It was planned. They put the word out that they wanted dirt on Kavanaugh, and there were plenty of hysterical women ready and willing to invent stories for money, fame, and the chance to destroy a White Male.
I believe they intended to do it to Gorsuch but they weren’t ready back then to weaponize the process.
And they take righteous umbrage on being called on the politics of personal destruction. Its always about them.
As it if makes that right, excuses it or justifies what they did.
Ford was a good candidate because her “dirt” was so far back it could not be disproved. All they had to do was make is sound more-or-less plausible. A lot of people would be duped by the telling. Others were eager to believe. But it turned out to not be as easy as they thought, primarly because of Trump’s pure cussedness and Kavanaugh’s integrity, faith, and fight-back.
‘and there were plenty of hysterical women...’
which is pretty much any point in human history...