Kavanaugh Could Carry on Trump’s Agenda for Decades

For Brett Kavanaugh, Thursday’s hearing was an audition. Appearing after Christine Blasey Ford, it originally seemed the judge might find his Supreme Court nomination seriously threatened. Ford had proven a sympathetic and credible witness in detailing allegations that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her when the two were in high school, and managed in a plainly hostile cross-examination to solidify her account and put to bed a number of conspiracy theories about her. For the Judiciary Committee and the very few swing voters in the Senate, it would have been difficult to establish a more credible and more sympathetic denial: to match Ford fact for fact, and to outflank calls for a more thorough investigation of the claims.

But, Kavanaugh’s audience was not those swing voters or even the people who might be moved by the testimony of a woman facing her alleged abuser. It seemed the one person that the would-be ninth