A cornered animal is the most dangerous because it’s the most desperate and unpredictable. Similarly, cornered politicians are capable of reaching levels of absurdity that were once assumed humanly impossible.

Cases in point: Here are Democratic Sens. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, and Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., trying their best to explain why Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser shouldn’t have to testify about her claims before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday.

“Denying Dr. Ford an FBI investigation is silencing her,” Gillibrand tweeted. “Forcing her into a sham hearing is silencing her. And pushing through Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation is silencing her.”

“I am totally disappointed that all of these people who have come forward to say we should hear from her and now that she’s expecting a modicum of fairness so she’s not re-victimized are now saying ‘If she doesn’t want to testify, we should just go ahead,’” Hirono said on CNN.

So let’s get this straight.

When we finally got details and a name attached to the mystery letter of accusations that we’d heard about for days, back when Ford was supposedly willing to testify about her alleged experience, the Democratic line was that the vote should only happen after she could come before the committee. Follow-up calls and other methods of evaluation wouldn’t suffice.

Now that she has been given a week to prepare to talk about something that she first brought to her congresswoman’s attention back in July and has been given the option of doing so in either a public or a private setting, no dice.

Indeed, now the line is that having her give her testimony under oath is “silencing her,” and allowing her to do the thing she offered to do days ago is “re-victimizing her.”

Instead, the nobler course of action, apparently, is to take a spotty, 36-year-old accusation presented without evidence and no other alleged pattern of behavior at face value and allow its mere existence completely to destroy a man’s career and his good name during the biggest job interview of his life.

How progressive.

The Federalist’s Sean Davis is right: This whole thing absolutely reeks of desperation at this point, because Democrats clearly didn’t expect to have to prove anything here. It’s like a poker player who has way too much money riding on a very weak hand and is doing everything he can to bluff his way out of his impending bankruptcy. What that guy never realizes is that everyone else at the table can see him fidgeting and sweating bullets.

And as any half-decent poker player knows, the best way to counter an obvious bluff is to call and raise it. If Ford refuses to testify Monday, the GOP should hold the hearing without her and turn the weight of this farcical exercise against the Democrats.

There really is no limit to the nonsensical circus that is Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination “process.”

In utter defiance of any shred of self-awareness, we have Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.

At a Tuesday press conference, flanked by two other sitting senators, Blumenthal said that the Kavanaugh nomination should be withdrawn because, “The bar here is not whether you have not criminally assaulted someone; it’s credibility, trust, integrity.”

Yes, Blumenthal actually wants to set that evidence-free standard … at least for Republican nominees. He also goes on to say that, because of the claims, "This nomination will not only cast a shadow over Judge Kavanaugh if he were ever to be confirmed ... it will also stain the United States Supreme Court irreparably."

Lest we forget, Blumenthal picked up his Senate seat in 2010 after it had been reported far and wide that he lied about his service in the Vietnam War. Instead of actually serving in a combat function in Vietnam as he claimed, he got a series of deferments from 1965 to 1970 and then joined a reserve unit, which all but guaranteed that he wouldn’t see combat, and remained stateside conducting drills and organizing a Toys for Tots drive.

Yet Brett Kavanaugh doesn’t meet Blumenthal’s standards for “credibility, trust, integrity” because he denies a single unproven claim of misconduct from 36 years ago, and Blumenthal seems to have no problem with tanking a man’s reputation and his career over it.

Folks, the irony here is so rich that Bernie Sanders is probably off somewhere drafting a bill to slap a 95 percent personal tax rate on it as we speak.

Here's yet more proof that the Democrats are playing dirty with Kavanaugh.

Senate Republicans want to follow up with Kavanaugh's accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, in the regular order of the Senate confirmation process. What's supposed to happen is that an update to a nominee's background will be discussed in private phone calls between each party and the committee. If necessary, additional testimony may be required, but the phone calls should come before the committee reaches that point.

But a statement from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, says that Sen. Dianne Feinstein's office is refusing to cooperate in the follow-up on Ford's accusations.

Here's the statement:

Anyone who comes forward as Dr. Ford has deserves to be heard, so I will continue working on a way to hear her out in an appropriate, precedented and respectful manner.

The standard procedure for updates to any nominee’s background investigation file is to conduct separate follow-up calls with relevant parties. In this case, that would entail phone calls with at least Judge Kavanaugh and Dr. Ford. Consistent with that practice, I asked Senator Feinstein’s office yesterday to join me in scheduling these follow-ups. Thus far, they have refused. But as a necessary step in evaluating these claims, I’ll continue working to set them up.

Unfortunately, committee Republicans have only known this person's identity from news reports for less than 24 hours and known about her allegations for less than a week. Senator Feinstein, on the other hand, has had this information for many weeks and deprived her colleagues of the information necessary to do our jobs. The Minority withheld even the anonymous allegations for six weeks, only to later decide that they were serious enough to investigate on the eve of the committee vote, after the vetting process had been completed.

It’s deeply disturbing that the existence of these allegations were leaked in a way that seemed to preclude Dr. Ford’s confidentiality.

Over my nearly four decades in the Senate I have worked diligently to protect whistleblowers and get to the bottom of any issue. Dr. Ford’s attorney could have approached my office, while keeping her client confidential and anonymous, so that these allegations could be thoroughly investigated. Nevertheless, we are working diligently to get to the bottom of these claims. (Emphasis added.)

So let's recap how Feinstein has played this. In July, Feinstein's office received a confidential letter from Ford detailing her accusations. Feinstein sat on this letter for two months, failing to bring it to the public or the full committee's attention throughout Kavanaugh's public testimony. Then, the week before the committee was set to vote to advance Kavanaugh to the full Senate for confirmation, Feinstein announced she has referred the letter to the FBI for a criminal investigation against Kavanaugh. She did not announce what the accusations against him are or who is making them. The American people had to wait for that information to be leaked to the media before Kavanaugh's accuser, Ford, came forward with her allegations for the first time in 36 years.

Senate Republicans are obviously disturbed, so they want to give Ford a chance to submit her accusations to the Senate to get to the truth of the matter. If there is credible evidence that Kavanaugh committed a crime, the American people deserve to know and Ford deserves justice. But Feinstein's office is slow-walking that process, because she's not actually interested in the truth. This isn't about what happened in the 1980s when Kavanaugh and Ford were in high school. This isn't about Kavanaugh's character or his fitness for the Supreme Court. This isn't about truth or justice or good government.

This is Dianne Feinstein and the Senate Democrats using any means necessary — even destroying a man's reputation —  to politicize the Supreme Court nomination process and prevent a constitutional textualist from sitting on the court.

It's unethical. It's disgusting. It's the Democratic Party.