Blasey Ford's Shining Moment; Grassley's Catastrophe - By Josh Marshall

[DonViejo]

September 27, 2018 1:18 pm

I have, so far, had an odd exposure to today’s testimony. I had to be out of the office and offline for most of the late morning, notwithstanding the gravity and newsworthiness of the day. I saw the first fifteen or twenty minutes of Blasey Ford’s testimony. Then I returned for the last round of questioning of Blasey Ford from Rachel Mitchell, the sex crimes prosecutor from Arizona.

Everything I’ve heard about what came between confirms me in my reaction to those two portions of the hearing.

I’ve always thought it odd the way we talk about ‘credibility’. It means believability. That we experience someone as believable doesn’t mean they are believable. Or rather it is clearly rooted in a mix of personal experience and experiential cues that suggests believability. An odd thing. Still, from the moment I heard Blasey Ford speak, even though it was a story we’ve now read more or less in these details, I had a virtual certainty that she was telling the truth, that she was in a position to remember the key details she describes and that the incident she has described happened as she has described it. For all you can glean reading the details, seeing her describe those details was game changing.

Then I came back and heard this jarring and vaguely bizarre cross-examination from Rachel Mitchell, asking minute details about her polygraph exam, clearly trying to catch her out on some contradiction or detail and stumbling on to a family funeral.

I had a sense in advance that Mitchell might come off as a cross examiner, scrutinizing details of Blasey Ford’s testimony and utterly missing the moral or emotional context of the hearing. But I could not have comprehended it would be that bad.

I watched and couldn’t imagine what Committee Republicans were thinking if they thought this was accomplishing anything good, whether substantive or political. It wasn’t just that she didn’t lay a glove on Blasey Ford. It was more the jarring mismatch between the two people. Here you have a cooperative, sympathetic and seemingly guileless (in the good sense of the term) women getting questions the clear focus of which was to catch her out on some fatal contradiction. It was harsh and forensic. For all that, it was even more hapless because Mitchell clearly didn’t know the answers she was going to get. So she failed even in her probably impossible task.

more
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/blasey-fords-shining-moment-grassleys-catastrophe

[Iliyah]

1. The truth always shine!

[leftieNanner]

2. But GrASSley will count it as a win.

He dumped his responsibilities onto a "female", didn't fully prepare her (no FBI investigation), and left her to the winds of chance. Now, when she fails, ol' Chuck will blame her!

Fuck you GrASSley and all the repugs!

[yellowcanine]

3. Old trial lawyer axiom, "Don't ask a question if you don't know what the answer will be."

[TeamPooka]

4. this is true. Applies to a lot of general buisness meetings too.

[onenote]

5. Yup.