A leftover from yesterday. Not all of the women in the clip are celebrities, please note, just enough to add a patina of Importance to it. What right-thinking progressive would care about a video of average Americans stating their political views without a four-second cameo from Julianne Moore?

A fun fact about MoveOn, the creators of this spot: The group got its name from its efforts to get the country to move on from Republican efforts to impeach a credibly accused left-wing sexual predator. That’s the sort of feminist bona fides I always prize in woke attack ads involving rape. I try to resist Whataboutism, particularly when the matter at hand involves something as grave as what Ford’s alleging, but whenever the left starts sermonizing at Republicans about treating victims of sexual assault properly a variety of leering Democratic ogres waddles out onstage in the right-wing imagination. It’s led by the Kennedys, grinning broadly, drinks in hand, pants around their ankles, but not limited to them. Which is not at all to imply that Kavanaugh should get a pass because Ted Kennedy got one for 50 years: If he’s guilty, he should be borked with gusto and impeachment proceedings begun to remove him from the federal bench.

But it is to say that, despite their alleged wokeness, progressive outrage at sex offenses and judgments about who deserves the benefit of the doubt and who doesn’t remain mainly a matter of political expedience. Hint that you might blow up Roe and you’re guilty as charged. Hint that you’ll storm the ramparts if Roe is blown up and you’re entitled to a robust presumption of innocence. And that’s not just a historical relic; it continues to the present day. Which is why, although her reasoning is nonsense, Kirsten Gillibrand’s not entirely wrong in calling Monday’s hearing a “sham.” It is a sham in the sense that it’s being presented as a fact-finding inquiry when it’s not. No facts or lack thereof will be produced that changes any Democratic votes. This is a political exercise, not an investigative one.

To prove that I’m not doing knee-jerk Whataboutism here, let it be noted that the right has its own core constituency that seems completely disinterested in the facts of an alleged sexual assault when a political prize is within reach.

Worried their chance to cement a conservative majority on the Supreme Court could slip away, a growing number of evangelical and anti-abortion leaders are expressing frustration that Senate Republicans and the White House are not protecting Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh more forcefully from a sexual assault allegation and warning that conservative voters may stay home in November if his nomination falls apart… The pleas are, in part, an attempt to apply political pressure: Some evangelical leaders are warning that religious conservatives may feel little motivation to vote in the midterm elections unless Senate Republicans move the nomination out of committee soon and do more to defend Judge Kavanaugh from what they say is a desperate Democratic ploy to prevent President Trump from filling future court vacancies.

Franklin Graham, heir to the Graham family’s evangelical legacy, insisted yesterday that no one should get too worked up about what might have happened between a pair of teenagers. And that’s your daily news bulletin from “moral majority.”

One other thing. Befitting how rote and thoughtless the true message of the MoveOn ad is — “Ford is telling the truth because I *heart* legal abortion” — the format of the ad itself is painfully familiar. This style of staccato cross-cutting between people repeating each other’s lines to emphasize the message is so stale that even the parodies of it seem old. It’s phoned in, figuratively and apparently literally.