What to watch for in Thursday's high-stakes Senate hearings for Kavanaugh, Christine Blasey Ford

Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and one of the three women accusing him of sexual misconduct in the 1980s, Christine Blasey Ford, will testify Thursday before the 21 senators on the Judiciary Committee. Ford will testify about her allegations first, at 10 a.m. ET, and Senate Republicans have hired Arizona prosecutor Rachel Mitchell to question her on their behalf, an arrangement not used since the 1998 impeachment hearings for former President Bill Clinton. Kavanaugh will testify in the afternoon. The high-stakes hearings will be broadcast live on cable news, PBS, C-SPAN, and online.

In his prepared opening statement, Kavanaugh says he won't be hindered by "last-minute smears" and "grotesque and obvious character assassination," but says he "did things in high school that make me cringe now." Ford will identify Kavanaugh as her assailant, say she "believed he was going to rape me," and attest that the details "have been seared into my memory and have haunted me episodically as an adult."

Since the facts of what happened at the 1982 house party in the Washington, D.C., suburbs are not expected to be conclusively proven either way at the hearing, the relative credibility of the witnesses will be a major component of the hearings. Of course, "'credible' is subjective," says Amber Phillips at The Washington Post, and each senator will have different criteria. "Kavanaugh and Ford are playing to a national audience, but they're also speaking to an audience of one in Thursday's hearing: Sen. Jeff Flake," the Arizona Republican who's seen as the only potential swing vote on the Judiciary Committee.

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There's also a difference in how each party has defined the standard of proof Ford must meet. "Republicans are framing the hearing as a legal proceeding," The New York Times says. "Democrats, by contrast, are framing the hearing as a job interview to determine Judge Kavanaugh's fitness to serve; a Supreme Court seat is a privilege, they say, not a right."