It all goes back to Senator Dianne Feinstein. The shady allegations suddenly becoming public. The late hour shenanigans. The lying to colleagues. The using of a clearly damaged Christine Blasey Ford. The dragging of Brett Kavanaugh and his family through this fetid mess. Every part of this is the ranking Democrat’s fault.

Finally, at the end of the day, Senator Cruz and then Senators Cornyn and Grassley confronted her about her perfidy.

The Senator from California seemed genuinely shocked to be called out. Her befuddlement is laughable. How, precisely, did the news of the existence of Dr. Ford come to the public when only Senator Feinstein and a Congresswoman and their staffs had access to the letter in question?

Senator Feinstein ended up blaming Dr. Ford and her “beach friends.”

Speaking of those beach friends… Dr. Ford didn’t tell anyone, not her parents, not no one except for her Congresswoman, Senator Feinstein, the Washington Post, and her beach friends. She wanted to keep this private. Her letter was leaked. But Senator Feinstein insists it wasn’t her. And Dr. Ford insists it wasn’t her.

To reiterate, Dr. Ford claimed to want to keep this private. Her lawyers kept from her, evidently, the fact that the Republicans would have been happy to have her forensically interviewed in California what with her obvious fear of flying. She seemed shocked by this possibility. Her attorneys seemed dismayed, too.

This was not going according to plan.

After the morning’s testimony and no real progress and no real solid anything coming of it except the last two or three questions by Rachel Mitchell, many, including Judge Napolitano and renowned attorney and professor Alan Dershowitz thought the questioning of Dr. Ford was a bust. I’m no attorney and not versed in legal anything, but optics and public relations I do understand and Mitchell was the perfect choice. Here are the reasons:

Mitchell gently laid meandering ground work that subtly revealed the lack of substantiation. She was collegial, kind, quiet, and deferential to Dr. Ford. No one could get their arms around the questions. Mitchell was never the focus. She melted into the background. That much is obvious considering how there’s zero clips of any exchanges between the women. There’s no video of a traumatized victim being harassed. This is important longterm. The real fight wasn’t in the Senate chamber but on the news after this hearing. No clips. No video on endless repeat on NBC, CNN, etc. They salivated for it. The counsel for Dr. Ford were overheard asking the cameramen to not focus on Ms. Mitchell but to include the Senators. For once, Republicans were savvy. The questioner wasn’t up on the dais but low, level with the accuser. Then, at the end of this gentle questioning, Ms. Mitchell asked the important questions. They were the questions lingering in the minds of everyone going into lunch. “You don’t remember who drove you home?” “You realize that this isn’t the best forum for these questions?” “It would be better to conduct this in private, don’t you agree?” Clever. Delegitimatize the process. Dr. Ford was a hapless victim, see? She would have preferred to be questioned in private and the Democrats denied the wishes of their own witness. No direct assault. No abuse. No cross-examination. No assumption of her being a liar. The Republicans resisted the urge to say anything and shut up. Thank God. It would have been a disaster. Both Senator Graham and Senator Cruz could have made short work of Dr. Ford’s monster-truck sized holes in her story, but that wasn’t the point. The point was to recognize the political game being played and refuse to play it. Their restraint should be saluted. If this were a criminal trial, Dr. Ford’s allegations wouldn’t make it past a police officer’s desk. Everyone in that room knows this. The only purpose was spectacle and to portray Republicans a malevolent Old White Men. Sorry, Dems, you got outplayed on this one.

Which brings us back to Senator Feinstein. She dropped this bomb upending the process and dealing contemptuously with her own witness, Judge Kavanaugh, her Republican colleagues, and her fellow Americans. When the original hearing didn’t go as planned, when the only dirt was baseball tickets and beer, something drastic had to be done. This last-hour desperation meant expending a cartel-load of political capital but things like Senator Feinstein’s future was at stake — never mind the Senate control and the Supreme Court balance and most of all, the cultural control that leftists hold so dear. So Senator Feinstein lit everything on fire and burned it all.

This ugly sham will be the Senator’s legacy and her shame. At the end of her career (because win or lose, her career as Senator is over), Dianne Feinstein upended the rule of law and laws of common decency. She abused a fragile woman and attempted to destroy a decent man and his family for one reason: power. Her power.

Hope the spectacle was worth it. It won’t be videos of the male Republicans that will be the legacy of this farce, it will be Senator Feinstein: fumbling, shocked, caught in a trap of her own making. She should pay for her malice dearly, she’s caused incalculable damage to many innocent people — not least of all the American citizens she claims to represent.