar cases, and in which guilt or innocent could be confirmed to a very high degree of certainty by additional evidence, in the cases with details similar to this one, the accused was guilty x% of the time.”
Instead of saying anything like that – or doing the reasonable thing and admitting that when reasonably caveated we just don’t have good data for things like this – nearly everyone was willing to go on gut hunches which just happened to align to an astonishing degree with their solidarities.
What was even more depressing was the constant and completely improper abuse of the term ‘credible’ at every turn, which not only aligned with political loyalties instead of any objective character of the whole collection of evidence, but on the display of conspicuous emotionalism in the giving of live, televised testimony in front of a global audience.
Again, no one discussed what possible evidence connected these particular performances to the frequency in which the claims made (and the way in which they were made) were otherwise proven to be accurate by additional corroborating information. Instead, commentators merely declared and asserted ‘credibility’ and implicitly claimed to be very good human lie detectors immune from politically motivated reasoning or confirmation bias. And everyone on their side parroted the same things.
Finally, even stipulating guilt of some crime for the sake of argument, there is the real, general question of whether it really has anything to do with the ‘fitness’ of an individual for any particular position.
On the matter of narrow job performance (unrelated to trustworthiness or interpersonal skills), obviously there are literally millions of ex-cons (or criminals who were never caught or convicted) out there, some who committed very serious or violent acts in their past, and who do just fine at their tasks, and many who are highly skilled experts at their profession. As anecdotes, I know a first rate chef with such a checkered past, and once hired an ex-con to do some renovations, and he did a fine job at them.
The progressives in particular indulged in a good deal of hypocrisy on this matter given their usual public stance in favor of expungement of records of acts committed as a juvenile, rehabilitation, second (or third or fourth) chances after “having paid one’s debt to society”, and against even allowing inquiries into the criminal background of job applicants, precisely in the name of avoiding what they claim to be an irrational prejudice.
Many commentators claimed that certain high profile and public positions could not be filled by anyone under any cloud of suspicion whatsoever, which is of course a recipe for an endless stream of false accusations and political set-ups and hit jobs, especially in cases when an accused candidate has no way to prove his or her innocence beyond mere denial.
Others said that being caught in a ‘lie’ in that denial would fall below the necessary degree of honesty and integrity needed for the job and would disqualify any candidate without a spotless life history, but even that claim in not obvious and requires some demonstration instead of bald assertion. Obviously this world is full of people who have told lies (Diogenes call your office), even important lies about serious matters, and yet many of them perform their jobs at a high level.
For judges in particular we want no favoritism or bias, disinterestedness, discernment, wisdom, fidelity to the law, and fair and predictable jurisprudence that isn’t merely an opportunity to hand-wave the imposition of one’s personal preferences or political agenda in a ‘results-oriented’ fashion. Under these criteria, at least half the progressive judiciary was unqualified for any judgeship from the very beginning, regardless of whether they are living saints with pristine life histories.
From this perspective, the whole focus on education, experience, and criminal history are all kind of distracting gimmicks from the really important attributes of individual decision makers and the true stakes of these matters. So, not only was this whole circus a fiasco, but it diverted the focus of attention away from the core argument into corrosively polarizing deviations.
> Instead of saying anything like that – or doing the reasonable thing and admitting that when reasonably caveated we just don’t have good data for things like this – nearly everyone was willing to go on gut hunches which just happened to align to an astonishing degree with their solidarities.
Are frequentist solidarities equivalent to Bayesian priors?
Correct me if I’m wrong, but Ford had lawyer(s) picked for her by Feinstein. Any lawyer would be insane to send Ford out there to be questioned on national television without rehearsing her. So we were looking at a performance, not just a testimony.
The same is true of Kavanaugh. He’s been around DC for a long time. He was involved in the Lewinsky and Vince Foster cases. He saw the Bork and Thomas confirmations. There’s no way on earth he’s actually shocked at what’s happened here. And he undoubtedly had his own lawyers and Republican operatives coaching him. His indignation and tears were also a performance.
And I doubt Senator Collins really was worried about precedent or procedure. She’s watching the midterm polls and wondering if rejecting him will cost the Republicans their chance at a conservative justice.
So I think the whole thing was a bizarre performance with little connection to reality. Can you tell I’m a Libertarian?
“There’s no way on earth he’s actually shocked at what’s happened here. ”
Oh, I think he was. He fully expected virtually every Democrat to oppose him, but I think he was genuinely shocked to find himself defending himself from accusations of participating in gang rapes and being interrogated on national TV about the meaning of juvenile 80s slang from his high-school yearbook.
+1 to what MichaelG said.
Nevertheless to me it seems like what most likely likely happened was that a drunk Kavanaugh grabbed and groped and pulled down Ford trying to make out with her, and she being a little neuritic (she clams claustrophobia and fear of flying) was fearful of being raped. Most girls would have just warned their friend to avoid Brett when he’s drunk and done so themselves and not brought it up again. So he denies it because he did not try to rape anyone and she went in thinking he had.
Marist did a poll with a more randomly scientific sampling which showed that 54% of Republicans polled said they would support approving Kavanaugh EVEN IF Ford’s allegations were true.
Only 32% of Republicans polled said that knowing Ford’s allegations were true would change their mind about Kavanaugh’s confirmation.
The remainder were undecided on the importance of his guilt. And, it follows, undecided on if it even matters whether or not he perjured himself in his testimony on the matter.
To me this is the most alarming and surprising aspect of the whole issue. It’s one thing for people to have good faith differences in who they believe is credible. It’s something else entirely not to care who is telling the truth.
If not telling the truth disqualifies someone from public office, then everyone on the ballot this November is disqualified. Surely, you mean something more complicated.
Roger,
Actually what I meant was much LESS complicated than deciding on the truthfulness of “everyone on the ballot this November.”
I meant to refer specifically to Kavanaugh and Ford and their testimony in this specific case. The one we’ve been talking about.
And I was trying to bring some perspective. If it is “alarming and surprising” for people ” not to care who is telling the truth” in this case, why is it not also alarming in regard to political rhetoric generally? And why, given the shrug that “oh, all politicians lie”, should it be surprising in this case?
Roger,
Who said it wasn’t alarming in regard to political rhetoric generally? But that really wasn’t the topic was it?
Arnold’s post was on whether citizens should see Kavanaugh or Ford as more believable in terms of probabilities. It’s interesting and revealing how Kavanaugh’s supporters here want to talk about everything but that.
Alexander did ask people for “their probability”; to me that sounds like “subjective probability.” And is this supposed to be a contested notion? Doesn’t everyone, whatever his theoretical views, understand what subjective probability is?
What is it? I ask seriously, not sarcastically.
I’m a libertarian-leaning independent, not a Republican. My initial opinion of Kavanaugh was that I didn’t like his record on civil liberties and would have preferred a different nominee. I wouldn’t have been sorry to see him withdraw. But once the circus began, I thought it was essential that he be confirmed and that Feinstein’s cynical gambit not only fail but also bite Democrats in the ass in November. Ford’s accusations were not only ancient and uncorroborated but all but uncorroboratable (or falsifiable). By Ford’s own account, she did nothing and told nobody at the time (nor for several decades afterwards), nor does she remember the basic details of time and place. Regardless of any guess about what might or might not have happened, it would be a terrible precedent if such old, sketchy, uncorroborated, non-falsifiable accusations could be used to destroy reputations and careers.
That aside, what’s my assessment of the probability? I think it very unlikely that Kavanaugh was guilty as charged (that he, in the presence of his friend, locked Ford in a room, held her down with his hand over her mouth and attempted to rip off her clothes in order to sexually assault her). In fact, I’d put a relatively low probability that there ever was any small house party attended by both Ford and Kavanaugh (not only could Ford’s high school friend Leland not corroborate a particular party, she couldn’t even confirm she had ever met Kavanaugh).
To me, the Bayesian proir for a Boolean value is something like “given the set of all possible universes, in what portion of them is this value true?”
The evidence is that he was a jerk in college and high school.
Did Feinstein care who was telling the truth? Apparently not. Avenatti and Swetnick? Good enough for Feinstein. Ramirez had more doubts than Senator Feinstein. Ramirez sort of believed her own accusation. The Senator was more confident.
But Feinstein set the circus going. Feinstein’s aware of what the media does. She knows that the TV-viewing public inevitably gets even the simplest facts wrong. Viewers are going to make things up and speak with complete confidence about things they sort of heard. The sum of falsehoods grows like Topsy and the Senator chose all this.
Senator Collins, on the other hand, inevitably gets called a “rape apologist.”
But due process isn’t just for terrorists. A terrorist doesn’t lose his due process rights when he’s also, later, accused of rape.
What does Senator Feinstein or Senator Whitehouse or Senator Blumenthal care about any of that “nonsense” (New York Times). Why stand in the way of an angry mob.
What “due process?” He wasnt on trial. He was interviewing for a promotion to a lifetime position. The worst that could happen is he goes back to his other lifetime position courtesy of the us taxpayers.
Fwiw I think he did terrible during the interview. I wouldnt have promoted him. But aparently 51 senators thought differently.
The New York Times: “Meanwhile, Senator Collins subjected us to a slow funeral dirge about due process and some other nonsense I couldn’t even hear through my rage headache as she announced on Friday she would vote to confirm Judge Kavanaugh. Her mostly male colleagues applauded her.”
That’s a quote from Democratic strategist Alexis Grenell.
Who else isn’t on trial? The students expelled from their universities.
Democrats on campus aren’t concerned about due process. Democrats in the media too. Even the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee. And you.
That’s what happens when the Democratic Party en masse announces that a guy needs to have been accused of murder before the presumption of innocence would again be relevant. If he’s accused of rape, he has to prove his innocence. He’s better off being accused of murder.
Nobody’s on trial but you are flunking the test. You’re flunking it now. Is there such a thing as a principle or isn’t there? Is the Tom Hanks character in Bridge Of Spies an apologist for the communists?
Senator Feinstein is 85 years old. Old enough to remember Joseph McCarthy. And yet she flunked the test.
No one on either side has even attempted to define what due process and the presumption of innocence should mean in a he said, she said, case like this. I think it is obvious both principles are important here and also obvious there should be a very different degree of certainty needed for failing to promote somebody to one of the most important positions in the world than for imprisoning them. Can we start there?
If you were hiring a babysitter and there was only one uncorroborated but seemingly credible allegation of child abuse against that babysitter would you feel obligated to hire that babysitter in order to stay true to your principles about the presumption of innocence? What if that person wasn’t babysitting your child for a night but was babysitting your rights for the rest of their life?
It is also obvious that there are difficult and ugly trade offs that will need to be decided on. We know at the start a serious injustice is going to be done to someone. We just aren’t sure who.
There is a reason that the Kavanaugh defenders here have preferred to focus on their opinions on the character of Feinstein and whoever else is their least favorite Democratic politician. Whether or not Christine Blasey Ford was telling the truth or not depends on HER character and motivation, not on someone else’s.
While she was testifying most people saw Christine Blasey Ford as very believable and convincing. I was watching on Fox News and their commentators were in a state of utter despair.
Afterwards almost all the Republican Senators said they believed she was being honest but had simply misidentified her assailant. There is certainly a non-zero chance that could have happened but that theory rests on a bizarre idea of how memory usually works. It is true that eyewitness testimony is mistaken more often than most people realize but the overwhelming majority of those mis- identifications come in stranger attacks. For obvious evolutionary reasons, humans are very good at remembering which people attacked them when they knew those people before the attack. And as for the other people at the party, nobody is good at remembering anything about decades old parties where nothing noteworthy happened to themselves.
In a case like this I don’t think we can do better than to listen to the parties, review the evidence both sides present and make a judgment on who is more credible. That includes, but is not limited to, who had more to gain from lying about the case.
She actually didn’t identify Kavanaugh until decades later, in 2012. Kavanaugh had been in the news in 2011 because he was part of the DC Circuit Obamacare decision. He was also being talked about as a potential Supreme Court nominee if the Republicans took the Presidency in 2012.
From the Washington Post of September 17, 2018:
Ford said she told no one of the incident in any detail until 2012, when she was in couples therapy with her husband. The therapist’s notes, portions of which were provided by Ford and reviewed by The Washington Post, do not mention Kavanaugh’s name but say she reported that she was attacked by students “from an elitist boys’ school” who went on to become “highly respected and high-ranking members of society in Washington.” …
In an interview, her husband, Russell Ford, said that in the 2012 sessions, … he recalled that his wife used Kavanaugh’s last name and voiced concern that Kavanaugh — then a federal judge — might one day be nominated to the Supreme Court.
I don’t know if you’ve had the experience of relating a memory (which you can see in your mind) and being told that it couldn’t have happened because you weren’t there at that time or something similar. I have and it makes me leery.
Roger,
Yes, I have twice had the experience of seeing objective evidence that convinced me that memories I had felt very sure of were wrong. But neither of them involved situations when I was in danger.
The most vivid and durable memories I have are of the few times I felt I was in real danger. As I understand it, there is lots of evidence that the presence of adrenaline makes for more durable and accurate memories. Do you think that your memories of the times you thought you were in danger are more reliable, less reliable, or equally reliable compared to the times you thought nothing remarkable had happened?
In this case we have one party who had one beer and thought her life was in danger and another party who was drunk and thought nothing out of the ordinary happened. I would not expect these memories to be equally reliable. Would you?
As for her not coming forward right away with an allegation, that is the norm, not the exception when these kind of incidents do occur.
“In this case we have one party who had one beer and thought her life was in danger ”
Right. And her memory is vivid and durable …that she can’t recall where or when the alleged incident took place or how she got there or home after she supposedly narrowly escaped with her life. In my experience, that’s not how traumatic memories work. The accusation seemed to me to be so lacking in critical details that it seemed almost purpose-built so that Ford could never conclusively be shown to be lying nor Kavanaugh be able to conclusively demonstrate his innocence.
Greg,
I’ve had several near death experience. Some involving violence, others health issues. In truth, while I could tell you the broad strokes of what happened, I can’t actually get into that big a degree of detail. Especially on ones that reach back many years. For instance, I was beat up by some bullies after a surgery and it nearly caused dangerous heart damage, and yet I can’t tell you the names of any of the bullies and only barely remember a few vague physical characteristics.
Just the other day in the hospital I found out from my medical records that I had misremembered something important from a hospital stay eight years ago.
We don’t know if Ford is telling the truth. Did she have three beers and said she had one? Was it as rough as she said? Did she like it rough? Had she flirted or come onto him? Did it start consensual and then change? Did she retroactively change the details of the event due to an emotional change? There are a million ways some incident 30 years ago could have gone down. Obviously she’s recounting what she believes to be the story that makes her look best and him look worst.
Or hell, maybe she just made it up to drive a political goal or get her fifteen minutes of fame. Remember when journalists at rolling stone made up getting gang raped on broken glass by frat boys. False rape accusations are pretty common.
The bottom line is nothing in this testimony justifies blowing up this guys life thirty years out. I also see zero evidence of it being a window into his character or professionalism (my understanding is he had an extremely successful personal and family life).
If people don’t like these incidents occurring the best way to deal with it wasn’t a witch hunt. It’s a total re-evaluation of social and sexual mores.
asdf,
>—“The bottom line is nothing in this testimony justifies blowing up this guys life thirty years out.”
So then the “bottom line” for you is that even if “this testimony” by Ford is entirely true he should be approved. Got it. Can we stop pretending it’s about something else then? This is just what the Marist poll showed.
What i’m saying is that we don’t know what happened, there is no evidence of what happened, and fords testimony represents a “worst case” scenario. That worst case isn’t that bad (his “intent” to rape is only speculation, no actual physical rape attempt happened even according to ford). And since we can’t reasonably assign a probability of 1 to all of fords testimony, it seems possible that at least some of the details are different (up to and including possibly a total forgery).
“I was at a drunken party 30 years ago and I think that this person intended to rape me even though our clothes stayed on. I have no evidence of this.” We don’t blow up people’s lives over claims like this.
asdf,
>—” there is no evidence of what happened”
Eyewitness victim testimony is accepted as evidence in both criminal and civil cases in EVERY court in America. And the standard of certainty needed for elevation to the Supreme Court is, and ought to be, much closer to the civil standard than the criminal standard.
You complain that Ford’s case is based on “speculation” while speculating wildly on possibilities that NO ONE submitted the slightest evidence for. You speculate below that she may have been “into being forced.” Well, even women “into it” in consensual role play situations do not really want to be unexpectedly attacked against their will in real life situations. Your eagerness to conflate the two is telling and tells us a lot about your commitment to avoiding “speculation”
>—“Or hell, maybe she just made it up to drive a political goal or get her fifteen minutes of fame. ”
More of the pure speculation you claim to be opposed to. What political goal??? Everyone understood that even if Kavanaugh was rejected, he would be quickly replaced with another nominee who was at least as conservative and better vetted and eventually approved.
And did she really strike you as someone enjoying the limelight? She had absolutely no history of having more than ordinary political activity or seeking celebrity. She had no plausible incentive to make a false accusation. The reason she was reluctant to come forward was that she understood that doing so would blow up her life.
And, as expected, she was soon driven from her home by death threats. Such were her incentives to come forward with a false accusation.
In contrast, Kavanaugh had nothing to lose and a lot to gain by stonewalling.
>—“False rape accusations are pretty common.”
Compared to what? They are a lot less common than real allegations or cases where rapes happen and victims never come forward.
But more to the point: This was not a rape allegation! If she simply wanted to make up the most damaging allegations it would have been.
Now you say below that since no rape happened that means “essentially nothing happened.” Since she agreed to go to a party you would have advised your daughter not to go to she was fair game to be forced into a bedroom by a 17 year old football player as a 15 year old, pinned down, have her mouth covered to the point she was afraid of suffocating and then forcibly groped while he tried to remove her clothing.
That never was OK within what you would consider to be the left wing version of “social and sexual mores” that I grew up with. As for the re-evaluation of what you take to be existing mores, you should get on with that immediately.
You can’t really get away with simultaneously claiming that Ford’ allegations are so damaging as to blow up his life…..but also so trivial that we shouldn’t care if they are true. You need to pick one of those at a minimum.
Recall that Arnold’s original post was about whose testimony was more likely to be accurate, not why that shouldn’t matter after all this time.
Everyone understood that even if Kavanaugh was rejected, he would be quickly replaced with another nominee who was at least as conservative and better vetted and eventually approved.
NO NO NO NO NO!
Most people felt that if Kavanaugh was rejected, it would be too late to get another nominee through the process before the election. If the Democrats took the Senate, they would then be able to stop any nomination “at least as conservative.”
Roger,
Republicans are extremely heavy favorites to retain control of the Senate and are also favorites to increase their majority.
With everyone exhausted from this confirmation war, it will be trivially easy to get someone like Neil Gorsuch approved. Democratic Senators in Red States still need a substantial reason to vote against a nominee without all the baggage Kavanaugh had.
It’s not obvious how you find an incentive in all this for Christine Blasey Ford to go through what she has gone through.
“Eyewitness victim testimony is accepted as evidence in both criminal and civil cases in EVERY court in America.”
“He said, she said” can’t convict anyone. And thank god it can’t.
“while speculating wildly on possibilities”
I’m not trying to convict a man. I’m saying there are a million ways this event could have gone down. Are you saying the only possible set of events is the one Ford has given? What other possibilities do you think there are?
“She had no plausible incentive to make a false accusation.”
I’ve already discussed possible reasons.
“And did she really strike you as someone enjoying the limelight?”
I don’t know. Many people do things, get in over their heads, and regret it later. When the Rolling Stone person got caught making it up, they no doubt realized what a bad idea it was. But before you get pushback you may not realize what’s at stake.
We just went through an entire #Metoo movement that asserted that all women must be believed regardless of evidence, that any woman that makes an allegation is a hero, and they were able to take down powerful men based on charges just as flimsy. Who knows what Ford thought was going to happen.
But then after hundreds of people keeled over to the pressure, someone pushed back.
Leaving aside the issue of trying to win a seat through delay, the main issue at hand is whether baseless allegations can destroy someones life. Weaponized #Metoo. If they can, absolutely nobody is safe. If they can’t then we still have a civilization. If the GOP allowed Kav to get lynched there is no way they could ever defend anyone under any circumstance.
“Since she agreed to go to a party you would have advised your daughter not to go to she was fair game to be forced into a bedroom by a 17 year old football player as a 15 year old, pinned down, have her mouth covered to the point she was afraid of suffocating and then forcibly groped while he tried to remove her clothing.”
No, I wouldn’t want someone behaving that way. I don’t know if that’s what happened. You don’t need to change that story before its pretty tame though, and we haven’t been given any evidence it was true.
Here’s a speculation for you. Ford may have had more to drink than she says. She may have alternatively attracted to and repulsed by an attractive athlete. She may have been excited by and/or scared of the fact that she was an inexperienced 15 year old. She may liked aggressiveness, or she might have been turned off by it, or her opinion could have changed mid event. She could have given clear signals, mixed signals, unclear signals, or her signals could have changed throughout the event. Her signals could have changed with her mood which could have changed in a moment.
Even the chocking, the most shocking part, is something multiple girls have wanted me to do to them, and I’ve seen how it can turn girls on. Personally I find it repulsive and think as an impulse it should be strongly shunned by society, but I can’t unlearn this fact of female sexuality.
At the end of the day all we really know is that despite being the embodiment of a lustful patriarchy, Kav didn’t actually do anything. She wanted to leave, and she left, and he didn’t stop it, when clearly it was within his capacity to do so if he wanted.
If things went exactly the way Ford described then I would certainly have beaten Kav up if she were my daughter. But I don’t know how they went. You don’t either. And there are a lot of ways things could have happened that are different, even ones that assume some of what Ford is saying is true, and make this into one of a million encounters of a type that I don’t particularly like but are the way things are based on the rules our society came up with.
asdf,
>—““He said, she said” can’t convict anyone.”
You said her testimony did not count as “evidence” as in “there is no evidence of what happened.” There is lots of evidence on both sides and a lot of it is disputed. That is very different from the absence of evidence.
This has never been about whether or not somebody is “convicted.” It has always been about whether or not someone is elevated. You keep deliberately conflating the two. Do you think the standard should be the same? Can we have a higher standard for the Supreme Court than not being able to send someone to jail?
AGAIN I remind you that Arnold’s post asks which of the two is MORE believable, not do we have enough to jail him.
>—“Even the chocking, the most shocking part, is something multiple girls have wanted me to do to them, and I’ve seen how it can turn girls on. ”
Did ANY of them want it done unexpectedly in situations where they had not consented to it? And here’s hoping they were all older than 15. This is not the stage of sexual experimentation that many 15 year olds are at. Just in case you can muster any interest in what was most probable.
>—“We just went through an entire #Metoo movement that asserted that all women must be believed regardless of evidence, that any woman that makes an allegation is a hero, and they were able to take down powerful men based on charges just as flimsy. Who knows what Ford thought was going to happen.”
We just went through a Presidential election where Trump survived accusations of various types of totally inappropriate sexual aggression from 22 different women. And a videotape of him bragging about that very behavior. And he was the guy who nominated Kavanaugh and encouraged him to deny it all aggressively just as he did.
You think Ford was unaware of this or it made her optimistic things would go well for her?
Greg G,
I think that most Democrats feel they have a chance to retake the Senate. More importantly, they know that they will do better, the more of their people they can get to actually vote. Lots of people normally “stay home” for a mid-term election. Thus, turnout is vital.
There is a tremendous incentive to rile up the base, to make them feel that who winds up ahead really matters. They would not have allowed a Gorsuch to sail through. Quite the opposite. They would have used their opposition as a reason to get out and vote.
Allowing a Gorsuch to be confirmed would have felt like betrayal to a substantial part of the base.
Why do you think Nancy Pelosi waited until so late in the process to make the charges public?
Roger,
I must admit I didn’t know that Nancy Pelosi had any role in this at all. Want to tell me more about that?
from the wikipedia article Christine Blasey Ford
In early July 2018, after Judge Brett Kavanaugh was reported to be on Donald Trump’s shortlist to become an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Ford contacted both The Washington Post and her congresswoman, Anna Eshoo.[10] On July 20,[3] eleven days after Trump nominated Kavanaugh, Eshoo met with Ford, becoming convinced of her credibility and noting that Ford seemed “terrified” that her identity as an accuser might become public. Eshoo and Ford decided to take the matter to Senator Dianne Feinstein, one of Ford’s senators in California and the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which would deliberate Kavanaugh’s nomination.[22] In a letter to Feinstein, Ford alleged that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her when both were in high schools in Bethesda, MD, and stated that she expected her story to be kept confidential.[10][23] In August, Ford took a polygraph test with a former FBI agent, who concluded Ford was being truthful when attesting to the accuracy of her allegations.[10]
Owing to her confidentiality commitment to Ford,[24] Feinstein did not raise the issue in the initial Kavanaugh confirmation proceedings.[25] On September 12, The Intercept reported (without naming Ford) that Feinstein was withholding a Kavanaugh-related document from fellow Judiciary Committee Democrats.[26] On September 13,[27] Feinstein referred Ford’s letter to the FBI, which redacted Ford’s name and forwarded the letter to the White House[10] as an update to Kavanaugh’s background check.[28] The White House in turn sent the letter to the full Senate Judiciary Committee.[10]
On September 16, after media reported anonymous allegations and reporters started to track down her identity, Ford went public.[29] Ford had wrestled with the choice to make her identity known, weighing the potential negative impact it could have on her,[30][31] but ultimately spoke to The Washington Post, alleging that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her in the summer of 1982 when she was 15 and he was 17.
Yes, I am cynical about who leaked the information and why Feinstein “did not raise the issue in the initial Kavanaugh confirmation proceedings.”
Roger,
I still don’t get your point about Pelosi. Are you confusing her with Feinstein? If so, your Wikipedia article says that there was a delay because Ford was refusing to come forward publicly. Consider me skeptical you would have been any more receptive to the Ford allegations had they come out as soon as Feinstein had them. As it was, Ford was terrified of going public for very good reasons. She has been driven from her home by death threats. That proves to me she had good reason to be hesitant.
Whatever was going through Feinstein or Pelosi’s mind has nothing at all to do with Arnold’s post which asks whether Ford or Kavanaugh is more credible.
OMG. You’re right; I was confusing her with Feinstein. And you’re also right that I would not “have been any more receptive to the Ford allegations had they come out as soon as Feinstein had them.”
As soon as I heard it reported that she said the memory had been “pulled out of her” at counseling sessions in 2012, I immediately thought of all the bogus “recovered memory” stories from back in the previous century. I remember (really I do) telling several people when that was reported, “If this were a Democratic nominee and the Republicans had an accuser like this, I’ll bet there would be a raft of stories about how fallible memory is and how easy it is to remember things that didn’t actually happen–and the stories would be completely true. I wonder if we’ll see stories like that here when the accuser is Democratic and the nominee is Republican.”
To be clear, I think that Feinstein did not send the letter to the FBI, or make public the accusations, immediately because:
1) It had been written to her in confidence.
2) The process is long and Kavanaugh might have been stopped without making Ford’s story public.
3) If nothing else had worked to stop Kavanaugh and the process was nearing it’s end, she could call on Ford’s patriotism, Ford being a strong Democrat, to make her story public.
4) If that didn’t work, well, this is Washington and leaks happen.
@Greg G
> She had no plausible incentive to make a false accusation. The reason she was reluctant to come forward was that she understood that doing so would blow up her life.
>>—“False rape accusations are pretty common.”
>Compared to what? They are a lot less common than real allegations or cases where rapes happen and victims never come forward.
The rates of false rape report are between 2% and 10%[0]. That the makes them uncommon, but far from unheard of. Certainly not low enough that we can dispense with a presumption of innocence, even for non-criminal investigations. I’ve heard that the rate of false accusations for rape is higher than other crimes, but I can’t find any statistics for false crime accusations overall, so I don’t know. I doubt the false accusation rates for other serious crimes is any higher.
I’m not claiming that Dr. Ford did make a false accusation, but if I may, I’d like to offer up a plausible scenario why she might have:
– During 2012, Dr. Ford and her husband are having marital problems. Feeling that she doesn’t have the ability to resolve those problems, she fabricates a false allegation that she has no intention of acting upon in order to elicit sympathy from her husband in the hopes that it will draw them closer together.[1]
– When Kavanaugh is nominated this year, and in the spirit of #metoo, her husband encourages her to come forward with her story. Not wanting to reveal her deceit to her husband, she writes a letter to Feinstein, but asks the Senator to keep the story in strict confidence so that she is never required to defend the allegation in public. She hopes the issue stops there.
– When the story is leaked (likely by Feinstein or one of her staffers) Dr. Ford is now completely in over her head. Fortunately, she now has an army of lawyers, political operatives, and an ex-FBI friend who all believe her completely and are willing and able help her prepare the most airtight case possible.
[0] https://www.nsvrc.org/sites/default/files/Publications_NSVRC_Overview_False-Reporting.pdf
[1] this is not an uncommon motive for false allegations https://leb.fbi.gov/articles/featured-articles/false-allegations-of-adult-crimes
Roger,
I agree with you about the very problematic nature of so called recovery memories where the memory was just absent for many years. This is not one of those cases. She has always maintained that the memory was always present and that, like many women, she just waited a long time to talk about it.
I don’t doubt that some guy tried to take advantage of her at some party when she was in high school. However, from what I understand, the details of where, who did it, and exactly what was done, only date from 2012.
lliamander,
First of all, in my opinion you have been the most responsive and sensible commenter addressing both Arnold’s question in the original post and my questions in the discussion so thank you for that.
I think the scenario you speculate on where she felt she had to follow through with the letter to Feinstein to shore up an earlier lie to her husband is wildly unlikely even if she was lying about everything. Especially if she was lying about everything.
Having countless people pulling on every loose thread in the narrative would be a terrible strategy for getting away with the lie. She could have easily been entirely believable saying she was too terrified to come forward. It’s unlikely the husband would have been eager for any of this. And they will be lucky if the marriage survives all the stress of the public spectacle they are in now.
This is the best comment here IMO.
> No one on either side has even attempted to define what due process and the presumption of innocence should mean in a he said, she said, case like this. I think it is obvious both principles are important here and also obvious there should be a very different degree of certainty needed for failing to promote somebody to one of the most important positions in the world than for imprisoning them. Can we start there?
Sure, I’ll bite. Presumption of innocence in this case is that she suffered an attack (or at least sincerely believes she did), but that he didn’t do it. Due process implies the standard of a preponderance of evidence, which is considerably more lenient that what would be required for a criminal conviction but still requires that it be “more likely than not” (i.e. >50%) that he was the perpetrator. Due process also implies that all parties (including witnesses) have a chance to tell their side of the story, and to be questioned on the details – which they did.
> If you were hiring a babysitter and there was only one uncorroborated but seemingly credible allegation of child abuse against that babysitter would you feel obligated to hire that babysitter in order to stay true to your principles about the presumption of innocence? What if that person wasn’t babysitting your child for a night but was babysitting your rights for the rest of their life?
If you are in the position to hire anyone, and you receive what you consider to be credible allegations that the individual committed a crime, you have three ethical options:
1) report the allegation to the authorities, or encourage your source to do likewise, and let the justice system handle the allegation
2) quietly refuse to hire the person
3) ask the individual about the allegations and give them a chance to explain themselves, and make a determination from that
Making the allegations public and creating a media circus in order to ruin the life and reputation of the job candidate without a trial is not acceptable. If the allegations become public, publicly proclaiming that you absolutely believe they are guilty based solely on the allegation is also not legitimate. But that is exactly what Senate Democrats did. Senator Hirono went so far as to say that his judicial record (somehow?) was enough for her to believe that he was the kind of person to commit such an assault. You might as well have gotten out the ducking stool.
I won’t comment on the specific analogy of hiring a babysitter other than it’s a very ill-conceived one and someone who wanted to take the time could point out a number of ways in which that scenario doesn’t match the case before us at all.
It seemed to me that this played out as an almost perfectly constructed thought experiment to isolate the idea of believing the word of a single person in the absence of any supporting facts
Ultimately, I felt Dr. Ford’s testimony shouldn’t be considered because such circumstances are best dealt with via a system of checks and balances. The accusation was 100% based on one person’s word. There was corroboration that the memory had been in place well before the nomination, but no corroboration whatsoever for the event itself.
Because the memory appears to have been in place for some time and because no disqualifying information has come out on Dr. Ford, I would rule out that she made a knowingly false accusation with the intent of blocking the nomination. I’m comfortable with the notion that she believed what she was saying.
So, what are the odds that Dr. Ford suffered from some form of substitution memories with regard to what happened to her or who did it?
I’m not sure you could construct a person less likely for this to happen to. She displayed a great deal of discipline and precision in explaining her recollections. She has a clinical understanding of how memory works and what being sure means, but was comfortable claiming she was 100% certain. She resisted even slight mischaracterizations of her testimony. I think its pretty unlikely she got this so fundamentally wrong.
> Because the memory appears to have been in place for some time and because no disqualifying information has come out on Dr. Ford, I would rule out that she made a knowingly false accusation with the intent of blocking the nomination.
I don’t believe that her making a false allegation is the most likely possibility, but there definitely has been information that has come out that casts doubt on Ford’s testimony:
1) She refused to release her therapist’s notes: Dr. Ford is mostly right with regard to the impact of trauma on memory formation, but often what is saved is more the emotional impact of the experience rather than details[0]. Furthermore, our memories are subject to modification as we review them and attempt to make sense of our past experiences[1]. Since the therapist’s notes are the earliest evidence we have of the assault and her own recollection of it, it could definitely help support her story. That she refuses to release either indicates that the notes cast further doubt on her case, or that they reveal unrelated but personally damaging information that she would rather not reveal (a perfectly understandable reason).
2) Public records related to her second front door don’t support her testimony: Yes, she has a second front door, but that door was added several years prior to her therapy session (which seems to contradict her claim that she and her husband were fighting about the addition). Also, the door seems have served the purpose of allowing them to rent out part of their house.
3) The sworn letter from her ex-boyfriend: The letter casts doubt her claim to claustrophobia and a fear of flying, and directly contradicts her claim of never having helped anyone prepare for a polygraph.
4) Ford’s friend and witness pressured to change her story: Leland Keyser, Ford’s friend and one of the people she named as a witness, was pressured by former FBI agent Monica McLean (the same person that Ford’s ex-boyfriend claimed Ford trained to pass a polygraph) to modify her testimony[2].
[0] https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2018/09/27/experts-christine-blasey-ford-science-memory-right/
[1] https://townhall.com/columnists/scottmorefield/2018/09/23/exclusive-eminent-california-professor-and-human-memory-expert-weighs-in-on-christine-fords-allegations-against-kavanaugh-n2521636
[2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/friend-of-dr-ford-felt-pressure-to-revisit-statement-1538715152
That was my take – my belief in what I wanted to be true completely overwhelmed my ability to evaluate facts and come to an objective conclusion. Confirmation bias is real and powerful, even when we are fully aware it is happening!
#3 is what did it for me. Those were my thoughts exactly as it happened. If Kav actually did what Ford was accusing him of, or even anything like that in some beer-induced haze, his only shot would be to get out in front of it because then not only would his nomination be toast, but his entire career as a judge would be gone forever. A mid-life guy with a family can’t risk that kind of ruination just for a promotion.
I don’t understand this logic at all. Why would it be safer to own it? Any possible outcome where he admitted being in that bedroom would have cost him the nomination and he would have become a cultural punching bag for the rest of his life. It would have sliced just enough of the benefit of doubt away to prevent him from ever getting past this.
Being caught in a flat-out lie of an issue of this magnitude as a sitting judge is 1,000,000 times worse than a youthful indiscretion. The latter means not getting the nomination and being a MSM punching-bag until the election; the former means losing your job working as a shift-manager at a gas station, if you’re lucky.
I don’t think there was any chance this was going to turn into a Dateline “To Catch a Predator” type of gotcha. Kavanaugh was able to read the Post story before making any statement, and that included the claim that she told no one at the time.
If he was guilty, the only catastrophic risk for Kavanaugh would be if Mark Judge were to make a confession.
Thats why he was never called by the committee to testify.
@Moo cow
But Mark Judge was interviewed by the FBI, and made no such confession. Isn’t this why the Democrats called for an FBI investigation? Because they would be better suited to extract just such a confession?
I’m surprised more people aren’t considering the possibility that both parties are describing the same incident as they genuinely remember (or genuinely don’t remember) it.
If he pinned her down and groped her in the way she described without any actual intent to rape her, and in a very drunken state, then there is an excellent chance he genuinely doesn’t remember what was an entirely unconsequential event for him at the time.
Meanwhile, the same event could have traumatized her in exactly the way she describes.
Let’s remember that the difference between a 17 year old weight lifting football player and a 15 year old girl in both physical strength and maturity is huge.
I agree. I think there are shades of gray/degrees to this too, particularly for somebody who was really drunk. E.g. I could see Kavanaugh thinking something like “I vaguely remember trying to kiss girls at parties sometimes, but I’d never would have forcefully pin anyone down” etc.
This partly why I don’t find Arnold’s (3) at all that persuasive. We’re not talking about a clear-headed, premeditated, cold-blooded crime here. I don’t think it’s at all necessary that Kavanaugh went through some big calculation about whether it’d be better to deny it or own up, particularly if alcohol is involved and memories are sketchy. In fact, the fact Arnold thinks (3) (an emphatic denial and no corroboration) is the best evidence these allegations aren’t true, is probably weak enough that it makes me think it’s MORE likely Dr Ford’s account is basically accurate.
I didn’t see SSC’s poll either, but if I did, I’d put it at something like 75% these allegations are true. Whether that means he should or shouldn’t get to be a SC justice or not, who knows.
For context, I’d say my views are similar to Slocum’s above (libertarian, some concerns on Kavanaugh’s privacy record, but overall would much rather have him than someone like Kagen). I would also be willing to bet that — controlling for ideology — people that attended high school/college parties with heavy drinking (I did occasionally) would be more likely to believe these allegations. Would be interested in hearing whether or not commentators who find (3) persuasive did as well.
It could also be the case that it was not as bad as Ford says (there was an awkward groping but not much more), or that it was and Ford was kind of into it (lots of girls are into being forced), or who knows what else.
When I first heard of this story I had assumed he was being accused of rape. To find out that essentially nothing happened (even if we believe some of what Ford is saying) was puzzling.
Having been to drinking parties where people are trying to hook up, I find this whole story rather tame. I’ve seen worse on crowded public streets in the city. I’ve watched a women walk up to a dude in the middle of a dozen people at a party, stick her hand down his pants and grabbed his cock, then said lets fuck right there. And this was hardly some swingers party or someplace people went for kink, it was just another random yuppie party in the city.
If you don’t want stuff like this happening, you need to go after the entire culture of excess that the left represents. More sex. More booze. More drugs. More do whatever you want. Throw a thin veneer of “consent” over the whole thing as if that isn’t a paper thin guard against these sorts of events. And definitely don’t ask questions about what consent really means when millions of women think 50 Shades of Creepy Stalker is sexy.
If you don’t like what happened with Ford, support the right. They are the ones against drunken hookup excesses. I’ve got a daughter. My primary guard against her getting raped isn’t giving her the power to destroy random men 30 years after the fact without evidence (a corrupting power if there ever was one). It’s raising her to know that parties like this are not places she should want to go to. That’s what the right teaches. The left teaches we are just one more kangaroo court lynching away from making it a perfect idea.
I agree with a lot of this. Not sure the right (especially those on the right who are young and drink heavily) are all that serious about stopping drunken hook up culture in practice, but if anyone in the 3 axes model would be opposed to it, it’d be the conservative/pro civilization and anti barbarism folk.
I think you could take issue with some of your details, e.g. I don’t think it’s nec accurate to say “nothing happened” — Dr Ford said she believed Kavanaugh was trying to rape her. That would be something. Also hard for me to see (if this is true) that Ford (who had one beer) is as blameworthy (because she took part in the drunken party excess) as Kavanaugh would be.
On the one hand, I agree with story is tame(r) in the context of drunken, hook up culture then the standalone facts might indicate. On the other, I think there are details (covering her mouth to keep her from screaming, her worried she’d suffocate) that, if true, probably put this outside the normal hookup/party culture.
#3 seems really weak to me. Admitting to Ford’s allegations would certainly have caused him to lose the nomination and be remembered forever as the guy who lost it for having sexually assaulted a 15 year old girl. Disgrace would be assured.
By her own claims, it was clear that the only person her allegations about what happened in that room (behind closed doors with the music turned up) could have been “corroborated” by was Kavanaugh’s close friend who all agree was an out of control alcoholic. If Ford had been making up this story she would not have wanted to risk putting him in the room because he was much more likely than not to be a Kavanaugh ally and could always very believably say he simply doesn’t remember.
As for the trustworthiness of early and emphatic details they are near universal in such cases. Trump has used them with great success and was certainly encouraging Kavanaugh to do the same.
Bill Cosby got by for decades on such denials. As did countless others. These are notoriously hard cases to prove and every prosecutor knows that. Even if a couple votes had been different and he had been denied to the nomination that wouldn’t have changed anyone’s opinion about the case and it would NOT have been tantamount to a criminal conviction. He would still have been a martyr and a hero to half the country. There is no chance anyone could have then gone on to remove him from his existing very prestigious job.
I’ll bite.
I was an alcoholic in high school. I found drugs to go with alcohol in college. I could never put myself in a situation like SCOTUS nominee because I just don’t know everything that happened. I just don’t. I don’t know! You guys may find this very disconcerting. Someone could be accused of a terrible act and they are unable to remember.
I’ve had two successful careers – one in the helping professions and one in business. I’ve been an honest productive taxpaying citizen for a few decades now. But what life was like back then will always be with me, and I will admit it – I am not qualified to run for high office or be a lifetime appointee.
Ok. That said, #3. Alcoholics are the best liars out there. Bar none. We learn early! No lie is too outlandish. No denial is too ridiculous. Deny early, aggressively; it’s the only way to go when the crapo is hitting the fan. Absolutely. Gaslighting. But with even more self righteousness and more aggression. It works.
I was like *whoa* as all this unfolded. So familiar. The anger, the aggression, the blubbering tears of rage are absolutely the stock in trade of the aggressive alcoholic liar. No doubt about it.
I’m not even talking about the night in question here, though I found Ford utterly believable. I’m just commenting on K’s reaction as it unfolded.
The bar should be awfully high for a lifetime appointment to a court that has the power to nullify my marriage and take away my health insurance. There were cleaner candidates that would have been immediately confirmed. They may have done the same damage to my life. But I could not say they weren’t qualified.
Instead we got this guy.
You’re treating yourself as an analogy for someone else, and then treating that as evidence about him. It’s not.
You were a blackout drunk. That’s the factual part. But asserting that someone else was probably also a blackout drunk, as a first step, and then piling more speculation on top of that? That’s a party game. You and 900 million other people have very confident opinions about these people who only exist for you on screen. But your confidence is misplaced.
You haven’t put yourself in the shoes of someone who is being accused of something he didn’t do. You haven’t made that imaginative leap.
“So familiar. The anger, the aggression, the blubbering tears of rage are absolutely the stock in trade of the aggressive alcoholic liar. No doubt about it.”
Your lack of doubt isn’t something to boast about. Try doubting your feelings sometimes. Your feelings aren’t proof. Your feelings don’t have anything to do with the real human being you’re attacking. Why not try to imagine that you might feel angry too if people who know nothing about you, people in every country in the world, were speaking with utter confidence and zero basis in fact?
Trial by media is itself punishment. It’s the infliction of pain. It has nothing to do with what’s true and what’s false. Wild speculation doesn’t get us closer to the truth. What Senator Feinstein set in motion is an evil circus of falsehoods and fabulations and fairy tales about what must be the case and what probably happened and what the viewing public can sort of remember.
That’s why civilized people opt for this thing called due process instead. A decent person doesn’t just have a lot of opinions about TV characters to which you attach a real person’s name.
Weir –
Senator Feinstein, like most of the players involved, was dismal. When she fielded this allegation, she didn’t advise Dr. Ford properly about her personal exposure, and recommended a partisan lawyer to her. During her hearing comments, she asked Kavanaugh about outrageous unvetted allegations that show no sign of validity, but she didn’t introduce these ideas into the media stream and wasn’t the only one who referenced them.
She is also one of several possible sources of the leak that put much of this into motion. But there is no evidence that it was her. A number of others might have done it. There is no clear publicly known information about who leaked this.
So, it appears you are somewhat selective in your outrage over wild public speculation and unverified accusations.
We live in a country of 330 million people and most of them can now publish any comment the like. Your previous posts effortlessly conflate various random public comments with the behavior of the Democratic legislators.
The Republican majority runs the Judiciary committee. Whoever leaked the Ford allegation started much of this, but this is 2018 and rumors will be floated. Other rumors were. We can’t stop that. Our institutions will need to be the firewall that knows how to filter out the illegitimate from the legitimate. There is no other option.
The committee should have been able to handle this, but they had no idea what to do, and they made it worse. That has to change.
What I was responding to was this (and I will admit I might have approached this the wrong way):
“I would also be willing to bet that — controlling for ideology — people that attended high school/college parties with heavy drinking (I did occasionally) would be more likely to believe these allegations. Would be interested in hearing whether or not commentators who find (3) persuasive did as well.”
Yes. The allegations are believable. No, #3 is totally not pursuasive. Here’s why.
I think a largely ignored, but significant, possibility is something happened and he forgot, and is thus not lying. However, I think her story is exaggerated in an objective sense. Something that was totally normal horseplay and fooling around for one drunk, evidenced by the claimed presence of another person in the room, which is counter-evidence to a planned attack, could be perceived quite differently by someone who was less experienced. Playing it over in her mind, in the context of victimhood status culture, the little things become bigger and it becomes a full fledged attack.
I look at this from the perspective of the little boy in Brooklyn who had the police called on him because his backpack brushed against a woman. She had to be shown security video of the incident to correct her own perception of what had happened.
35 years of memory of an incident like this is unlikely to be clear.
The accuracy or not of either side’s testimony is irrelevant.
There was an accepted process to evaluate the allegations. Feinstein sat on them with the apparent objective of politicizing their release to achieve a desired outcome.
At that point, they should be put in the category of inadmissible evidence. To do anything else breaks a process that has been developed to adjudicate such issues in a politically fraught decision.
Arnold’s post above has the great virtue of recognizing that nobody should feel certain of what happened here. He asks the question: What probability should we assign to the possibility that Kavanaugh was guilty of the assault that Ford describes?
Not what do you think of Feinstein or Pelosi or even whether or not he should be confirmed. Not if there was enough to convict him of a crime. Not what you thought of the political process. Not, do you think she liked it rough or what adjustments should be made to sexual and political norms.
We are 51 comments in at this writing and it is very revealing how vanishingly few Kavanaugh supporters will even answer Arnold’s question before insisting on changing the subject. It is also revealing, in my opinion, which side was eager for a more thorough FBI investigation that might have uncovered any conspiracy to lie or manipulate the process on either side.
Greg,
You miss the mark entirely. Without evidence there is no way to assign a probability. Unless you submit “my subjective opinion of this persons body language and tone of voice obviously means he is a rapist with probability p=x” is evidence.
Above the best you can come up with is “Ford wouldn’t do this unless it happened.” But of course people do this sort of thing all the time when it didn’t happen, or it happened differently then they say it did. That’s the whole point of talking about how there are lots of ways events could have unfolded that are different than Ford says, something you refuse to accept based on your subjective opinion of her “credibility”.
No FBI investigation is going to give you definitive proof of what happened at some house party thirty years ago, which means we are going to be right back where we are.
Should we just assume that every time a woman makes an accusation it must be true or likely to be true. What exactly do you want done every time someone makes an accusation without evidence?
We’re talking about whether we have a civilization or not here. Whether we are going to throw out the entire basis of our legal and cultural norms surrounding evidence and guilt because you think you’ve got a window into Ford’s soul.
asdf,
You continue to talk about this as if it was criminal trial to decide if someone should be jailed rather than a hearing to decide if someone should be elevated to one of the most crucial and prestigious jobs in the world. Do you think the standard for those two things should be the same?
And, this is NOT an allegation of rape or even necessarily of attempted rape. She is alleging precisely the events that she described. She is alleging that he forced her into a bedroom, pinned her down with his hand over her mouth and forcibly groped her. Of course she was afraid she would be raped in that situation but she did not claim she could be certain that was his intent. Her most immediate fear was that she would be unintentionally suffocated. There are a lot more forcible gropings than rapes. If the events she describes are true but he had no intention of raping her opinions vary on whether or not that should be disqualifying for the Supreme Court nomination.
You keep saying there is no evidence. There is lots of evidence. The problem is that none of it is nearly as conclusive as we would like it to be. There are criminal trials every day with conflicting eyewitness testimony the credibility of which is the most important factor in the trial. Every time that happens juries or judges make judgement calls about that conflicting testimony. Sometimes they get it wrong. Afterwards we still “have a civilization.”
> You continue to talk about this as if it was criminal trial to decide if someone should be jailed rather than a hearing to decide if someone should be elevated to one of the most crucial and prestigious jobs in the world. Do you think the standard for those two things should be the same?
I don’t think anyone is conflating the two. Obviously the standards are different. Senator Collins, for instance, made clear that the standards were different – and what she thought the appropriate standard was.
What you seem to fail to realize, is that the choice is not between hire/no hire for a prestigious job. The choice is between:
– elevating a man to the highest court
– utterly destroying his reputation, his career, and the lives of his wife and daughters.
This should not have been the choice presented. There should have been an option to deny him the privilege while allowing him to (mostly) maintain his dignity and reputation. The way that could have been achieved was to:
1) launch an investigation as soon as Feinstein received the letter, perhaps with some discretion in order to protect the identity of Dr. Ford and the other witnesses
2) withhold judgement until all the evidence was collected and presented to the judiciary committee
Had that been done, I think it very possible that the judiciary committee would have refused to go forward with Kavanaugh on the grounds that “we don’t know what happened, but we want to avoid a scandal”.
That was not how it played out, however.
lliamander,
I agree that the description you give of a better way to handle this would have been much better and more dignified if it they could have pulled it off. With all the interest in the nomination though and all the people investigators would need to talk to, this investigation would have been nearly impossible to keep secret. But still worth trying I agree.
I do not agree that if two Senators votes had been switched that there would have been substantially more damage to his reputation, career and family than had already occurred. Do you really think people would have changed their opinions about this because of those two votes? Would you have changed your opinion about him because of those two votes? He would have remained a hero and been a martyr for his supporters and his opponents would not have changed their opinion about him.
For that matter, I do not think there would have been less damage to his reputation if his nomination had been withdrawn after an investigation the details of which were successfully kept secret. That might have even been worse for his reputation since he would have been denied the chance to give a public defense and the withdrawal would have been taken as evidence of wrongdoing.
What I find so difficult to believe is how little criticism is being leveled against the Judiciary Committee chair, Senator Grassley, and the Senate rules in general.
A large number of commenters are just assuming that Feinstein sabotaged this by dropping the allegation at the last minute. That probably isn’t even true, but it might be. Shouldn’t the process be able to deal with last minute accusations? This will certainly happen again.
Dr. Ford didn’t want to go public because she didn’t think her story was sufficient, and she was right. There should have been a vetting, and the committee should have been able to agree to not have a public hearing on this matter because there was no corroborating evidence. The accusation relied 100% on the word of one person and occurred 35 years ago.
It was a serious accusation, but a single person’s word cannot be enough to air an accusation of this type in a public hearing. This should be a standing agreement in the Senate.
Senate rules made this a mess by not having bipartisan civility and by not having a set of procedures in place for dealing with accusations whenever they occur. Grassley made this worse by refusing to handle this properly.
There should be a legal framework allowing the Senate to call on FBI or equivalent investigators when they need them for such matters. Having the White House able to dictate the terms of any such investigation contributed to the mess. The instructions should have been bi-partisan. The investigation should have happened prior to calling a hearing. Whose fault was that?
This did not have to become the embarrassment it became. This did not happen only because of the Democrats or only because of Feinstein.
I do not agree that if two Senators votes had been switched that there would have been substantially more damage to his reputation, career and family than had already occurred. Do you really think people would have changed their opinions about this because of those two votes?
I would not be at all surprised. And I call as evidence the pro football Super Bowl. If one team attempts a game winning field goal at the end and the ball sails just inside one of the cross bars, they become celebrated, get most of the publicity in the off-season, are commonly referred to as the best, etc., etc. If the ball hits the cross bar and bounces out, they are also-rans, the other team is great, etc., etc.
A few inches make that much difference to affect.
I do not think unsubstantiated accusations of a groping 30 years ago are evidence to keep someone off the Supreme Court.
On a political level I don’t think politics can function an environment where we allow such claims to make or break political lives. People are free to weigh these things while in the voting booth, but it’s telling that both presidential candidates where far more credibly accused of worse in their personal lives than Kav in the last election.
In terms of “ability to fulfill the functions of a Supreme Court judge” we’ve seen zero evidence that whatever happened at a party 30 years ago has effected Kav ability to be a judge. Everyone throughout his career has thought him a good judge. He doesn’t appear to be some violent blackout drunk. And he doesn’t appear to be someone with some deep seated hatred or dismissal of women (the women in his family and professional life don’t seem to think so). So on the grounds of competence we don’t have any evidence that Kav is unfit.
With Ford she didn’t think this incident was enough to go after Kav for *30 years*. Only when Kav could potentially play a political role did she think this incident was important enough. It was politics, not the incident, that drove her action. Just as it was politics, not the incident, that has driven the actions of those opposing Kav.
Character is a funny thing in politics. When Ceaser wanted to divorce his wife to gain a more advantageous marriage (and be political allies with her potential rapist and all around bad dude) he leveled a similar unsubstantiated accusation (nobody believed it) against his wife to justify his divorce. “The wife of Ceaser ought not even to be under suspicion.”
What’s going on with Kav is political. And it takes place in a context that we can’t ignore. There is a desire to bypass criminal court and try men for sexual matters under entirely new grounds. Whether it be the Kangaroo Title IX courts of the University, or merely the court of social media which has proven more than enough to destroy lives. “Believe all women” is literally a call to believe all claims regardless of evidence.
It dovetails nicely into a more general leftist movement to remove evidence entirely from all matters and replace it with identity politics. “Hands up, don’t shoot!” But his hands weren’t up and he had committed multiple assaults that day against civilian and police and was charging the police officer at the time he was shot. Thus the court found him innocent. Doesn’t matter! He’s guilty. He’s all men. All whites. A symbol of the system of oppression!
If this was about what happened to Ford it would have been resolved long ago. It’s not about that. It’s about politics and power. That’s why it only mattered when Kav might have impacted politics.
On the personal level I think we all agree that if it’s enough to keep you off the court, it’s enough to say you an unperson. You might as well call him guilty. In the modern world having your name dragged through the mud and your career ruined is what we do to destroy people. We don’t have firing squads, we have social media and economic destitution. In our genteel modern world that’s the proscription list.
asdf,
>—” “Believe all women” is literally a call to believe all claims regardless of evidence.”
Yes it is. That’s why no one in this discussion is saying that! If you can even find someone who is saying that take it up with them.
Again I note how most commenters want to discuss everything but Arnold’s question which was not, “What can you prove?” but if you had to bet your life with the very imperfect knowledge we have, which way would you bet on whether or not Ford’s allegations are true?
“but if you had to bet your life with the very imperfect knowledge we have, which way would you bet on whether or not Ford’s allegations are true?”
The whole point of what we have accomplished as a civilization is that we don’t have to bet peoples lives on this sort of thing. That’s why we have a presumption of innocence.
You’ve asserted with a high degree of confidence that “Ford wouldn’t have done this if it wasn’t true (or highly likely to be true).” I don’t find that statement reasonable. There are lots of possible reasons for Ford to do what she did.
I’m radically unsure what probably to assign to reasons or events due to lack of evidence. You seem eager to assign probability with a high degree of confidence based on an intuition I don’t assign the same value to.
asdf,
>—“The whole point of what we have accomplished as a civilization is that we don’t have to bet peoples lives on this sort of thing.”
Yeah, you are taking that question a lot more literally than I meant it and I think you know that. What I meant was, it’s clear by now there is no way we can force you to answer the question Arnold asks. I was reminding you that this is his blog and he thought it was good question to ask anyway. He wasn’t asking about the presumption of innocence. That might be the subject of a very interesting but very different blog post.
And Kavanaugh detractors keep trying to create a free option for themselves at the expense of others.
Implementation: Level accusations outside the normal, established approach.
Upside: No Kavanaugh, possible ‘better’ judge (definitions vary)
Downside: Kavanaugh seated, which probably was going to happen anyway.
Costs:
* Impact to Kavanaugh
* Impact to Ford
* Damage to the political system and increased political strife.
Apparently the Dems and their supporters put no value on the costs, so it’s a free option. They get a little upside at a price they are willing to pay. (They didn’t factor in how it would play in Peoria.)
“Level accusations outside the normal, established approach.”
Are you talking about the normal, established approach of the Senate Judiciary Committee consent hearings?
If you are, are you leveling accusations against Feinstein?
Please tell us what your evidence is. Explain to me why what you are doing is any better than what you are complaining about.
Here’s the timeline, per USA Today
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2018/09/24/brett-kavanaugh-allegations-timeline-supreme-court/1408073002/
• I did not mention Feinstein, you did
• Someone leaked the allegations outside the normal senate process and after having the opportunity to raise the allegations privately
• Occam’s razor suggests the Republicans had no reason to do so. Might have been Feinstein, someone in her office, another dem, or even second hand from someone that knew of the allegations and told the media.
• USA Today said it was a dem. Since I consider us print and tv media heavily democrat-aligned I give it ‘statement against interests’ level of weight
So. Allegations were raised outside the normal senate process channel and after the opportunity to raise them privately was past. Those allegations were probably, but not definitively, from an anti-Kav source
Either way, publicizing the allegations in the form they were incurred the costs I noted with the benefits (to dems and their supporters) I noted. Again, I didn’t say who did it. I don’t know.
Dems and anti-Kavs seize on the free (to them) option and run. Whether they were involved in the initial disclosure or not.
Oh, and attempt to score ‘you don’t care about women and sexual assault’ points in the bargain.
Fielding,
>—“And Kavanaugh detractors keep trying to create a free option for themselves at the expense of others.”
The “free option” for chief “Kavanaugh detractor” Ford included being driven from her home by death threats in the least surprising development of this whole episode. And having her name dragged through the mud with the wildest kind of speculation about her by many Kavanaugh supporters.
You apparently missed the fact that I included impact on Ford as a cost.
I would thank you not to attempt to score ‘you don’t care about women/victims’ points at my expense.
Fielding,
Yeah you included it as a cost.
Then you dismissed it as cost. Like this:
>—“Apparently the Dems and their supporters put no value on the costs, so it’s a free option.”
Sorry about how expensive this has all been to you.
It’s a cost to Ford
It’s not a cost, or at least one they care about, to Feinstein, Schumer, Booker, CNN, etc etc.
Multiple actors, multiple objectives, multiple objective functions.
Sorry about how hard it is for you to wrap your head around these concepts.
Fielding,
Yeah, it’s true. My head is not really getting around that. Guilty as charged. Silly me. I thought Ford was both “a Dem” and a “Dem supporter.” Is she not?
And if she is wouldn’t this apply to her?: “Apparently the Dems and their supporters put no value on the costs, so it’s a free option.” You wrote that, not me. I cut and pasted it from YOUR comment.
It is a little hard to explain what her motivation was for coming forward with a false allegation. There is not a lot of upside for her in that and she has no history of either seeking celebrity or engaging in more than a normal amount of political activity.
>Yeah, it’s true. My head is not really getting around that. Guilty as charged. Silly me. I thought Ford was both “a Dem” and a “Dem supporter.” Is she not?
She is, but the point you appear to be missing and that I clarified by naming Feinstein, Booker, etc is that Ford is not the one making the decisions on how this is going down. So she’s not the one distorting the process to create the free option.
Her motivation and even the accuracy of her statements are irrelevant to my point. You brought it up. I didn’t. It doesn’t matter and isn’t germane.
Nice little dance you do there.
So someone, somewhere made an allegation outside the normal senate process channel? Possibly a Senator, or perhaps it was some guy sitting on their bed who weighs 400 pounds? I know, you’ve said you aren’t sure.
So, because of Occams razor and all that, its probably Kavanaugh detractors, which probably means Dems, which means apparently Dems and their supporters put no value on the costs, like damage to the political system, so it’s a free option, and don’t go claiming you don’t care about women and sexual assault.
Got it.
Eh, you asked, I answered.
I thought about not bothering. Next time I won’t.
Since everyone would rather talk about the sad state of our political culture and norms around these issues than Arnold’s post, allow me to make a neglected point about the former.
If you want to know when our political norms around sexual impropriety really came off the tracks cast your eyes back to Starr’s investigation of Bill Clinton and the many ironies around Brett Kavanaugh’s role in that. He was famously one of the lawyers on the Starr team who pressed the hardest for as many salacious sexual details as possible about that totally consensual relationship between two adults. All they really needed to support the perjury charge was the DNA from the blue dress. The rest was about doing political damage to Clinton with Lewinsky as collateral damage. This is precisely what Kavanaugh was referring to in his highly partisan and inappropriate reference to the Ford charges as “the revenge of the Clintons.” There is not the slightest evidence that the Clintons had anything to do with these Supreme Court confirmation hearing.
And you might consider how the guy who nominated Kavanaugh and coached him on his denials filled the gallery of the Presidential debates with Bill Clinton accusers whose allegations were decades past their litigate by dates.
Just maybe the pathology didn’t start with Feinstein who – by the way – for all of you so concerned with the presumption of innocence – hasn’t been proven to be guilty of any misbehavior at this point!