In whiplash moment, Democrats are now backing away from Kavanaugh allegations

Washington Post  "In a head-spinning few days, Republicans have moved into a full offensive posture over the latest allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, leaving congressional Democrats in a defensive crouch as they try to change the subject.
"Tuesday’s dueling news conferences, led by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), perfectly captured the new dynamic.
"After their respective policy lunches, McConnell devoted his entire opening remarks, more than three minutes, to the Kavanaugh issue, highlighting a clarification the New York Times added to an article about how an alleged victim did not recall an alleged incident of sexual misconduct during the justice’s college days.
"“I think it is truly outrageous. We had this investigation a year ago; we had this vote a year ago,” McConnell told reporters.
"That came after McConnell, opening the Senate floor Monday, devoted his entire remarks, more than five minutes, to the Kavanaugh issue with just as much indignation.
"Schumer never mentioned the latest Kavanaugh imbroglio in Tuesday’s opening comments and appeared exhausted when the topic came up as the very first question." . . .

The Architect of the Latest Kavanaugh Smear Just Gave a Self-Damning Radio Interview  "There is no substantiated evidence of any sexual misbehavior by Brett Kavanaugh at any point in his entire life. Several shaky claims have been made along these lines, but all of them are badly undercut by available evidence. None of them is more likely than not to be true.
"Yet in a casual radio interview this morning, New York Times reporter Robin Pogrebin, a classmate of Kavanaugh’s at Yale, gave an unintentionally revealing report about her approach to the story. Following Christine Blasey Ford’s hard-to-believe testimony, which was undercut by all witnesses she placed at the party in question, including a lifelong friend of hers, and following Deborah Ramirez’s hard-to-believe story, which she herself admitted being uncertain about, Pogrebin obviously became subjected to confirmation bias. She had a narrative in mind and she pushed and pulled her writing to fit it.
"Pogrebin is at the center of a discussion of gross journalistic malpractice after publishing a story Saturday night with colleague Kate Kelly that failed to mention that a woman who, according to a man named Max Stier, had Kavanaugh’s penis pressed into her hand at a campus party by multiple friends of his has said she recalls no such incident. That woman has also declined to talk about the matter with reporters or officials. Why even publish Stier’s claim, which was discounted by Washington Post reporters who heard about it a year ago, that he witnessed such an incident during a Yale party in the 1980s? Because of the narrative, Pogrebin says. “We decided to go with it because obviously it is of a piece with a kind of behavior,” she said on WMAL. Pure confirmation bias."  

. . . So the standard here is not whether something is true, it’s whether it’s “conceivable.” If a story is “of a piece with a kind of behavior,” even if such behavior is itself not established, and if a story is “conceivable” when filtered through that confirmation bias, and even if it’s undercut by the person the story supposedly happened to, and even if the person telling the story was “incredibly drunk,” you just go with it anyway. Let’s hear it for the New York Times, home of All the News That Fits the Narrative.

So what is confirmation bias?