Last July, as Donald Trump was conducting a US supreme court search that Brett Kavanaugh would later gushingly praise for its “careful attention,” Mitch McConnell sent a private warning to the White House. The Senate majority leader urged the president to choose someone other than Kavanaugh because the federal appeals court judge had too long a public record dating back to his days as a top assistant to Grand Inquisitor Kenneth Starr.

It is possible that McConnell was also concerned about something personal on Kavanaugh’s record in addition to his paper trail from the George W Bush White House. But Trump, whose idea of a “listening tour” is to watch recordings of his own rallies, turned a deaf ear to McConnell’s plea. The selling point for Trump may have been Kavanaugh’s extreme belief that a president (even one who watches Fox News all day) is far too busy to be questioned by an outside investigation.

Now the nomination is teetering on the precipice after Christine Blasey Ford went public Sunday with her allegation that a drunk Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her as a 15-year-old at a high-school party. As for McConnell, whose political career has been a portrait in cynicism, he now faces a choice between trying to save Kavanaugh and trying to save his suddenly imperiled Senate majority.

Assuming it comes off as scheduled, next Monday’s Kavanaugh-versus-Ford hearing could shape the fall elections. Led by a shameless president with a less than upright Jimmy Carter-esque sexual history, the pyrotechnics surrounding the Capitol Hill confrontation could make the ordeal of Anita Hill seem restrained and dignified in comparison. Already, Donald Trump Jr, a son who loyally emulates his father with every crude gesture, has posted on Instagram a humorless joke ridiculing Ford’s accusations.

The confirmation of Kavanaugh under these ugly circumstances would represent a victory for Trump – and virtually no one else in the Republican Party. With Kavanaugh on the supreme court for its opening session in October, the president would be blessed with a justice almost certain to support him if Trump decided to defy a subpoena from Robert Mueller.

Already, the talking points that loyal Republicans were parroting on the Sunday morning shows sound like they were written during insensitivity training. On Fox News Sunday, Louisiana Senator John Kennedy complained about the anonymous “lady in the letter” who claimed that when “Judge Kavanaugh was a teenager, he allegedly made sexual advances against her at a party.”

Now Ford is no longer anonymous. And an alleged attack that caused Ford to worry that Kavanaugh “might inadvertently kill me” is a far cry from Kennedy’s vague references to “sexual advances.”

Once Republicans thought that they could politically exploit the votes of red-state Democratic senators who opposed Kavanaugh. Now vulnerable Senate Democrats like Heidi Heitkamp (North Dakota) and Claire McCaskill (Missouri) have a convincing non-ideological explanation for voting against the nominee.

Not only would McConnell’s scorched-earth battle for Kavanaugh unite the 49 Senate Democrats, but it would also put beleaguered Republican incumbents like Nevada’s Dean Heller and even the fiercely ideological Ted Cruz in Texas in an uncomfortable position. Then there is Republican House member Martha McSally, who is running for the Arizona Senate seat being vacated by Jeff Flake. McSally, who once called the Access Hollywood tape “disgusting,” had to embrace Trump to survive a vicious right-wing primary challenge last month. Now she will face an even trickier decision on the campaign trail after describing the charges against Kavanaugh as a “very serious allegation.”

Do Republicans in tight Senate races like McSally stand with the president and McConnell in stouthearted defense of an accused sexual predator or do they risk the wrath of Trump voters by abandoning Kavanaugh in his desperate hours?

The talking points that loyal Republicans were parroting on the Sunday morning shows sound like they were written during insensitivity training

McConnell is boxed. The more he fights for Kavanaugh, the more he risks alienating women voters in November. Already, political analyst Nate Silver gives the Democrats a 30% chance of winning back the Senate, despite a political map tilted towards the Republicans like a rigged roulette wheel. If the Republicans go too far in defaming Ford, they risk the greatest gender-based political uprising since the suffragette movement.

But the situation is equally dispiriting for McConnell if Kavanaugh withdraws or loses on the Senate floor. Trying to jam through the next name on the Federalist Society’s list in a post-election session would also arouse united opposition from the Democrats who remember that McConnell refused to grant Merrick Garland even a hearing in the election year of 2016. Waiting for a new Senate in 2019 would mean that pro-abortion-rights Republican senators like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski are more likely to be skittish about their own 2020 reelection prospects.

Too many pundits have hailed McConnell’s supposed political genius as he pursued a right-wing agenda while offering fealty to a president he obviously scorns. With Brett Kavanaugh, McConnell finally may be paying the price for his craven willingness to truckle to Trump.