Well, it looks like I was wrong, and happily so. Those weird new unsubstantiated anonymous assault accusations made no appearance at the hearing AFAICT. Glad they didn’t make the cut for Senate hearings, I suppose they’re strictly for the tabloids. On the plus side, I feel Kav and Ford both got to say what they needed to say, but on the downside, far too much of this boiled down to a he-said/she-said. Far too little attention was paid to witnesses (Judge wasn’t even asked to testify, which seemed very improper for something this serious IMO), very little attention was paid to other corroboration (Ford’s discussion of the assault with friends prior to the nomination was mentioned only briefly), and the failure to include other accusers did not seem adequately explained at all IMO.
Will it make a difference? Maybe. By not going full InfoWars*, they may have saved Murkoski’s vote. But I don’t think any of the others were in danger, so he’s in like… hmm, maybe Flynn’s not a good name in this context. They may have also caused themselves some midterm troubles, though. Kav didn’t step on any legal landmines AFAICT, but he sure didn’t endear himself to anyone new.
* Notwithstanding Kav’s attempt to pin the blame for this on the Clintons, who clearly must have used the same time machine for coaching Ford to talk about the assault prior to Kav’s nomination that they used to place birth notices in the Hawaii newspapers for Obama prior to his election.