The NPR Politics Podcast - The Lasting Political Impact of The Ford-Kavanaugh Hearings

Episode Date: September 29, 2018

With less than six weeks until the midterm elections, how will Kavanaugh's nomination process — with multiple allegations of sexual assault, an emotional day of testimony and a re-opened FBI investigation — mobilize Republican and Democrat voters? This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, congressional reporter Kelsey Snell, political editor Domenico Montanaro and political reporter Danielle Kurtzleben. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. Yesterday on the pod, we broke down all of the testimony by Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford. Blasey Ford, as you remember, accused him of sexual assault when they were in high school. He vehemently denied it. Today we're focusing on the political impact and fallout from that. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Danielle Kurtz, layman political reporter. I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. Let's get caught up on a very intense

week of news. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sat before the Senate Judiciary Committee for the second time in response to allegations from Christine Blasey Ford of sexual assault. The hearing went on all day and Senate Republicans and Democrats heard dramatic testimony, both from Ford and Kavanaugh. Emotions ran high. On Friday, the Judiciary Committee began to assemble with a plan to vote on Kavanaugh's nomination. And there was a moment where it looked like everything was full steam ahead. And a protester, a rape survivor, cornered Senator Jeff Flake as he was getting on an elevator, presumably to go vote in favor of Kavanaugh, to vote him out of committee. Yeah, he had said earlier in the day he was going to vote for Kavanaugh. There was

a statement that he put out and it looked, actually, I talked to Republicans at the beginning of the day who were bullish, who thought that things were moving along exactly as they expected. And then this happened. I have two children. I cannot imagine that for the next 50 years, they will have to have someone in the Supreme Court who has been accused of violating a young girl. I just want to take a moment to reflect on that. This protester, she was just one of so many people who have been affected by the conversation that happened in that hearing, by what is being discussed right now. I mean, I think that there is a conversation that is being had by a lot of women right now about things that they maybe haven't talked about in a lot of years. Danielle, you've been doing some reporting.

Right. I went down to the Supreme Court where there was a rally in front of the building in response to the Blasey Ford Kavanaugh hearings. From this one protest, admittedly, the day after these hearings, to me, it didn't have the feeling of the Women's March. It was a bit more somber. I mean, of the handful of women I spoke to, one college woman told me about supporting her friends who have been assaulted. One woman was there with her 17-year-old daughter saying, my 17-year-old is going off to college next year. I'm very afraid for her being assaulted. One woman was there with her 17-year-old daughter saying, my 17-year-old is going off to college next year. I'm very afraid for her being assaulted. One woman told me about her assault and how she didn't talk about it for 50 years. What is the political implication of what those women are feeling, what they were telling you about? First of all, there is, of course, a political divide here. This is not just about women versus men. Democratic women in particular

are very fired up about this, and we can't ignore that. But I wonder if there might be a sense among women that the rug has been pulled out from them here, or a sense at the very least that things have not changed. And Domenico, this isn't just a moment for Democratic women, there has also been a strong reaction to Judge Kavanaugh's testimony, a strong reaction coming from the right. Right. Republicans really were able to rally around what Judge Kavanaugh did. You know, it was a sharply partisan, kind of eyebrow-raisingly partisan testimony that he gave. But it was enough for Republicans to be able to essentially rally around and get together and say, hey, we may not know what to believe, but we know that we can't stand the Democrats. And the fact is, Democrats, they felt had been problematic in this process, and it was enough to get behind Kavanaugh.

You saw him get a hand from Lindsey Graham, the Republican from South Carolina. To my Republican colleagues, if you vote no, you're legitimizing the most despicable thing I have seen in my time in politics. You want this seat? I hope you never get it. I hope you're on the Supreme Court. That's exactly where you should be. And I hope that the American people will see through this charade. President Trump loved it and, you know, essentially said this is why I nominated the guy. So the confirmation process is now on ice. Late Friday, President Trump ordered the FBI to conduct a supplemental investigation of Judge Kavanaugh and any credible allegations against him.

This opened the door for the Senate to vote to move forward with the Kavanaugh nomination. But pending the completion of the FBI probe is being celebrated by people on the left. But, Kelsey, it's not clear to me. I mean, how does this turn out? To give a little bit of a reality check on what this actually means, it is not a criminal investigation. And this is a background check. And those have really different rules and really different demands. And, you know, it also is very narrow. So they have one week to complete this, and it is narrowly focused on current credible allegations. Even Senator Jeff Flake, who is the one who called

for this FBI investigation, said it'll be up to the FBI to determine what current and credible means. Does it mean just Ford? Does that mean Deborah Ramirez, whose allegations came out just about a week or so ago? Does that include the woman who's being represented by Michael Avenatti, the attorney for Stormy Daniels? Who does that include and how far does this scope actually reach? Well, Democrats are already asking for that. They want something that's a wider investigation. I don't see how a wider investigation of that kind of magnitude gets done within a week. And frankly, if they look just at the Ford allegations, which, you know, Republicans after her testimony said that they thought that she was credible, but have hung their hats on the fact that they haven't been able to get any corroborating information from any of

the other potential witnesses who Ford says were there. If all of that holds up, if the FBI investigates and speaks to those individuals and they maintain that they have no recollection of being at that party or that party happening, this could wind up being a good thing for Judge Kavanaugh. Oh, yeah. This is no silver bullet for the Democrats for the thing that they they wanted this FBI investigation. They are getting it, but it might be the thing that gives a lot of Republicans cover to say we worked on corroborating Ford's story and we weren't able to. And that could make it so that people like Senator Susan Collins of Maine, who has been one of the most closely watched people in all of this,

that could give her the space to say, you know, the FBI got involved. They didn't see anything. Kavanaugh, I will support you. A couple of things to add in there, though. say, you know, the FBI got involved. They didn't see anything. Kavanaugh, I will support you. A couple of things to add in there, though. I mean, going back to Domenico's point about Republicans saying that Blasey Ford was credible. Well, they said she was credible. But then again, they didn't believe the part, the very crucial part where she said, you know, I am 100 percent sure that it was Kavanaugh. Aside from that, we have a very good piece up on the Web by one of our colleagues,

Phil Ewing, that explains this FBI investigation. And my understanding here is, and Kelsey, maybe you can tell me a little more. My understanding is that this FBI investigation, it doesn't, it's not like it comes out with a green checkmark or a red X, like this happened or it didn't, right? Is the form of this just going to be a stack of interviews? I mean, that is what Republicans have said all along, right, is that an FBI investigation doesn't draw a conclusion and that it's up to the senators to draw conclusions. But what it would do is it would involve interviews with more people, people who have come forward since the last time Kavanaugh had a background check. So it would give the FBI a chance to kind of establish what facts are, in fact, facts. One question I have about this is whether this FBI investigation, whether this pause is in some ways about saving the institutions,

or at least helping the institutions to be able to say that they didn't rush it through. I think it's about saving themselves. I think we give these politicians way too much credit if we're going to say that they care that much about these institutions. I think some of them do care about the institutions, but they're facing a lot of political pressure. They're facing people who are in their faces about this. Literally. And they're just not sure what to do. They want to make sure that they're doing this, as Republicans have said, respectfully of Dr. Ford, but that they want to still get Kavanaugh through. Well, that's a really difficult balance. And they saw what the backlash was in 1992 after the way Anita Hill was treated in 1991.

Politics, nominations, bills passing. Often it's about momentum. Taking a pause can affect momentum. It can affect how senators see what just happened. I think that's absolutely true. It can affect how senators see what just happened. It can also affect how the public sees what just happened and then what the public then relays to their senators. Specifically, I'm sure we're all thinking of those senators that are in those swing states this year. Brett Kavanaugh was already seen pretty unfavorably in polls after the Blasey Ford allegation came out. And then, you know, these other allegations came out.

Well, I'm very interested in seeing how much those numbers swing or don't swing. It is quite possible people are so dug in that they aren't going to change. One thing I would add, though, is that when we last polled on this with Marist, we saw that I believe it was 42 percent of Americans had said they didn't know whom to believe, whether Blasey Ford or Kavanaugh. Well, I wonder how much the hearings made them make up their minds or conversely, just left them in the air still. So think about what else could happen in a week's time. Certainly, there could be new revelations that come forward. There could be something that changes within these interviews. And that certainly provides a lot of risk for Republicans, too. We are at this point less than six weeks away from Election Day. How does this play? What does this end up meaning or does it mean different things in different

places to different people? That's a good question. But if you are Senator Joe Donnelly, you are asking that question a lot today. So before the Judiciary Committee meeting, he came out and said he was going to vote no on Kavanaugh. Now, who is Joe Donnelly? He is one of the most vulnerable Democrats up for reelection. I know we say that a lot, but this is really true in his case. He's a Democrat from Indiana. From Indiana, a state that President Trump won by like 19 points. And, you know, he is now going to go home with this FBI investigation happening, having already said he would be a no. And the people, the campaign committee for Republicans are already out there, you know, making a big deal

about this. One of their staffers was tweeting, Dear Joe, it was nice knowing you. And this is, I mean, it's a really serious question for him. I think it's a little bit safer for people like, I don't know, say, Joe Manchin of West Virginia or Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota, who have kept their mouths very, very tightly shut. Danielle? Yeah, I mean, to add to that, at least on the voter side or the activism side as well, I mean, first of all, you can see this being the phrase I've been using a lot this week is kind of a powder keg or lighter fluid or any sort of pyrotechnic analogies you want to use. You can see it being that on either side of the aisle, right? I mean, as far as the left, though, I will say this.

I got a message this morning from a group called Run for Something, which encourages young progressives, especially young women, to run for office. What they said was they, a, if I'm recalling correctly, two thirds bump in the number of women in Congress, largely led by Democrats. Two thirds more than a very low number. Aside from that, I mean, Donald Trump's election led to an already large wave of women who are running for office and who are ready to vote this year, of course, mostly on the left. You can imagine that another man on the right with allegations of sexual misconduct against him getting into power would fire up women on the left in massive ways, especially this close to an election. And here's the thing, though. In 2016, there was a man running for office who was accused of sexual assault and other things and was on tape talking about doing things. And he won. And in a lot of ways, that hearing, that Kavanaugh-Blasy Ford hearing and the reaction to it that happened immediately, it was like reliving the 2016 election in 10 hours. is derailed, you can imagine that people on the right will be phenomenally upset and will themselves be energized to turn out in November and will feel as if their person got a raw deal in all of this. Can I just add something that I think is an interesting part of this that isn't

just about how voters feel or how people are running? Sure. One thing I have noticed is that at least three senators who normally walk around this building, walk around the offices pretty much unencumbered except for having a few staff with them, are walking around with police escorts, with Capitol police escorts. Susan Collins, Jeff Flake, and Chuck Grassley all walk through the Capitol today with at least two police officers with them because this has become such a tense political moment. Democratic women have been really fired up in this election, as Danielle alluded to. You know, they've been looking to send a message to President Trump. Democrats need 23 seats to take back the House, and they're going to get their first shot at sending that message.

And whether or not they're going to be able to do that is largely going to be tested in that battleground. Even beyond the midterms, this could extend certainly beyond November. I mean, people are going to remember this for sure. People remember Merrick Garland, for example. I mean, this could hold on for a while. And by the way, opinions change well after the fact. I was looking at some polling today from 1991 and 1992. As of 1991, polling found that around 24% of Americans believed Anita Hill in the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings. One year later, 44% said they believed Anita Hill. Similarly, a lower number believed Clarence Thomas a year later. Opinions can change drastically over time, especially should the atmosphere of how America thinks of sexual assault, sexual misconduct change.

This next nominee is going to be replacing the swing vote on the Supreme Court. This is bigger than just the midterms. You know, this is the 5-4 vote that will place essentially a conservative majority in place for a generation potentially. And for the first time in 75 years or so, there would be a conservative majority on the court. This is a big deal and bigger than one midterm election. That was NPR's Domenico Montanaro, Danielle Kurtzleben, and Kelsey Snell. Thank you all. Thank you. Thanks. You're welcome. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. © BF-WATCH TV 2021