We’ve seen this movie before. Back in 1991, during Clarence Thomas’s confirmation hearing, there were other women who waited in airless witness rooms to testify in support of Anita Hill. They, too, were never called. Two other women were ready to testify that Judge Thomas had made inappropriate, sexualized comments to them in the office, incidents that were similar to the harassment that Ms. Hill had described in her opening statement. There were people willing to be called before the committee who would have testified under oath about Judge Thomas’s interest in pornography, information that also would have buttressed Ms. Hill’s testimony. But none were called.

Instead, Senator Joe Biden, the Democratic committee chairman, fearing political backlash, abruptly gaveled the hearings to an end. Anita Hill remained isolated as the lone accuser.

Clarence Thomas categorically denied her testimony and famously denounced the hearing as a “high-tech lynching.” Just hours after the hearing ended, he was confirmed in a 52-to-48 vote, the closest vote ever for a successful Supreme Court nominee.

I was in the Senate hearing room, bleary-eyed, when Senator Biden brought the curtain down on that travesty of a hearing. It was only in the wee morning hours that I learned that there was a second woman, Angela Wright, who had been ready to testify that Judge Thomas, in the office, had asked about the size of her breasts. Several senators told me years later, when I was reporting for a book, “Strange Justice,” that if Ms. Wright had been allowed to testify, Judge Thomas might not have been confirmed.

At the time of the Hill-Thomas hearing, there was a lot more that was concealed from the public. There were four other women who would have supported aspects of Ms. Hill’s testimony and four others who knew about Judge Thomas’s interest in pornography. At least Hill was permitted to call as witnesses friends in whom she had confided about the sexual harassment she endured. Dr. Blasey won’t have even that.

After the curtain abruptly fell on the 1991 hearing, a confirmation vote was hurriedly scheduled. Now, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, is trying to muscle through the same rushed vote. There was such nervousness in 1991 that more would come out about Judge Thomas after the confirmation vote that his swearing-in was also hastily moved up. Literally at the moment he became an associate justice, The Washington Post was preparing a story about his habitual use of pornography. (Ms. Hill had testified that the harassment she had endured involved him calling her into his office at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Department of Education and describing pornographic films.) The story never ran.

Following the spectacle of the Hill-Thomas hearings there was a backlash, but not the one the Democrats had feared. The 1992 elections were called the “Year of the Woman” and brought six new Democratic women, including Dianne Feinstein, to the Senate. The new women joining the Congress that year called themselves “The Anita Hill Class.”