Today's episode is sponsored by AARP.

Republicans won America's swingiest swing state by talking up trade and immigration.

Can Democrats win it back by talking about pensions, social security, and Medicare,

visit Politico.com slash the Deciders to learn more. Hello listeners and welcome to another edition of Politico's Nurdcast.

I'm Scott Bland, your host.

This week on the Nurdcast, we've got two segments and we'll start with the dramatic hearing on Capitol Hill for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

Plus, looking ahead to the midterms, there are 435 house seats, but we're going to talk about the ways in which this is really one giant

national election and a few examples of how it isn't.

A quick reminder to our listeners before we get started, please subscribe to the Nurdcast, rate us, and write a review if you haven't already.

All right, let's begin.

Time for our first data point, 100.

Christine Blasey Ford said today that she is 100% certain that it was Brett Kavanaugh who assaulted

her at a drunken high school party in Maryland in 1982. The boy who sexually

assaulted me, she called him before the Senate Judiciary Committee today in raw testimony.

Kavanaugh denied the allegation in a forceful opening statement of his own, followed

by hours of his testimony. This confirmation process has become a national disgrace,

Kavanaugh Thunder. The Constitution gives the Senate an important role in the

confirmation process, but you have replaced advice and consent with search and

destroy. So we're taping this segment now just after the and Politico's Marianne Levine was covering the hearings today. Marianne thank you so

much for being here. Thank you for having me. And with me here at political

White House reporter Andrew Restusha. Andrew good to see you as well. Thanks

for having me. We're going to step back and talk about the consequences of the hearing here in a moment, but first let's walk through the hearing itself. We'll give you a sense of what happened over many, many hours today with a few clips of the most salient moments.

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