{"id":178672,"date":"2018-09-24T21:31:00","date_gmt":"2018-09-25T02:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/09\/24\/always-look-on-the-bright-side-of-life-2\/"},"modified":"2018-09-24T21:31:00","modified_gmt":"2018-09-25T02:31:00","slug":"always-look-on-the-bright-side-of-life-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/09\/24\/always-look-on-the-bright-side-of-life-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Always Look on the Bright Side of Life"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"border: 1px solid black; float: right; margin: 0px 10px; padding: 5px; text-align: center; width: 314px;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"171\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/SJUhlRoBL8M\" width=\"304\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>I mentioned that there were some unalloyed benefits of the entire Brett Kavanaugh debacle.<\/p>\n<p>There are two immediate benefits that come to mind, first, this spectacle has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/entry\/joe-biden-anita-hill-replay_us_5ba5089be4b0375f8f9c678f\">reminded people how hapless\/complicit that Joe Biden was in the confirmation hearings of Clarence Thomas 25 years ago<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">In the past week, it\u2019s been hard to flip on cable news without hearing the name <a href=\"https:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/topic\/anita-hill\">Anita Hill<\/a>. And that\u2019s not good for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/topic\/joe-biden\">Joe Biden<\/a>, who\u2019s thinking of running for president in 2020.  <\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is going to educate who is under the age of 35 and may not have grown up knowing Joe Biden\u2019s role in all of this,\u201d said a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/topic\/democratic-party\">Democratic<\/a> strategist who requested anonymity to speak candidly.  <\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s been 27 years since the law professor electrified the nation with her testimony about the sexual harassment she faced from Clarence Thomas, who was then up for confirmation to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/topic\/supreme-court\">Supreme Court<\/a>.  <\/p>\n<p>That hearing was widely considered a disaster, a textbook case of how not to treat a woman who comes forward. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/topic\/republican-party\">Republican<\/a> senators went after Hill and tried to make her seem like a liar, a mentally ill person and a spiteful jilted lover. But Democrats held the majority at the time, and Biden, then a senator from Delaware, was the chairman of Senate Judiciary Committee and, more than anyone else, could determine the direction and parameters of the discussion.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/>In 1991, most significantly, Biden did not call three other witnesses to testify who could have strengthened Hill\u2019s allegations. But in other ways, too, Hill said she felt like she was left out to dry, without an ally on the committee. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cMost evident from the televised Judiciary Committee hearings was the fact that I sat in that hearing room <a href=\"https:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/entry\/joe-biden-legacy_us_5877d9ace4b03688c84399b9\">without a patron on the panel<\/a>. That image still resonates,\u201d she wrote in a 1995 essay.  <\/p>\n<p>From the beginning, Biden said he recognized that Hill\u2019s allegations against Thomas were \u201ca giant incendiary bomb.\u201d But he didn\u2019t act like they were, according to Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson, who wrote <i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Strange-Justice-Selling-Clarence-Thomas\/dp\/0395633184?tag=thehuffingtop-20\">Strange Justice<\/a><\/i>, a thorough book about the Thomas confirmation battle. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This is good because if 2016 taught us anything, it is that septuagenarian defenders of the status quo are not good news for the party or the country.<\/p>\n<p>Even if you want a centrist squish, it&#8217;s clear that we need someone who can credibly present themselves as an agent of change.<\/p>\n<p>The other good news is that Susan Collins has finally been forced to reveal that her moderation is a myth, because when the vote is important and close, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/entry\/opinion-susan-collins-kavanaugh_us_5ba6620de4b0181540dd7b3d\">she will always vote with Republicans<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<div data-rapid-cpos=\"9\" data-rapid-parsed=\"subsec\" data-rapid-subsec=\"paragraph\"><span style=\"color: blue;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The campaign has also substantially weakened Collins. Recent <\/span><a data-rapid-parsed=\"slk\" data-rapid_p=\"17\" data-v9y=\"1\" data-ylk=\"subsec:paragraph;cpos:9;elm:context_link;itc:0\" href=\"http:\/\/www.protectourcare.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/ME-Care-Memo-Results.pdf\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">polling from<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Public Policy Polling puts Collins\u2019 approval underwater (35 percent approve, 48 percent disapprove) and finds that 48 percent of Mainers are opposed to confirming Kavanaugh. Even more importantly, the polling finds that 53 percent of Mainers say that Collins\u2019 handling of the Kavanaugh nomination has made them view her less favorably, while only 19 percent view her more favorably. Last year, <\/span><a data-rapid-parsed=\"slk\" data-rapid_p=\"18\" data-v9y=\"1\" data-ylk=\"subsec:paragraph;cpos:9;elm:context_link;itc:0\" href=\"http:\/\/www.sunjournal.com\/new-poll-finds-wide-support-for-susan-collins-touble-for-bruce-poliquin\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the same pollster found her<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> at 59 percent approval and 34 percent disapproval. Just this week,&nbsp;<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Wall Street Journal<\/span> <a data-rapid-parsed=\"slk\" data-rapid_p=\"19\" data-v9y=\"1\" data-ylk=\"subsec:paragraph;cpos:9;elm:context_link;itc:0\" href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/opposition-to-kavanaugh-nomination-grows-among-voters-new-poll-shows-1537477360\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">polling suggests that support<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> for Kavanaugh\u2019s nomination has slipped dramatically, with 38 percent of registered voters opposing his nomination, a surge from 29 percent opposed a month ago (only 34 percent support him, with the remaining 28 percent undecided). Among women, 28 percent favor the nomination and 42 percent oppose.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>It would be a very good thing if this ended her career.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I mentioned that there were some unalloyed benefits of the entire Brett Kavanaugh debacle. There are two immediate benefits that come to mind, first, this spectacle has reminded people how hapless\/complicit that Joe Biden was in the confirmation hearings of Clarence Thomas 25 years ago: In the past week, it\u2019s been hard to flip on &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[375,407,374],"class_list":["post-178672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-elections","tag-justice","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178672"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178672\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}