Editor’s note, November 8, 2022: This story was originally published in 2020 and has not been updated. For a more up-to-date explanation of how the press calls races, see our recent story.

On the morning of Friday, November 6, three days after Election Day, Decision Desk HQ called the presidential race for former Vice President Joe Biden. They were the first to make the call, even as states around the country continue to count votes.

Decision Desk is relatively new, but they join news agencies like the Associated Press and broadcast services like NBC News and CNN in projecting presidential election winners on a state-by-state basis, before all the votes are in. It’s an important service that greatly speeds up our knowledge of who’s won what, without having to wait for the final tally from state authorities, which in some cases can take a while to count. All of these outlets have an excellent track record for accuracy, but in the rare cases it goes wrong, it can go very wrong — as in 2000, where every major service called Florida for Al Gore early on, only for it to become clear the race was a squeaker.

The reason the calls have dragged out this year is because of the unprecedented number of mail-in/absentee ballots, owing to the practice’s vast expansion during the Covid-19 pandemic. Furthermore, President Trump and his allies have pushed aggressively for networks to call the election the night of, dubiously portraying late-arriving votes as fraudulent when they should count just like every other vote.

The news outlets, however, emphasize that the “decision desks” making calls at networks and the AP are staffed by professionals, often PhDs in political science or related fields, who are well-insulated from the more opinionated sides of their news operations.

For instance, Arnon Mishkin, Fox News’s decision desk leader, is known as a straight shooter by observers across the political spectrum, not beholden to the right-wing figures at his network. Fox News aggressively called Arizona for Biden on election night, and the AP later joined them but the days since Biden has seen his lead shrink considerably. Other outlets have not yet called Arizona.

“He’s good. He’s been doing this a long time,” Scott Tranter, who is running the race calls team at Decision Desk HQ, a private company providing vote tabulation and race call data, told me. “He — how do I put this — he could give a fuck what Sean Hannity says at 8 pm. And that’s good, and Fox still hires him for it.”

The decision desks at other networks are similarly professionally staffed, apart from any anchor interference. If you don’t like Tucker Carlson or Rachel Maddow or Wolf Blitzer, don’t worry, they’re not making the calls.

Vox has been doing election calls this year, too, with the help of Tranter and the team at Decision Desk HQ. They provide trustworthy, timely information to contracting media firms; besides Vox, their clients have included BuzzFeed, the Economist, the Atlantic, HuffPost, FiveThirtyEight, Axios, Reuters, and Business Insider. They’re good, in other words. Here’s how their election-calling procedure, and that of their rivals at the AP and on various TV networks, works.

Election calling, explained

Arguably the most famous, and perhaps the most labor-intensive, election-calling operation is run by the Associated Press. Per the AP, it employs more than 4,000 stringers (freelance reporters hired for this assignment specifically) and sends them to county election centers, where they call in raw vote totals to AP’s decision desk as they come in. Some 800 vote-entry clerks screen the data for abnormalities and then enter it into software that also raises flags if the numbers look “inconsistent or statistically unlikely.” 

“AP’s race callers are staff who are deeply familiar with the states where they declare winners. Most have called races in a state for many years,” the agency explains. The calls they make depend heavily on incoming vote totals being reported from counties, analyzed in conjunction with knowledge of how those counties typically vote, their demographics compared to those of the state as a whole, etc.

But sometimes the AP and other news agencies make calls as soon as the polls close. In the past, agencies have relied heavily on exit polls to make those projections. The AP has moved away from exit polling in favor of a system it calls AP VoteCast, which “expected to complete about 140,000 interviews with registered voters between Oct. 28 and Nov. 3, concluding as polls close on Election Day.”

Conducted with the NORC at the University of Chicago, which also runs the highly regarded General Social Survey, AP VoteCast is meant to replace exit polls with an alternative method that accounts for the large chunk of voters who vote before Election Day, either in early voting or via absentee/mail. (Fox News will also use AP VoteCast, but calls it “Fox News Voter Analysis.”) Either way, exit polls/VoteCast can make it possible to call easy, not-close races early.

Decision Desk HQ, Vox’s partner, calls these “insta-calls,” and relies on a house-made forecasting model to make them rather than exit polls or a VoteCast-style poll. Tranter explained that the forecast model uses public polling but also economic data, demographics, turnout estimates, and so on.

The race call team also relied on private polls it conducted in North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and elsewhere DDHQ is in the field. They also did a high-sample survey in Florida, for instance, which Tranter says, to give them a sense of “how to think about those early vote returns at 8 pm.”

ABC News, CBS News, CNN, and NBC News have a different method on election night. They rely on a partnership called the National Election Pool, which provides exit polling and other data to the member organizations. (Fox News and AP used to be a part of it but left the group after the 2016 race.)

NBC News explains that NEP will have about 4,000 staffers in 2020, both for exit polling and for collecting county- and precinct-level votes (which AP used to do for all these groups before it left the pool). Like AP, NBC claims, “Vote results are rigorously checked and verified. Part of quality control involves checking that vote data is consistent across sources, and we also compare the vote to past election results to see whether the turnout looks extremely different across multiple past races.”

NBC clarifies that while it relies on that vote and exit poll data to make its projections, its projections are independent of the NEP itself and made for NBC alone. Other NEP members like CNN have explained their process similarly. Once there’s raw vote data to look at, Jennifer Agiesta, CNN’s director of polling and election analytics, says, “we’re looking at how much we know about all the different types of vote that are out there, where in the state those votes have come from, how they compare to what we know about votes there in the past, and what we know about what’s left to count.”

The unusually high level of absentee voting/vote-by-mail in 2020, amid the Covid-19 pandemic, certainly complicated this year’s calling efforts. To get a sense of what the vote that’s in at, say, 8:30 pm on election night means, you have to have a sense of how many people voted in person that day versus by mail, how much of the initial vote total is by mail versus in person, where the in-person votes come from, how in-person versus by-mail voters lean in key races, and so forth.

With voting methods changing dramatically this year, that all could be harder to predict. “If a state is somewhat slower to count its mail-in ballots, which we find often does happen, then we need to adjust our race calling to make sure that we have an accurate view of all the outstanding votes before we call a race,” Sally Buzbee, a senior vice president at the AP who runs their election-calling operation, explained at a roundtable event of election-calling experts before the election.

CNN’s Agiesta agreed with that sentiment, saying, “the amount of vote left to count is critical, and may be a more difficult piece of information to track down in 2020,” because of vote-by-mail and “the decreased value in knowing the number of precincts reporting. There are fewer people voting on Election Day in most places and some states are consolidating precincts, so comparisons of the number of people voting in a particular precinct now to the past are less valuable, and it may be harder to get a good read on Election Day turnout before a county or town is fully reported.”

The result might be more cautious network calls this year than in the past. But even the presidential election not being called until the next day would not be unprecedented. In 2000, of course, the process was slow, but in 2004 as well, networks declined to call the election for George W. Bush until Wednesday morning.

Decision Desk, Vox’s partner, explained

Vox has worked with Decision Desk since 2017. Here’s how its process works: Officials responsible for reporting elections generally report them on a public website. But if you’ve ever tried to access one of these sites, you’ve probably noticed they are mostly terrible. They often do not post the most useful information front and center — like where to vote and election results. They also aren’t necessarily easy to find through a Google search.

This is where firms like Decision Desk come in. Media outlets pay them to do the extra work necessary to pull results together. Decision Desk uses an API, or application programming interface, that essentially allows the firm to get the information at the same time as it’s published on those state and county websites, provided by election officials. It also scrapes information directly from other public sites. And it uses old-fashioned methods, like phone calls and faxes, though to a far lesser extent than the AP does, to communicate with county officials.

The result, it argues, is a data collection operation that’s much faster than other organizations’, which in turn translates into faster race calls. Tranter explains that ultimately, for both his team at Decision Desk HQ and other call teams, calling elections is an algebra problem. The equation is super-simple: Each candidate’s votes (vote-by-mail plus early voting in person plus Election Day) summed equal total turnout:

Candidate A (VBM + EIPV + EDV) + Candidate B (VBM + EIPV + EDV) + … + Candidate Z (VBM + EIPV + EDV) = TT

Where VBM = Vote By Mail; EIPV = Early In-Person Voting; EDV = Election Day Vote; and TT = Total Turnout.

Going into election night, the teams had a decent sense of how many people had voted by mail and in person, and might be able to use polling to figure out whom those people voted for. These teams’ turnout models provide an estimate of total turnout. But the rest is in flux throughout the night and in the days that follow.

“The key variable in all this as tabulation nears completion is, how many votes are left?” Tranter says. “If you know how many votes are left you can determine if there are enough votes to move a second-place candidate into first place, and if there is not, then you can assume the current vote leader will win.” On Tranter’s team, there’s a unanimity rule: All three race call team members assigned to a particular race have to agree that it’s impossible for the trailing candidate to make up the difference in order to call that race. 

Is it possible they miscall some races? Sure — even a team with 99.8 percent accuracy will miss a race or two.

But so far, Decision Desk has had a strong track record. It’s only had to go back on one general election call since it started offering its services to clients like Vox, which was in California’s 21st Congressional District, where Republican David Valadao lost to Democrat TJ Cox in 2018. It was an extraordinarily close race, and though at first it looked like Valadao had a lead that wouldn’t be affected by mail-in ballots, it ultimately flipped on the last mail-in ballots. On this, Decision Desk wasn’t alone. The Associated Press had to recall that election too, plus a race in North Carolina that DDHQ didn’t erroneously call.

Decision Desk also made one incorrect projection in the 2020 primaries, predicting that Rep. Lacy Clay (D-MO) would win his primary when challenger Cori Bush beat him in an upset. “The challenge we had in that race was an unexpected split between the early mail-in votes and the day-of vote,” Tranter says. “While that has been expected in the general election, we had not until that point seen such a drastic split within a Democratic primary challenge. When the Election Day vote went so strongly to Bush, it became clear she would win and that our call for Clay had to be publicly withdrawn.”

But DDHQ called the vast majority of 2020 primary races correctly, and the AP has had two retractions in Georgia’s congressional primaries this year, putting DDHQ still ahead by a bit in terms of accuracy. DDHQ is often quite fast, relative to competitors. In the primaries, it beat its main competitor, AP, by 47 minutes in New Hampshire and by 15 minutes in Nevada, and it called the race almost immediately in South Carolina.

In short, you can trust Decision Desk HQ. You can also trust its competitors like AP, NBC News, ABC News, Fox News, and so forth. We picked DDHQ because we think they’re the best, but no one is running a shoddy operation here.

The key, though, is patience. Part of being a good race caller is declining to call races when there’s legitimate uncertainty. Decision Desk has called the presidential race, but you might not get definitive answers elsewhere as soon as you want to. Be patient, and we’ll all figure this out together.

This year, Vox is publishing live election results for every presidential primary and in many down-ballot races. We rely on data powered by Decision Desk HQ — a firm that provides trustworthy, timely information.

We’ve worked with Decision Desk since 2017. So far, it’s had a strong track record. It’s only had to go back on one election call since it started offering its services to clients like Vox, which was in California’s 21st Congressional District, where Republican David Valadao lost to Democrat TJ Cox. It was an extraordinarily close race, and though at first it looked like Valadao had a lead that wouldn’t be affected by mail-in ballots, it ultimately flipped on the last mail-in ballots. On this, Decision Desk wasn’t alone. The Associated Press had to recall that election too.

In 2020, Decision Desk has made no incorrect calls. It’s also been quite fast, relative to competitors. It beat its main competitor, the AP, by 47 minutes in New Hampshire and by 15 minutes in Nevada, and it called the race almost immediately in South Carolina.

We trust Decision Desk because it uses gold-standard methods to call elections. Here’s how it works.

Decision Desk gets data from the source

Media outlets rely on firms like Decision Desk to make sense of publicly available information in real time. We have a contract with Decision Desk to publish its data.

For example, state officials responsible for reporting elections generally report them on a public website. But if you’ve ever tried to access one of these sites, you’ve probably noticed they are mostly terrible. They often do not post the most useful information front and center — like where to vote and election results. They also aren’t necessarily easy to find through a Google search.

This is where firms like Decision Desk come in. Media outlets pay them to do the extra work necessary to pull results together. Decision Desk uses an API, or application programming interface, that essentially allows the firm to get the information at the same time as it’s published on the website, provided by election officials. It also scrapes information directly from other public sites. And it uses old-fashioned methods, like phone calls and faxes — though to a far lesser extent than the AP does. In Iowa, Decision Desk had a person on the ground to get the results directly from the party.

How Decision Desk calls a race

For people new to election watching, it might seem ridiculous to have an election called with less than 1 percent of the vote counted. But firms can. Decision Desk employs electorate experts by state and knows which counties to watch. The patterns give it a lot of information about what the rest of the vote will look like.

When evaluating whether to call a race on election night, several factors come into play:

• How much of the vote is in and where the outstanding votes are
• The demographic makeup of where votes have come in and where they haven’t
• The combination of early, absentee, and day-of votes
• Whether a candidate is under- or overperforming in their expected strongholds

Decision Desk also uses a lot of other information like overall voter turnout and quality polling (sometimes its own) that were run very close to Election Day. In other words, it doesn’t just rely on counting votes — though it’s pretty good at that.

The Democratic Party is moving toward counting votes

If one thing came out of the disaster of the Iowa caucuses, it’s that counting votes is best left to election officials. As a whole, the Democratic Party is moving away from caucuses. Though several states had them still in 2016, almost all of those states have switched over to running primaries instead, including my home state of Minnesota.

There’s a brewing sentiment among the party that the candidate with the most votes should win. This is, of course, the core of Bernie Sanders’s argument — or at least it was while he was still winning the most votes. But especially in the wake of the realization that caucuses perhaps aren’t the best way to get an increasingly motivated primary electorate involved, primaries are the natural alternative choice.

Decision Desk has consistently reported individual vote counts reliably and quickly. So on Super Tuesday and throughout the presidential election, we’re going to be carrying Decision Desk’s live results.

Dystopias are having a moment. A popular and critically acclaimed adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale is on TV. George Orwell’s 1984 recently became a best-seller again, more than 60 years after it was published. A slew of newer releases, such as Idra Novey’s Those Who Knew, have explored the “messy, continuing aftermath of the MeToo movement,” as Alexandra Alter wrote for the New York Times.

But one writer whose work feels especially relevant isn’t even in the mix: Alice Sheldon.

Sheldon primarily wrote under a male pseudonym — James Tiptree Jr. — in the late 1960s and early ’70s. Today, that work has an eerily contemporary feel. Her short stories depict worlds defined by familiar gender dynamics, shot through with dark themes and, often, wry humor.

In these worlds, misogyny might mutate from a psychological phenomenon into an actual virus. Women might rather take their chances with alien invaders than with the men of Earth. Men who time travel might discover a future in which their sex has been wiped out and women are getting along just fine without them.

At the time, “Tiptree’s” work was received as sharp and innovative, earning Hugo and Nebula awards and drawing a fervent fan base. Admirers included fellow science fiction writers like Philip K. Dick and Ursula K. Le Guin.

But today, a mere handful of universities list these stories on syllabi of science fiction classics. The last time a publisher put out a collection of Sheldon’s work was 1990 (reissued in the mid-2000s). She has only a few thousand reviews on the popular book website Goodreads — compared to the hundreds of thousands for Le Guin or the more than 1 million for The Handmaid’s Tale alone.

Sheldon has been all but forgotten in this modern dystopia resurgence, even though what she created as James Tiptree might resonate louder now than ever. But the author herself is a fascinating figure and deserves to be recognized today.

Who was Alice Sheldon and her alter ego James Tiptree Jr.?

Alice B. Sheldon was born in Chicago in 1915 and came to writing science fiction relatively late in life, after pursuing careers in painting, the army, the CIA, chicken farming, and academic psychology.

She was born into wealth and relative privilege; her mother was a well-known Victorian author and explorer, writing about the family’s many trips to Africa (some of which Allison illustrated as a child). She went to college in the late 1930s, first at Berkeley and later at Sarah Lawrence, not a given for women at the time.

Still, Sheldon was deeply unsatisfied with the limits on what women could achieve in almost every profession. She joined the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps during World War II, only to be honorably discharged at the end of the war because the military no longer needed women. (It was during her military career that she met her second husband and lifelong partner Ting Sheldon, after an unhappy marriage earlier on.)

Sheldon worked a brief stint in the CIA from 1952 to 1955, developing its photo intelligence division. The grunt work of poring over photographs — something she enjoyed but didn’t find particularly fulfilling — was a far cry from her husband’s decades of advancement in the clandestine service. The couple eventually bought a chicken farm in McLean, Virginia, and in the 1960s, as she worked on her doctoral thesis in psychology, she turned to writing science fiction as an escape.

As journalist Julie Phillips explains in her exhaustive biography James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon, Sheldon “wanted a name ‘editors wouldn’t remember rejecting’” and ended up taking on the name of a jam she stumbled upon while shopping at the supermarket.

It turned out that Sheldon’s fears of rejection were unfounded — within a year of publishing her first short stories, one of them, “The Last Flight of Doctor Ain,” was nominated for a Nebula award.

Simultaneously, she cultivated a following through fanzines, which gave writers a way to correspond directly with their readers (an analogue today might be how people like J.K. Rowling talk with fans on Twitter). Sheldon crafted a “macho” persona for Tiptree, exaggerating her past as an African explorer and hinting at a long career at the CIA.

“The male name turned out to have many uses,” Philips writes. “It made her feel taken seriously when she wanted to write, with an urgency that was hers. It gave her enough distance and control to speak honestly about herself.”

Eventually, Sheldon discovered the limits of her male pseudonym; jealous of contemporaries like Norman Mailer and Harlan Ellison, who wrote with such personal, authoritative voices. She longed, as Phillips records, to express feminism and “write as herself, or at least as a woman.”

She channeled this urge into the creation of the female pseudonym Raccoona, who also wrote sci-fi short stories.

But Raccoona was less successful both critically and commercially. Her work was sometimes rejected by the same editors who had accepted Tiptree’s, and Phillips writes that Sheldon “came to feel that Raccoona wasn’t taken seriously because she was a woman, and it’s possible this is true.”

Raccoona published a handful of short stories in the early ’70s, to mixed reception, even though she was given a generous introduction from “Tiptree.” Sheldon seemed to have lost some of the fan appeal that she cultivated with her gregarious Tiptree persona.

Eventually, Tiptree fans began to connect the dots between Tiptree the writer and Sheldon the person. After Sheldon’s mother died in 1976, she took a hiatus from writing, and “Tiptree” asked an editor to publish a letter explaining why. Tiptree had written extensively that his mother was an elderly explorer and author in Chicago, and his readers scoured the obituaries in Chicago-area newspapers for clues to his real identity. Sheldon’s mother’s obituary seemed to match, but only one surviving relative was listed: Alice Sheldon.

After nearly a decade, Sheldon’s cover was blown.

She continued writing, mostly under Raccoona. But according to Phillips, she never returned to the creative heights she achieved as Tiptree.

It’s unclear if her professional decline came from the revelation of Sheldon’s true identity, long-lingering issues of depression and Dexedrine dependence, a diagnosis of bipolar disorder around the time of her mother’s death, or some other issue. In any case, Sheldon’s post-Tiptree work includes some of her weakest stories.

Sheldon’s life ended tragically. When her husband became ill in the winter of 1986, she began talking about killing herself when he eventually died. His illness blinded him, and he expressed fears that Sheldon might carry through with a plan they’d once discussed to take their lives together. Then, in May 1987, Sheldon shot her husband, and then killed herself.

As James Tiptree Jr., Sheldon created some of the darkest feminist dystopias you can imagine

One of the most recognized works that Sheldon wrote as Tiptree is a novella called Houston, Houston Do You Read?, first published in an anthology of science fiction stories in 1976. It earned Tiptree both a Nebula award and a Hugo, the pinnacle of science fiction literary recognition.

Houston, depending on your perspective, is either a dystopia or a utopia — and your perspective probably hinges a lot on your gender identity and politics. It embodies a sentiment that famed sci-fi author Ursula K. Le Guin expressed in her 2011 collection of essays that “within each utopia, [there is] a concealed dystopia; within each dystopia, a hidden utopia.”

In the story, an all-male group of astronauts accidentally rockets forward in time and encounters an all-female crew. This is strange to them; where they come from, not many women are astronauts. They soon discover that a virus wiped out most of human life on Earth, save for a few thousand women. Since then, the women have been getting by, cloning themselves and living peacefully. The men discover that in the future, they’re obsolete — and unwelcome.

Houston seems to raise the question of whether women are simply better off without men, and encourages the reader to confront the idea that all dystopias are a matter of opinion. Presumably, Houston read as dystopian for many men, who might have been alarmed to learn how unnecessary they had become.

The inverse of Houston might be a 1976 short story that Sheldon wrote as Raccoona, “The Screwfly Solution.” It tells of a religious cult that views women as an evil threat that must be eliminated. Told partially through letters, newspaper articles, and government reports, it chronicles the escalation from a few disturbing incidents to mass killings of women, what the story labels “femicide,” carried out by men who scientists believe have caught a virus that drives them to murder. Morgues across America are so full, they begin refusing female corpses.

“Women,” one of the believers says in the story, “are nowhere defined as human, but merely as a transitional expedient or state.” It’s downright creepy for anyone who’s spent time perusing the darker parts of 4chan or Reddit.

Reading “The Screwfly Solution” today, the cult-turned-epidemic seems like an extreme version of today’s incels — the online community devoted to resenting women that was linked to a horrific 2018 attack in Toronto that left 10 people dead. The story depicts toxic masculinity in virus form.

The idea that ritualistic killings of women could spread throughout the world is not so far-fetched for women today. Stories like this one reflect the very real fears women have about their personal safety.

In her day, Sheldon’s work was relevant and respected

It’s surprising how lost to the popular discourse Sheldon is, given how widely revered she was and how relevant her work still feels. Other stories with similar, gender-bending themes, like Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, became science fiction classics as Sheldon’s work has faded away.

In addition to winning awards, Tiptree caught the attention of Philip K. Dick, who was so impressed with Tiptree’s work that he wanted to collaborate on a novel. (Sheldon, not wanting to expose her true identity, demurred.) In the mid-1970s, Sheldon participated, as Tiptree, in a high-profile written symposium on women in science fiction — as the token sympathetic male writer. She also developed a strong friendship with Le Guin.

Sheldon’s foresight is also notable. A short story that Sheldon wrote as Tiptree, “The Girl Who Was Plugged In,” reads today almost as a commentary on Instagram — and is arguably the first cyberpunk story ever published. And its influence can be pretty clearly seen on William Gibson’s 1984 novel Neuromancer, now one of the best-known works in the genre.

Sheldon’s relative obscurity could be explained, in part, by the fact that she was writing short stories — Canadian author Alice Munro suffered similarly until she won a Nobel prize. It’s a theory Phillips subscribes to: “I think Tiptree’s relative obscurity has a lot to do with the short story factor,” she told Vox in an email. “Short stories are important in science fiction, but many casual sci-fi readers prefer novels and might not pick up a collection or anthology.”

Regardless, Sheldon is overdue for a return. And perhaps she’ll get it — horror filmmaker Jennifer Kent said in January that she is developing a TV series with Guillermo del Toro based on Tiptree’s work.

It’s about time.

The battle over Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court is over, and Republicans have won.

The 53-year-old DC Circuit Court judge will be promoted to the nation’s highest court, where he could well sit for decades. Christine Blasey Ford’s decision to come forward with sexual assault allegations against him, as inspiring as it may have been to many across the country, did not, in the end, prevent Kavanaugh’s confirmation.

The consequences from all this will be enormous. Key Supreme Court precedents on abortion rights, economic regulation, and many other issues hang in the balance — as does the Court’s very legitimacy after this intensely controversial process. There will be major political and cultural ramifications as well, as the midterm elections play out and the country grapples with what this means for #MeToo.

Here, then, are several takeaways from how Kavanaugh’s confirmation played out, and a look at what might be next.

Christine Blasey Ford unintentionally gave us a test of the #MeToo movement. Conservatives largely failed. 

On October 5, 2017 — exactly a year before the Senate invoked cloture on the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh — New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey published an exposé detailing accusations of sexual abuse and misconduct against Harvey Weinstein.

In the year since, women have spoken out. Not just by bringing accusations against other powerful men, but also in conversation with men (or more often with each other), in Facebook posts and group texts and living rooms — about things they had carried inside them in silence and shame. They were speaking out not as a means of group therapy — to the contrary, the past year has been emotionally exhausting — but as a political declaration.

That conversation — the #MeToo movement — has brought certain tenets into public understanding. That male misbehavior was accepted for a very long time, and that things that seem flagrantly wrong were often not treated as such when they happened. That long-ago traumas still ripple through victims’ lives. That how someone treats vulnerable women is a reflection of his character; that someone who seems like a “good man,” and generally does the right thing, doesn’t get a pass; that the reflex to close ranks against an accused peer is part of what shames victims into silence. That people should face social and professional consequences for socially and professionally unacceptable behavior, even if it doesn’t rise to the level of a crime.

That America might finally be ready to believe women.

If Kavanaugh had been nominated instead of Neil Gorsuch in early 2017, maybe Ford wouldn’t even have sent a letter to her representatives in Congress; she might not have thought her story mattered. She ultimately (if unwittingly) tested the strength of the #MeToo movement with public testimony last week. In some circles, her performance was seen as courageous — a show of strength that few would be able to muster and no one should have to. Few Republicans, even, dared to mock or question Ford directly, with the infuriating exception of the president of the United States.

Conservatives might not have openly doubted Ford’s story — a level of respect we might not have witnessed before #MeToo — but in the end, some of the justifications they offered echoed all the same old clichés that women have spent the past year or more debunking: that social sanctions against someone should be applied only if their accusers meet criminal standards of proof; that sexual assault is always an unknowable matter of he said, she said; that what happened 35 years ago doesn’t matter. 

Taking #MeToo seriously requires accepting that norms have shifted, and that past behavior might need to be reexamined, or that people might need to apologize for things (like an inside joke in a yearbook) that seemed fine at the time. And the haste to move forward and confirm Brett Kavanaugh has been the latest reminder that people are uncomfortable looking backward; they would rather skip to the end, and to forgiveness. 

—Dara Lind

Mitch McConnell proves (again) that he delivers for donors

In July of last year, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was overheard on the streets of Washington saying, “I’d really like to get that Kennedy slot.”

Now he’s got it.

By successfully ramming through Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination despite his unpopularity and despite Christine Blasey Ford’s sexual assault allegations, McConnell has delivered an enormously consequential prize to his political backers: He’s locked in conservative control of the Supreme Court, perhaps for a generation.

This is what the religious right, GOP megadonors, business groups, and the Federalist Society network of conservative legal activists care so intensely about, and why they’ve worked so hard to put McConnell and his party in power and keep them there.

McConnell understood full well how important this was to them, and has been willing to embrace controversial and unconventional political tactics to deliver it: refusing to consider any Obama replacement for Antonin Scalia, changing Senate rules to confirm Neil Gorsuch, and vowing to “plow right through” (his words) Kavanaugh’s nomination even though Ford had come forward.

It was remarkably ugly, but McConnell got what he wanted. His aggressive, uncompromising strategy, for both Scalia’s and Kennedy’s replacements, succeeded.

—Andrew Prokop

Lisa Murkowski listened to the victims of sexual assault — and the coalition that wrote her into office

In the end, only one Republican senator stood up to McConnell and cast a dissenting vote in Kavanaugh’s confirmation: Alaska’s Sen. Lisa Murkowski. (She ultimately voted “present” on the final vote so her colleague Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) could attend his daughter’s wedding.)

“I believe Brett Kavanaugh’s a good man,” Murkowski said. “It just may be that in my view he’s not the right man for the court at this time.”

For weeks, Democrats and Republicans have been talking past each other on Kavanaugh’s nomination. As Democrats called for a thorough investigation into the allegations of sexual misconduct, Republican leaders called it nothing more than a partisan scheme to obstruct the confirmation process. But the entire time, Murkowski seemed to be looking past the partisan bickering. She emphasized the importance of listening to the accusers.

“We are now in a place where it’s not about whether or not Judge Kavanaugh is qualified,” she told the New York Times. “It is about whether or not a woman who has been a victim at some point in her life is to be believed.”

And when her own party’s leaders brushed away calls for an independent FBI investigation into the allegations, she expressed a need for more facts — that an FBI investigation could bring.

But even before the allegations of sexual misconduct were brought forward, Murkowski’s vote was uncertain. She is one of the few in the Republican Senate conference who supports abortion rights — an issue that was raised heavily during Kavanaugh’s initial hearings. She was also under pressure from Alaska’s Native population to reject Kavanaugh’s nomination, out of concern for his positions on health care and American Indian tribes’ rights. She met with sexual assault survivors and Native American leaders from her state throughout the confirmation process.

Those voices likely shaped her vote, because they are the same voices that put her in office. It goes back to 2010: After losing her Republican primary to a Tea Party insurgent, Murkowski managed to band together a unique political coalition of Alaska Natives, Democrats, and centrist Republicans to win as a write-in candidate.

Ever since, she’s made it clear that she’s not going to vote with Republicans because they tell her to. Last year, she was one of Republican leaders’ major obstacles in repealing Obamacare, and now, even in a close Supreme Court vote, she stuck to her guns.

—Tara Golshan

The conservative movement finally got its majority on the Supreme Court

Conservatives have been on a mission to remake federal courts for decades.

After witnessing the heyday of liberalism on the Supreme Court in the 1960s and ’70s — a time when the Court ordered schools integrated, legalized abortion, and outlawed discriminatory voting laws in Southern states — conservatives saw the judiciary as a tyranny run by liberal justices and law schools. Those decisions were seismic cultural shifts, and conservatives were tired of feeling powerless to stop, slow, or reverse these changes.

So they set out to grow the ranks of conservatives in law schools, in federal courts, and ultimately at the Supreme Court. (The Federalist Society, of which Brett Kavanaugh was once a member and which vetted Trump’s list of all other possible nominees, was founded in the early 1980s.)

Now, with Kavanaugh as the fifth vote in the Court’s conservative bloc, the Federalist Society and their fellow activists are going to get their prize. Kavanaugh is more conservative than Republican-appointed Justice Anthony Kennedy, whom he is replacing, and though Kavanaugh gave a lot of non-answers on controversial topics throughout his confirmation hearings, conservatives widely expect he will hand down victories on restricting abortion, striking down affirmative action, and protecting corporations from onerous environmental regulations.

This explains why all the debate about the allegations of sexual misconduct against him didn’t make much of a difference. Conservatives saw this as one of their few opportunities to dominate the Supreme Court. Frustrated liberals could never gain any traction, no matter how serious the charges, be it sexual assault, possible perjury, or his display of partisanship. Republicans have been putting up with Trump precisely for this moment. For them, the mission has always been about getting a majority of conservatives on the Court.

Indeed, as Vox’s Jane Coaston pointed out, 56 percent of voters who found the Supreme Court nominations to be “the most important factor” went for Trump in 2016. Republicans made a deal: They’d protect Trump, and Trump would give them their Supreme Court nominee. Now they have him.

—Kay Steiger

Susan Collins and most Republican women don’t believe women when it’s their guy getting accused

Republican women have been at an impossible crossroads ever since the election of President Donald Trump.

While many may agree with his policy agenda, they’ve also been forced to sidestep his numerous sexual misconduct allegations along with his crude and demeaning rhetoric toward women — the best example of which came in the now-infamous Access Hollywood tape, which leaked two years ago Sunday: “Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything,” he said.

Republican women like Rep. Martha Roby (R-AL), who withdrew her support for him at the time, have seen themselves penalized at the polls for speaking out. Rep. Martha McSally (R-AZ) — who never even endorsed Trump in 2016 — has now been forced to cozy up to him as she vies for a Senate seat.

Republicans — women included — have broadly avoided confronting Trump’s past bad behavior, including the 20-plus sexual misconduct allegations he’s faced, in favor of getting their policies jammed through Congress.

Kavanaugh’s nomination gave Republicans the Diet Coke version of this years-long dilemma with Trump. He is a conservative justice. He will likely help advance rulings on issues like corporate power, abortion rights, and gun control that Republicans will herald. His confirmation is a Republican win. Despite his qualifications, however, Kavanaugh — and his nomination process — have been marred by multiple allegations of sexual misconduct.

And Republicans’ decision to support him anyway has also shined a light on the longstanding partisan divide in how likely people are to believe women.

A New York Times/Siena College poll found a stark split between Republican and Democratic women on this subject, with 64 percent of Democratic women believing Christine Blasey Ford’s account, and just 7 percent of Republican women feeling the same.

Against this backdrop, Republican senators ultimately had two options: They could trust Ford’s testimony — and reject Kavanaugh — as Sen. Lisa Murkowski has done, and in doing so could potentially incur the wrath of their party and face high political costs. Or they could support him and cast doubt on the credibility of the allegations, an approach trumpeted by the male-dominated conference.

With Republican Sens. Shelley Moore Capito (WV), Joni Ernst (IA), and Cindy Hyde-Smith (MS) sitting behind her on the Senate floor, Sen. Susan Collins announced on Friday that she had chosen the latter. “I believe that she is a survivor of a sexual assault and that this trauma has upended her life,” she said. “Nevertheless, the four witnesses she named could not corroborate any of the events of that evening gathering where she says the assault occurred.”

—Li Zhou

The Supreme Court is damaged as an institution — perhaps irrevocably

In confirming Kavanaugh within years of blocking Merrick Garland, Republicans have done extraordinary damage to the Supreme Court itself.

The Court’s legitimacy depends on most Americans viewing it as above the political fray, an institution whose decisions are driven by legal reasoning not by the justices’ partisan leanings.

But Republicans just confirmed Kavanaugh with a razor-thin, almost entirely partisan majority. And they did it after Kavanaugh’s fiery and nakedly partisan testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, in which he blamed the sexual assault allegations against him on a left-wing conspiracy. They were, he said, a “calculated and orchestrated political hit, fueled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election.”

The September 27 hearing revealed a justice who was less an “impartial arbiter” of the law and more a partisan creature who would take his political grudges to the Supreme Court. He claimed, without evidence, that Democrats were going after him to get “revenge on behalf of the Clintons,” with the support of “millions of dollars in money from outside, left-wing opposition groups.” He was defiant, even downright rude, toward the Democratic senators who asked him questions.

And after all of that, you have Kavanaugh rammed through despite the cloud of sexual assault allegations, after an FBI investigation Democrats (correctly) believe was too limited to help adjudicate the truth of the allegations against the now-justice.

Chief Justice John Roberts has long been concerned with the Court’s legitimacy and standing as a neutral arbiter. This appears to be part of the calculation behind his decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act: Roberts was worried about the Court being perceived as simply a partisan Republican actor.

Kavanaugh’s very presence on the Court, especially after the clearly partisan blockade of Merrick Garland (President Barack Obama’s 2016 nominee to fill the spot on the bench that Neil Gorsuch eventually did), has led to what Roberts has long tried to avoid here. It will be hard for many liberals to accept Court rulings that go against them as legitimate and fair, rather than as the outcome of a partisan Republican majority.

And that is a recipe for crisis: The system depends on everyone having faith in the Supreme Court adjudicating partisan disputes. Confirming Kavanaugh, who is the most unpopular Supreme Court nominee ever to be approved by the Senate, could quite plausibly collapse this consensus.

—Zack Beauchamp

Some red-state Democrats voted no — come what may in November

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) was the one red-state Democrat facing a tough reelection in 2018 who voted for Brett Kavanaugh. But two more red-state senators — Heidi Heitkamp (ND) and Joe Donnelly (IN) voted against him, and it could cost them in their bids for reelection.

Both Donnelly and Heitkamp voted for Trump’s first Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch, but both made clear they were troubled by the sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh and talked about the need to listen to sexual assault survivors.

Heitkamp, the Democrat from North Dakota, tops many lists of most endangered senators. She’s running against Republican Kevin Cramer, who is leading recent polls by about 8 points, according to the latest RealClearPolitics average. Trump won North Dakota by 35 points, and the majority of the state’s voters support Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court; in a recent Fox News poll, 34 percent of likely voters surveyed said they’d be less likely to vote for Heitkamp if she voted against Kavanaugh, and another 46 percent said it wouldn’t have an impact on their vote.

Donnelly announced his opposition to Kavanaugh last week. The Indiana senator appears to be in a better spot polling-wise than Heitkamp — but he’s just 2.5 points ahead of Republican challenger Mike Braun according to the RealClearPolitics spread, so it’s still a very close race.

Ironically, Manchin might be the best off of all of them — he’s leading in some polls by double digits — but he seemed unpersuaded by Ford’s testimony. Still, he is running in a state Trump won by 40 points.

Other red-state Democrats, including Sens. Claire McCaskill, Jon Tester, and Bill Nelson, all announced they would vote against Kavanaugh last week.

—Ella Nilsen

House Republicans in Clinton-friendly districts might be goners

Now that Kavanaugh appears to be getting confirmed, it could bode poorly for House Republicans running for reelection in 2018.

When Kavanaugh’s nomination appeared to be in real trouble last week, it had the effect of revving up the Republican base in a way pollsters haven’t seen all election cycle. An NPR/Marist poll released on Wednesday showed that 80 percent of Republican voters polled said the midterms were “very important,” essentially on par with Democratic voters, who were at 82 percent.

Compare that to July, when Republican voters lagged 10 percentage points behind Democrats when asked how important the midterms were. The sudden jump in enthusiasm signaled that Republicans were fired up about Kavanaugh in a way nothing else had been able to achieve.

“The result of hearings, at least in the short run, is the Republican base was awakened,” said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion.

Now that it appears Kavanaugh will be confirmed after all, the effect could indeed be short-term. (It’s important to note it’s still too early for enough polling data to tell us if this was a short-term spike or a larger trend among Republican voters.) But Kavanaugh’s drawn-out, embattled confirmation hearing, ending with him being confirmed, could now have the effect of spurring more Democrats to the polls on November 6.

—EN