Collins's Kavanaugh vote becomes key weapon for opponents

Susan Collins gave a 45-minute floor speech back in 2018 explaining exactly why she'd vote for Brett Kavanaugh, and it hinged on his professed respect for precedent. That vote is now being replayed as some kind of betrayal, four years and one overturned Roe later. It's a tidy story if you don't look too closely at how confirmation hearings actually work, or at what senators are entitled to assume when a nominee tells them, under oath, that a case is "settled law."

The reality is messier than the campaign ad. Kavanaugh said what he said to get confirmed, and plenty of people warned at the time that his answers were squishy enough to mean whatever he needed them to mean later. Collins chose to take him at his word. You can call that naive. You can't call it dishonest, and you definitely can't call it the same thing as personally overturning Roe, which is the leap Troy Jackson's ad wants voters to make.

What's actually happening here is simpler than the abortion framing suggests. Maine Democrats need a reason to beat an incumbent who has survived worse, and "she voted for a Supreme Court justice" is a cleaner attack than anything in Collins's actual record. Fair enough, that's politics. But voters ought to notice that the argument isn't really about her vote. It's about punishing her for taking a nominee's sworn testimony at face value, which used to be considered the responsible thing to do.