Well, folks, you heard it here from Robert Stacy McCain first:  There will be a Senate vote on Judge Kavanaugh this week.  Excerpt:

The clock is officially ticking:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said the Senate will hold a vote on Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination this week.
“The time for endless delay and obstruction has come to a close. Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination is out of committee. We’re considering it here on the floor and … we’ll be voting this week,” McConnell said.
McConnell’s comments, made during a Senate floor speech, comes as the FBI has to wrap up its investigation into multiple sexual misconduct allegations against Kavanaugh by Friday.

OK, and Steve Bannon says it’s an all-or-nothing battle: “There’s no walking this thing back… You get Kavanaugh, you’re going to get turnout. You get turnout, you’re going to get victory. This is march or die.” As I previously reported, White House staff had said from the start Trump won’t back down, and if Senate Republicans can’t confirm Kavanaugh, there’s no saving the GOP in the midterms:

“[Kavanaugh is] too big to fail now,” said a senior source involved in the confirmation process. “Our base, our voters, our side, people are so mad,” the source continued. “There’s nowhere to go. We’re gonna make them f—ing vote.[Joe] Manchin in West Virginia, in those red states. Joe Donnelly? He said he’s a no? Fine, we’ll see how that goes. There will be a vote on him [Kavanaugh]. … It will be a slugfest of a week.”
“There’s no time before the [midterm] election to put up a new person,” a White House official close to the process told me.

Now, just today, President Trump reportedly gave the FBI license to interview anyone they deem necessary to wrap this thing up – so long as they do it this week.  So Senator McConnell may be justified in thinking a vote this week do-able.

Personally I give the chances of a vote before Friday as one in three.  A vote over the weekend or even early next week is more likely.  But I do think there will be a vote, and I do think Judge Kavanaugh will be confirmed.

But I also think the confirmation process is forever damaged.  The shenanigans pulled by a few Senate Democrats – and, I have to disagree with Senator Graham, I do think Senator Feinstein is perfectly capable of any manner of treachery – in cruelly and cynically victimizing Dr. Ford in an attempt to smear Judge Kavanaugh have left the formerly collegial process broken.

Every nominee for the Supreme Court now will have to run a gauntlet.  Every high school indiscretion is fair game.  Every nominee, no matter the party of the appointing President, will be subject to an anal exam; tax returns, high school yearbooks, whatever.  Every person from their past who is holding a grudge or is seeking a book deal will be uncovered and dragged before the Judiciary Committee and the public spotlight.  And no one, no one with any self-respect will seek to serve the public in this capacity.

There has been a tendency towards this for some time; people of skill, ability and talent rarely seek public service any more.  Instead, public “servants” have now become one with the small-town mayor in an old joke, about which mayor a wag said “you know, when I was a little kid, my Pa gave me a heifer on a rope, said, ‘take ‘er over to the neighbor’s bull, get ‘er serviced.’  So I done it.  Now whenever I hear a politician talk about service, I wonder who’s gettin’ screwed.”

Well, now that joke has a sad answer:  America.  America is gettin’ screwed.