Smokey wrote:Remember when the Democratic Party outed that whistleblower dude during the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings?

Nope. And neither do you.
Feinstein denied that she or her staff leaked Blasey Ford's identity. The reporter to whom the identity was leaked confirmed that the did not receive the information from Feinstein or her staff. Blasey Ford stated that she had told several friends about sending the letter. That's what we know. It may very well be that the person who leaked the information considered him or herself a Democrat, but there is zero evidence that the "Democratic Party" outed her.
This is the old false equivalence gambit that has become absolutely predictable from the right. The person who leaked Blasey-Ford's identity was absolutely wrong for doing so, as it was clear at the time of the leak that she wanted her identity to stay confidential. If it were a staffer, he or she should have been fired. If it were Feinstein, she should have been reprimanded or censured. But it is important to note that it is extremely unlikely that the leaker was motivated by a desire to attack and destroy her personally. Had her identity been kept confidential, but the allegations been made public, you'd have seen the Right do just what they are doing now with the whistleblower -- demanding to know the identity for the express purpose of attacking and personally destroying that individual. In other words, in both cases the identity of the "whistleblower" was important to the right so that they could personally intimidate and punish the person for coming forward.
It is fascinating to me to see the political right, which has for my entire life been suspicious of government to the point of paranoia, suddenly reverse course and seek to mercilessly attack and personally destroy anyone who provides information about potential wrongdoing in the Trump government. If anyone should be in favor of protecting government whistleblowers, it should be the people who don't trust government.
Heck, I'm pretty darn liberal, and I think whistleblower protection for government employees is an essential check on government corruption. We should encourage government employees who see illegal activity or abuse of power to report those activities. And the only way to encourage that reporting is to protect he employee from retaliation by his or her boss or others up the chain of command. The best way to do that is to provide a method for a government employee to come forward and report anonymously. The merits of the report can then be evaluated through an investigation of the facts.
The status of the current whistleblower as government employee is, of course, a critical difference between the whistleblower and Blasey Ford. There is no law that protects Blasey-Ford's identity, because Justice Kavanaugh isn't in a position to directly retaliate against her as Trump or other government official would be with respect to an employee in the executive branch.
If the whistleblower statute is respected and followed, the identity of the whistleblower is irrelevant information unless the whistleblower's testimony would be the only possible relevant evidence. In the present case, the whistleblower is not the only source of evidence. In fact, he or she isn't the best source of evidence -- by a long ways. Whether the whistleblower is a republican or democrat, which presidents he or she worked under, who appointed him or her, or whether he or she is a Jew is 100% irrelevant to the merits of claims against Donald Trump. It's a red herring to distract from the merits of the claims and to personally punish the whistleblower to discourage any other witnesses to wrongdoing by the Trump government from coming forward. Smokey is openly advocating for corruption in government. Such a weird thing for a political philosophy that supposedly distrusts government.
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951