For Democrats in Ford-Kavanaugh fight, believing is enough

Now, out of the Democrats’ faith comes a new argument: It doesn’t matter whether Ford’s charge is true. It is credible. And that is enough, because even a credible allegation — no word on who defines what that means — disqualifies Kavanaugh for a seat on the Supreme Court.

“The truth is, I believe her,” Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand said. “She has a credible allegation against Judge Kavanaugh.”

Some academic Ford supporters lent their scholarly credentials to the credible-is-enough argument. “The existence of credible allegations against Judge Kavanaugh should be disqualifying,” wrote Cardozo Law School professor Kate Shaw in the New York Times. “If members of the Senate conclude that a credible accusation of sexual misconduct has been made against Judge Kavanaugh, that should be enough to disqualify him.”

In The Atlantic, Brookings Institution scholar Benjamin Wittes took the argument to its illogical extreme. Because of the political sensitivity of the situation, Wittes wrote, Kavanaugh “cannot…seek to discredit a woman who purports to have suffered a sexual assault at his hands.”