Gavin Newsom fulfills his promise and names a black woman — Laphonza Butler — to replace Dianne Feinstein.

The NYT reports.

Butler, the president of Emily’s List, "has been a fixture in California politics for nearly 15 years as a former leader of the state’s largest labor union and an adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris."

Newsom didn't pick Barbara Lee, who is a black woman and who is running to win that Senate seat in the 2024 election. He'd said he didn't want to have an impact on that race. Presumably, Laphonza Butler is committed to completing Feinstein's term and not attempting reelection. Lee is behind in the polls, so by declining to boost Lee, Newsom helped Adam Schiff, who's been leading.

Dianne Feinstein has died.

"Senator Dianne Feinstein Dies at 90/The California Democrat, the oldest member of the Senate, had been declining in health for months" (NYT).

ADDED: The NYT story is just a squib with the notation "This is a developing story. Please check back for updates." I can't understand why they wouldn't have a long and complete obituary ready to publish at the push of a button.

AND: From the WaPo obituary:

Mrs. Feinstein won her Senate seat in what became known as the Year of the Woman, an election that sent 24 new women to the House of Representatives and brought the total number of female senators to six.

"Dianne Feinstein, 90, cedes power of attorney to daughter — but still serves in Congress."

The NY Post reports.

It's not as bad as the headline makes it sound. You might imagine that Feinstein is so far gone she can't handle her own personal finances, but:

Feinstein handed over power of attorney to her daughter, 66-year-old Katherine Feinstein, in part to help handle legal battles over her late husband Richard Blum’s estate...  In one dispute, Katherine, Feinstein’s only child, is at odds with Blum’s three daughters over the ownership of a luxury beach house owned by Feinstein....

She doesn't want to be distracted by intrafamily litigation that's really about Katherine's interests, not her own. But it's something to pounce on, if you're inclined. Yes, for other reasons, it's apparent that Feinstein doesn't belong in Congress, but this adds almost nothing. 

Gerontocracy update.

Asked to vote on the defense appropriations bill, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) begins giving a speech: “I would like to support a ‘yes’ vote on this. It provides …”

Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA): “Just say aye.” pic.twitter.com/Gw2eZ9rEMv

— The Recount (@therecount) July 27, 2023

"Putting any kind of public pressure on Ms. Feinstein has been criticized by the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi and others as sexist."

"'I’ve never seen them go after a man who was sick in the Senate in that way,' Ms. Pelosi said last month. It’s true that the Senate, which has always been entirely or mostly male, has experienced long absences by some of its male members. In the 1940s, Senator Carter Glass of Virginia was absent for four years because of heart trouble. Senator Karl Mundt of South Dakota had a stroke in 1969 and never really came back in the following three years. In 2001, when he was 98, Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina was wheeled to the Senate floor to cast votes, despite widespread concern about his mental fitness. In all of those cases, as with Ms. Feinstein, the senators ignored concerns about their capacity and pleas from their colleagues as long as they could. This Senate tradition should have been discarded long ago. Senate seats are not lifetime sinecures...."

Writes the NYT Editorial Board, calling on Dianne Feinstein to resign from the Senate.

But isn't Pelosi right? Something has been done badly by men for a long, long time, and suddenly it just has to stop... because a woman is doing it? Pick a different occasion for standing on lucid, sensible policy! Dianne Feinstein is no more in the way than Glass and Mundt and Thurmond. They received an old-fashioned sentimental Senatorial respect. Perhaps that respect is ridiculous. Perhaps it's just inconvenient. But use this newfound principle first against a few men or it's evidence of sexism. Pelosi's right.

"Senator Dianne Feinstein... announced on Tuesday that she would not run for re-election in 2024 but would finish out her term in Congress..."

"... Ms. Feinstein, 89, has had acute short-term memory issues for years that sometimes raise concern among those who interact with her. She has never acknowledged the problems.... Ms. Feinstein... these days struggles to recall the names of colleagues, frequently has little recollection of meetings or telephone conversations, and at times walks around in a state of befuddlement...."

The NYT reports.

Hard to understand how she can serve for 2 more years, but I'm sure she's seen other cases of Senators in a similar condition, though it seems that at this point, she would not remember.

"The last year has been extremely painful and distracting for me, flying back and forth to visit my dying husband who passed just a few weeks ago."

"But there’s no question I’m still serving and delivering for the people of California, and I’ll put my record up against anyone’s."

Said a written statement from Dianne Feinstein dated, March 28, quoted in "Colleagues worry Dianne Feinstein is now mentally unfit to serve, citing recent interactions" (San Francisco Chronicle).

I'm creating a new tag, "gerontocracy" to keep track of the news about the many aging politicians and judges and other leaders who seem to be gaining in power as time wears on. There's an instinct to be kind and forgiving or at least polite to these older folks, an instinct that may be about our own self-preservation. We may fear our own aging, and the loss of power and influence that threatens to accompany it. But we also fear that will be accused of discrimination or bigotry if we impugn the old, even if they crowd out the younger people who should be rising into the most challenging positions.

Anyway, this obviously isn't just about Dianne Feinstein. It's about President Biden and Donald Trump and many other individuals who don't know when it's time to scale back. Obama had his "bitter clingers," who were just ordinary people who didn't have much and were "clinging" to things that everyone can have — guns and religion. But the clingers of the gerontocracy are depriving others of something — power. They may have lost the ability to use that power competently. And we ordinary people can barely bring ourselves to criticize them for clinging (other than in the stupidly partisan manner that has infected and thoroughly debased American political speech).

The immortal Feinstein.

I'm reading "California Recall: Unpredictable Election Has Democrats Concerned About Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s Seat" (CBS, San Francisco):

It’s the Democrats’ doomsday scenario: California Gov. Gavin Newsom loses his recall race this fall, and a Senate vacancy is later filled by a GOP governor. And the 50-50 Senate, currently controlled by Democrats, is run again by Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell.

Nobody wants to talk about it openly, but Dianne Feinstein is 88 years old.

In an interview with CNN, Feinstein made clear the recall election won’t affect her plans to serve out her full six years — no matter the outcome of the race. “Why would I?” Feinstein said when asked if she would consider resigning in the period between a Newsom loss and before a GOP governor could be sworn in. Feinstein added: “It doesn’t affect me — the recall is just against him.” Asked if she had even considered stepping aside as the recall campaign has gotten underway, Feinstein said: “No.”

That's Ruth Bader Ginsburg style grit.

Now, maybe she'll cave to pressure if Newsom actually loses. There could be a 38-day period before the new GOP governor takes office. 

"Until the San Francisco Unified School District board stripped Dianne Feinstein’s name from one of its public schools, we were unaware of the Senator’s service to the Confederacy."

"While the city’s mayor, she had replaced a vandalized Confederate flag that was part of a historical display outside City Hall. So now it’s goodbye to Dianne Feinstein Elementary School. The Feinstein purge is among the banishments the board took Tuesday night when it voted 6-1 to rename 44 schools. The most absurd target is Abraham Lincoln, who waged the war that ended slavery...." 

From "Cancelling Dianne Feinstein In San Francisco, the Senator now ranks with Confederate generals" by The Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal. 

"Also canceled were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Daniel Webster and Paul Revere. The criteria used to come up with the list of villains is whether they had promoted slavery, genocide, the oppression of women or 'otherwise significantly diminished the opportunities of those amongst us to the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.'"  

Maybe stop naming schools after human beings. These folks are flawed, and it's going to come around and bite you in the ass sooner or later. Here in Madison, where we live on the west side of town, my kids went to a high school called West High School. Keep it geographical. Although if I had to argue that "West" was a politically incorrect name, I could do it. In defense of West, I note that over on the east side of town, the high school is called East High School. 

It was especially bad to name a school after Dianne Feinstein, a living politician. You never know what these creatures who still walk the face of the earth might do to complicate your effort at honor. If you must name schools after human beings, choose dead ones who've proven their status as heroes. But that's a bad idea too. Schools should teach critical thinking and a deep understanding of history, and that's inconsistent with having one person's name hanging over the kids' head all the time. 

And what's absurd about pursuing inquiry into the shortcomings of Abraham Lincoln? It's a great idea, if it involves teaching the kids to learn the methodologies of history. It's supposed to be education, not religion.

"Curiously, the media maintains that Feinstein was declining mentally for years but neither reporters nor members noted it before her recent election."

Curiously, the media maintains that Feinstein was declining mentally for years but neither reporters nor members noted it before her recent election.https://t.co/Cy0wqXzp4f It was only after she hugged Graham after the Barrett hearing that she was declared effectively incompetent

— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) December 10, 2020

The Senate Judiciary Committee begins its work on the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett.

Watch from the beginning here, at C-SPAN.

I turned on the TV and looked at CNN for about a minute before clicking off. Amy Coney Barrett was sitting stiffy, staring forward, her lower faced covered in a big black mask. Dianne Feinstein, maskless, was grimly chewing her out. Ghoulish. Unwatchable. 

I'll be paying attention from a distance, but I can't help believing I already know everything that will be said and where we'll end up. I'll comment on the proceedings as I see fit.

What percentage of the discussion will be about abortion? 85?

"Democrats worry Feinstein can't handle Supreme Court battle/Colleagues fear the oldest senator may struggle to lead Democrats on the Judiciary Committee."

Politico interviewed more than a dozen Democratic senators and aides" about Dianne Feinstein, 87, who might not be up to the challenge of leading the opposition to Trump's nominee.

A Democratic senator, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said a group of Feinstein’s colleagues want Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) or Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) to serve as the top Democrat on the Judiciary panel for the upcoming nomination hearings, which are expected to be extraordinarily contentious. This senator is worried that potential missteps by Feinstein could cost Democrats seats.

“She’s not sure what she’s doing,” the Democratic senator said of Feinstein. “If you take a look at Kavanaugh, we may be short two senators because of that. And if this gets [messed] up, it may be the same result. I think it could impact a number of seats we can win,” the senator added.

Another Democratic senator said party leaders were “in an impossible position,” pointing out that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y) and other senior Democrats can’t replace a female senator for hearings on an expected female nominee to replace a deceased female Supreme Court justice....

A third Democratic senator put it this way: “She can’t pull this off.”...

ADDED: "Pull off" is a funny phrase. I looked it up in the OED. It has many meanings that are not at all what the third Democratic Senator meant. For example, in U.S. slang, it means "To steal, esp. by picking a pocket":

1883 ‘M. Twain’ Life on Mississippi lii. 511 I pulled off an old woman's leather; (robbed her of her pocket-book).

And it means, in "coarse slang," "To masturbate (a man); to cause (a man) to ejaculate by masturbation":

1909 J. Joyce Let. 8 Dec. in Sel. Lett. (1975) 184 I pulled myself off twice when I read your letter. I am delighted to see that you do like being fucked arseways.
1922 J. Joyce Ulysses iii. xviii. [Penelope] 711 How did we finish it off yes O yes I pulled him off into my handkerchief pretending not to be excited.

I'm using high prestige authors to illustrate the lowly meanings.

But the perfectly appropriate meaning is "To succeed in accomplishing, achieving, or producing (something); to carry off." Not necessarily some sort of sneaky caper!

1923 H. G. Wells Men like Gods i. i. 6 He was not really clever enough to pull such a thing off.
1960 ‘Miss Read’ Fresh from Country (1962) xviii. 197 ‘And good luck to the old girl, say I!’ continued Joan warmly... ‘Let's hope she pulls it off!’

"Having Barrett replace Ginsberg because they are women is like having Clarence Thomas replace Thurgood Marshall because they're black."

Top-rated comment on "Who is Amy Coney Barrett, the judge at the top of Trump’s list to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg?" (WaPo).

From the article:

A devout Catholic who is fervently antiabortion, Barrett appeals to Trump’s conservative base. But Republicans also hope that for moderates such as Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), her gender makes her a more palatable replacement for Ginsburg, a feminist icon who spent her life fighting for gender equality....

Trump first nominated Barrett to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit in 2017. Previously, she’d taught law at the University of Notre Dame for 15 years, so she had no previous judicial record to scrutinize. Democrats balked at her nomination, questioning whether the academic could be an impartial arbiter because of her deep religious convictions. Republicans accused Democrats of applying a religious test in their questioning.

That links to a September 7, 2017 WaPo article "Did Dianne Feinstein accuse a judicial nominee of being too Christian?"

Amy Barrett... has spoken often of her Catholic faith and drawn opposition from liberal groups, which argue that she'd place it above the law. Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, echoed those concerns Wednesday at a confirmation hearing, telling Barrett that “the dogma lives loudly within you, and that's of concern …”

I blogged about that at the time, here. Excerpt:

Is "dogma" a dog whistle, expressive of anti-Catholic bias or does it aptly characterize a person with fixed beliefs that interfere with understanding law in a properly judicial way?... We're being asked to rely on the decisions that will come from the mind of this nominee. That mind must be tested, and it can't be tested enough. There are all sorts of biases and disabilities within any human mind, and the hearings can do very little to expose the limitations of an intelligent, well-prepared nominee....

A nominee with a mind entirely devoted to religion and intending to use her position as a judge to further the principles of her religion should be voted down just like a candidate who revealed that he'd go by "what decision in a case was most likely to advance the cause of socialism."

I'd like to think that a religious person has a strong moral core that would preclude that kind of dishonesty, but we're not required to give religious nominees a pass and presume they're more honest than nominees who are not religious devotees. That would be religious discrimination!

ADDED: Is it too late to be annoyed by the use of "they" in the quote in the post title? Also let me remind you of what Thurgood Thurgood Marshall said as he was retiring from the Court, before Clarence Thomas was nominated:

Q: Do you think President Bush has any kind of an obligation to name a minority justice in your place?

Thurgood Marshall: What?

Q: Do you think President Bush has any kind of an obligation to name a minority candidate for your job?

Thurgood Marshall: I don't think that that should be a ploy, and I don't think it should be used as an excuse one way or the other.

Q: An excuse for what, Justice?

Thurgood Marshall: Doing wrong. I mean for picking the wrong Negro and saying "I'm picking him because he is a Negro." I am opposed to that. My dad told me way back that you can't use race. For example, there's no difference between a white snake and black snake, they'll both bite. So I don't want to use race as an excuse.

Dianne Feinstein has the guts to stand up to the children. That's not easy!

Who knew Dianne Feinstein could be so savage? pic.twitter.com/BqkYD6iWMe

— Kyle Morris (@RealKyleMorris) February 22, 2019

"Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal ran a story on how three conservatives nominated to the rogue Ninth Circuit..."

"... but whose nominations lapsed with the last Congress, had been left off the list of nominees resubmitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Many of us cried foul. According to the story, the White House was trying to reach some kind of a bargain with Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris, allegedly to grease the skids for the inevitable replacement of Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court. There are several reasons to not engage in negotiations with either Feinstein or Harris. Harris is running for president. She is incapable, even under ideal circumstances of dealing in good faith.... Feinstein, likewise, is not trustworthy and after her performance during the Kavanaugh auto-da-fé any Republican who deals with her should be shunned.... The White House is now announcing that two of the tree nominess [sic], Daniel Collins, Kenneth Lee, have been renominated to the Ninth Circuit while Patrick Bumatay is being nominated to a district judge position. This is just bullsh**. We have the votes to crush Democrat opposition. The fact they don’t like a guy…and Feinstein and Harris were terrified of Bumatay because he’s young, Filipino, conservative and gay, making him almost bulletproof to their attacks—is reason itself to push his nomination through."

From "The Trump White House Does A Partial Cave To Feinstein And Harris On Ninth Circuit Nominees" at Red State.

Here's the White House announcement of the new nominees.

Here's the WSJ editorial (behind the paywall).

Here's Rush Limbaugh yesterday (before the new White House announcement, reacting to the WSJ):

"I’m a big fan of Sen. Harris, and I work with her. But she’s brand-new here, so it takes a little bit of time to get to know somebody."

Said Dianne Feinstein, endorsing Biden (L.A. Times):

“He has the experience, the drive, he was chairman of [the Senate Judiciary Committee] when I came” to the Senate, Feinstein said Thursday. “I worked with him closely on a number of different things. I have a great respect for his integrity as well as his ability. And I think experience is really important at this particular point, where our world is today.”

That's a very bland endorsement, based entirely and openly on the length of her personal relationship.

Let's watch the Kavanaugh hearing.

1. It's about to start. I'll update this post as we go.

2. Dr. Christine Blasey Ford has taken her seat. She's nervously looking around, getting patted on the back. She's wearing a dark blue jacket over a dark blue top and has her hair done in a way that allows it to fall over her face and to need to be pushed back. Senator Grassley begins by apologizing to both Blasey and Kavanaugh for the incivility to which both have been subjected. He says he intends to preserve civility in the hearing and to make it "comfortable" for both witnesses.

3. Grassley criticizes Democrats for sitting on the allegations, allowing them to leak out belatedly, and failing to resolve matters in a bipartisan way. Democrats, he says, are to blame for the pain that "Dr. Ford" has suffered in recent days. He praises himself for doing he could to accommodate her. (I put "Dr. Ford" in quotes to indicate that's what she is being called here. I had switched to calling her "Blasey" after reading in the NYT that she preferred that name. From here on, I'll write "Dr. Ford" without quotes.)

4. Dianne Feinstein: "She wanted it confidential, and I held it confidential, up to a point..."

5. Feinstein casts an aspersion on Grassley: He didn't introduce Dr. Ford. Grassley, angered, interrupts to say that he didn't forget to introduce her. He was going to introduce her at the point when he was inviting her to begin speaking.

6. Still waiting for Feinstein to finish reading her intro statement. Dr. Ford seems to be struggling to keep her composure. After Feinstein, I presume we will hear Dr. Ford read this statement, already released to the press.

7. "I am here today not because I want to be. I am terrified...." she begins, in a creaky voice.

8. Sorry, but I got an hour and a half behind. Will resume.

9. Now, I've watched the entire opening statement by Dr. Ford. She seemed very credible to me. Though she was reading, she seemed to be reliving a real, traumatic experience. It's hard to imagine that she could be infusing her speech with that kind of emotion phonily. Even an excellent actress would have difficulty affecting that kind of emotion.

10.  Rachel Mitchell, the prosecutor brought in to ask questions for the Senators, receives 5 minutes of time from Senator Grassley. Mitchell's use of the time is awkward, because she begin with documents that Ford must read and comment on, and Ford takes her time and makes small corrections to the documents. Grassley interrupts to say his time is up, and shifts the proceedings forward to the next Senator, Dianne Feinstein,

11. Feinstein takes her turn and focuses on the difficulties Ford experienced as her name became known. This material bolsters Ford's credibility, especially to the extent that it seems that Ford knew how painful this exposure would be before she decided to go public. Feinstein's time runs out quickly and Mitchell gets another 5 minutes to continue where she left off.

12. Mitchell's approach enables Ford, just by being careful, to slow everything down. The time will run out. The day will end. Maybe Kavanaugh supporters wanted it to play out like that, but Ford is a credible person, and I think the Republicans chosen approach, including the use of Mitchell, will backfire on them, and Kavanaugh will not be confirmed. I'm saying this at 11:06 ET in my recording, that is, an hour before I'm writing this update.

13. At 11:13 ET, Ford speaks of the "indelible" memory of Kavanaugh and Judge laughing — "having fun at my expense." "I was underneath one of them, while the 2 laughed, 2 friends having a really good time with one another."

14. At 11:56 ET, during the questioning by Senator Whitehouse, I exclaim aloud: "The Democrats are winning by a lot here." Whitehouse is talking about the lack of an investigation.

15. Grassley gets angry and yells — about why there is no new investigation — but it feels so wrong that he's yelling in the presence of Dr. Ford. She's the allegedly traumatized victim — don't yell around her! The Republicans are either too bland — operating through Mitchell — or irksomely angry — through Grassley. Do they know how badly they are losing right now? I wonder how Brett Kavanaugh is doing.

16. I'm skipping ahead, looking to see if Kavanaugh's testimony has begun. It has not. I talk with Meade for a while about what Kavanaugh might say if he were asked if he is 100% certain that Ford is wrong when she says she's 100% certain that Brett Kavanaugh did what she remembers. Here's what I imagined Kavanaugh saying: I cannot be 100% certain. I know that I drank far too much on some occasions when I was an immature teenager, and though I've said that I don't remember ever suffering alcohol-induced amnesia, I cannot know for an absolute certainty that it never happened. Watching Dr. Ford testify has been a horrific experience for me. What if there is a blank, dark spot in my memory where drunken young Brett Kavanaugh did what Dr. Ford describes? I pray to God that's not true, but I cannot say 100% that it's not true, and if it is, I am so terribly sorry. I beg Dr. Ford's forgiveness. I hope for God's forgiveness. I hope that my life's work as a sober adult makes up for what I may have done all those years ago. I still believe I have devoted and useful service to give to my country, and I humbly submit myself to your vote, Senators. And I thank all of you for considering my case, and I want Dr. Ford to know that my heart goes out to her, and my heart goes out to every victim of sexual assault. Thank you.

17. I picture Trump watching the hearings with Ivanka. Somehow I imagine Ivanka reacting like me. I wonder what they are saying to each other. Remember that Trump said at his press conference yesterday that he would watch and judge Dr. Ford for himself, that he had an open mind about it, and he could "believe anything."

18. I've been listening to Kavanaugh for a long time without stopping to write anything. Let me quickly say that I'm finding his opening statement extremely powerful and persuasive.

19. It was a long day! Let me try to wrap up this post. I thought Kavanaugh did really well in his written statement, expressing strong outrage and real emotion. In the questioning, this demeanor sometimes felt too strong. He interrupted and shouted back and seemed to show some hate and contempt for some of the Senators. He said more than once that his family had been "destroyed," and yet his wife is his "rock." The rock is not destroyed.

20. This was the ultimate he said/she said. Both were tremendously strong and they told diametrically opposed stories. If I had to decide, I would not go by who's more likely to be telling the truth, but how everything we've heard weighs on the question whether or not to confirm. In view of everything we know about Kavanaugh, does he deserve confirmation even with the degree of doubt we have about something terrible he might have done when he was 17 (and a couple of other, much weaker allegations)? I suspect most people will end up in the same position they had on him anyway, because it's a matter of weighing. But when I think about how BK and CBF could be so far apart, I have 3 explanations: 1. BK has some alcohol blackout holes in his memory, and what CBF remembers is in one of them, 2. CBF has a false memory and really believes it (caused by some genuine trauma), 3. BK has no route but forward, and he knows he did it, but feels entitled to what he's worked all his life to attain. Since there's no way back to his old life, he must force his way through this obstacle. And he's barreling ahead to save his life and save his family. Cornered, he had to fight like hell, and that includes lying.

"It’s like any witness preparation times 2,000. You come at them with the worst version you think the antagonists are likely to ask them..."

"... and you probe for their emotional stability: Can they take it?... This is pressure like you’ve never seen. … That’s why they call it 'murder boards.'"

Said Georgetown lawprof Emma Coleman Jordan, quoted in "Democrats in the dark on eve of historic Kavanaugh hearing/Senate Democrats have had no apparent contact with Christine Blasey Ford — and have no idea how she'll hold up" (Politico).

Also:

Asked whether she has confidence in Ford’s prep team, [Senator Dianne] Feinstein said that "I have no idea” and insisted that “we’re not getting involved in any of that. I assume her own lawyers are prepping her. We’re not. Let me make that very clear."

NOTE: This is the second post in a series of posts about Kavanaugh this morning. Comments on this post should only be about this article. Here's my post warning you that a series of posts is forthcoming. If you want to draw attention to other articles, do so in the comments section for that post, not this one.

About the Kavanaugh accusation, Trump says "I don't want to play into their hands."

I think the Democrats believed the Kavanaugh accusation would play out differently, that Republicans would resist and obstruct, but Trump saw how they were playing and chose not "to play into their hands."

Here's the quote in context:



"I feel so badly for him that he's going through this, to be honest with you. I feel so badly for him. This is not a man that deserves this... this should have been brought up long ago and that's what you have hearings for, you don't wait until the hearing is over and then all of a sudden bring it up. When Senator Feinstein sat with Judge Kavanaugh for a long period of time a long, long meeting. She had this letter, why didn't she bring it up? Why didn't she bring it up then? Why didn't the Democrats bring it up then? Because they obstruct and because they resist. That's the name of their campaign against me. Resist. And they just obstruct. And, frankly, I think they're lousy on policy and in many ways they're lousy politicians, but they're very good on obstruction. And it's a shame. Because this is a great gentleman. With all of that, I feel that the Republicans, and I can speak for myself, we should go through a process, because there shouldn't even be a little doubt. There shouldn't be a doubt. Again, they knew what they were doing. They should have done this a long time ago, three months ago, not now. But they did it now. So I don't want to play into their hands."

You can think about how the hand would have played out if the Republicans had been the ones to "obstruct and... resist." I think that's what the Democrats pictured, when they waited until after the hearings: "They did it now." Trump sees that as a deliberate play, and he's not going to let it work the way they planned. After what they did... "we should go through a process." That's surprising. Now, what are they to do?

I think they are scrambling. Today, we see that the accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, might not appear at the scheduled hearing — "Kavanaugh’s Accuser Has Yet to Confirm Appearance at Monday Hearings" (NYT):

The mysterious silence from Dr. Blasey and her lawyers was another turn in a drama that has gripped the Capitol since Thursday....

Dr. Blasey, thrust suddenly into a spotlight that she never sought, has been inundated with vulgar email and social media messages, and even death threats.... Dr. Blasey, who has two teenagers, has moved out of her house, is arranging for private security for herself and her family, and is effectively in hiding, [an unnamed person close to her told the NYT]....

Democrats and Republicans, meanwhile, are clashing over the scope and shape of the hearings. Mr. Grassley said Judge Kavanaugh and Dr. Blasey would be the only witnesses, prompting pushback from top Democrats, who are demanding an F.B.I. investigation to search for additional witnesses or evidence, and to avoid the specter of a “he said, she said” debate that will not get at the truth.

One possible witness is a friend of Judge Kavanaugh’s, Mark Judge, who Dr. Blasey said was in the room with Judge Kavanaugh when the assault occurred. Mr. Judge had told the Judiciary Committee that he does not remember the episode and has nothing more to say, seemingly foreclosing the possibility of an additional witness interview, at least for now.

He could be asked about his problems with alcohol-induced amnesia, his observation of Kavanaugh's drinking, and any alcohol-induced amnesia he saw in Kavanaugh, and he could be pressured to admit that he's unreliable as a witness to the nonoccurrence of any event from his heavy-drinking years.

“We have two diametrically opposed stories,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, said on the Senate floor. “My view: Professor Ford is telling the truth. But if you don’t want the hearing to be just a ‘he said, she said’ affair, an independent investigation, a background check by the F.B.I., is essential.... We must not repeat the mistakes of the Anita Hill hearings,” he said. “They were rushed, and they were a debacle.”

That is, once the hearing was scheduled, Democrats switched to saying they didn't want it. And Blasey (Ford) seems to have become unavailable. Going public with the accusation now looks a bit like a bluff. But — not wanting to play into their hands — the bluff was called. And now they want a new deal: an independent investigation. Trump rejected that (in the clip above).

Anita Hill has been brought in, with an op-ed in the NYT, saying the Clarence Thomas hearings were not done right and the Senate needs to handle the woman's allegations about sexual misconduct properly this time. She says "The job of the Senate Judiciary Committee is to serve as fact-finders, to better serve the American public, and the weight of the government should not be used to destroy the lives of witnesses who are called to testify." But her idea of fact-finding is not for the Senators to question Blasey directly, according to Hill, who says:

Select a neutral investigative body with experience in sexual misconduct cases that will investigate the incident in question and present its findings to the committee. Outcomes in such investigations are more reliable and less likely to be perceived as tainted by partisanship. Senators must then rely on the investigators’ conclusions, along with advice from experts, to frame the questions they ask Judge Kavanaugh and Dr. Blasey. Again, the senators’ fact-finding roles must guide their behavior. The investigators’ report should frame the hearing, not politics or myths about sexual assault.

So the new hand has been dealt. How do you not play into that? I'm using Trump's idiom. If it seems wrong, let's talk about that.

ADDED: This post caused me to do a fair amount of research into the phrase "play into their hands." I'm not sure what the original metaphor is, but you can see from the post that I assumed it was poker. Anyway, the phrase means to do something that unwittingly advantages your opponent.

In my search, I ran across the phrase in the famous and tragically hilarious NYT article "The Aspiring Novelist Who Became Obama’s Foreign-Policy Guru/How Ben Rhodes rewrote the rules of diplomacy for the digital age" (May 2016):

With three hours to go until the president’s address to Congress, Rhodes grabs a big Gatorade and starts combing through the text of the State of the Union address. I peek over his shoulder, to get a sense of the meta-narrative that will shape dozens of thumb-suckers in the days and weeks to follow. One sentence reads: "But as we focus on destroying ISIL, over-the-top claims that this is World War III just play into their hands." He retypes a word, then changes it back, before continuing with his edit. "Masses of fighters on the back of pickup trucks, twisted souls plotting in apartments or garages — they pose an enormous danger to civilians; they have to be stopped. But they do not threaten our national existence."

AND: Something new from Dianne Feinstein, about Blasey: "I can’t say everything’s truthful. I don’t know."

Later, she said, “Look I believe she is credible... But based on what I know at this stage she is credible,” which doesn't explicitly walk back the idea that maybe not everything Blasey said is true.

But then Feinstein came back with a sledgehammer: "During every step of this process, I’ve found every single piece of information from Dr. Christine Blasey Ford eminently credible, sincere and believable. She knew this would have a huge effect on her life and she was incredibly brave to come forward."

PLUS: Just last August, Dana Milbank (at WaPo) had a column titled "Journalists are playing into Trump’s hand":

Trump is making us the story by making us the in-house villain of his rallies.... My colleagues’ instinct has been to fight back. During a live stand-up from Trump’s Tampa rally this week, CNN’s Jim Acosta was taunted by the crowd, which had been chanting “fake news,” “go home” and “CNN sucks.” Said Acosta: “We’re staying right here. We’re going to do our job and report on this rally to all of our viewers here tonight.”

A noble sentiment, but better to “go home” — so Trump can’t use the scenes to his benefit. Eric Trump retweeted video of Trump supporters chanting “CNN sucks” at Acosta during his stand-up, adding the hashtag #Truth. The president retweeted his son....

Stop letting him make us the story.

UPDATE: I just heard on the Tucker Carlson show that Blasey has announced that she will not testify until after an independent investigation is done.

"A secretive letter shared with senators and federal investigators by the senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee charges that a teenage Brett M. Kavanaugh..."

"... and a male friend trapped a teenage girl in a bedroom during a party and tried to assault her, according to three people familiar with the contents of the letter. The letter says that Mr. Kavanaugh, then a student at Georgetown Preparatory School in suburban Washington and now President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, had been drinking at a social gathering when he and the male friend took the teenage girl into a bedroom. The door was locked, and she was thrown onto the bed. Mr. Kavanaugh then got on top of the teenager and put a hand over her mouth, as the music was turned up, according to the account. But the young woman was able to extricate herself and leave the room before anything else occurred, the letter says.... She has declined to be publicly identified, and she asked Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, not to publicize the letter."

The NYT reports in "Letter Claims Attempted Assault by a Teenage Brett Kavanaugh." Kavanaugh says "I categorically and unequivocally deny this allegation... I did not do this back in high school or at any time." And the male friend says "I never saw anything like what was described." Feinstein had been holding onto the letter since last July, which makes it feel like a last-ditch delay effort.