Monday’s speech of the day belonged to Amy Klochubar, the politician who in a just world would now be running for president.

“Let me tell you a secret,” she told the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the people watching, “this is a sham.”

Klochubar did that rare thing; she rose about the knee-jerk posturing and preening that has become the language of American political discourse and spoke through to reflect the hearts of so many women.

It was fitting that as she spoke so eloquently, her voice trembling with the emotion, President Trump was tweeting that the Democrats were getting too much time to speak.

Let’s get on with it, he said, and anoint his nominee. Opponents have no right to speak. Democracy always irritates him.

Klobuchar was right, of course, and she told some truth. The proceedings are a sham, as are the politics of the left and the right.  And the U.S. Senate itself.

All-day, there were pre-packaged, co-ordinated speeches on both sides, boring and canned. Klobuchar’s talk was a rare burst of authenticity and feeling.

The usually pugnacious Kamula Harris disappeared yesterday, the cautious don’t-rock-the-boat vice presidential candidate was there instead.

Yesterday, she was no longer indistinguishable from the old white men. Once upon a time, she would have torn Judge Barrett’s throat out; Monday, she was trying to look vice-presidential.

Her heart was not in it, her job now is to stay out of trouble.

Monday’s proceeding was a rushed and arrogant effort to keep ordinary people out of the process so the old white men could do their dirty business privately, wrapping themselves in virtue and flags while spouting lies and platitudes.

I can’t say the Democrats wouldn’t have done the same thing if things had turned out differently.

There is no ethic in our civics now other than winning, by all means, at any cost. Everyone else is the enemy. The real enemies run wild.

The most interesting person on TV all day was the one who couldn’t speak, Judge Barrett, who was seen all day peering over her mask, showing no emotion of any kind.

I kept thinking of Justice Kavanaugh, shouting and yelling his innocence – maybe a little too much. What was Barrett thinking?

This nominee is self-possessed. She doesn’t show emotion, and she doesn’t make mistakes.

As much as I love Klochubar’s speech, I felt some empathy for Justice Barrett, who sat like a mummy in her mask, the newest pawn in the poisonous process our civic world has become. Civic life in America is a survival course.

Everyone who participates is a victim, one way or another. Everybody gets a chance to be hurt and abused.

My role has always been clear. In a world of organized hysteria, the best thing any writer can do is to stay calm. There is no longer any such thing as an honest question or statement in a public forum like the Senate.

The Republicans were whining about people attacking Barrett’s faith, even though nobody was.

And the Democrats were desperate to paint the judge as a Hellish and calculating enemy of the American family, eager to steal their health care and kill their children. It’s as if she is now the Goddess of Health Care, it’s all in her hands.

I watched some of the Senate Judiciary  Committee hearings this morning, and I will be frank about it.

Amy Klochubar spoke from the heart and told the truth, and she was the only one. Her target wasn’t Justice Barrett so much as the morally bankrupt old white men of the Republican Party.

I had that twitchy feeling in my stomach when there are jerking-knees in our political system. The knee-jerk thing goes against my nature.

I believe much of the criticism of President Trump’s is accurate and justified, if sometimes over the top.

Apart from policy differences, I have been troubled, as many people have, by his lies, his tweets, his narcissism, his corruption,  his cruelty, and his loyalty only to people who promise to love him.

Those criticisms do not seem contrived or invented to me. He is hurting our democracy.

He declined the great opportunity of being my President, and I decline to be his worshipper.  I’ve respected plenty of conservatives and some liberals. I have no respect for Donald Trump, who revels in frightening and hurting people.

The man is broken and falling apart

and in public.

It’s not so simple with Amy Coney Barrett. I’m not so sure of the assaults on her.

To me, she is a different story, and I think a more complicated one.

We all talk about not hating the people we disagree with, but we hardly ever avoid it. I don’t feel about Barrett the way I feel about Trump at least not yet. I’m sure she and I would agree on very little.

But so what?

I find myself respecting her, and I see little about her to hate. I think Trump will very much regret treating her like one of his lap-dogs or poodles.

I re-read her bio carefully before I wrote this, and the hysterical liberals and progressives fomenting about her nomination don’t jell with me so far.

If we don’t love what Trump himself does, why would we pay him the compliment of doing the same thing?

Yes, we all know Mitch Connell is both a hypocrite and yet another Republican with little or no respect for democracy or how it works. He’s got a truly slimy side to him.

Klobuchar made a powerful case for it, and it rang true to me.

But watching the hearings is a lot like watching the final game of the World Series before seeing game one. What, really, is the point?

We will know soon enough what Judge Barrett is really like and what she will really do. In just a few weeks, she will show us with her votes on the Supreme Court.

Then I will know. In the meantime, there is nothing to be done about it, other than to Trump’s bidding and distract the public from the awful mess he is in.

If you love hysteria and posturing, the hearings are made for you.

My second favorite moment was watching Lindsey Graham, who may have the biggest balls in the U.S. Senate, musing mournfully about the good old days when the Senators respected each other and worked together.

Whatever happened to those days, he wondered, butter beginning to melt in his mouth, his nose starting to grow. It was probably pointless to even try to do better. Someone should have answered him.

The poor man, I can see him and the President bitching together on the golf course about the beating each is taking. Geez, Lindsey, I can’t imagine what happened to bipartisanship in the U.S. Senate.mWho might have helped to kill it?

But is this all Judge Barrett’s fault? Is she really the villain of the piece, waiting for a 25-year-old racist quote to pop up in her high school year book, or to melt under the brilliant cross-examination of a Ginsburg- inspired U.S.Senator?

Ginsburg herself was pretty clear. One step at a time, Keep moving forward. Fight back. Stay calm. Don’t quit.

We know Judge Barrett’s nomination is a foregone conclusion; the Democrats gambit to terrify the country with the loss of its health care isn’t going to change that. Do we know she won’t say an honest word about how she will vote on the court?

Nobody does it anymore. Honesty seems to be suicidal in American politics.

The Biden-Harris campaign is brilliantly focused now and has Donald Trump on the run. Perhaps it would be better to take the vote early and get on with the campaign.

It doesn’t make sense to interrupt that very successful stream with a different focus and a battle that is doomed from the beginning.

Why not focus on what can be won and is being won – the November election? Isn’t that the key to winning our democracy back?

Just sayin,’

Judge Barrett is a poor target for liberals and progressives, no matter how disturbed they are by McConnell’s trickery or the threatened loss of Roe Vs. Wade.

I have seen or heard nothing that persuades me that the ACA will be struck down in its totality or that pre-existing condition will be wiped out in one stroke by the appearance or Judge Barrett,  by the whole court, or that Judge Coney, a devoted family person, will support so drastic a step.

There would no greater lift for the Democratic Party to have 30 million people suddenly lose their health benefits. That would spark a revolution in itself.

And for that reason alone, it is improbable for that to happen.

The legal assault on the ACA is considered weak by judicial experts.

Like most conservatives, Barrett was deeply critical of the law.

But she wasn’t on the Supreme Court then.  And she can’t do it all by herself. She seems very respectful of the law and thoughtful about it.

That would profoundly damage the image of her new workplace, and leave a dreadful legacy behind. Supreme Court justices are most often subtle – they chip away at things, they rarely wipe them out.

Her complaints about the law doesn’t automatically mean she will support tossing it out and leaving tens of millions of people without insurance protection. That would seem foolish to me.

And if they do, the fight will go forward, just as Ginsburg always said.

As Trump has shown us, Presidents are very powerful,  especially with congress on their side. There is a lot Biden and a Democratic Congress could do about it.

But there is no reason to embrace Trump’s assumptions about Barrett; this is a strong woman of conscience, even if it doesn’t match ours.  She doesn’t seem to me to be like the toadies Trump usually surrounds himself with.

She is a lot smarter and has great convictions about the lawyer. That hers differ from mine does not make her a monster.

Trump continues to describe Judge Barrett is a slavish devotee to him and his expectations and welfare.

Reading her biography and some of her essays,  I think that’s a big mistake. Very little that President Trump says is true or comes true, and I imagine Judge Barrett is offended by his patronizing assumptions. Be careful what you wash for.

Progressives are also troubled by her religious faith’s depth, but that seems distinctly inappropriate to me. Her roots are in a populist movement of charismatic Catholicism.

Barrett’s religious views have been shaped by an insular religious community – the People of Praise – which has about 1,650 adult members, including her parents, and draws on the ecstatic traditions of charismatic Christianity, such as speaking in tongues.

Charismatic Christianity also advocates social responsibility and an intense and personal communion with God.

Many so-called “religious Christian conservatives” and evangelists claim religious conviction, but they have been increasingly corrupted by money and political power.

And they have stained the name of Christianity for a long time.

The charismatic movement is different, especially in Catholicism. There is nothing fake about it.

The group has distinct views on sexuality that recognize the husband as the head of the family, although the Barretts go to some length to describe their marriage as a partnership.

And in any case,  her marriage is nobody’s business but hers. Her resume is impressive.

She seems to have little trouble separating her religious beliefs from her law school academic and teaching.

She is one of the most popular professors at Notre Dame, and even her ideological opponents describe her as brilliant, a wonderful listener, and a compassionate and generous human.

I have the feeling that what progressives and liberals most dislike about her is that she is very conservative, like her mentor and tutor, Justice Antonin Scalia.

Trump thought Neil Gorsuch was a reliable rubber stamp also, and he is turning out to be a conservative but independent jurist.  Absolutely no one expected him to protect gay and transgender rights.

Getting on the Supreme Court is head-turning. It changes people.

I went back to read some of Judge Ginsburg’s writing for help in sorting this out.

She wrote several times about her admiration for Judge Scalia, who became one of her closest friends. She never resented or belittled him for his judicial philosophy.

She especially respected his intelligence, passion, and independent thinking.

Ginsburg was also uncomfortable with Roe vs. Wade.

She believed the court might have been wiser to leave abortion alone and let it work its way through the American public, as happened with gay marriage and other gay rights.

She said by intervening in such a bitter issue, the court actually prevented the American citizenry from working it out, as they would have had to do.

There are many ways a Biden-Harris government could protect abortion rights in America. The Supreme Court is not the only way this can be done.

It’s not even clear that that was the best way for it to have been done.

The true conservative position might be that the government has no business meddling in such a personal decision abortion.

Americans feel deeply about this issue and vote accordingly, and the abortion issue is a key factor in the rise of Donald Trump and the extremists who have taken over the Republican Party.

The issue divides Americans more than any other. Each side finds the other beyond comprehension.

Like gun control, the issue is too emotional and intense for black-and-white solutions.

No one is even trying to find a middle ground or a better way or resolving Roe-V- Wade, or gun violence.

Ginsburg supported abortion rights but was critical of the legal bloodshed. She said she wished the court had legalized abortion as a fundamental right instead of Roe v. Wade.

Donald Trump would never have been elected if not for the depth of feeling about abortion. Pro-life organizations and voters are a primary source of funds and votes for the Republican Party, which milks that golden calf at every turn.

Isn’t it time to do something different? Isn’t that the lesson of Trump? But this time, perhaps we can do it in a less divisive, hateful, and racist way.

Liberals would do well to remember that the reason Trump is in so much trouble has little to do with his policy decisions.

He is in trouble because he has become the nation’s leading  National Asshole. It’s him people don’t like; many of his policies and surprising moves are quite popular.

Joe Biden seems to understand this, which is a major reason he is so far ahead in the polls.

I have no idea what Judge Barrett will do or how she will vote when she shows up on the court. She is personally and judicially opposed to abortion.

That does not tell us how she would vote on so important an issue as Rove V Wade?

I could well be naive and trusting in my own responses rather than accepting these fevered assertions. We’ll know soon enough.

I believe she is a person of substance, intelligence, and accomplishment, and she deserves my respect. I am willing to see what happens before I join any mob and blame her for climate change.

What the Republicans are doing is legal; it is not unconstitutional in any way. It might be opportunistic and divisive, but they have the right to do it, and they will do it.

If Judge Barrett and the Supreme Court became complicitous in stealing or interfering with the November election or supporting Donald Trump’s near treasonous assault on our electoral system, they would destroy their own position as a just court of the last result.

That would mark the beginning of the end of the Supreme Court as we know it. The court’s power rests totally on its credibility. Trump has taught us that Presidents can ignore laws they don’t like.

They can get away with being very conservative; they can’t get away with wrecking our democracy. They will doom themselves as well as our system of governing.

A lifetime appointment is a good way to promote individuality and integrity if frees people up to do what they want.

I am no seer; we will all have to see what we see. I could certainly be wrong.

I am certainly willing to see what Judge Barrett does before slithering off to Costa Rico. I reject mob thinking and hysteria in its many current forms.

There is a thoughtful and honest person in there, I believe.

Judge Barrett is heading for the Supreme Court no matter what I think, and no matter what you think. I’m not wasting any more energy on that.

But what I am thinking is this: let’s see what happens, rather than what terrified liberals and progressives and bed wetters insist will happen, or fear will  happen.