October 5, 2018

Joe Manchin’s Argument for Voting for Brett Kavanaugh Makes No Sense

If you don’t believe it was Brett Kavanaugh who sexually assaulted Christine Blasey Ford, then you don’t actually believe Christine Blasey Ford.

Joe Manchin

Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Newscom via ZUMA

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Just seconds after Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins announced she would, in the end, support Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court—effectively assuring he will prevail in the final vote on Saturday—the last Democrat still on the fence, West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, finally hopped off it:

He’s a yes. Unless something changes, on Saturday, he’ll be the only Democrat—joining all but one Republican—voting for Kavanaugh.

In explaining his decision to reporters not long after, Manchin offered a familiar refrain, echoing colleagues such as Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.)—he believes Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations of sexual assault, but he doesn’t believe she was sexually assaulted by Kavanaugh:

Perhaps Manchin really does believe this, but the second part of the comment renders the first part irrelevant. In Ford’s letter to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), her interview with Senate Judiciary Committee staffers, and her emotional public testimony, she was unwavering on this one point: She is “100 percent” confident it was Kavanaugh who assaulted her. She remembers his face, and she remembers, most of all, his laughter. If you don’t believe it was Brett Kavanaugh who sexually assaulted Christine Blasey Ford, then you don’t actually believe Christine Blasey Ford.

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We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

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