I'm not watching all of the hearings and I wonder how anyone could stand to. My guess at this moment — subject to change with the next revelation or maybe the one after or the one after — is that Judge Kavanaugh will squeak by to attain SCOTUS stature but that many of the Republicans who vote to put him there will quietly regret that. They'll look at what the whole mess has done to their standing with women voters and wish their leaders had withdrawn the name. There are probably lots of potential nominees who would deliver the same reliably conservative votes but who don't have tales of drunken misbehavior in their past. Who knows? Some of them might even have vaginas and therefore vote against women's rights with a bit more credibility.
The one thing that I'm fairly certain of is that a lot of old white males out there either don't understand about how rape or even attempted rape…or choose not to understand because then it would be more difficult to not give a damn about the well-being of women. The ones saying things like "Well, if the rape wasn't completed, no crime was committed" are clueless. Even less clued-in are the ones who are suspicious that a woman who later claims that she was attacked didn't immediately rush to the police and swear out a full report. Most rapes are not reported and many of the women who do report them are then put through such hell and character assassination and other pains that it's amazing any of them come forward.
It's getting a little better these days but it's got a long way to go. And trying to shove it back to the Middle Ages are all those who want Brett Kavanaugh on the High Court and are seizing on the non-reporting to try and raise suspicion about the whole claim. I'm trying to decide if I can or should post some stories from past lady friends — most of them, actresses — who were attacked and who felt that reporting what happened would put then through a worse hell than the assault. But I assume that anyone who doesn't understand that is trying real, real hard not to believe that and won't be persuaded by any anecdotes.