“BUT THE EVIDENCE IS AS THIN AS CAN BE:” Ronan Farrow spells out unnamed woman’s claim that Brett Kavanaugh tried to force himself on her in high school. “One of the most powerful aspects of Farrow’s previous #MeToo reporting is the contemporaneous corroboration he cites from friends and family of the alleged victim. In nearly every case he’s covered (maybe every single one, in fact), a woman who was assaulted or harassed ended up confiding in others about it years ago, sometimes on the very day of the incident. That’s a strong defense to the inevitable claims that the accusation has been concocted belatedly because the “victim” wants attention or money or, in this case, maybe to take down a public official whose politics she abhors. It’s hard to accuse someone of making up a story to shake down Harvey Weinstein in 2018, when he’s an easy target, if they were telling the very same story in 1988. All of that is missing here.”

I suspect that this late hit is mostly about easing the pressure on red-state Dems, plus allowing Dems to call Kavanaugh “illegitimate” for the next 40 years a la Clarence Thomas.