Re: As many have pointed out, that's a poor choice of words here... - Edit 1
Before modification by Cannoli at 11/10/2018 01:33:20 AM
If Ford had had a more detailed, highly plausible story backed up by a lot of circumstantial evidence, though still lacking the hard proof that might have put Kavanaugh at risk of actual criminal conviction, do you think that he would have been confirmed, or that he should have been?
I would probably require the official in question to be the subject of tape recorded confessions attempting to suborn perjury, a long history of complaints of that sort of behavior, and DNA evidence. But that's not enough to get a single Democrat to cross party lines, so why should Republicans bother? Why should they have even heard Ford out, until she came up with something better than the 36 year old recollections of a woman with a self-described highly unreliable memory. Also, I don't care if they had a fucking home movie of Kavanaugh doing that as a 17 year old. It has nothing to do with his qualifications for the bench or the Supreme Court. I need something better than the assertions of a gender widely incapable of coping with the sight of an insect that it was actually a threatening or frightening experience. Ford's assertions of her emotions tell us about Ford, they have nothing to do with Kavanaugh. And that's assuming a politically active & partisan individual is actually being honest.
'Proven' guilty was not required here because it was not a criminal case, merely a decision about whether Kavanaugh deserved the immensely important and high-profile job he had been nominated for. If you insist on using a legal phrase, I believe 'preponderance of the evidence' would've been enough for most senators in this case, though of course every senator is free to vote based on whatever standard they choose to hold the nominee to.
Innocent until proven guilty is not just a legal standard, it is a common expression for the standard any decent person uses. It's amazing that you and your ilk believe Merrick Garland had an ironclad "right to be heard" (which is a thing you all made up two years ago, as opposed to "innocent until proven guilty" which is a legitimate standard used elsewhere), but Brett Kavanaugh's legal career has to dead-end because some dingbat with ample credibility issues randomly makes a completely unsupported assertion about him.
There is more evidence of Garland kidnapping a princess and orchestrating a time loop in a conspiracy with fiends associated with the classical elements to gain immortality, than there is of Kavanaugh's misconduct.
Moreover, with his attitude during the hearings, Kavanaugh did actually provide a good reason to reject him that had nothing to do with his guilt or innocence of the sexual assault - and it seems Heitkamp and Murkowski made their decisions primarily based on that, not because they necessarily thought him guilty, or more likely to be guilty than not.
I respect the decision of Collins, Flake and Manchin, and I don't think the Republicans should be demonized in such a way for these votes, but if I'd been a senator and free to vote my conscience without regard to party strategy, I do think that Kavanaugh's attitude in the hearings would've pushed me from a likely yes to a no.
And it's only the GOP that allows that sort of thing, while the Democrats march in lockstep with that "party strategy." Which of THEM were convinced by the preponderance of evidence against Clinton?