The Democrats’ Kavanaugh bluff is falling apart fast

A cornered animal is the most dangerous because it’s the most desperate and unpredictable. Similarly, cornered politicians are capable of reaching levels of absurdity that were once assumed humanly impossible.

Cases in point: Here are Democratic Sens. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, and Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., trying their best to explain why Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser shouldn’t have to testify about her claims before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday.

“Denying Dr. Ford an FBI investigation is silencing her,” Gillibrand tweeted. “Forcing her into a sham hearing is silencing her. And pushing through Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation is silencing her.”

“I am totally disappointed that all of these people who have come forward to say we should hear from her and now that she’s expecting a modicum of fairness so she’s not re-victimized are now saying ‘If she doesn’t want to testify, we should just go ahead,’” Hirono said on CNN.

So let’s get this straight.

When we finally got details and a name attached to the mystery letter of accusations that we’d heard about for days, back when Ford was supposedly willing to testify about her alleged experience, the Democratic line was that the vote should only happen after she could come before the committee. Follow-up calls and other methods of evaluation wouldn’t suffice.

Now that she has been given a week to prepare to talk about something that she first brought to her congresswoman’s attention back in July and has been given the option of doing so in either a public or a private setting, no dice.

Indeed, now the line is that having her give her testimony under oath is “silencing her,” and allowing her to do the thing she offered to do days ago is “re-victimizing her.”

Instead, the nobler course of action, apparently, is to take a spotty, 36-year-old accusation presented without evidence and no other alleged pattern of behavior at face value and allow its mere existence completely to destroy a man’s career and his good name during the biggest job interview of his life.

How progressive.

The Federalist’s Sean Davis is right: This whole thing absolutely reeks of desperation at this point, because Democrats clearly didn’t expect to have to prove anything here. It’s like a poker player who has way too much money riding on a very weak hand and is doing everything he can to bluff his way out of his impending bankruptcy. What that guy never realizes is that everyone else at the table can see him fidgeting and sweating bullets.

And as any half-decent poker player knows, the best way to counter an obvious bluff is to call and raise it. If Ford refuses to testify Monday, the GOP should hold the hearing without her and turn the weight of this farcical exercise against the Democrats.

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