There must be at some stage after this wretched Kavanaugh miscarriage of Supreme Justice, an autopsy of Democratic tactics.
What should have happened is that Kavanaugh should have been grilled over his views on abortion and whether or not he would ever make it more difficult for women to get them, instead it became an emotive media circus that created a toxic cultural backlash which risks benefitting the Republicans in the mid term elections.
Leaking Dr Ford’s claims to the media after sitting on them for 6 weeks and denying her the opportunity to testify in California were an obvious attempt by Democrats to create the media spectacle this turned into because Democrats wanted to capture the momentum of the #MeToo movement for the mid term elections.
The problem for Democrats using that tactic meant that they also had to adopt one of the unchallenged pillars of the #MeToo movement, which is that accusation is evidence.
The ocean of incandescent rage at centuries of sexual assault, sexual abuse and sexual harassment against women that never sees justice has found voice on social media platforms that have side stepped corporate media gatekeepers, but the meta narrative that women must be believed if they make an accusation because all men are lying abusers flies in the face of due process and the presumption of innocence.
In the past, justice was guided by the belief that it was better 10 guilty men walk free rather than one innocent man go to prison, in a world framed in patriarchal white privilege those legal protections simply protect that privilege, so 10 innocent men punished rather than one going free is an acceptable price when compared to the enormous amount of women who never see justice.
This unchallenged pillar of #MeToo, that accusation is the new evidential threshold and all accusers are guilty has inadvertently created an enormous cultural backlash that Republicans are already seeing in the polls.
The idea that you can be falsely accused by hyper partisan accusers who already hate you and be found guilty will terrify Independents and Republicans far more than the much more real threat of being sexually assaulted, harassed or abused.
Accusing everyone who voted for Trump as a ‘racist’ rather than understanding the economic insecurity free market globalisation had caused didn’t work in 2016, I fear accusing everyone who believes in due process and the presumption of innocence of being rapists will be equally unsuccessful in 2018.
Why is it only you amongst the left martyn thahat understands the principle thatconstant negativity never achieves the result desired? I would have thought with Jacinda’s win last year this truth would have been evident to the left. But most seem to want to continue with smug wokedom
It’s because they’re just acting out their emotional problems – as are the people on the other side of the argument.
What I mean is people on the left are enjoying the righteous anger of pointing the finger at sexist people. Ironically they’re getting the exact same buzz that the get-tough-on-crime brigade get from pointing the finger at criminals.
I’m not sure where it will end but a bit more empathy is required – I note that it took WWII to get British people to develop enough empathy to enact a lot of social services like the NHS.
Anyway, I keep saying the we need to sort out our personal problems as part of our efforts to make the word a better place but it’s really not a popular concept on political blogs.
Martin
Absolutely correct. The Democrats gave themselves a self-inflicted wound here. Why they did not go the abortion route and press him on that surprised me. The Democratic senators seemed more intent to preen for the cameras and try and get clips for their next campaigns. Dick Blumenthal was the worse offender here. A man who lied about his service in Vietnam had the gall to question another man’s honesty.
They have handed a big stick to the Republicans to win at the midterms plus have pushed moderates away. Women are starting to realise the costs and consequences of METOO. They fear, which some measure of genuine concern now, that their husband, son, brother, and father could be next.
They actually did go the abortion route.
He is reported to have replied that Roe V Wade was “pretty much settled law” but this did not get into the mainstream media because it wasn’t outrageous enough to be click bait.
Do you realised that Kavanaugh was asked more questions that all previous supreme court nominees put together? It was an outrageous inquisition.
No, the real reason the Democrats threw every dirty trick in the book at him was because he wasn’t their man. They still haven’t gotten over Trump winning and are just dying in a ditch over it.
Pure tribalism.
A group of French feminists distanced themselves from MeToo. My interpretation is that although they supported the right for women to raise complaints against sexual attacks, they rejected the way this extended to any accusations against male behaviour that was disliked. They rejected women positioning themselves as victims when they had fought for the right for female sexuality to be openly asserted in French society.
You refer to Kavanaugh’s sense of entitlement but not how this revealed his arrogance & misogynous tendencies towards women. You assume the publicity around the accusations of his sexual misadventures will advantage Republicans in the upcoming Congress elections. Groups from his college & Universities have organised to oppose his appointment to the Supreme Court and I don’t think the groundswell of voices against him will disappear now he has achieved a majority of 2 to become a SC justice. I suspect your own antagonism against MeToo is affecting your analysis.
I don’t really get the argument that the left blew it by focusing on accusations of sexual assault by Kavanaugh. It seems the Left is always required to make strategy on Right Wing/Conservative terms – and try not to upset them too much. That only puts the right wing at the centre of power and means the whole world revolves around them. The Left outnumber the right. Give them something to vote for and support and they will become the centre which the Right must accommodate.
If people do decide to vote for people accused by multiple women of sexual assault, then that falls on their head, and is not the fault of people who point out what the person did.
Can someone explain why we keep using the label #metoo ? I thought Me Too meant the empowerment of women saying “yes it happened to me” not whatever this is.
I think there’s a hell of a lot of subtlety getting lost at the moment. It’s a really big deal for people to be believed when they say they’ve been abused or raped but can we believe them without immediately punishing the perpetrator? That’s the hard bit.
It makes sense that if you believe what the victim says then you must also believe the perpetrator is guilty – but then you run head long into the guilty-til-proven-innocent issue, which in the context means believing the victim is a whole different thing.
That’s the tricky bit – I haven’t seen anyone talking about this but please point me in the right direction if someone has
Maybe all this will mean these attacks will happen less and that’s a good thing but I sure as hell wouldn’t like to be someone who was falsely accused.
Martyn;
Globalists, who’s face is represented by the Democrats here, are desperate and
in full panic mode.
And desperate people do desperate things.
Further;
“In the past, justice was guided by the belief that it was better 10 guilty men walk free rather than one innocent man go to prison, in a world framed in patriarchal white privilege those legal protections simply protect that privilege, so 10 innocent men punished rather than one going free is an acceptable price when compared to the enormous amount of women who never see justice.”
WTF???
Sometimes I wonder, especially given your past reputation, why you continue to
carry water for them.
Cheers.
Were are you getting your information? The complain forwarded is not so much he said/she said sex allegation but whether Kavanaugh PERJURED himself -which certainly appears to be the case (even before Blasey Ford ). One would have to ask why did the Republicans pushed on with him instead of setting him aside for another without these questions (they had others after all). They want him in because he’s said he doesn’t believe a president can be impeached.
The Democrats problem is an internal one: the progressive wing is being undermined by the conservative establishment: this is why they lost last election. If they continue to sabotage them they will lose again.
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