Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from> around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
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Paul Krugman: Republicans Take the Hypocrite’s Oath
On graduation, most medical students swear some version of the ancient Hippocratic oath — a promise to act morally in their role as physicians. Human nature being what it is, some will break their promise. But we still expect those who provide health care to behave more ethically than the average member of society.
When it comes to how political figures deal with health care, however, we’ve come to expect the opposite, at least on one side of the aisle. It often seems as if Republican politicians have secretly sworn a Hypocrite’s oath — a promise to mislead voters to the best of their ability, to claim to support the very protections for the sick they’re actively working to undermine.
To see what I mean, consider the case of Josh Hawley of Missouri, who is running for the Senate against Claire McCaskill.
Hawley is one of 20 state attorneys general who have brought a lawsuit attempting to repeal a key provision of the Affordable Care Act — the provision that protects people with pre-existing medical conditions, by requiring that insurance companies cover everyone of similar age at the same rate regardless of medical history. Kill that provision, and millions of vulnerable Americans will lose their insurance.
But here’s the thing: Protecting coverage for pre-existing conditions is overwhelmingly popular, commanding majority support even among Republicans. And McCaskill has been hammering Hawley over his role in that lawsuit.
Eugene Robinson: Just how low can Republican senators go?
If that hearing could have possibly gone worse, please tell me how.
Christine Blasey Ford was the soul of credibility, which should be no surprise. She is a PhD psychologist in the middle of a distinguished career. Her voice was both strong and vulnerable as she recounted the details of the sexual assault she says she suffered more than 35 years ago at the clumsy, drunken hands of Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh. She didn’t sound like a partisan. She sounded like a determined survivor.
Kavanaugh sounded like a man fighting for his life. That was no surprise, either, but his tone was unexpected. He shouted. He wept. He flatly accused Democratic senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee of timing Ford’s allegation as a last-ditch effort to prevent his confirmation — a startling allegation from a sitting federal appellate judge, let alone a nominee for the Supreme Court.
The body language of the Republicans on the panel reflected the bipolar nature of the day. Ford’s compelling testimony slumped their shoulders and furrowed their brows. Kavanaugh’s fiery self-defense seemed to animate them, buck them up and perhaps rescue his nomination’s chance of approval.
We should have known that unless Ford or Kavanaugh somehow fell apart in the witness chair, the nation would be left with a dilemma. What I didn’t fully realize was how damaging and divisive that dilemma may ultimately prove to be.
Michelle Goldberg: Christine Blasey Ford’s Sacrifice
On Thursday, Christine Blasey Ford testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the world, that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were both teenagers. Her soft voice cracked as she spoke. She smiled a lot; her attempts to make everyone see how agreeable and reasonable she is were heart-rending. But she was also poised and precise, occasionally speaking as an expert — she’s a psychology professor — as well as a victim. Watching her push through her evident terror was profoundly inspiring.
The hearing, by contrast, was profoundly dispiriting. If I were allowed to curse in The New York Times, this column would be one word repeated over and over. There is no reason Republicans had to put Blasey through that cruel, wrenching process. It made sense for her to testify, but not like that, as if she were on trial, or imposing on the committee’s precious time. It’s inexcusable that Kavanaugh’s friend Mark Judge, who Blasey identifies as a witness to the alleged assault, hasn’t been questioned, and that there are no plans to do so. Perhaps if senators had heard sworn testimony from Judge — who wrote books detailing his youthful binge drinking — they might have decided to call the whole degrading spectacle off.
Ruth Marcus: Ford’s testimony was devastating. Kavanaugh’s was volcanic.
“Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter, the uproarious laughter between the two . . . I was underneath one of them while the two laughed.”
That laughter is now indelibly etched into my hippocampus, too, and, I suspect, in the minds of everyone who listened to Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
I have built my professional career on words, and the capacity of words to convey information and argument. But Thursday’s session reaffirmed the unrivaled and compelling power of personal testimony, not only in providing information but also in assessing competing narratives.
Long before the advent of livestreamed hearings, the framers of the constitution embedded this crucial insight into the Sixth Amendment guarantee that “in all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right . . . to be confronted with the witnesses against him.”
And while a confirmation hearing is not a criminal proceeding, and it would be wrong to import some of the other essential elements of criminal process into the confirmation, the fundamental wisdom of the Constitution’s approach was on display Thursday. Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh was confronted with the witness against him — one of them, anyway — and it was devastating.
Richard Wolff: Brett Kavanaugh’s credibility has not survived this devastating hearing
They say there are no heroes and no leaders left in Washington. Well one showed up in front of the Senate judiciary committee, and her name is Dr Christine Blasey Ford.
Victims are supposed to be many things: suffering creatures who struggle to withstand the klieg lights of a court, or a hearing. Ford was something else entirely.
Her pain was clear each time her voice cracked and her eyes welled with tears. But her courage, decency and honesty were even clearer as she walked carefully over ground she plainly never wanted to revisit from her teenage years. [..]
The contrast with the US supreme court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, could not have been greater. He was hot and bothered from the outset, fiddling with his shirt cuffs, sniffing incessantly, anxiously unscrewing small bottles of water, spraying accusations across the political landscape.
He lapsed into his old role as a political hack, accusing a wide range of actors for his suffering: the media, the Democrats on the judiciary committee, a vast leftwing conspiracy, the Clintons. He predicted political Armageddon as sex was weaponized to destroy reputations, notably his own, as he was just on the verge of success.
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