I mean in what way other than the hearings held to determine whether the candidate who is about to be selected is suitable would you suggest the democrats and accusers say their piece?
I am unfamiliar with the process so I can only provide my opinion, but to me those should be no brainers :
1°) Accusers should politely stfu when they have no ground for accusation.
2°) Questionning should be focused on the questions that actually matter ; impartiality, self control, reviews of the controversial arbitrations he performed as a judge.
3°) Decision should be made according to the rules of the game without the players trying to flip the board everytime they are losing
In general, the whole democratic system gains if the discussions are kept civil and standards upheld. USA always had low standards and a high propensity to explode in short outburst of popular rage that are instrumentalized from both parties, as far as I can remember, but since 2016 I saw the methodical destruction of every bit of standard it had.
Democratic standards, that's what I'm asking for.
And before someone rightly points out that Republicans do the exact same thing all the time : yes I know. That's my point.
Mate, I don't think you understand. A Supreme Court Justice has his job for
life, making them the closest thing to a monarch the US has. They have egregious amounts of power handed to them without much recourse for taking that power back.
This was NOT a criminal investigation. This was trying to determine if the individual in question was
worthy, not just qualified, to hold that much power for that long. There are no time limits, because frankly,
every SC nominee should undergo such scrutiny in the first place. All the way back to the days when they were young kids. Because when you're appointing, with no way for the people themselves to alter the process, a supreme judge of the land, who's duty is to interpret the law of the land for the rest of their life, you should make as sure as fucking possible that that person is as perfectly clean as possible, in every possible way.
The criminality of the stuff doesn't matter, because like you said, there's a limit on how old such accusations can be. What matters is that this guy, in a period of his life where his personality and frontal cortex were presumably in full form and action, was allegedly running gang rapes on women. Was apparently getting so drunk he could not recall any of the relevant information. In fact, if you had watched the hearing, you'd know he openly admits to
still drinking "lots of beer". That's not the kind of flawless conduct that one would expect of one of our nations 9 best people. That's barely conduct exemplary of a judge at all, although it's not illegal so there's no real impetus to disbar him.
Imagine if he was just handed a nuclear bomb by the senate. People would be worried if he took the bomb and said "Boy, this'll go down great with the blokes at the pub!" and proceeded to smash back 13 Heinekens and reminisce about the days when he would seduce drunk women in college. Because that's not behavior indicative of a mindset that's safe to hold that much raw power.