Christine Blasey Ford Didn’t Come Forward in Vain

On Friday afternoon, Senator Susan Collins of Maine delivered a floor to the Senate and to the cable-news cameras situated within its chambers. In it, she made clear what had been, up until that point, likely but not inevitable: She would vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, all but assuring that the Senate overall would elevate him to the bench. As Collins spoke, she also participated, television being what it is, in a moment that had clearly been designed to be one of historical image-making: The senator was surrounded, as she delivered her speech, by two other (white, Republican) women who had supported Kavanaugh in his fight for confirmation, Senators Shelley Moore Capito and Cindy Hyde-Smith. A triptych meant to signal progress that also signaled its absence. But there was another woman who was part of that image, as well—a woman who has been present, not in body but in spirit, in the debates that