Ask any casual observer what the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation fight is about, and the answer will be the allegation that at a high-school party 36 years ago, when Kavanaugh was 17, he drunkenly forced then-15-year-old Christine Ford onto a bed, tried to undress her, and, when she tried to scream, covered her mouth with his hand.

That is now old news. In the last 48 hours, immediately after Senate Republicans and President Trump agreed to Democratic demands that the FBI investigate the 1982 incident, the Kavanaugh goalposts have moved dramatically. Now, a key issue is Kavanaugh's teenage drinking, and whether he testified truthfully to Congress about the amount of beer he consumed in high school and college more than three decades ago, and the effect it had on him.

Just look at the headlines:

"Yale Classmate Accuses Kavanaugh of 'Blatant Mischaracterization' of His Drinking." (New York Times)

"Another Yale classmate breaks silence: Kavanaugh lied." (CNN)

"Brett Kavanaugh's College Friends Say He Lied Under Oath About Drinking." (NBC)

And many others. The allegation is that at last Thursday's hearing, Kavanaugh lied to the Senate Judiciary Committee when he was asked about his drinking practices both in high school and at Yale University. Kavanaugh was under oath at the time.

"Lying to Congress is a federal crime," Sen. Bernie Sanders noted in a letter to Judiciary Committee chairman Charles Grassley. "Kavanaugh's truthfulness with the Senate goes to the very heart of whether he should be confirmed to the court."

The new developments raised two questions. One, did Kavanaugh actually lie to the Senate about his drinking? And two, why are Democrats, now that they have finally won the FBI investigation they wanted into the sexual misconduct allegations against Kavanaugh, suddenly making a bigger deal of his drinking?

On the first, Kavanaugh clearly told the Senate he drank in high school and college. He told the Senate he sometimes drank to excess. But he said he did not black out, nor did he drink so much that he could not remember events that took place while he was drinking.

"I drank beer with my friends," Kavanaugh testified. "Almost everyone did. Sometimes I had too many beers. Sometimes others did. I liked beer. I still like beer. But I did not drink beer to the point of blacking out, and I never sexually assaulted anyone."

That was pretty clear. Kavanaugh repeated it all when the Republican-appointed prosecutor, Rachel Mitchell, questioned him.

"Yes, we drank beer," he said. "My friends and I, the boys and girls. Yes, we drank beer. I liked beer. Still like beer. We drank beer. The drinking age, as I noted, was 18, so the seniors were legal, senior year in high school, people were legal to drink, and we — yeah, we drank beer, and I said sometimes — sometimes probably had too many beers, and sometimes other people had too many beers."

Mitchell pressed Kavanaugh on whether he sometimes drank so much that he forgot what he did when he was drinking.

"Have you ever passed out from drinking?"

"I — passed out would be — no, but I've gone to sleep, but — but I've never blacked out," Kavanaugh said. "That's the — that's the — the allegation, and that — that — that's wrong."

"So let's talk about your time in high school," Mitchell said. "In high school, after drinking, did you ever wake up in a different location than you remembered passing out or going to sleep?"

"No, no."

"Did you ever wake up with your clothes in a different condition, or fewer clothes on than you remembered when you went to sleep or passed out?"

"No, no."

"Did you ever tell — did anyone ever tell you about something that happened in your presence that you didn't remember during a time that you had been drinking?"

"No..."

"During the time in high school when you would be drinking, did anyone ever tell you about something that you did not remember?"

"No."

Later in the hearing, Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar picked up the questioning. "Drinking is one thing, but the concern is about truthfulness, and in your written testimony, you said sometimes you had too many drinks. Was there ever a time when you drank so much that you couldn't remember what happened, or part of what happened the night before?"

"No, I — no," Kavanaugh answered. "I remember what happened, and I think you've probably had beers, senator, and — and so I..."

"So you're saying there's never been a case where you drank so much that you didn't remember what happened the night before, or part of what happened?"

"It's — you're asking about, you know, blackout," Kavanaugh said. "I don't know. Have you?"

"Could you answer the question, judge? I just — so you — that's not happened. Is that your answer?"

"Yeah, and I'm curious if you have," Kavanaugh said.

"I have no drinking problem, judge."

"Yeah, nor do I."

Some Democrats and their allies in the press suggested Kavanaugh lied in his exchanges with Mitchell and the Democratic senators. But how? Kavanaugh was quite open about the fact that he drank in high school and in college, and also about the fact that he sometimes drank too much. He denied having alcohol-related blackouts, but said he had "gone to sleep" after drinking. On another occasion, responding to Klobuchar, he said "I don't know" when asked if he had ever drunk so much that he didn't remember what happened the night before. It's hard to see where the "federal crime," as Sen. Sanders put it, is in that testimony.

But by Sunday night, the Washington Post reported that "many Democrats have called for the FBI to take a broader look at whether Kavanaugh may have misled senators by minimizing his carousing behavior in high school and college."

Both the Post and the New York Times featured statements by a man named Charles Ludington, who was a classmate of Kavanaugh's at Yale and is now a professor at North Carolina State University. (He has written an academic history of wine.) Ludington said that in college Kavanaugh was "a frequent drinker, and a heavy drinker." Ludington said he had heard Kavanaugh "slur his words" and saw him "staggering from alcohol consumption." (Ludington said he knew that because "I often drank with him.")

"When Brett got drunk, he was often belligerent and aggressive," Ludington continued. "On one of the last occasions I purposely socialized with Brett, I witnessed him respond to a semi-hostile remark, not by defusing the situation, but by throwing his beer in the man's face and starting a fight that ended with one of our mutual friends in jail."

Ludington said he was going to take his tale of a 35-year-old scuffle to the FBI for further investigation, to show that Kavanaugh lied under oath to the Senate. "I can unequivocally say that in denying the possibility that he ever blacked out from drinking, and in downplaying the degree and frequency of his drinking, Brett has not told the truth," Ludington said.

The problem is, there is nothing in Ludington's statement that actually contradicts Kavanaugh's testimony. As noted, Kavanaugh testified that he drank plenty. And Ludington did not say that he, Ludington, ever witnessed Kavanaugh blacked out or passed out from alcohol. It is unclear what, if anything, the FBI would do with such a presentation from Ludington. But such stories are causing great excitement in Democratic Washington at the moment.

Why? The answer is the theory behind the Democratic attacks on Kavanaugh.

The most serious allegation against Kavanaugh is, of course, Christine Ford's. (To a lesser extent, there is also accuser Deborah Ramirez's claim that Kavanaugh exposed himself to her in a college drinking session, and to an even lesser extent, there is the gang rape allegation of Michael Avenatti client Julie Swetnick, which is not taken very seriously by either Democrats or Republicans.)

Kavanaugh has strongly and unequivocally denied the Ford allegation. The problem for Democrats is that there is no contemporaneous evidence to support Ford's claim. By her own account, Ford told no one of what happened at the time. She told no one in the next few years. No one in the next few decades. No one for 30 years, until, in 2012, when Ford says she told her therapist what had happened to her long ago.

The people Ford claims were at the home where she says Kavanaugh attacked her, including one close friend of Ford's, have said they have no memories that support her account.

So the Ford case is quite hard to make. And that is where, for Democrats, Kavanaugh's supposed blackouts come in. With no contemporaneous evidence that the Ford attack happened, Democrats are trying to make the case that it could have happened. What if Kavanaugh got drunk, attacked Ford, and later didn't remember that he did it?

That is the theory behind some Democratic senators' questioning of Kavanaugh last week. The idea was to get Kavanaugh to admit alcohol-induced memory loss and thus undermine his firm contention that he did not do what Ford alleged. How could he really know? He himself admitted that he sometimes drank so much he couldn't remember what happened the night before. He could have attacked Christine Ford in an alcoholic blackout and never remember that he did it.

The problem, of course, is that is all anti-Kavanaugh theorizing. There's no evidence to support it, just as there is no evidence beyond Christine Ford's word to support the original attack allegation. But it's what Democrats have to work with right now, and it's why they are trying to change the subject from alleged sexual misconduct to Kavanaugh's teenage drinking.

