He Said, She Said: Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh took on the mantle of victimhood yesterday in a daylong hearing as he belligerently denied ever committing sexual assault, sometimes crying, sometimes challenging the political motives of Democratic senators, and even their drinking habits.

Millions of Americans were riveted to televisions, computer screens, and radios as the drama played all day.

Taking virtually no time to consider the testimony of Kavanaugh and his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, the Republican leadership of the Senate Judiciary Committee plans to go ahead and vote today, probably passing Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Senate floor. Kavanaugh’s fate rests with a handful of senators who might go either way.

Kavanaugh came out fighting after the panel first heard from Ford. “The Constitution gives the Senate an important role in the confirmation process, but you have replaced ‘advice and consent’ with ‘search and destroy,’” he said.

Ford has accused Kavanaugh of attempting to rape her at a high school party. Kavanaugh was subjected to painfully uncomfortable questions about his high school drinking, sexual activity, and even cryptic notes in his yearbook bio blurb. He said, “My family and my name have been totally and permanently destroyed by vicious and false additional allegations,” referring to the claims of two other women who have also accused him.

Kavanaugh’s performance was straight out of the Trump playbook: don’t quit, admit nothing, and fight. Kavanaugh offered up his calendar from 1982, saying there was no notation for the party he was said to have attended where the assault may have taken place. He repeatedly said, falsely, that four other people who were purportedly there said the party never took place. They didn’t say that … they said they don’t remember it.

In proclaiming his innocence, Kavanaugh repeatedly dodged questions while talking about his high school record as an athlete and number one student. At times, he sounded like an aggrieved teenager defending himself. In kicking back against his Democratic questioners, he shook off his courtly neutrality and outed himself as a partisan Republican, damaging his credibility as a judge.

Kavanaugh boasted of his approval rating by the American Bar Association, but by the end of the day the organization called for further investigation and a delay in the vote on Kavanaugh’s confirmation.

The hearing was heated at times. In frustration, Republican Lindsey Graham had a brief meltdown and blurted out, “To my Republican colleagues, if you vote no, you’re legitimizing the most despicable thing I have seen in my time in politics.”

Earlier in the day Kavanaugh’s accuser, Christine Blasey Ford told the Judiciary Committee that she is “100 percent certain” that it was Brett Kavanaugh who sexually assaulted her while the two were in high school.

Ford is a professor of psychology. Asked how she remembers it was Kavanaugh she said, “Just basic memory functions and also just the level of norepinephrine and the epinephrine in the brain that sort of, as you know, encodes — that neurotransmitter that codes memories into the hippocampus and so the trauma-related experience is locked there whereas other details kind of drift.”

She also said that her strongest memory of the incident with Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge was that “Indelible into the hippocampus is the laughter — the uproarious laughter between the two, and their having fun at my expense.”

Committee Chairman Charles Grassley opened the hearing with a statement clearly designed to cast doubt on Ford before she testified. Grassley spoke about what a great guy Kavanaugh is and that none of the current accusations showed up in six FBI clearance reports. He said, “Nowhere in any of these six FBI reports, which committee investigators have reviewed on a bipartisan basis, was there whiff of any issue, any issue at all in anyway related to inappropriate sexual behavior.”

Ford said in her formal statement that, “I have been accused of acting out of partisan political motives. Those who say that do not know me. I am a fiercely independent person, and I am no one’s pawn.”

The Republican questioning was done by veteran Arizona sex crimes prosecutor Rachel Mitchell, and it may have backfired. She never quite got to what she was driving at, that Ford’s memory is flawed and that she is being used by the Democrats to destroy Kavanaugh. While Democratic senators asking their own questions went straight to the heart of the issue, Mitchell took her five-minute increments of time to slowly ask about matters of memory and credibility, even delving into Ford’s fear of flying. She asked few questions about the actual incident, instead focusing on what happened before and after.

Mitchell asked about how Ford’s story came out and who was paying her lawyers. They’re working for free.

In Brief: President Trump delayed his fateful meeting with deputy Attorney Gen. Rod Rosenstein until next week. It’s been speculated that he may fire Rosenstein or demand his resignation, but it seems he would have done that already if that’s his plan. —New York airport workers are reaching a deal that will give them $19 an hour, the highest minimum wage in the country. — The Securities and Exchange Commission is suing Tesla car founder Elon Musk, claiming he made false public statements about the business. They want to force him out of the company.

Core Curriculum: The State of Texas has intervened in a lawsuit to back a high school that expelled a girl who refused to stand for the flag during the Pledge of Allegiance.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said, “School children cannot unilaterally refuse to participate in the pledge.”

India Landry, 18, sued after she was expelled from the Houston-area Windfern High School last year. She told reporters at the time that her opposition to the pledge was political, and that she was inspired by the NFL players kneeling during the national anthem.    She said a school official told her, “This isn’t the NFL.”

Landry told reporters, “I don’t think the flag is for what it says it’s for, liberty and justice and all that. It’s not obviously what’s going on in America today.”

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