2. This excellent episode of The Daily recounts what happened last time the Senate confirmed someone (Clarence Thomas) who had been credibly accused of sexual harassment or assault. It brought a record number of women (mostly Dems) into politics. nytimes.com/2018/08/25/pod…
3. The extent to which women favor Dems over Republicans is now approaching what it was in the early 90s. Women were +10 D in 2016 and most pollsters expect that will be significantly higher in 2018. 
4. The August Quinnipiac poll is in line with most others suggesting that Trump's approval ratings are below 10% amongst African-Americans and around 25-30% for Latinx voters.
5. So let's say you're a @gop strategist. Your party is doing as badly as ever with voters of color, if not worse, and people of color are a larger portion of the electorate every year. Meanwhile, women (50% of voters) are becoming increasingly less likely to support your party.
6. A normal party, facing a situation where key demographics comprising 70% of voters (i.e. all women + people of color) are cooling to your message, would start doing things to convince those voters to give your party a second look.
7. In this Kavanaugh situation, that would mean at least pretending like you believe women who say they've been the victim of a sexual assault. But instead, the @gop response today is "damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead."
8. Iin 2012 the @gop conducted a post-election autopsy that concluded that in order to win they needed to make themselves more appealing to African-American and Latinx voters. Then Trump happened and, well, never mind.
10. For people 50 and over like myself, the new revelations regarding Kavanaugh have brought back memories of Anita Hill. Though both D and R senators behaved badly in that hearing, it was the @gop that took the biggest reputational hit for that sexist fiasco.
11. Today's breaking news was a test for the @gop leadership...would they be able to navigate the politics of sexual assault so as to prevent their slipping support amongst women? The answer we got today was a resounding no. No, we're not even going to pretend like we care.
12. Clearly the morality of these actions and statements is far more important than the electoral consequences of them. That said, this electoral brazen-ness in the era of #metoo is really shocking.
14. I'm no political strategist so perhaps I'm missing something here...but when your party is systematically driving away everyone other than white men (30% of the population), that seems like an unwise gambit to me.
