Thursday’s hearing on the sexual assault charges against Brett Kavanaugh promises to be a circus. If the past few weeks are prologue, Democratic senators will demagogue in bad faith, Republican senators will embarrass themselves, and most of the press won’t even try to assess the veracity of what is said, opting instead for score-keeping and judging the “optics.”

We know how Judiciary Committee Democrats will vote. They are all completely faithful to the abortion lobby and have never considered voting for Kavanaugh.

Some Republicans on and off the committee have tipped their hands, suggesting they’ll be voting for Kavanaugh no matter what they hear. That’s a moral error. Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations against Kavanaugh are serious and at least deserve to be weighed.

But even then, the hearing should be about just one thing: If he did what she says he did, or anything like it, every Republican should vote Kavanaugh down.

Of course, we can’t know for sure, but some light may be shed by putting both accuser and accused under oath and asking questions pertinent to this accusation. After the questioning, senators of good faith can vote on whether they believe Kavanaugh or think Ford’s story is correct.

Democrats and their allies in the major media are laying many traps, hoping to snare a Republican senator's vote. They will try to make this about Mark Judge’s character, about whether Ford deserves sympathy, or whether prep school boys in general can be monsters. In general, they hope to make some Republican senator uneasy with the politics and the “optics” of the situation. They can win by making just a couple of Republican senators feel that even if the charges against Kavanaugh are unconvincing, it just looks bad to confirm him on a party-line vote after all of this.

This would be a grave injustice and a disastrous error.

Again, if Kavanaugh really seems guilty, vote no. But Republicans cannot vote no just because Kavanaugh has become a public-relations liability or politically toxic. Republicans cannot feed the Left's jackals and expect anything good to come from it in the long run.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., launched a lame, transparent political attack on Miguel Estrada last decade, who was nominated to the D.C. Circuit Court by former President George W. Bush. Schumer pretended he was filibustering because Estrada hadn’t provided all relevant documents, but the documents he demanded were all privileged. Within a few months, Schumer would drop that pretext for his unprecedented judicial filibusters. Purloined documents revealed Schumer and allies filibustered Estrada “because he is Latino” and may have been difficult to defeat for a later Supreme Court nomination.

The New Yorker reports the horrific coda: “During the confirmation struggle, Estrada’s wife miscarried; in November 2004, she died, of an overdose of alcohol and sleeping pills. The death was ruled accidental by the medical examiner. [Karl] Rove said that Mrs. Estrada had been traumatized by the nastiness of the process.”

Democrats suffered no consequences for that. The quarterbacks of the attack — Schumer and then-Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev. — later became party leaders.

Senate Democrats learned a lesson from the Estrada episode: They can get away with murder.

If Kavanaugh isn’t convincingly proven to be a sexual predator, but the Democrats win anyway — just because they made the whole situation so ugly that no one had stomach for the fight — just imagine the long-term consequences.

Imagine what every Republican nominee for a century will be subject to. Even this week, Democratic senators were lending credence to absurd accusations by Michael Avenatti.

Then, imagine how Republicans will retaliate.

Politics today look toxic. If Democrats defeat Kavanaugh simply by lobbing uncorroborated accusations, Washington politics will become hell.