Well, they could just withdraw the nomination, even without admitting belief in guilt ("To help heal this fractured nation, we have decided to nominate someone else..."). Then Kavenaugh loses, and both sides go on to another candidate.

That's a win for the nation, a loss for one man, and a push for both parties. Well, maybe a slight loss for Republicans, but they'll likely get their judge in the end, and with much less controversy, which they could use to their advantage later. It's not like they don't have plenty of judges to choose from (to be clear, they have a large list that would support their goals).

That we can't immediately get past this is sickening.

Withdrawing the nomination just sends the message that due process doesn’t exist. I don’t want him confirmed, but I’m not sure that public rejection of the presumption of innocence by the US government is a price worth paying. Rock and a hard place, as they say.

> Withdrawing the nomination just sends the message that due process doesn’t exist.

Then they should call a recess for some period of time that actually allows some preliminary investigation to happen (far more than a few days, but not more than a few months). My comments are with the understanding that they are unwilling to do so. In that case, they should move on.

> That's a win for the nation

Is it a win for the nation that someone can be successfully browbeaten into a political loss based on unsubstantiated accusations?

It's a win for the nation in that we do not need to have the confirmation process become a circus of political partisanship. An investigation should be carried out, whether Kavenaugh wants one or not, given that he currently holds a high office and it's a public accusation of a felony, but it would beneficial if it was carried out and publicly reported on outside the context of a confirmation hearing. If Kavenaugh is innocent, he loses out, but the Democrats and liberals would also face a large blow to credibility and would have problems doing the same thing again. If he's guilty, we're successfully kept someone guilty of criminal assault from the Supreme court.

It would suck for him if innocent, but that is politics, and it definitely is something he accepted as a possibility along with the nomination. But I do not think he has a right to that position, and the nation's well-being comes far-ahead of any sort of right he might expect anyway. Serving is a privilege, we should not all suffer for his privilege.

I generally find your comment such quality that you don't deserve downvotes, but I've just two comments: (1) the chances of any investigation having any guilty/innocent resolution, given that the alleged crime happened 35 years ago and even very recent rapes basically boil down to he said/she said, is very low, and (2) unfortunately, I've seen no blow to credibility to anyone, despite there having been quite a few highly-publicised rape cases that were proven to be false.

> I generally find your comment such quality that you don't deserve downvotes

Thanks. I attribute that mostly to some poor wording on my part, where I said "But I do not think he has a right to that position" to mean "he's not entitled". Unfortunately it's easily misinterpreted as "so should not get it".

> the chances of any investigation having any guilty/innocent resolution, given that the alleged crime happened 35 years ago and even very recent rapes basically boil down to he said/she said, is very low

That may be, but accusations such as this deserve to be investigated. In the general sense because someone is accusing someone else of (what is usually charged as) a felony assault, and this specific case because we do not want someone like that in power, for multiple reasons (even if we assume he's entirely changed, the blackmail potential if proof does surface is problematic).

> I've seen no blow to credibility to anyone, despite there having been quite a few highly-publicised rape cases that were proven to be false.

I think it's a matter of opportunity and reason. Most accusers probably aren't linked to (or more importantly and accurately, able to be implied as linked to) a coherent adversarial cause backed by an organization and ideology.

What that basically means is that next time, instead of a nominee on the stand talking about what sounds like a conspiracy theory about the Clintons and Democrats doing a concerted smear campaign that isn't true, they'll be able to point at a specific prior instance as evidence. That's extremely powerful.