As Blasey Ford alleges Kavanaugh assaulted her, will Senate repeat mistakes made with Anita Hill?

Dr. Christine Blasey Ford has come forward to accuse President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of attempted rape, throwing his nomination into question in the days before the Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to vote on it. Blasey Ford is a professor at Palo Alto University in California and says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were both in high school. She at first expected her story to be kept confidential, but changed her mind after it leaked. She now says she is willing to testify about her experience. In an interview published Sunday by The Washington Post, Ford said that in the early 1980s Kavanaugh and a friend were “stumbling drunk” when they pushed her into a bedroom. The Post reports, “While his friend watched, she said, Kavanaugh pinned her to a bed on her back and groped her over her clothes, grinding his body against hers and clumsily attempting to pull off her one-piece bathing suit and the clothing she wore over it. When she tried to scream, she said, he put his hand over her mouth.” We get a response from Dahlia Lithwick, senior editor at Slate.com, whose latest piece is headlined “Our System Is Too Broken to Assess the Sexual Assault Claim Against Kavanaugh.”