Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto is being awfully coy about whether she’s going to vote to confirm Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. But really, who is she fooling? Does anyone doubt at this point that the judge will be confirmed on a strict party-line vote, and that in the end, our junior senator will find an excuse – any excuse – to choose tribalism over good government?

But she has a chance to do something truly heroic instead, and what’s more, I think she wants to do it. At this point, it’s not even about one Supreme Court justice – Kavanaugh is almost certain to be confirmed with or without the senator’s blessing. But by voting for the eminently well-qualified jurist, she can help be an antidote to one of our political culture’s most disgusting and destructive trends – the careless slander and deliberately false allegations against our political adversaries.

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You know any nominee for any sort of public office is a good one when the people opposing said nominee have to literally make up reasons to not like them. Judge Kavanaugh falls squarely in this category, as the shameful partisan circus has played itself out both in the halls of Congress and all over social media so plainly demonstrates. I mean, when you’ve lost Ruth Bader Ginsberg…

Consider the lies to date: He has a pro-Yucca policy preference (he doesn’t, but the federal law he’s obligated to follow does); he hates women (nope); he’s itching to outlaw birth control (context matters to honest people); he thinks Presidents are above the law (wrong again); he uses his assistant to throw up white supremacist gang signs (a lie as moronic as it is offensive); he’s in favor of racial profiling in the national security context (exactly the opposite, in fact); he’s (horrors!) against racial profiling with respect to college admissions and in other domestic social contexts (that’s probably true, but not being a racist is something I like about my judges); and he is literally “evil” (seriously – go read a #$%^ history book, you ignorant twits).

These lies are all odious enough, and they are lies – it is no defense to be too ignorant to know what you’re talking about when passing one of them along.

But other, similarly false accusations have claimed Kavanaugh is guilt of lawbreaking, and that’s where things really go off the rails. The various allegations of perjury went nowhere because they were, well, just more lies (ironic, that). So now the latest attempt to drag the judge down involves Senator Dianne Feinstein vaguely intimating at the eleventh hour that she received evidence months ago of the judge’s “misconduct” (she wanted you to read “sexual” in front of that, and many people took that bait) while he was (wait for it) in high school. I’m old enough to remember when Democrats thought that it was an outrage to bring up mistakes made in one’s youth – just ask Aaron Ford.

And let’s be honest – if Feinstein actually had proof that Judge Kavanaugh was some sort of sexual predator as a juvenile, she would’ve waved it around like a bloody shirt, not hidden it from her own party members and let the FBI summarily reject doing anything with it. Hers is a lie, pure and simple, and a particularly disgusting Mean Girls – nay, Heathers level of dishonest character assassination. Say what you want about the failed nomination of Merrick Garland – at least Republican senators admitted their opposition was over judicial philosophy, and weren’t maliciously and fraudulently insinuating that Garland was a rapist.

For anyone to falsely accuse anyone else of committing a crime is bad enough. But the specter of powerful government officials falsely accusing people of felonies – or worse, making accusations so vague that they cannot even be defended against – is horrifying to all fair-minded Americans.

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Slander in the name of political power is nothing new, of course, but it seems to be particularly fashionable these days, and extra volatile in the social media age. Senator Cortez Masto’s predecessor and mentor, Harry Reid, is perhaps our most famous practitioner of this type of gutter politics, lying about Mitt Romney not paying his taxes and then bragging about it because, “[he] didn’t win, did he?” As a simple county prosecutor, I would be fired and possibly disbarred for such conduct, but then, I’m not the head of a political tribe fueled by blind loyalists, so the rules are different for me.

Cortez Masto’s own record suggests a similar willingness to let justice and fairness take a backseat to partisan considerations. When she was the attorney general, she pursued felony charges for mis-appropriating government funds against then-Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki, who just so happened to be exploring a run against Reid at the time. The charges were dismissed, but not because Cortez Masto couldn’t prove the allegations – it’s actually worse than that. She couldn’t even articulate in her indictment what, exactly, Krolicki had done wrong. In dismissing the case, the judge said, “[The Indictment] does not specify which funds were utilized, the accounts which were used, or the transactions at issue. The Indictment also fails to specify the duty that was allegedly violated.” The charges could have been re-brought, but tellingly, they weren’t. By then, Reid was on his way to re-election against a field of far weaker candidates, and Krolicki’s political career had been torpedoed. (Political corruption charges her office later pursued against a fellow Democrat turned out somewhat differently. Nice plea deal, if you can get it.)

Ethical and competent prosecutors make allegations specific enough to put the accused on notice as to what exactly it is they’re being accused of, and they don’t bring (or continue to pursue) charges that cannot be proved. Justice and due process demand no less. While sitting U.S. senators are not legally held to that same standard, ethically speaking they absolutely should be – it is not an easy thing to repair a reputation, no matter how unfair the besmirching was in the first place.

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You will never convince me that the Krolicki indictment was not just another version of Reid’s false claim about Romney’s taxes. In doing what she did, Cortez Masto contributed mightily to an already toxic political atmosphere, both nationally and here in Nevada. But with Kavanaugh’s nomination, she has a unique opportunity to repair a great deal of that damage.

The fact that Senator Cortez Masto has not announced opposition to Kavanaugh leads me to believe that she knows the conduct of her fellow Democratic senators has been shameful, understands he will be a diligent and thoughtful Justice and that there is no good reason – or not an honest one, anyway – to vote against his confirmation.

If she votes against him, she will be tacitly endorsing her colleagues’ outrageously deceitful tactics, not to mention those of the more radical fringes of her base. She will cement herself as a partisan “good soldier” for whom party loyalty trumps integrity or fair dealing with people she disagrees with politically. And she will have done so for nothing, as Kavanaugh is virtually certain to be confirmed no matter what she does.

But if Cortez Masto votes for him, she will repudiate political slander as a casual tactic, along with the salt-the-fields politics of personal destruction and tribal loyalty. Practically speaking, she would buy herself a moral-high-ground cudgel to be used against Republicans the next time they act (as they inevitably will) with petty and dishonest partisan dishonor. When she faces re-election, she will have earned some respect across the aisle, and maybe even a few more votes. The same is likely true with her Senate colleagues, improving her own political capital and giving her more opportunities to deliver for Nevada. She will distance herself from her noxious predecessor. And she will have the satisfaction of having done the right thing, doing her part to trade heat for light in Congress. It will be powerful redemption for her past mistakes and a benefit to the country as a whole.

Orrin Johnson has been writing and commenting on Nevada and national politics since 2007. He started with an independent blog, First Principles, and was a regular columnist for the Reno Gazette-Journal from 2015-2016. By day, he is a deputy district attorney for Carson City. His opinions here are his own. Follow him on Twitter @orrinjohnson, or contact him at [email protected].