Contrary to the radical historical revisionism that resulted from the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation catastrophe, the initial #MeToo movement was never about a right for all women to be believed. Rather, it served as a correction to a societal whitewashing of the scope of sexual assaults and misconduct in our midst and reasserted the right of victims to be heard and to have their claims be taken seriously. Not automatically believed.

The correction was overdue and wholly justified. Democrats spent decades ignoring the bevy of corroborating witnesses granting credence to multiple rape and sexual harassment allegations against Bill Clinton, and Republicans rebounded by using Clinton as a cipher, deflecting from Donald Trump’s own admissions of groping and spontaneous dressing room visits with Clinton cover-ups as a comparison. Once Hillary Clinton was crushed by the election of another credibly accused sexual assailant, the floodgates could finally open, first in the uppermost echelons of Hollywood, and then finally to cull the worst of the crops in both political parties. The odds of the Democratic establishment ousting Al Franken or Republican voters abandoning Roy Moore were once unthinkable. Yet somehow, they feel far more possible again today than they were for years.