If Christine Blasey Ford doesn’t show up to Monday’s hearing, it will hurt the Democratic Party, which has thrown full support behind her without waiting for the facts.

The confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court has easily been one of the ugliest battles in the history of U.S. politics.

Obviously, the hostility began during the 2016 election when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) blocked the confirmation of President Obama’s SCOTUS nominee Judge Merrick Garland to fill the seat of the late Justice Antonin Scalia. No matter what you thought of the outcome, it was the epitome of dirty politics as well as a stroke of political genius, as the SCOTUS vacancy was a huge factor among those who voted Donald Trump into office.

It’s understandable for Democrats to be bitter over the GOP’s treatment of Garland. He was never given a vote, let alone a confirmation hearing. So when President Trump appointed Judge Neil Gorsuch, it rubbed salt on Democrats’ wound. Predictably, they weren’t on board with confirming a conservative judge, so McConnell expanded the “nuclear option” made famous by his former colleague Harry Reid (D-NV), which paved the way for Gorsuch’s confirmation.

This year, Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement. And the left went absolutely insane. At least with Gorsuch, a conservative judge was replacing a conservative judge. Here, Trump’s next pick was going to replace a moderate who was often the swing vote in highly publicized cases.

So the fact that a conservative could take Kennedy’s seat and establish a conservative-dominant Supreme Court for a generation was an extremely tough pill to swallow for liberals. When Trump nominated Kavanaugh, Democrats planned to do everything in their power to prevent his confirmation from happening, by any means necessary.

First, Senate Democrats tried to delay the confirmation hearing because thousands of documents from Kavanaugh’s tenure serving the Bush administration weren’t released. Then there was the coordinated effort to derail the confirmation between the outbursts of 2020 hopefuls and the unhinged protestors that kept disrupting the hearing.

We had Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) make a fool out of himself with his “I am Spartacus” moment while breaking Senate rules, and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) pushed a false narrative that was debunked by The Washington Post and PolitiFact about Kavanaugh’s views of birth control. But it wasn’t until last week that things went from ugly to toxic.

Exactly seven days before the Senate Judiciary Committee was scheduled to vote on Kavanaugh’s confirmation, it was leaked to the press that Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) obtained a letter in July written by Christine Blasey Ford, a woman who accused Kavanaugh of sexual assault back in high school in the early 1980s. Feinstein eventually handed the letter to federal investigators, who passed it off to the White House.

Ford alleged that when she was 15 years old, a drunk 17-year-old Kavanaugh forced her on a bed at a house party, groped her over her clothes, put his hand over her mouth as she tried to scream, and managed to get away after his intoxicated pal Mark Judge fell on top of them. Both Kavanaugh and Judge vehemently denied such actions occurred.

There are very few facts in this allegation. There is no date, no location, and no corroborating witness. All Ford has provided thus far are notes from 2012 couples therapy sessions, when she first told others about the alleged incident. So unless someone emerges and backs up Ford or another alleged victim comes forward, it’s a “he said, she said” scenario.

Victims of sexual abuse deserve to be heard and be taken seriously. To their credit, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee are taking this allegation seriously. The only folks who’ve been anything but serious are the Democrats.

Feinstein sat on this letter for more than six weeks before she shared it with investigators. She didn’t mention it to Kavanaugh at their one-on-one meeting, nor at the confirmation hearing. Feinstein claims she held the letter out of respect for Ford’s anonymity. Ford ultimately came forward to The Washington Post last weekend.

Instead of proceeding with the vote, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) decided to have a hearing on Monday and invited both Kavanaugh and Ford to make their case to the public. Kavanaugh accepted the invitation while Ford has yet to respond, despite her lawyer’s recent insistence that she was willing to testify before the Senate.

Now, Ford has aligned herself with Senate Democrats, who are calling for the FBI to investigate this incident before she testifies, which is completely absurd. For starters, Kavanaugh has already gone through six separate background checks. Secondly, this alleged assault took place decades ago. How on earth could the FBI investigate a crime that has no date, location, witnesses, or any sort of evidence?

Democrats are only pushing for an FBI investigation, which would take months, as a desperate ploy to delay this confirmation until after the midterms, perhaps hoping for that small chance they can retake the Senate and block all of Trump’s future nominees.

After all of this, Feinstein has finally expressed her own doubts of Kavanaugh’s accuser, saying “I can’t say that everything is truthful. I don’t know.” Really? She and her Democratic colleagues have spent all week saying Ford is “credible.” Now she says she doesn’t know? It’s this kind of reckless politics that could help prevent a “blue wave” from happening.

Just look at how Democrats have behaved these past few weeks. They sounded the alarms for not getting enough documents about Kavanaugh (more than 500,000 apparently isn’t enough), they coordinated with protestors, they spread disinformation about his stance on abortion, and now they’re treating him as if he’s the Harvey Weinstein of the judicial branch. Frankly, McConnell’s maneuvering of Garland pales in comparison to Democrats’ slimy tactics on Kavanaugh.

The entire country is witnessing this disaster, and many were disturbed by Ford’s allegation. However, if she doesn’t show up to Monday’s hearing, not only will it hurt her credibility, it will hurt the credibility of the Democratic Party, which has thrown their full support behind this woman without waiting for the facts.

Pundits have put pressure on the GOP about inviting Ford to testify, saying if their treatment of her is reminiscent of what Anita Hill went through during the confirmation of Clarence Thomas, then they’ll be slaughtered in the midterms. But can’t the opposite happen if Kavanaugh’s accuser turns out to be a giant hoax that Democrats pushed at the eleventh hour? Shouldn’t their maligning of Kavanaugh backfire? If anything, this gives America a taste of what to expect if Democrats take over Congress, specifically the Senate. It wouldn’t just be obstruction of the Trump agenda and Resistance, it would be shameless political stunts and character assassinations.

Democrats have put all their eggs inside Ford’s basket. If her story falters, it will reflect on them and their awful handling of Kavanaugh’s confirmation. This is something voters will not forget by November, and that “blue wave” many are expecting could evaporate because of it.