President Trump apologized to Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh and his family for the “terrible pain and suffering” they endured during his confirmation process, declaring that “what happened to the Kavanaugh family violates every notion of fairness, decency and due process.” Democrats seem to be taking the opposite lesson from the Kavanaugh fight. As Politico recently tweeted, “After failing to stop Kavanaugh’s confirmation, Democrats wonder if it’s time to be more ruthless.”

More ruthless? There are a lot of reasons the effort to stop Kavanaugh failed, but a lack of ruthlessness is not one of them. Kavanaugh’s opponents just tried to destroy a man without a shred of corroborating evidence. No tactic, no unfounded accusation, was too extreme. Democrats demanded that the FBI investigate not just Christine Blasey Ford’s uncorroborated accusations, but also the charge in the New Yorker’s hit piece that Kavanaugh had exposed himself to a college classmate, Deborah Ramirez, as well as the scurrilous accusation by Michael Avenatti client Julie Swetnick that Kavanaugh participated in gang rapes at high school parties. How can you get any more ruthless than unfounded accusations of gang rape?