In a recent study, 45 percent of pollers said that Ford is telling the truth in her testimony. A third (33 percent) said Kavanaugh is the one telling the truth, up slightly from 26 percent before he testified. But the question is, will it affect the midterms?
A Supreme Court nomination that went down in history, began with a fairly uncontroversial nomination by President Trump. Brett Kavanaugh was nominated to replace Anthony Kennedy as a Supreme Court Justice on July 9th, 2018. Over two months after his nomination, Kavanaugh was publicly accused by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford of sexual harassment in 1982, when the two were in high school together. This public accusation was made when Ford was interviewed by the Washington Post. After the initial allegations, reports came out stating that Ford had sent a letter to California senator Dianne Feinstein, detailing her assault, -only 21 days after Kavanagh’s nomination. The amount of time between Ford’s private confession to Dianne Feinstein, and her public allegation during her interview allowed for a large gap in her story to appear from the start. Kavanaugh supporters claim that Dr. Ford waited about a month in between telling Feinstein and telling the public for political reasons. However, both women and men have come out in support and defense of Ford, and in overall support of the #MeToo movement.
On September 27th, in possibly one of the most watched and dramatized hearings in United States history, Ford and Kavanaugh testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Both Ford and Kavanaugh presented heartfelt and emotional accounts of the allegations. A protest-filled appointment of Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court took place just 10 days later, with a final vote of 50-48 in the Senate. This conflict will now go on to greatly influence the midterm elections, with many senators and potential presidential nominees receiving backlash from their parties as a result of their stance on the conflict. It has also set a precedent for sexual allegations in the future, and has demonstrated the power of political parties in an otherwise non political allegation.
