Women vote

Women have the vote

Justice Kavanaugh and all republicans beware.

This staggering news is now playing hard in American politics. Agreement on the facts of the alleged attack by him on a very young Christine Ford 36 years ago is unlikely, but the optics (the latest shorthand for how stuff is seen) of bullying older republican judiciary committee men browbeating her is just awful coming before the mid-term elections. It is scheduled for next Monday.

The ‘me-too’ women’s movement speaking up for victims of male assaults stretches from Hollywood elites through the well-off suburbs and into poor communities. Repeated TV and video loops of her cross examination will be played all through local election broadcasts on the democratic side, dynamite indeed and a kinda fact in our post-fact era.

The ugly demolition of Anita Hill in an eerily parallel hearing 27 years ago cannot be repeated. After that event women were roused, used their votes, and now occupy positions of power, certainly on the democratic side of the committee. Too many,  too often, have kept quiet about their own victimisation and now demand responses from men acknowledging women’s pain.

Will Kavanaugh project how he understands this? Will older republican men? Can a hearing even take place, be allowed to? Ford ‘s lawyers are demanding an FBI investigation should take place first.